Off the Couch and On the Road

There is almost a ‘work’ component to long-term travelling – a routine consisting of thought (where to go next), research (trains, planes, buses) and action (venturing out each morning with several sightseeing goals in mind). Even if, as some do, you claim to be a free-wheeling, go where the wind takes you backpacker with no plans at all, the sheer fact that you end up somewhere else does take some planning. Maybe not as much as me perhaps, but as I leave ‘home’ each day and return having stood up all day, review budgets, liaise with different people on the best way to execute a plan, and spend a fortune on coffee, it sometimes feels like work to me, albeit a fantastic job.

There are exceptions; the Greek Islands felt like a true summer holiday, as did laying on the beach in Positano. But when i arrived in Schaffhausen, Switzerland and there was a kitchen, bath, TV with Grey’s Anatomy and Desperate Housewives (in English) and my own room sans random backpackers snoring, it didn’t just feel like a holiday, it almost felt like home.

Except home isn’t surrounded by lush forests on one side and the emerald green Rheine on the other, of course, nor is it a short walk past traditional cottages to a cobblestone town containing a castle (Munot) and beautiful statues and fountains scattered throughout, adding to the village atmosphere.

I spent the first day chilling out, and the next walking through town after a light rainfall in the morning – climbing up the castle stairs to look over the village and wandering through open-air shops. I travelled the 40 minutes another day to check out Zurich (30 dollars for the train! Cheap it ain’t) which was great, it’s a smaller city than I imagined but encompassing beautiful churches sitting either side of the Rheine and lots of wide, paved, manicured streets. Oh, and a 3-storey english bookstore, which captured my attention and my budget, for a good few hours – not including the discussion with the cashier about where exactly Harry Potter might find Voldemort’s 7th horcrux. I also found a dress for the wedding the friend and I attended on the weekend – friends of his through work held in the southern German town of Hubertshofen.

An hour away from Schaffhausen, the village contained a small church where the traditional Catholic ceremony took place, before Champagne and pretzels were served outside the church. (In Australia we call them giant pretzels, but I don’t think they have pretzels any smaller there, so they just call them pretzels. Like we call it ‘Chinese food’, and they just call it ‘food’).

It was all quite casual, the couple stayed with guests after the ceremony and followed us around to the massive circus tent the family had erected on the property of their family-owned Bed and Breakfast next door for coffee, tea and cakes in the garden until it was time to head into the tent for dinner.

The food was amazing – a professional buffet put together purely by friends using the B&B’s kitchen, and after dinner a band played swing, jazz and traditional German music until the early hours – the couple staying until they had farewelled their last guest.

It was a fun night despite not knowing the language or any guests, and I think gave a nicer overview than any tourist brochure could. A friend who doubled as the photographer brought trays of shotglasses to each table, as we all toasted the couple with Williams (pear), Kirsch (cherry) and Ouzo (aniseed) spirits – great for us despite the photographer starting to feel the effects half-way around the tent after every table insist he have ‘just one’ with them. Some things are funny enough that you don’t need a translation.

At about 2am I head off to sleep in the B&B just outside the tent, leaving others to continue on until morning, and we drove back the following morning after breakfast with the bride’s parents and friends.

Being much warmer and sunnier than the previous day, the friend and I decided to take a boat cruise down the Rheine to a little town called Dressenhoffen. The scenery was stunning, full of families in boats, swimming and hosting BBQ’s by the banks of the river, kids waving madly as our ferry sailed past. Lunch was in Dressenhoffen before a short train back to Schaffhausen and an early night.

Needing to catch up on some research for Paris, the UK and my Africa trip in August, I spent Monday in the house, fortunate as the weather once again turned cold and raining (this is summer, can I remind you. Right, just wanted to make sure you knew).

Ironically, I watched Grey’s Anatomy again that night, and realised it was the same episode that I watched hours before my flight to Bqngkok in March. So I’m still no further along than I was 3 months ago, and now won’t have a TV until October in Canada. A cruel twist of Karma to make up for my week of luxury. Oh so cruel.

I left Switzerland the following day with my head full of new countries to explore, timetables and directions to follow, and back to carrying my pack everywhere again – which mysteriously feels so much heavier after just one week.

