A couple of paragraphs about pies - also, Edinburgh

We'd made it. Despite the misgivings of the UK Customs officer, I was in the country. I'd met up with my girlfriend, explained why I was so late, and we set off. The first stop was to a currency exchange in the airport, to get pounds for our euros. A painless experience, as you'd expect.

Next up was getting to town. We just took the normal bus that runs from the airport into town, and my very first impression of Edinburgh, once we started to get into the urban/suburban areas, was a striking similarity to the kinds of neighbourhoods, suburbs and houses I would expect to see in New Zealand.

When the colonists started designing the city that would one day become Dunedin, in the South Island of New Zealand, they decided on Edinburgh as an inspiration for the architecture and style. It was also, apparently, designed by someone who had no first-hand experience of the landscape and implemented by people who would follow the rules, no matter what, which is why Dunedin has the world's steepest street, as well as a number of other, extremely steep streets.

I'd always known that, and I have visited Dunedin on a number of occasions in the past, seeing as it's not far from Christchurch, where I'm from; has a large student population (lots of people I know having studied there) and being on the main highway south (where I used to hitchhike occasionally). But it was incredible to see what a fantastic job the designers of Dunedin had done capturing the spirit of Edinburgh. The architecture, imposing grey stone buildings, wide streets, even the gloomy weather (which I'm sure can be nice from time to time), Dunedin really did seem to capture the essence of Edinburgh.

We arrived at our hostel (St Christopher's Inn, £8 a night in a 16-bed dorm). We arrived too early to check-in (even after my delay at the border, we'd still made it into town around 8.00 or something), but we left our bags in the lockers and headed out to have a look at Edinburgh properly. We were tired from being up all night, and hungry.

So, we continued looking around Edinburgh, not in any particular direction, or with any sense of urgency. To be honest, around half a year later, after spending 3 months mostly hitchhiking around the UK, I can't remember everything that we saw and did that day. But, I do remember that we were excited, because we found a shop that we'd seen on Youtube, in a travel video about Edinburgh, called "Piemaker". A place that sells pies. We'd been looking forward to visiting it, and by complete coincidence, it was literally just down the road from our hostel. Unfortunately, when we first arrived, it hadn't opened yet.

Now, in New Zealand, at least amongst my peers, a pie and a coffee was the hang-over food of choice. Pie to fill your belly, to stick to your ribs, tasty enough to want to eat it despite feeling terrible, easy to eat and a true comfort food for New Zealanders. And coffee to provide you with a caffeine hit, to ease yourself through the pain of the hangover, to shake off the cobwebs of a terrible sleep, beginning at some point too late in the morning, continuing through the deep, infinite blankness of a drunk sleep, culminating in a dizzying, confusing and sickeningly quick rush back to reality, to consciousness, to wakefulness, where any light, sound, movement, any thing is enough to make you feel sick. So, of course you feel tired and want a coffee, and a cigarette if you're so inclined, or one of those special jazz cigarettes if that's more your style. But, the important thing to take from this paragraph, is we love pies, meat pies, they are a major comfort food for me (not just when I'm hung-over) and that a meat pie and a coffee when you're hung-over are like magic.

In Vienna, there is a pie-shop, across the street from an extremely good cafe, in either some kind of amazing, fortuitous coincidence, or the two businesses have colluded to work together (New Zealand isn't the only place to enjoy pies and coffees together, although I would argue we're easily the best at it). In any event, both are extremely good, and a lifeline back home when I was feeling homesick in Vienna (read: hung-over in Vienna). However, they aren't a perfect facsimile; they are fancy and expensive (I mean, you can get fancy, expensive pies in New Zealand as well, but sometimes, you just want a lower-priced, decent-quality stomach filler) and getting them is a bit of an event. Because they are so ubiquitous in New Zealand, getting a pie can be an every-day event, you can make a big deal out of it, if you choose, but it can also be as simple as seeing one and thinking "Yeah, I could go for a pie, why not?".

So, despite hankering for a pie, we decided to continue around for a bit, looking for some food and some caffeine. If you know me, then you know that I love food, especially eating although I also enjoy preparing food. I like the idea of fine, fancy food, but for me, the real pleasure is local or regional foods, especially home-made comfort foods and dirty yet delicious, unhealthy yet irresistible street food etc. Being in the UK, even Scotland, didn't change that at all. I was on the lookout for something genuine and Scottish/British. Something like a mug of tea and a bacon butty. Just down the road, we found exactly that, at a student cafe. Cheap bacon, in a bap, with brown sauce...that was Scotland. My girlfriend just got a coffee, because she wanted to save herself for a pie.

My selection

Lisa's pies

After (first) breakfast, we headed back to Piemaker to see if it was open, and joy! It was! So, we got a couple of pies each...with so much time passed, I can't remember exactly what we ordered, but with a bit of sleuthing and reasoning with Lisa, we think we've got it. I'm sure I got a sausage roll and a shepherd's pie, and she got a couple of pies, a Scotch pie, so we could see what it was, and the other was a mac 'n' cheese pie. I distinctly remember, because I had absolutely no interest in buying one myself. I did try it, and I have to say, I didn't care for it, although my girlfriend enjoyed it. And I definitely noticed, mac 'n' cheese pies are definitely a thing in Scotland.

Saw these at the supermarket...didn't
buy them though, I wanted my first
Haggis experience to be the real thing

My girlfriend wasn't feeling too well, so after the pies, we went to a local supermarket. Something I noticed that was different about the European mainland as compared to New Zealand, was the fact that basic painkillers and other over-the-counter drugs aren't available at the supermarket, but only at pharmacies. Because Lisa wasn't feeling well, we went to the supermarket to stock up on cheap, generic drugs. We walked around for a bit, went to Primark (I'd forgotten to bring a warm hat, and I figured it would be useful to have one) and we headed back to St Cristopher's, where Lisa slept for a bit on the couch until we could check in. We napped for the afternoon, woke up, ate some super cheap Asian food in a place down the road, went back to the hostel, and slept solidly again until the morning time.


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Update #4 - better late than never

So, I'm sitting on a ferry on the way to Sweden right now. I've been so busy over the last 2 weeks, visiting my friend at the Language Farm in Thüringen, so never got around to updating the blog.

