Hallo!

Well, I survived Salzburg, and it was really nice. I can't decide whether Prague or Salzburg is my fave place now. They are both very nice and both hold good memories for me. I think the reason they are both holding such good memories is that not only were they pretty places, but I also had good hostel experiences and met some nice people. So the combination of the 2 things made it extra special.
20/2- I woke up at the ever delightful time of 4am and drove to the airport, for my 5am check-in and 7am flight. Coventry airport is... well... THRILLING! (if you like sheds with 1 tiny counter selling bottled water). I arrived in Salzburg, caught the bus to the station then walked to the hostel from there. By the time I arrived, wearing my 4 layers, my full pack and my little backpack as well, I was red and boiling hot. I dumped my pack, and went off to explore. I used my free hostel map to find my way to the fernicular up to the top of the hill where there is a fortress. I was walking around up there, and down in the old town, in just a t-shirt, trying to cool off. This drew some looks and points, but it was quite warm and glorious blue skies and sunny, with the 12'C. The view from up the top was quite good, but then the Alps were behind making it seem less high up! I then went for a walk to the river and sat on a bench filling in postcards,but the sun was setting by now, and the temp dropped so I was in 4 layers again, gloves and beanie!Back at the hostel I discovered 4 new room mates, 2 from South Korea who spoke VERY little English, and 2 from Indonesia who spoke good English.
21/2- THE DAY OF THE SOUND OF MUSIC TOUR!!! yayayayay!!! The tour guide was a rather camp guy who had some good (well rehearsed) jokes and comments and he made it a very good tour. It was another glorious, blue sky day. We had a stop over in a place called Mondsee which is by Lake Mondsee where I had proper apple strudel. More about the tour later... When I got back, I took the tour guide's (Peter's) advice and caught bus number 25 to Untersberg Mountain, where I then caught the cable car to the top. OMG! It was scary and exhilerating all at once. Dangling from a cable all that way up,and when it went through one of the 2 points that were attached to the mountain to regain the tension, it kind of falls down again and bounces a bit! SCARY! Especially the 2nd one, as you couldn't see after it and it just bounced down over a huge snow filled valley between the top peak and the point it was attached too. When I got up there it was covered in icy,old snow, which was rather hard to walk on in sneakers! It was quite cool up there, as once the annoying children had gone, it was so very quiet, surreal, the quietest place I have ever been. When I got back to the hostel I met another new roomie, Amanda, from England, who has been on an afternoon sound of music tour and she had met others from the hostel there too. We went down for dinner (schnitzel) and ended up playing card games with some of the other guys in the hostel for a couple of hours which was fun.
22/2- I got up and struggled for ideas of what to do with myself, until my tour at 2pm. I ended up going out to the old town again. I went into a store called 'Easter in Salzburg' which is all blown eggshells handpainted. A lady asked how many there were and he said around 100,000!! Then I got some souveniers, then I went back, put them in the hostel, dumped the stuff and watched the last bit of the sound of music dvd that plays every day (with the annoying girls there from America who didn't understand bits, like they had never seen it before, GRRRRR, fools!) then I went for my tour, which was very pretty, and rather informative, but we also had 2 stops of free time for around and hour which wasn't very 'value for money' on a 4 hour tour! I went to Bavaria in Germany though, and I saw some amazing views. The water was crystal clear too, which was cool. They say it's drinking quality, but I don't know about the duck poo! When I got back I played some more cards with some different people in the hostel.
23/2- I went to Mozart's home and museum in the morning, then went to the airport. Salzburg airport is slightly more exciting than Coventry! Through the other side, past security check there are a whopping 2 stores! Neither of which sell books of magazines and my flight was delayed by an hour and I had nothing to read. The flight back was uneventful, and I arrived to pouring rain in Coventry!
I am now at my Aunt's place where I appear to have completely buggered upmy right knee. YAY for me! *grumble*. Anyways, sound of music tour! I have come up with the first (and possibly only) raych's blog quiz! The first person to email me (raychl@bigpond.com) with the correct answers gets an authentic prize all the way from Austria! So, in order to win, you need to email me the spot in the Sound of Music that the following locations appear. Please email the number of the photo, followed by your answer. Good luck!

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5) (this one is a bit tricky cos it was being rennovated)

(6)

Crappy valentines day to you all

It is still valentines day here for another hour and 7 minutes. I went to work with yr 5 kids, then went and took myselfout to the movies, and saw music and lyrics, witch hugh grant and drew barrymore. It was ok, like the wedding singer mixed with every hugh grant romantic comedy. Then band practice, and now here i am. I'm away friday night up to the rellies, then Austria, then back to the rellies for the next weekend, so I'll blog again whence I return. Until then I leave with you a Valentine's poem that i found profound and heartfelt...

Lewinsky and Clinton have shown

What Kaczynski must surely have known

That an intern is better

Than a bomb in a letter

Given the choice of how to be blown

Snowflakes that fall on my nose and eyelashes...

Hello!