In other words, it’s back to work.

-Sarah

I spent a week or so in Germany in ’05 for work – convincing a bunch of journalists to write lots of nice things about my client – which mostly involved lots of football, beer and hangovers. So I can’t really remember much of Germany, except that I loved it. And when I arrived in Munich this time after a killer early morning flight from Athens, I remembered why.

Germany is so green, and clean, and beautiful. And I thought, maybe Sydney would be this green if we weren’t in such a drought. I thought this right before it started raining (nature explaining itself), which sucked beacuse you couldn’t even venture outside, it was a torrential downpour. Thankfully the rain lightened up somewhat, and I set out with my umbrella to see the city.

I had unintentionally arrived during Munich Festival, which was fortunate – there were street stalls, music, theatre and discounts to museums right around the city which added a great atmosphere. And I found a Starbucks, who don’t even flinch when you ask for a mocha. You know, like coffee and chocolate together? The Italians were horrified at the utter suggestion. So Munich was great.

I lay in the sun at the English Gardens, drooled over treasure at the Munich Residenz (Royal Palace) and ate Bratwurst whilst window shopping down the main streets running off Marienplatz and Odeonplatz. It was only a quick visit, a stopover, but a lovely place to spend two days, especially as the weather cleared up and it turned beautifully sunny and warm.

My final morning I caught a bus to the station and a train to Schaffhausen in Switzerland. Of which I had no idea where that was, or in which direction I was heading to get there, but my ticket said platform 13, and I thought that was a good start.

-Sarah

One final ferry trip back to Athens and our island hopping days were over. We each did our own thing for the afternoon – last minute sightseeing, internet, packing – and caught up for farewell dinner and drinks that evening (after walking for miles to find a bar, Ios it was not).

The following day was my only full day in Athens, so I woke early and walked. And walked. I saw all the main sites in the city and decided that Athens was wonderful despite the concrete and less-than-perfect scenery. The Acropolis, encompassing the Parthenon, Temple of Athena Nike (she of hot shoes), and Erechtheion were claustophobic if anything to see, people were crammed in like, um, european tourists at the Parthenon in the heat, which wasn’t pleasant.

But it was interesting. Something you have to see even if you’re not overly impressed once you see it. A lot of the site was being reconstructed to rectify ‘earlier mistakes’ of reconstructions of the past, so it didn’t exactly look as pristine and tourist free as the postcards, but it did make me wonder. How do they know the previous reconstructions over the past few hundred years were incorrect? What if they keep pulling it apart and putting it back together forever? Will it resemble chinese whispers and eventually look nothing like the original ever did? And who would know otherwise?

Anyway, Athens was well worth exploring and I had my last Gyros (I could eat them forever, Greek food rocks), before settling into my hotel room with, like, my roommate who like, was, like, totally 18 and was, ohmygod so excited about her, like, island hopping tour.

Bless.

-Sarah

Ios was the party island, so we were told. ‘Don’t waste your energy, save it for Ios,’ Renee kept saying. And it was completely true, because there was literally nothing else on the island except for a ghost town of pubs and bars that only awoke after sunset, and an exquisite beach filled with hungover tourists (Australians, I should say) collapsed on sunbeds scattered down the coastline.

It was a bit creepy, the streets being so empty during the day with nothing open, but our accomodation was at Far Out Village and Camping right on the beach, with pools, cafeterias, bars and music pumping all day, so there was never a real need to leave. Our first day we chilled out by the pool and beach before preparing for our pub crawl that night (preparation consisted of 3 euro cocktails, in case you were wondering).

We went to about four or five different bars, including the ‘Red Bull’ bar and ‘Flames’, with Renee scoring us more free shots every few hours. At the ‘Fun Pub’, the bartener even lined us up and poured tequila and lime juice into our mouths as we lay our heads back on the bar. Man, it was the party island.

Greeks freepour the shots, one drink would have about 4 shots in it, so we didn’t need to spend a fortune which was great. We danced the night away to great music (they played ‘Ice Ice Baby’ and ‘Like a Prayer’, what more can I say) and I stumbled home, via the best bakery in the world (and it’s not because I was drunk, it really was the best bakery in the world) at about 4.30am, leaving thousands of others still partying in the bars and on the streets until everything shut just after sunrise.