Lisa came to the farm for a week as well, and we had a great time, I even got drawn as an anime character, which was cool.

After that, we initially planned to hitchhike from Jena to Leipzig, but we were so exhausted, we changed plan. We stayed for a bit in Jena, had a nice late lunch/early dinner at the cafe my friend used to work at, and I booked a hostel for myself in Leipzig for a night.

Lisa had a bus booked back to Vienna from Leipzig, at about 11:30, so we just chilled out at the hostel until out was time to leave. Once I'd seen her off, I headed back to the hostel, had a quick shower and feel right asleep. I'd set an alarm for 6am, as I wanted to get out and start hitchhiking as early as possible.

I woke up slightly before my alarm, had another shower to wake up and packed my things. Took a bit longer than I expected, because I was so tired, and didn't get to the spot I'd read about on hitchwiki about 10am. I got there with all my stuff (including my guitar which had been left at the Language Farm), and sat on my guitar case for a minute or two, just soaking up the sun a bit, trying to get the energy to start hitchhiking. I was at a petrol station on the motorway, and had been there for about 5 minutes, sitting in the sun, with my sign in front of me, when someone called out from the pumps.

My sign said "North/Rostock" and turns out these guys are from Rostock, had spent a weekend in Leipzig and were on their way back. It was mostly an uneventful ride, although there was massive traffic jams about halfway through. The driver was incredibly nice and took me the whole way to the port so I could buy a ticket for the ferry.

Unfortunately, the next ferry we completely booked, so I had to take the 23:55 one. And now, here I am. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous, it's a long way to go tomorrow, I didn't really specify a time I'd be in Enköping, but I said I hoped it would be lunch time. I'd have to get pretty lucky for that to happen, but we'll see...crazier things have happened.

Sorry for the non-standard formatting on this post, I am writing this on my phone, and the Blogger app doesn't allow much formatting.

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Update #3

Been too busy this weekend to do the finishing touches on the UK blogposts I was going to write about, so I'll just describe the week that was.

All week, I've been preparing to leave to go to Sweden. Lisa and I are going to WWOOF on an organic farm in Enkoping, and I wanted to make sure I had all the bits and pieces. In addition, it's harvest season, so Lisa has been working at the Lagerhaus and I had been helping on the field.

Last minute, I decided to stop in Thüringen on the way, to hang out with some old friends for a couple of weeks. I wanted to leave on Friday, so on Thursday, I went back to Vienna to get the stuff from Lisa's apartment that I wanted to take to Sweden. Because Lisa was at the Lagerhaus, her brother took me to Leopoldsforf train station to get the train to Vienna. Leopoldsdorf doesn't have a ticket service of any sort, you must buy the tickets on the train. The conductor was in my carriage but she seemed too lazy to get out and check any tickets, so I didn't end up buying one, and just got off on the first station in Vienna. When I got off, however, I realised that I had forgotten to bring the keys to the apartment, so I had to Whatsapp everyone and let them know that I had, very typically for me, forgotten the keys and had to return to Kopfstetten. I had to buy a ticket from the machine and luckily, Lisa's brother would meet me at the Leopoldsdorf, drop off the key and I would take the next train to Vienna.

We did that, wasting almost a whole hour in total, and on the way back to Vienna, the conductor walked past me, looked me in the eye but didn't ask for a ticket and I never brought it up, so I got to Vienna free again.

I got the stuff from the apartment, and a new case for my phone, and headed back. I packed my stuff, and got ready to leave. I wanted to hitchhike, and I'd planned for it to take two days, I planned to arrive on Saturday evening. Lisa dropped me off at the Schönfeld-Lassee train station, I took a train to Vienna, and then made my way to the Hütteldorf, as suggested by hitchwiki.org.

It didn't take long for me to get my first ride and get on the way! My sign said "Kiwi going to Germany", because I felt like it would be beneficial for my sign to say that I was 

1. From New Zealand
2. An English-speaker

My "Kiwi going to Germany" and my stuff

However, the guy that picked me up didn't really read my sign, he just stopped to pick me up, he did, however, think it was cool I was from New Zealand. A pretty interesting guy, from Südtirol, in Italy (but the Austrian-German-speaking part), he lived in Vienna but worked near St Valentin as a tour guide at an old concentration camp. He dropped me off at a rest-stop, not too close to St Valentin, but that got lots of traffic.

At my first drop-off, in Oed

The next guy was one of the more interesting rides I've ever had. Again, not sure that he read and comprehended my sign in it's full entirety, we definitely got along right from the start. He was a Kurdish guy from Turkey, but had grown up in Romania. As he told me, the Turkish population in Romania is not particularly sizeable.

He could take me to Nürnberg, which was amazing, that was about half my journey complete right there! However, just after Passau, there was a border control, and they pulled us aside and checked our passports, his car and quickly interviewed us. We didn't have anything illegal and weren't doing anything wrong, and once they understood I was a hitchhiker, they were less confused about why a New Zealand with a Swedish working holiday visa and residency card was travelling with a Turkish Romanian who was going to Paris.

We stopped at a rest stop to get some lunch, and it turned out to be quite a nice little stop. I got one of my favourite Austrian comfort foods, Leberkäse, and I have to say, it was definitely one of the more generous slices I've ever had and accompanied it with a Radler, with dark beer (which I don't recommend). My new friend got an egg sandwich type thing, but when we sat down outside to eat, he decided he would get some potato salad as well (he was a vegetarian), so went back inside. He came out with nothing, and I asked him about it, and he said the chef had told him he would make him something special. He went inside after a few minutes, and came out with a massive plate of pasta, mixed with scrambled eggs, with large helpings of various salads on the side. He had brought two forks with him, because it was too much for one, and the chef had only charged him €5!

After we were done, we went in and said our thanks for the fantastic food, and headed out again. Unfortunately, it turns out on the motorway, there wasn't really a good stop close to Nürnberg, so he dropped me off a bit west of Nürnberg. Now that I was in Germany, I thought that having a sign that said "Kiwi going to Germany" was a bit pointless, as I was already in Germany, so I wrote a new sign on the back that simply said "North/Nord" on it, as I was going pretty much just heading North.