Well, it snowed! In Bristol! We had snow early thursday morning. I looked out my window at 6.45am and there was not much, when I got out of the shower and looked again at 7.30 it was all blanketed in white. Not enough to close schools etc, unlike the midlands, who had a fair bit of snow and had school closures. The day before had been freezing cold driving to work in the morning. Thursday snowed in the morning and was pretty much done when I got into the car at 7.45am. Yesterday It snowed again, not as much, but I had to work ages away, and pretty much the whole way there I was driwing through snow. This in itself is an odd experience, asthe snow doesn't stick to the windscreen like rain does, and it kind of comes at the car, then goes up and over the car as you drive through it. It looks like driving through stars at warp speed on bad dodgy star trek as the closer you get to the snow it pulls towards your car and goes horizontal instead of vertical. It amused me on my hour and a bit long drive to woop woop.

Yesterday I was working in a place called 'Calne' which is near Swindon where I have worked before, which requires a few junctions on the motorway. Then Calne is down the other side, in little hicksville areas, as opposed to main cities. And it didn't exist on my Swindon street directory or my wholeof UK one, so as I got closer and was actually in Calne (I had looked it up on online maps and worked out roughly how to get there) I had to stop and get a Calne street directory. So now I have 5 street directories in my car! On the way to this place you get to drive past New Zealand, which is odd. I wonder which New Zealand came first!

Anyways, the school requested a 'strong teacher' and select rang me. Cos i'm a badass teacher! HAHAH! I think cos i survive all the innercity bristol schools with Somali refugees and issues that come with that. So I am pretrified cos this area isn't as multicultural so what issues they have would be more 'feral children' than children who are a product of their mum and dad being drug dealers and moving around all the time getting welfare. I get there, and i knew the school was a St sumthingorother, but I was thing CofE like all the ones I have been to. No, it was a roman catholic school. The school is very open plan, the head teacher was very enthusaistic. The children were great. A couple were a bit lively, but u get that. But they did their work and were able to work independantly at their desks and do things like write stories by themselves. Which I am not used to. I have not been at a school where yr 2 are at a yr 2 level for ages! I am used to yr 2 who are barely able to write their name, let alone focus on an activity indepoendantly for 45 minutes!!!! So at the end of the day when it came to me leaving the school secretary said 'so you survived then?' and i explained what i was used to and said i had a good day. And she said 'oh, so if we asked you back you'd come?' with a shocked tone. I said yes. Yesterday was a walk in the park for what I'm used to. I didn't have to yell and scream once and I didn't really have to raise my voice! I suppose for that area they were a bit lively and they could have carried away and gone too far if they weren't under control, but compared to what I'm used to, they were angels!!

There were all these decomposing snowmen out in the playground from the day before, as it was only 2'C and not warm enough for them to melt but in the rain their heads had comeoff of they had falled over. Poor snowmen!

Thats pretty much my week. Work, and work and work. Huzzah for 4 days teaching! that means I will get good money next friday, instead of the no money I will get after I have my week off during mid-term break to go to Austria. I can't believe the teachersover here,whinging that they have 7 weeks without a holiday when other schools in other areas have 6. I told them in Australia we have between 11 and 13 week terms with no break in the middle. They looked so concerned for how Australian teachers survive without holidays every 5-7 weeks. Wimps! I didn't tell them I was used to working 50 weeks a year with no holidays. Cos I think some of them would have fainted at the thought of that!!

Anyways, I'mgoing to get out of my PJs now and have me some brekky. Thanks for all the comments on the last blog. Nice to get some feedback from time to time.

Fare thee well!

Bonjour

Howdy! I am back from gay Paris. I was a whirlwind trip, with only 3 full days, as the flight there was evening and the flight back was early morning. As I had been before, in torrential rain, and been in a fair bit, I didn't go in much (also because Paris is very expensive) but I had fairly good weather so I saw the outside of lots of things. So, here it is...

Thursday 1/2- I arrived at about 7pm to my hotel room which was very luxurious, not! Instead of getting a mint on the pillow you got a pube on the sheets! Huzzah! There were French kids staying at the hotel, I'm assuming from a school excursion, that yelled to each other constantly, and the doors were paper thin to the hall. Plus I think every singlepipe from the entire building's plumbing ran down through the bathroom behind my bed head as I could just hear constant water running, either in shower slow flow or fast toilet flushes. Thank god I brought my earplugs! So, I watched a bit of Friends dubbed in French, which was tres annoying, and gave up and went to bed.

Friday 2/2- It was a bit cloudy and attempted to rain acouple of times, but didn't manage more than a light misty shower. I explored the open top bus tour I had pre-booked tickets for. Most cities have one loop and about 12 stops. Paris has 4 different loops and over 50 stops! I spent all of the first day on busses, only getting off to change for another loop. Here aresome snaps from my bus top...

Then I got off at the Moulin Rouge stop and walked up montmatre to catch the fernicular railway up to Sacre-Coeur. But or course the fernicular was broken so I climbed up all the stairs. There wasn't much of a view becauseof the clouds and so forth. I went inside and sat on one of the pews for a bit. It was odd to be in there and see religious people coming in and kneeling, praying, holding rosary beads, reading the bible, crossing themselves. I feltlike I shouldn't have been in there. And unlike the Sistene Chapel people were silent and respecting the no photos. This church was more religious and sacred than the Vatican and St Peters. It was odd.

