Dear diary,
Where do we start... A flurry of activity lead us to run a marathon, complete a bit more sight seeing in The Netherlands, drive over 5000kms around Europe visiting 11 different countries, then return to Emilies after selling our belovered palace of love! We have spent the last couple of days inside watching the odd snow flake fall and whilst some italian doesn't have us paying 3euros for 15mins of internet we thought it was about time for a recap! (this could be long as its been a while!)
A couple of days after we last wrote we managed to visit Amsterdam. The main intention for this visit was to run the Amsterdam Marathon we had been training for, we had two main goals... 1. Finish the dam thing. 2. (mainly a goal set by Tris) beat a Kenyan - any one would do! Luckily for us 30,000-35,000 other people had the same idea (goal 1) so there was plenty of encouragement to complete the 42km jog. It was one of the toughest things either of us have done but we ended up sticking it out together and completed both goals 1 & 2. Walking the day after was another story!!
Two days later we threw our sweet hogs on our bike rack, packed Valarie (our van) with our things including all our important mixed cassette tapes from 1986, and hit the road. First stop Berlin! It took us a couple of days to make the 800km journey and fortunately we had a camperstop book which allowed us to find parking lots and parks with power points and safe zones for campervans so we made use of our first ´camperstop´ to break the journey on the way. Berlin was a great place, we spent our time on a walking tour of the city and touring in the freezing cold on our bikes to visit the different sites and learn alot more about the war times etc that neither of us knew alot about.
Next stop was back country Germany, this time a camperstop on a farm - as it happended we picked a very random old mining town where they only spoke German. Was a booming little area with different restuarants across bridges and forrests. We biked through the forrest (off-road on our town bikes!) and ended up staying a few nights before heading to Prague via our last German stop Dresden, another city in the east that had a lot of cool street art, bars and cafes.
Surrounding Czech and Prague were awesome spots to check out, plenty of beer, mulled wine, and sasauges the size of my forearms. Needless to say these things combined with the Charles Bridge, Prague castle and old town square made for an action packed few days before migrating South. Our last morning we were greeted with minus 4.4 and a dirty thick frost. We both arose accusing the other of steeling the blankets but quickly released nope there was just half a cm of ice on the inside of the windscreen!!! So our first hour in the van was spent keeping the revs down to aviod cracking our little motor and ensuring our scarfs, hats, and gloves were firmly in place!!
Vienna was the next stop, this time we had a contact through Aunty Paula so we were lucky enough to have Manfred as our personal tour guide for our three day stop over. On top of this our book came through for us again this time providing a vineyard stay, free of charge provided we drank a bit of local wine.... at 3 euro a bottle we had no issue with this and not only did Manfred show us damn near every famous ruin in Vienna, we befriended a few locals and found ourselves using that local wine to wash down traditional cakes and food!!
Next was Hungary. We had managed to coordinate a stop off with our mates from the Transiberian Dan & Linda. So after an interesting drive across the hungarian planes with wind howling across Valarie and threatning to tip us if we got over 85km/h we rendezvoused in Budapest. We spent close to a week checking out the local sights, enjoying the local grub and also a few dinners with another NZ couple from Feilding aswell - magic! Highlight had to be the Roman thermal baths situated in a palace!! We said our goodbyes and made tracks along the length of Lake Balaton, staying a night down the far end enjoying the thermal lakes and little hungarian towns.
Following on we made it across the boarder into Croatia - an awesome 550km drive got us to the coast! With over 20 degrees and perfect sun for the journey we arrived in Zadar to unfold our deck chairs and sun ourselves for a couple of days, this even lead to swimming between checking out the local towns. The oldest town in the area - Nin - had its first inhabitants 3000 years ago. We spent a lots of time behind the camera photographing all sorts of old stuff! Over the next week we took the coastal road further south and were based in Split (the main port city operating in winter). We weathered one hell of a storm for a few days which resulted in us taking a bus trip through Bosnia to Dubrovnic. Without a doubt one of the most picturesque places in the world, with the city walls dividing the Sea and the old town, still very much in its original state with terraced roofs and cobbeled streets. By the time our ferry crossing for Ancona, Italy came around the storm had passed and we had swum some more and we were granted perfect conditions, with bright bright sun.
We were excited (weird ah?!) to meet another aussie couple in a van heading in the same direction so the four of us took over an area amoungst the seats of the ferry and set up camp for the night on our 12 hour crossing. We woke to find another cracking day and after 30 seconds of lining and a customs officer greating us in stylish aviators, we assumed our boat had taken us to the right place. We continued on the road and with a few coffee stops along the way (espresso on 80 cents) - one of which the barista actually made our day by loudly calling Me Sucsie Me Sucie to us (excuse me)!! We made it to Rome, and after a couple of near death experiences on the Roman ring road with 6 cars across 3 lanes going about 80km and tooting loudly we found another camperstop with 24 hour security (necessary in Rome)! From here we checked out all things Roman - The Collessium, The Vatican museums and city, art by Micheal Angelo, De Vinchi, Giotto, ruins and monuments everywhere and our favourite, old mate the Popes Basilica and chambers!! From here we got our token photo next to the leaning tower of Pisa on the way through Tuscany to the Cinque Terre on the coast. We spent a few days here and checked out the famous 5 villages built on the Coastal Cliffs of the Mediterian sea. There is a walkway connecting the towns but we had a bit of trouble with rain so we used a combination of train and brisk walking to ensure coffee, pasta, wine, and foccacia was sampled in each spot!! After here we thought we better check our Venice. This place is another Italian stunner - so we stayed a few nights and enjoyed walking the canals, more coffee and pizza (has to be done in Italy), and really just soaking in the fact that there is a city in the sea on about 117 islands!!
Fortunatly we actually found 15mins of internet and managed to coordinate a meet with our mate Steveo and his girlfriend Emma in Geneve Switzerland. We had also wanted to see the alps so drove from Venice, through the French/Itailian/Swiss Alps by taking the Mt Blanc tunnel connecting Italy to France. An experience well worth the time and unbeilivably Valarie had no trouble climbing for a few hours (not that we have ever doubted his abilities)! We popped out of the tunnel for our second visit to France, where we were greated with our first winter snow, naturally we stopped and biffed snowballs for a few minutes before finding an absolute gem of a camperstop in the French Alps!
In the morning we continued driving and made it to Geneve to met Steveo and Em at the airport. The four of us had an action packed weekend of a visit to an Irish pub, Cheese Foundu (if ever asked make sure your quite specific in ordering one foundu to share...sooo much cheese), the lake, the view from the clock tower, and our favouirte a punk concert in an old factory pub where everyone dressed as there favourite comic book character!! We managed to stay on the French side so the next few days following we got to know France a little better and made our way home towards The Netherlands.
In our last day on the road we managed to get through 800kms, a stop for lunch in Luxemburg a drive through Belgium and three quarters of the Netherlands to get back to the motorcamp we stayed at whilst working. Within 2 days we managed to determine that winter has come a little early and that snow was forecasted for the weekend so we sold up! Valarie has gone to a camper converter dealer to get a new lease of life. Sad to see him go but when it started snowing last night we knew it was a good decision - this is not camping weather! Due to the snow we figure the chances of any more bulb field work is nonexistant ... so with our time in Europe passing quickly we are packing our bags and have booked flights to head north to Scandinavia, with back-packs!!
Thanks for all the news, emails and calls. We hope its warming up at home and everyones getting ready for a well earnt christmas break. As you sip a cold beer think of us with mulled wine, hot chocolate and marshmallows by the fire in Sweden!
x McDuff
(Tristan and Michele)