Just in front of the Fun World Casino

After only about 15 minutes or so, a fancy newish Audi stopped, and a sort of business-type stopped and asked me about where I was going, in German. We discussed it, decided it would work and put my bags in the back. I introduced myself and he asked where I was from. As soon as I said I was from New Zealand, he switched to speaking in English and turns out, he liked the fact that I was from New Zealand. He had spent some time in Australia and really enjoyed it and as a consequence, he really wanted to go back to that part of the world.

Arrived safely in Jena

He was heading to Leipzig, but in the end, he made a special effort to drop me off in Jena, which was my goal. I had made, what I planned to be a 2 day journey, in a single day, in less than 12 hours. I found what seemed to be the only hostel in Jena, and luckily, got there just before reception closed.

The guy who checked me in seriously thought I was the coolest person ever. He loved that I was from New Zealand, that I speak German and that I was hitchhiking. He offered to help me with my stuff after checking me in, but he only took me sign and showed it to other people. The only other guy in the dorm was a young Russian kid, very shy because his English was not particularly strong, but a really nice kid nonetheless. He offered me a beer after an hour or so of us sitting in near-silence on our respective electronic devices, and we had a small chat. He was in town for a science conference, and had an extra weekend just to look around a little bit.

In the morning, I checked out and went to get a breakfast at a cool cafe called "Stilbruch", where a good friend of mine had formerly worked in the kitchen. I just went there on her recommendation, and it was super-busy, but the food was great. Afterwards, I went to the supermarket, as I'd forgotten my shower gel in Vienna, and I also bought a bottle of wine. I took the train to the small town where I was meeting my friends, but they couldn't pick me up until the early afternoon, so I sat at the small town train station and drank a whole bottle of wine to myself.

Needless to say, when they came to get me, I was pretty drunk.

We had some more drinks, had a barbeque, had a nice time, and I had a sleep. We had some stuff to do on Sunday, luckily I didn't feel too worse for wear, and so I've been busy and only really found time to write this update at the very arse-end of the weekend. Hopefully I'll be better organised next week and get up a couple of posts about the UK as well.

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Update #2 - week ending 09/07/17

I thought it was going to be a fairly average week, and I suppose in some ways it was, but there is definitely a bit to write about!

Early on in the week, I went to a Greek restaurant with Lisa's family, very idyllic, picturesque setting, overlooking the Danube-Oder canal (which connects with neither river, ironically enough...it was begun by the Nazis to connect the Danube in Austria with the Oder river in Poland, but it never got very far). The food was pretty good, the service was excellent Austrian service (pretty slow, but very friendly and personable, and it gives it more of an atmosphere of being there to enjoy yourself, just to relax, because there's no need to rush) and the setting was phenomenal.

View of the Danube-Oder canal

After that, Lisa and I got dropped off in Vienna (it's just outside the border), because she had an exam and I wanted to go to the Finanzamt (the Tax Office, more or less) and to do a bit of shopping for new running/sport shoes and some other stuff for Sweden. The Finanzamt was not the smoothest of operations this time; last time, my German was strong enough to get myself a code so I could log-in online, without Lisa's help, but this time, it was a bit more of a struggle. Unfortunately, we weren't able to do it online, and I went to ask why, but they asked where I lived, and when I explained that I didn't live in Vienna anymore, and wanted to use my girlfriends' parents' house as a postal address for my tax stuff, they said I would need to go to the Finanzamt in their district, not in Vienna.

Lisa's aunty has since assisted me, ringing the Finanzamt in Lisa's parents' district and finding out that I hadn't submitted a document detailing my earnings for the year. It is the kind of thing your employer can do, and I assumed mine had, but had not. It's not a problem, my boss did give me a copy when I left, and Lisa's aunty will submit that, and then I should be able to apply for my tax refund. A lot of effort for what I imagine will barely amount to €100, but I am proud of myself for going to the Finanzamt by myself, and at least making myself understood and moving the process along a bit.

After that debacle, I bought some shoes, that was alright, then I went to look for a device I'd send in the window of a store, when I was walking with Lisa, not so long ago. It was the kind of store that sells watches, and various electronics, home goods, odds and ends, but mostly electronic in nature. The item I wanted was a USB energy bank, for storing energy, that was equipped for collecting solar energy, as well as the more conventional USB charging. It was €20, which I judged to be an appropriate price, and I quite liked the idea of buying it at a local, small business. I spent ages in the hot sun looking in the windows, trying to find it again, but I really couldn't see it. I went in to the nicely air-conditioned shop and the owner automatically asked me (in German) what I wanted. I was a bit nervous, made worse by his brusque manner, so I just replied that I was "just looking, thanks". He then told me I could look from outside and gestured to the door.

Although I'm sure if I'd described what I was looking for, he would have assisted me, but my German isn't the best and he didn't seem the most patient of assistants. Moreover, I'd decided that I no longer wanted to support this business, and more specifically, this guy. I'll still be keeping an eye out for this kind of device, because they will be absolutely fantastic for hitchhiking, especially because in today's world, the phone is extremely essential, and if I am stuck somewhere overnight with no power, which happens sometimes, it is all to easy to run out of power. My phone is more than just a source of music (although it is the main thing I use it for), I also use it for navigating (even offline, if you've got a map open in memory already, it will update your real-time position on top of it; fantastic if you have to walk to the exit of an unfamiliar town/city and you don't have access to data or wifi) and as an emergency device (for contacting the police, friends, whomever I please).

I published the first 2 blog posts about my recent hitchhiking trip to the UK...if you haven't already read them, please do! Post #1 and #2. I will continue posting them twice a week, or maybe once a week if I am posting about some current travels.

Speaking of which, probably the most exciting news of the week...the camp I used to work at in Germany has asked Lisa and I to come back for a camp! My favourite camp of last year, the horse-riding/cooking camp. The horse-riding is neither here nor there for me (although I can ride horses both with, and without, saddles; I learnt when I was WWOOFing on a horse farm in Nordrhein-Westfalen), but the cooking camp is amazing. It's a bit of stress for the counsellors, when it's your turn to do a cooking project or whatever, but there is incredible food all week long. And I love food.