The following morning, Aileen and I, who shared a bungalow, complained about ants in the beds and mosquitos in our room, which were attacking us like we had discovered the recipe for erradicating bugs that could never be made if we were declared insane from itching, and got upgraded to the Far Out Hotel and Spa on the other side of the beach.

We were expecting to get transferred to the village accomodation (we were on the camping grounds) and so were unbelievably stoked when our driver pulled up outside a four-star hotel. Karma rocks, I tell you.

We had our own bathroom, blacony and pool noone else was using except for some greek boys and ourselves, and a pool bar. We could even squint and imagine seeing all our friends sweating it out on the crowded beach below. We were spoilt. So I didn’t leave all day, only heading back to the village for dinner and a showing of ‘Wedding Crashers’ before a good sleep in my luxurious bed.

Some of the others went clubbing again that night but I preferred to read and chill out instead, catching up on sleep before our trip back to Athens (sob) the following day.

-Sarah

Wow. It was my first thought as our ferry pulled up at the Santorini port after a 3hr trip from Paros.

The mountain cliffs loomed high above us and there looked like some great hiking tracks up to the top. We took our bus into Fira Town, past cubed whitewashed buildings overlooking the ocean, and took a lazy walk through the shopping village before dinner.

The shops were amazing handmade jewellery boutiques and art galleries, and the views of the ocean, sprinkled with volcanic islands, were simply breathtaking. Our dinner was so lovely, what with the view and great food and wine, that we decided to wash it down with dessert from the patisserie down the street. We had walked past it earlier and it was heaven, dozens of different handmade cakes, pastries and chocolates, making it impossible to choose just one.

Just as we were about to walk in however, the entire island had a blackout. Like, the entire island. Shopkeepers, bars, restaurants and homes all immersed into complete darkness. What was so amazing is that they all brought out candles and lit them on their white stone walls, so the entire island looked like Neverland filled with tiny fairies. It was beautiful.

The only place that had a decent amount of light was the Aussie bar (the Greek island are entirely filled with Australians, I’m not exaggerating. People don’t even bother asking where you’re from, it’s just ‘Sydney or Melbourne?’) so we had a drink and waited for the lights to come back on before sprinting back to the patisserie for dessert. We were sprinting because they looked so good, not because we suddenly felt the need for exercise, although I am sure it didn’t hurt.

The following morning, I decided to actually do some official sightseeing, and joined the Volcano excursion, which took us on a sailing ride to the island made of Volcanic rock (don’t ask me what it’s called, translated, I’m sure it means ‘Island of Volcanic rock’, so let’s just stick with that) where we walked up to the top and looked down into massive craters created quite recently (I think the last erruption was 1950). If you scraped dirt aside on the track, you actually saw steam rise, and the ground was boiling hot in places to the touch.

After boarding our boat again, we sailed another 15 minutes to hot springs, where we jumped off the boat into the ocean and sawm around to the hot springs protected by the surrounding rocks, where the water was a good 10 degrees warmer. We swam and covered ourselves in the orange mud before swimming back into the ocean towards the boat and the ride home.

It was just a great morning and an experience that was so much more unique than laying on a beach. My afternoon was spent looking around town before the group all met up at 6pm for our sunset picnic at Oia (pronounced ee-ah).

Oia is the place all the ‘white buildings overlooking the ocean’ photos of Greece you see are from, so you can imagine how perfect it was. Renee, our leader, stocked up on food and we walked through Oia town to the old fortress to set up a good spot to watch the sunset before the tourist rush arived.

We had a delicious dinner – Greek salad, cold meats, tatziki, olives, vine leaves, cheese and wine – which was looked upon enviously by the hundreds of other tourists, and the Contiki group who brought 4 cases of alcohol and no food.

The sunset was amazing – and it’s funny how something so simple can go by so unappreciated every day. Where am I every other sunset? But the lesson was well worth the price, and my only regret is not choosing to stay in Santorini for at least a week.

My last though of Santorini as we pulled out of the port the following morning? Wow.

-Sarah