Last time I was in Paris I was with my granny, who past away last year, so I felt compelled to light a candle for her. I am assuming I wont get gods trying to smite me for this gesture, as neither me or my granny are what you would call religious, but it just seemed like a nice thing to do. And my way of saying goodbye to her.

After doing this I walked back down the hill and caught the metro back to my hostel.

Saturday 3/2- It was a much sunnier day today, although much colder too. I decided I would walk to the Cimetriere du Pere Lachaise which was not far from my hotel, and is a place where loads of famous peopleare burried. It is a massive cemetery filled with crypts and large raised tombs so it is almost impossible to find your way around. I was about to give up when this guy said "are you looking for Jim Morrison?" in a very French accent. I said yes, and he proceeded to show me around to his grave. On the way he took me to several others and I said I was looking for Bizet and he showed me his too. When I left the man asked for money, which was to be expected, so I paid him €10 which wasn't bad for a 30 minute personal guided tour of the cemetery, which I would never have found all the graves without. I asked him how he knew where they all were and he explained that 15 years ago he used to make the marble graves. Now he just wonders around finding lost tourists and making some money. I heard him pick up another lost person as I was leaving and started to show him around! I was Oscar Wilde's grave, which has loads of kisses on it. Edith Piaf's (which he was shocked I knew who she was). Jim Morrison's (which is guarded as 15 years ago someone stole the bust off it). George Bizet's. Bugatti's (who has a huge plot and a simple headstone, cos they burried him with his car).

Then I walked down to catch the Blue bus loop from place de la Bastille. The blue loop was my last one, as I had done the other three on Friday. I then swapped back to the Orange and went to Tour Montparnasse which is a huge tower that you can go up to the 56th floor in the fastest elevator in Europe (56 floors in about 40 seconds, so fast your ears pop) and see 360' view. And from here you can walk up a few stairs to the 59th floor which is the helipad on the roof, and stand up there in the open. It is in from the edge a fair bit though, so you don't get to see the height perspective of looking down. On a good day you can see up to 40km away, which I think I saw. You could see the curve of the horizon! Plus, unlike the Eiffel tower, there were no queues. While I was up there a lady came off the elevator guiding another lady around who had dark glasses and a cane. Surely that is a waste of €9 for a blind person to experience the view?

Then I went back down to the bottom and walked back to le Jardin du Luxembourg which is a nice big garden that has loads of seats where people were just sitting and watching the world (and the occasional jogger) go by. There are kid's playgrounds, this coold row of swings where the parents all have little spots to stand and push the kids who are going at different times,basketball courts, ponds, bee hives, orange trees. It would be really nice in the spring/summer to come and sit under the trees in the shade and watch the world go by, but in the cold winter sun people were sitting in the open trying to get any residual heat from the sun to warm up!

Then from here I walked across to the Pantheon, which is a copy of the one in Rome, and was boring. The only exciting thing is the pendulum clock that allows the earth to revolve the clock around the pendulum which swings in the same spot. When I got there it was on time, but it didn't catch up and when I left it was 30 minutes late. Maybe the world had slowed down?

Then I went just around the corner and met a girl I chat to online and her husband (who had booked a trip to Paris at the same time as me) for dinner. We went to a typically French place (that smelled of French cheese *shudder*) and ate typical French food. I didn't have the escargot... been there, done that! I had cheese pastry, beef burgundy and creme brulee. Yum!

Sunday 4/2- I got up early and headed off for my grand day as Disney. I caught a proper train and travelled nearly an hour to get to the station right next to the entrance. Then I went in and was suitably impressed with the typical Disney castle. Then 2 hours later after 1 ride (its a small world after all), several diney-esque souveneirs and a whole lot of pity for people who take their children and are forced to spend hours queueing for rides and queueing for fotos with people in disney character costumes, and queueing for extremely overpriced food, and buying WAY too much stuff that they really dont need simply because it has a Disney logo on it and they can't bear the 'but i want one' tantrum any longer like plush fantasia hats with mickey mouse ears stuck out the side. So I got back on the train and went back into Paris and saw the Pompidou centre, the place de vosges, then went back to the Sacre-Coeur for a sunny view picture (spot the difference) and saw the Moulin Rouge with the lights on. Then I went back to my hotel and went to bed, as I had to be up at 6am (5am Uk time) for the airportshuttle back the airport to head home.

I had a good time in Paris, and was lucky with the weather. It is supposed to be snowing there this week. Although, it is really cold here too, and is supposed to be snowing hereon Thursday. I had to scrape the ice off the windscreen thismorning before I could drive anywhere. Got as high as 4'C. Woot!

Now, I don't know if it's because evenyone has given up and isn't reading this anymore, or if it's because you have all just become slack lazy people, but I haven't had a comment for a while, so please write comments, or send me emails. I know I don't send you all personal emails every 5 seconds, but it is because it would just say pretty much word for word what this says, but you could reply from time to time! Please? (unless noone is reading this anymore, then BOO to you!!).