I had to write to the farm in Sweden where Lisa and I will be WWOOFing, to make sure they would be ok if I arrived a bit later (and they were), and Lisa had to make sure she would be done at the Lagerhaus where she has a summer job (she will be) but we made it work and we're very excited. And, I have agreed to do a camp the week before as well, which will be nice too.

Poster for the Seefest

Lastly, we went to a concert (Seefest) at a cool little pub, next to a little lake in rural Austria, which I've been to a few times with Lisa and her parent. The first band were a cute group of young kids, I'd imagine from about 11 to about 14, singing some of modern pop music, all in English except one song in Spanish.

Overall, a pretty awesome week!

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To the Empire

So, we had our flight to Bratislava from Edinburgh booked. We took a bus from Austria, and arrived at some point in the middle of the night; our flight was at 6.30 or something ridiculous. For those who have never been to Bratislava airport, it's quite a nice airport, fairly modern...clean, tidy, but it's main issue is that it is extremely tiny. That's actually not normally a bad thing, but when you've got hours to kill and everything is closed, at least exploring the airport can normally occupy a little of your time. But the public part of this airport takes all of 10 minutes to get around completely.

Bratislava airport at night

Our Ryanair plane

Aside from that, we had a fairly non-interesting flight with Ryanair. We got on the plane, the plane took off, flew for a bit, then landed. When it came time for customs, I had to line up in the peasants' (aka non-European passport holders') line, and my girlfriend, being an Austrian, went through the much faster EU line. While crawling through the extremely slow and boring line, I was trying to connect to the wifi with my phone, so I could talk to my girlfriend, or browse the internet, or literally anything even remotely interesting. I had no luck with the wifi but did manage to get to the front of the line eventually.

Now, being a non-EU citizen, I had to fill out a card on arrival, with the purpose of my visit, my intended period of stay, an address where I was staying and so on. If you've ever travelled to a foreign country, then you know the type of thing. I am not the most organised of people, and where possible, I tend to let my girlfriend organise the details of our travels, because she'll;
a) get around to it (I tend to put things off);
b) remember whatever it is that's been organised (I'll forget the date and time of a flight I've booked before I've even left the room).
And so, as a result, I actually had no idea what the address of the hostel we were staying at was. I had no idea what it was called. I did recall that it costed about £8, because that was ridiculously cheap, and that it was fairly close to the city centre. I left that blank on the card, while trying to connect to the wifi to ask my girlfriend about it.

So, I get to the front and begin my conversation with the immigration officer. Of course, she notices that I haven't got an address that I'll be staying at, so she asks me about it.
"I'm afraid I don't know the address, my girlfriend has all the details."
"Where is she now?"
"She's Austrian, so she went through the EU line...I know that it's a hostel, and it costs about £8 a night."

After convincing her that it was all good, she asked what my purpose was and whether I had an onward ticket booked. She also seemed perturbed that I had written "~2 months" under the question about my intended period of stay. I explained that I was having a short holiday with my girlfriend, and then she would fly back to Austria, and I would go to London, to apply for a working holiday visa from the Latvian embassy. If I got it, then I'd be off to Latvia, if not, then I had enough money in my New Zealand account for a flight back to New Zealand. She wasn't impressed. I then tried to persuade her that I understood the seriousness of over-staying, by telling her about the time that I was deported from Germany (which I'll write about another time). With hindsight I realise, of course, that this was a terrible approach to take, even after explaining that in the end, it was proved that the deportation was a mistake on the German bureaucrat's part, and that the decision was reversed. But in the end, she allowed me in to the UK despite my ambiguously filled out arrival card, my vague answers to her questions and my admission of being deported from another EU country (although the decision had been reversed).

What would I have done if I hadn't been allowed in? I'm not sure, to be honest. I would've desperately found a way to contact my girlfriend, as a first point of action, so she'd know what was going on. Aside from that, not sure. But I was allowed in, and so my UK adventure could begin...

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UK travels - a background

I'm going to begin writing about my recent trip around the UK for 3 months, mostly hitchhiking and couchsurfing. There are some good stories, crazy adventures, high points, low points and everything in-between. First, let's travel back to the end of 2016.

My working holiday
visa for Germany

My working holiday visa for Germany had run out in September of 2016. I'd had a working holiday visa the year before, for Austria, and after it had expired, you were entitled to stay in the Schengen for an extra 90 days, as a visa-free tourist. What I learnt the hard way, after getting deported (which is a story for another time), is that after the visa had finished, one was supposed to leave the Schengen for any amount of time, then re-enter and the visa-free period begins on whatever date your arrival stamp states.

My passport with the exit
stamp from Croatia

Now, I wasn't sure if that also applied for the German working holiday visa, but I wasn't taking any chances. I'd booked a bus to Zagreb for a few days. to ensure I had at least the entry stamp. Upon returning into the Schengen, I was once again a legal visa-free tourist in the Schengen.

I'd been meaning to apply for a new working holiday visa for a while, but I'd lazy and disorganised and left it too long. It's not as simple as one might think; despite being young enough to be eligible for several visas all around Europe, it's not just a matter of sending in an application, waiting a few days and boom, you're done (although, to be fair, the German one is easy, you can just walk into an Ausländeramt (foreigner's office) and get it then and there apparently. I got mine at a German embassy and it only took a couple of days).

For example, not all the visas were available to me, despite being eligible for them. Let me explain; I was eligible to apply for the UK working holiday visa. Ignoring the fact that I was less keen to apply for that (as although it's in Europe and not too far from Austria and therefore my girlfriend, I'd still have to fly or go by boat to get back to the mainland), I would only be able to apply through the UK embassy in New Zealand. Now, I don't need to point out how ridiculous it would be to travel all the way home (when we came to Europe last time, the whole journey took around 50 hours!) simply to apply and then come back, and it meant that, effectively, the UK visa was unavailable to me. It was unavailable to me in the same way that Lamborghini ownership is currently unavailable to me; on paper, it isn't, but it's basically impossible. And other visas were out-of-reach for various reasons, including the same, or I didn't have enough money e.t.c..

So, basically, I settled on applying for a Latvian working holiday visa. It didn't require a large amount of savings (I only needed proof that I had the equivalent of around €600, as opposed to some other countries, that require €1800+), despite being quite far from Austria it was at least on the mainland, I could apply from an overseas embassy (in this case, London, so I could also leave the Schengen to avoid overstaying),  and lastly, although I think the number of visas issued every year is limited to a certain amount, it seems unlikely that the quota would be used up. To be honest, I've never heard of a single New Zealander ever applying for a Latvian working holiday visa, although I'm sure there must have been at least one by now.

I would definitely have to leave Europe in very early January, so my girlfriend and I had made a plan to fly to the UK together just before New Years. We looked online for some cheap flights from Vienna or Bratislava, and found some tickets that were cheap one way (for me), as well as return (for her). They flew into Edinburgh, and I happened to know that a very good friend of mine, who I met in working in Milford Sound, was living in the Highlands. I messaged him and, as his flatmate was away for most of the time Lisa would be in the UK, he was happy to host us for New Years and a bit afterwards.

And so, we were set. We'd fly to Edinburgh, spend a night there, then a night or two in Glasgow, then off to Fort William. Seems pretty straight-forward, but in fairly typical fashion, I almost managed to get myself refused entry into the UK. But that's a story for another blog post.

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Update #1 - week ending 2/7/17

Well, it's been a busy week as far as this blog is concerned!

Pretty much launched all of it today, the Instagram, the Facebook and the blog itself!

Still learning about Blogger and how it works, got some ideas about how to make the blog itself better, more navigable and in more of a format for future referencing, like a real diary.

Aside from that, did some cool stuff this week - most importantly, got my phone back from Switzerland...I've been using a 3rd-party computer-based application to upload to Instagram, which is far from ideal, so now I can use Instagram the way it was intended again.

It was incredibly hot in Vienna this week, and I spent the early part of the week pretty much just melting in Lisa's apartment, although we did have a bit of a trip down to the Finanzamt...when I worked in Austria, I paid taxes as if I'd worked for a whole year and had only worked 5 months, so I could claim some of the taxes back. We'd been trying to do it online, but because I am no longer officially registered in Austria, we weren't able to get a code sent via mail to log-in online, so I had to go in person.

I went with Lisa by bike; her with her on bike and I took a Citybike (an incredibly cool service here in Vienna). We locked up her bike across the street but we decided she would go return the Citybike to the nearest station while I went in to get started with the bureaucracy, because it was close to closing time (it closes at 12 in summer). It took her a bit longer to return, because by the time she got there, the station was full, so she had to wait until someone took a bike. As it happened, my German was good enough that by the time she got there, I'd got through most of the process, and she just had to help me fill out a form. Haven't been able to do the process online, though, so might need to go back in this week.

Check out the Instagram or Facebook to watch a video from yesterday...Lisa and I went to the sports field in the town over, with her brother, to kick around the rugby ball, but on the way, we went to check out a bunker in the fields that Lisa's dad had told us about. It was smaller than I expected, but pretty cool nonetheless.

On the way to the bunker

Lisa in the bunker

Me on the bunker

About to pass

So, in the next week, look forward to the beginning of my trip to the UK. I have drafted up a number of posts already (but still got a lot of work ahead of me...it was 3 months, after all - mostly hitchhiking), so I think I will be publishing 2 a week, possibly more.

Congratulations if you read this, you may be the only person to have done so. 😬

Feel free to follow me on Instagram, Facebook and look out for Youtube coming soon (I mean, it's technically there already, but it has nothing on it yet).

Return of the Marmite

I'd travelled by train and hitchhiking from Vienna, to a small town in Switzerland. I'd spent the weekend in Aargburg and then stayed the night in Freiburg in Germany. I'd hitchhiked from Freiburg to Friedrichshafen, had a wee adventure, but managed to get to Munich. Decided to stay the night at Munich central train station (Hauptbahnhof) before heading out to hitchhike towards Vienna in the morning.

So, apart from taking a selfie on my laptop of me with the Marmite, and trying to catch a nap here and there in the waiting area, I walked around the entirety of the Hauptbahhof, both above ground and below; and I walked around the neighbourhood, just to fill in the time. I also used the free wifi to look up things on the internet, to chat to Lisa and to do other internet stuff. When it finally got to dawn, I started walking, making my way to the city limits. I was standing just after a bus stop, not a perfect position but I had made a pretty large sign that said "Austria / Österreich". Being so early in the morning, the traffic was not very heavy and I did have to wait for an hour or so. A van stopped, an electrician on his way to work or something. He didn't speak English, but my German was good enough to ascertain that although he was going to Austria, he was going to or through Innsbruck, whereas it would be more convenient for me to go to Salzburg for getting to Vienna. He offered to either take me to Innsbruck or would drop me off somewhere on the way. I agreed to get dropped off on the way and hopped in.

Just as we were about to leave, some other hitchhikers had got off a bus at the bus stop and had come up to the van to inquire about getting a ride. I believe they were Austrians and wanted to get to Salzburg. There wasn't enough room, and to be honest, I was pretty glad. If they were trying to get to Salzburg as well, we'd probably get dropped off at the same spot and then either try to hitchhike together, which as three people would severely limit the possible rides we could get, or we'd be competing or have to take turns, which would really suck.

On the way, I made some small talk with my driver: he was from Croatia but had been in Germany for around 20 years. We had a look at the GPS while he was driving and we decided that the Raststätte at Irschenberg would be a good place to drop me off, and it was the last stop before he went one way to Innsbruck and I would turn off to Vienna; moreover, I had read about it on hitchwiki.org as a good place to get to if you were hitchhiking out of Munich.

He dropped me off, and I quickly figured out the best place to position myself to get all the outgoing traffic, where they'd have enough time to see me and have enough room to stop. I got my laptop out and took a selfie of myself, with my Marmite and my "Austria / Österreich" sign.

Absolutely perfect weather!

As I was putting my laptop back into my backpack, I noticed a guy walking over from the petrol station. As he got closer, I noticed he had a gun, and pretty much then, he announced himself as a police officer, and pulled out some ID. He asked me for my passport, so I gave it to him as well as my Swedish residency card. His colleague drove over in an unmarked car, and came out and had a look at my passport as well...they noticed my Austrian and German visas and asked if I spoke German, and I said I spoke a bit. I'm happy to say that I managed to answer everything in German, except the odd word that I didn't know here and there. While the colleague took my passport away to check it on the radio or whatever it is they do in the car, the original cop started asking me questions. How long had I been in Europe? (About 2 years) Where was I coming from and where was I going to? (I'd come from Switzerland, had a weekend meeting friends, I was heading to Vienna, and then eventually heading up to Berlin, then to Sweden). Do I have any drugs or illegal items? (No). He didn't seem to believe me, asking if I was sure I didn't have any drugs and started asking me if I had individual drugs...hashish? MDMA? Cocaine? After a couple of these, I told him that I had I was trying to hitchhike over borders and taking drugs would be too risky...luckily he found that pretty funny. He asked to look through my wallet, which I acquiesced to, because I didn't have anything to hide and just wanted to get on with my hitchhiking. He didn't find anything interesting, and asked if I could begin emptying my backpack. It was a bit annoying, but I started to do it anyway, answering his questions, and after a just a few seconds of taking stuff out, his colleague came back with my passport and said everything was fine with it. As the stuff I had taken out was literally sleeping bag and a couple of t-shirts, the cop told me that I could stop emptying my bag, and they pretty abruptly got back into their car and drove off.

Only about 10 minutes later, a car stopped, with a young couple. They asked where in Austria I wanted to go and I said Vienna. They were going to Vienna as well, and they would take me the whole way if I wanted. I couldn't believe it, a ride the whole way to Vienna from just 50km or so out of Munich. They were a young couple from Slovakia originally, but living now in Vienna. We made some small talk, and I tried to stay awake, but it was really warm, and I was really tired, and I fell asleep before Salzburg, and pretty much slept the whole way to Vienna. I felt a bit guilty, but they didn't seem to mind. When I woke up, we were on the motorway that runs around Vienna, and they wanted to know where they could drop me off. They weren't going near Lisa's apartment, so they decided to drop me off close to a subway stop. They let me out, and I was officially back in Vienna.

Picture of Gasometer I took  off Wikipedia.org
© Bwag/CC-BY-SA-4.0 

Where they dropped me off was at the Gasometer buildings. These are really cool, old gas holders for town gas, that have been converted to apartments, shopping areas and offices. I'd read about them, but hadn't been to see them personally (although I've seen them in the distance a lot), and I thought they were amazing. They gave me a feeling of dystopic, futuristic video-games, areas where the unassuming protagonist will begin their story. I didn't go in, though, I really wanted to get to Lisa's. I took the U-bahn to the closes stop to Lisa's and walked the 5 minutes or so to her apartment. I rang her bell, but nobody was home. As I didn't have my phone, I pulled out my laptop and tried to connect to the apartment's wifi from the street...didn't reach. I could either wait for someone to get home, or try to find some internet. It was a nice day, I didn't feel like walking any further, so I took off my boots, pulled out my book, and sat in the sun, outside her apartment, and eventually, her flatmate came home and let me in.

I messaged Lisa, had a shower, had a nap and then when she came home, we had dinner. After a day or two in Vienna, we took the train back to her parents house, and I finally felt my adventure was at an end. Definitely one of the longest continuous hitchhiking journeys I'd ever undertaken, I'd had a great time, met some great people and hopefully, won some great Marmite. 

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My Marmite adventure continues

I'd successfully taken an overnight train across Austria and hitchhiked into Switzerland. I'd spent a nice weekend in Aarburg, and agreed to stay with the other guys at their dorm in Freiburg. We took a train to Basel; our plan was to take a regional train to Freiburg, but due to a timetabling error on our part, we had missed all but the last one, a few hours later, and that would arrive at Freiburg too late for us. We went to the ICE train (InterCity Express), which are much more expensive, and asked the conductor if we were able to buy tickets on the train, as it was departing soon, and we were told we could.

We boarded and waited dutifully at our seats. Freiburg was the first stop, about 30 minutes away, and we chatted the whole time. As we were pulling into Freiburg, we noticed the conductor finally reaching our carriage, but we were just pulling into the station, he was just waiting at the door of our carriage, to get out onto the platform. We disembarked at Freiburg, having semi-legally avoided the rather pricey ICE ticket. The guys took me to get döner, at their favourite place, and we took a tram to where they live, at the St Alban Haus in Littenweiler, on the outskirts of Freiburg.

On the way to Freiburg, I'd noticed that I'd left my phone somewhere. When I was in the dorm, I connected to the wifi with my laptop and used Google to find my phone's location on Google Maps. It is absolutely crazy how accurate the service is. I had left it where we had stayed for the weekend, and so I emailed somebody to let them know I had left it and to arrange to get it back somehow. I went on to hitchwiki.org to see if anybody had any information about hitchhiking out of Freiburg, and luckily, there was some information. For hitchhiking east towards Munich, the recommended spot was not too far from where I was staying. I was to sleep on a mattress on the floor - I stayed up a bit, checking emails and so on. I really wanted to take a selfie with my Marmite, so in lieu of my phone, I just used my laptop.

Hanging out with my Marmite in Freiburg

I got up fairly early, and got myself ready to leave. I took the tram a couple of stops to Maria-Hilfe-Kirche, and looked around for cardboard. Looking in a side-street, I found that again, it seemed to be collection day and it was no trouble at all to find a cardboard box in a bin on the side of the street. Unusually for me, I took more than one piece of cardboard, as I figured it would be highly unlikely I would get to Vienna in just a single day, and if I had a couple of pieces with me, I could take them with me as necessary, and the incident with "Aarburg via Zürich" had convinced me that it was best to have some spare cardboard with me. I made up a sign that simply said "East/Ost" and tried to find a spot. It wasn't the best, as the highway went into an underground tunnel randomly in the city, with no spots to pull over immediately before it, but a short walk further up the road, toward the city, I found a small spot that I thought would suffice.

I was only there for a couple of minutes (without music, unfortunately, as I had forgotten my phone), when a youngish guy in a small car pulled over. He was heading somewhere else in Germany, to attend a friend's grandmother's funeral, but could drop me off somewhere by the Bodensee (Lake Constance). We got along really well, had some really interesting conversation, and we decided that he would drop me off at Friedrichshafen. To further my goal of taking a photo at every stop I made, I asked him if he could take a photo of me with my Marmite, which he was happy to do, in fact, even taking a selfie together with me and the Marmite. I put my email details into his phone and he said he'd email them to me[although, as of yet, I have not received the photo. It is possible I mistyped the address. His screen was fairly scratched, and it was quite difficult to see the screen properly in the bright sun anyway].

After he left, I headed down to the waterfront to enjoy some lunch. I had some Käsewurst that I'd bought from Vienna, that was a bit suspicious-looking and didn't smell the greatest, but which I ate anyway. I drank all the water I had, and went for a quick swim, as the day was absolutely sweltering. I walked a bit further along the waterfront, and found a public tap from which to fill my water bottle. When my shorts were more or less dry, I went off to start hitchhiking again. I knew that I wanted the highway 31, so I followed some signs for that, until it no longer had a pedestrian area and became more of a motorway. Luckily, this was a great hitchhiking spot, as there was a bit of shade available, and there was plenty of space to pull over, just after a bus stop, not to mention a public carpark next to me as well.

After about 20 minutes or so, I got my first ride. The guy was only going to Kressbronn, only about 20km down the road according to him, but he could drop me off at the gas station next to the highway. This sounded great, so I got in and we took off. It was not such an interesting conversation, mainly because his English wasn't the best and neither is my German, and he seemed to be with a young lady, who I imagine to be his daughter but was possibly old enough to have been a much younger girlfriend, who was a bit shy.

The petrol station was not as great of an area as I'd hoped. A tiny, rural sort of affair, it was a fair way off the highway. I wanted the traffic going back on to the highway, which was in the direction on the opposite side of a roundabout from where I was. The road I was on didn't seem to get a hell of a lot of traffic, and although the other roads seem to go to places and get more traffic, they hardly ever came to the petrol station. I went across the roundabout, despite it clearly not being a pedestrian area, and followed the road a bit. It curved consistently the entire kilometre or so to the highway, where it was even more clearly not a pedestrian area - it didn't really have anywhere for a pedestrian to stand anyway, so it would've been fairly dangerous to wait on the highway itself, not to mention cars were going pretty fast and if I'd been spotted by police, I could imagine having to deal with them (perhaps not getting in any lasting trouble, but I can never be bothered talking to police). The entire curved road was fairly bushy, meaning cars couldn't see me as they were heading towards the highway, the only reasonable place to stand was a slight grassy area immediately after the highway. It was far from ideal, but I only had to wait about 10 minutes before getting a ride, in a fancy Jaguar with a lawyer.

We started off the ride in German, but we soon switched over to English. I was pretty tired from being in the sun all day, but I managed to stay awake for the whole journey. A fairly interesting guy, he was involved with a program bringing students from the Maldives to Germany on student visas. He had plenty to say about the Maldives, not just the threat from climate change, but the intense corruption of the government. He also told me that a number of years ago, he had decided he wanted to something more than just legal work, and with the blessing of his wife, opened a micro-brewery in Munich with some other guys, and now they were looking at building up production capacity and expanding their sales area.

He dropped me off almost directly at the main train station, Hauptbahnhof. I had two options, I could stay the night at Hauptbahnhof, or I could make my way to the area I found on hitchwiki.org for hitchhiking to Austria and try to make it somewhere that night. I decided that I would wait the night at Hauptbahnhof, If I didn't get a ride before dark, I would either have to try to hitchhike at night (which I've done several times before, but it's not ideal), or I'd probably have to make my way back to Hauptbahnhof anyway. Even if I got a ride, realistically, the furthest I'd expect to get would be Salzburg, which would not be hugely closer to Vienna than Munich, but I had no idea if the Salzburg Hauptbahnhof was open 24 hours or where I could stay.

Munich Hauptbahnhof with my Marmite

So I stayed the night in Munich Hauptbahnhof, mainly trying to sleep in the waiting area. But it's not very comfortable in there, there's a faint but constant hum; too quiet to complain about but loud enough to annoy all but the most deaf. The security is not particularly keen on people staying there who don't have train tickets, and despite that, it managed to only be populated by the strange or the impoverished - myself included. There was a super-drunk Asian professional, who was dressed like a lawyer or something, and sat in his chair, moaning, retching and even vomiting a little bit; the crazy old homeless guy, with a large beard, mumbling to himself with periods of angry whispers and even the occasional shout; a weird, young kid, looked like a street kid, who was hanging around the ride-on cleaning machine suspiciously, and whenever I went out and come back, he'd be investigating something on the machine and then jump away when he noticed me.

So, the story will wrap up in the next post...what was that kid doing? Did I ever find out? #bleedpurple 

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To Switzerland...with Marmite

The route I ended up taking

I had a weekend planned in Switzerland - meeting people I know and some people I didn't know in the small town of Aarburg, in Aargau. I had to be there at a fairly specific time, but had no schedule for returning. So I formulated a bit of a plan: I would take a cheap overnight train from Vienna, in the very east of Austria, to Bregenz, in the state of Vorarlberg, in the very west, pretty much at the border of Switzerland. I would try to hitchhike from there to Aarburg (which on Google Maps was around a 2-hour drive), spend the weekend, then hitchhike back to Vienna, taking as long as necessary.

Just before I'd left, I'd been alerted by my girlfriend, Lisa, to a ongoing promotion by Marmite (the delicious New Zealand kind, not the inferior British kind...also, if you don't know what Marmite is, you can read about it here), whereby people could take photos of themselves overseas with their jar of Marmite, tag it with the hashtag #MarmiteNZ on Instagram, and they would select one person every month, and send them some Marmite. Lisa and I both really like Marmite, and we have a smaller and a larger jar here in Europe but the smaller jar is almost completely empty.

At the Vienna central train
with my Marmite

So, I figured, if I took the Marmite with me, and took a selfie at every place I stopped on my journey, then made them into a collage, and uploaded it to Instagram then I'd be certain to win the competition for the month. I took the smaller, emptier Marmite jar, in case I lost it, or fell into a volcano, or misplaced it in some other fashion. Lisa took the first photo of me, at Wien Hauptbahnhof (Vienna main train station), and I boarded the train, ready for the long journey ahead.

In winter, I had travelled from Zürich to Vienna on an overnight train, and the train had been very empty on the way, I'd had an entire compartment to myself almost the entire trip. Unfortunately, this time, it was surprisingly busy. I had bought my laptop and had hoped to do some work on it, perhaps play some casual games I have on Steam, but it was so crowded in the compartment, I didn't feel like disturbing people that much, especially considering how large and unwieldy my laptop is. So I read a bit of my book (I was reading Canterbury Tales...not the easiest of reads) but mostly just sat quietly, trying to find a comfortable way to sleep upright, without accidentally touching anybody else (pretty much an impossible task) or looking out of the window (which wasn't that interesting in the middle of the night).

A big mushroom! In Bregenz

I arrived in Bregenz at around 8.30am, as scheduled. Lisa had told me about a large mushroom-shaped kiosk which sells milk products, such as milkshakes, and I had decided that it would be the site for my next selfie. It was a bit more difficult to get it than I thought, as I'd forgotten to bring my selfie-stick (something that I was utterly opposed to before being given one by someone on one of my tours, and now I'm a fan) and the lighting was somehow being very difficult. After getting the photo, however, it was definitely time to try to start getting a ride towards Switzerland.

I was following the road-signs for the highway into Switzerland, and on the way, keeping an eye out for cardboard and for a marker. Often-times, I have found cardboard collection bins on the street or behind businesses to be excellent places to get cardboard, and if you're respectful, stay off majorly private property (I mean, the back of a supermarket or petrol station is usually private property, but not really) and clean up any mess you make, I think it's unlikely anybody would make a big deal out of it...certainly, I've never had anyone say anything to me. On the way, I went past a cardboard bin for an entire apartment building, on the street, awaiting collection. It was a matter of a few seconds to find a suitable piece of cardboard and to make sure all the other cardboard was back in the bin, ready for collection.

I continued along the way and spotted a supermarket. In a very Austrian, and specifically, a very alpine Austrian way, they had a barbecue going in the carpark, with sausages, beer and a crappy (or in my opinion, awesome) local duo playing all the favourite Schlager, Austro-pop and Volksmusik hits, all at about 10 in the morning. Moreover, there were already a handful of (mostly older) local people, getting drunk, eating meat and singing along. I went in to the supermarket, bought a decent but cheap permanent marker, sat outside and made my sign, then continued on down the road. Failing to see any spots that I felt were particularly good for hitchhiking, and not feeling the need to stop anywhere anyway, I kept walking to the next small town/village, named Hard. I wasn't in the centre of it, I could've turned off and checked it out, but I kept walking down the side of the highway (there was a bike and pedestrian lane), until there was a junction, with both ways going to Switzerland but at different points, on different highways. I figured that for getting to Switzerland, my best bet was to stand somewhere before the junction, with my sign that said "Switzerland/Schweiz", so I could get people who were driving to Switzerland in either direction.

I found a spot just after a bridge, with plenty of space to pull over, and held out my sign and my thumb. I had my headphones in, listening to music, the weather was absolutely fantastic and I was happy to stand in the sun for however long it took. But a car pulled up within 5 minutes. A young couple from Augsburg, Raphael and Sara, and they were going to Switzerland for a birthday party. They didn't take the main highways, so they could avoid the tolls, so we took a more winding route through rural Switzerland, driving through amazing alpine villages and brightly-coloured little towns and past hilly fields full of cows with bells, like we were in a movie. I almost always prefer travelling on smaller roads and highways for this reason, just seeing more of the landscape and the country.

After driving together for an hour or so, they dropped me off at a very small town called Pfäffikon, which is at the very south-western end of the big lake by Zürich, where Zürich is on the very north-west. I wasn't actually sure how big Aarburg was (because I am terrible with researching where I'm going), but figured that because it's in the state Aargau, with a name like Aarburg, if it wasn't the capital, then it was probably a main town at least. I went to the train station to use the free wifi, and looked on Google Maps, and figured the easiest way to get to Aarburg was through Zürich.

Not the best selfie ever

I made a new sign on the back of my old one, that just said "Aarburg". I had to get to Aarburg around 6.00, so I figured I'd try hitchiking until about 4.30, and if it didn't work, I'd take a train to Aarburg. From the train station, the road signs for a highway to Zürich were pointing to the right, but on Google Maps, it showed the most direct route to Zürich as being to the left. I followed Google's instructions, finding the on-ramp to the highway and finally a road-sign that said "Zürich". I had a great site for hitchhiking, with a large, open carpark for a kind of tavern/pub in front of me, with a bus stop slightly behind me. I took another selfie with my Marmite, put in my headphones and got to waiting again.

In hindsight, and by examining the map a bit more carefully, I think perhaps following the signs for Zürich to the other end of town might have been better - although not as direct a route as on the motorway, it would have been toll-free, so more local cars might have taken it. Not to mention, I would've been travelling next to the lake the entire way, and would undoubtedly have had amazing views the whole time. Also, Aarburg, although historically fairly important, is not particularly big or significant now, and probably not that well-known amongst the Swiss, let alone foreigners. And lastly, after an hour or so with no ride, I added "via Zürich" to my sign, but I realise now that it cluttered the sign and made it harder to read. I realise now that I should have gone about hitchhiking out of Pfäffikon differently, but hindsight is 20/20. If I wasn't on a schedule, I probably would've made a new sign that only said "Zürich" and might have checked out the other route.

But time was pressing, so I caved and took a train, and arrived in Aarburg at almost exactly 6. I spent the weekend, as planned, had a great time and all that, but then came time to say goodbye. Some of the other guys that were there were American students, studying abroad in Freiburg. We were sitting around, having some beers in the afternoon and I was preparing to start hitchhiking back to Vienna, but they invited to come and stay a night at their dorm, which I thought sounded pretty cool...

So, the story will continue in the next post...will I survive? Will I get back to Vienna? If you want, you can subscribe by email on the right side of the page here, or follow me on Instagram or Facebook.