Luther

This morning I went to the Petersburgh Citadel. It had a nice view of Erfurt from the top. Apparently Erfurt used to have around 90 churches but only around 20 remain. The two main ones are having work done on them so I wasn't able to enter. I went to the Augustinian cloister though, where Martin Luther used to study. Went into the church and wrote some postcards while listening to the organ being played. There was a prayer board near the entrance where people wrote their prayers. Most of them were in German, so I added an English one and I lit a tealight candle too. I felt very constructive.

I wanted to go on the underground citadel tour, where they give you a flaming torch and guide you around the underground part of the citadel but I had a headache and I suspected it would be in German anyway. It rains every afternoon, or it has since I arrived. The humidity gives me headaches that paracetamol has no effect on.

My dad thinks photos with no people in them are really boring, so I bought myself a mascot and he´s going to pose for me while I take photos. His name is Luther and he´s a small black sheep. Actually he doesn´t sit very well, except when doing the splits. I tried to make him sit in the shop and the shop assistants kept giving me funny looks.

I've eaten too many pretzels

Erfurt is a lovely town. It only has a population of around 250 000 so is very small but when I got here I still managed to get lost and walked in a loop before I found my hostel. Lonely Planets didn't mention anything about Martin Luther at all, which I'm very indignant about because I would have liked to know that he used to live and study at the monastery here. I had a weird interaction with an old man on the tram. He saw me puzzling over my directions for the hostel, and asked me something in German which I didn't understand but I thought he wanted to help me so I walked to him and he took my paper. Then he jabbered away while I stared and shook my head, and then he pointed to me, and then to his teeth or his mouth and gave a thumbs up sign. It looked like he was telling me a had nice teeth or he wanted to see them or something, so I flashed him a dazzling smile and then bared my teeth at him so he could have a look. I think he gave me a weird look but I couldn't tell. He was weird already. That shut him up for a bit, then he started talking again and then he got up to leave at the next stop and shook my hand, but at the tram door, he turned back and asked me something ending with a 'no?' and repeated the hand to mouth sign. I was like 'no' because I thought that was what he wanted me to say and also because I had no idea what was going on. So he said bye and left.

It later occurred to me it looked like he was mimicking eating. Maybe he wanted to eat me. Or maybe he was asking me to tea with me. Darn. I was hoping he was telling me I had beautiful teeth.

TRANSPORT HELL

So- I left the hotel this morning at 9:15 for the zoo but I didn't arrive till midday. This was because I was stuck in some alternate universe where everyone spoke the transport language but me. I'd asked at the hotel reception for directions to the zoo which the guy kindly gave me, and I rocked up to the main train station chirpily looking for the S1 or S9. It can't be that hard, I thought, they're bound to have signs everywhere.

Half an hour later, I asked a disgruntled stall owner where to catch it from. "Right here," he pointed to where we were standing. Since we were just next to the entrance of a carpark, with a roundabout in front of us and nothing but a give way sign, I had my doubts. So I asked a woman who passed, and she couldn't speak English but gestured a roof or something else with her hand and pointed across the road, where there was no roof and nothing else. I decided to go to the tourist office inside the train station to ask, and after 20 minutes I managed to locate it. The man I spoke to didn't speak English either (I thought it was a prerequisite for working in a tourist office...) but waved vaguely with his hand and kept saying, "elf, elf." Elf what? There are 50 different kinds of transport systems at this station. I left the station trying to find a bus stop for Bus 11 but there wasn't one. So I went back to the tourist office and this time the elf man wasn't there and I spoke with the lady who spoke English. She told me it was a tram I was supposed to catch, across the road, so I returned, this time to the tram lines and stood in front of the machines for five minutes until a man kindly asked if I needed assistance and taught me how to buy a ticket. I jumped on the next 11 tram that came along, until 15 minutes on realised I was going in the wrong direction. So I got off, crossed the tracks, caught the tram back another 15 minutes plus 15 minutes to the stop the woman had told me to get off at. There was nothing there. The first people I asked weren't locals but the second man said it was 500 metres down the road.


Cute zoo. Saw an okapi and a bongo. They're both horsey kind of animals but with stripes, like a mix of donkey /horse and zebra. The only difference I could see was they had stripes in different places. Can't remember which had stripes where. Also saw some really fat seals.

En Frankefurt

In Frankfurt! In Frankfurt! Tomorrow, I´m going to the zoo. That´s probably a stupid and wasteful thing to do because you can go to the zoo anywhere in the world, but the whim struck me. My 5€ Mango bag is already ripping. At least it was only 5€.

I fully appreciate international cuisine now. The main train station at Frankfurt has food places, sort of like in Australia, of cheap Japanese food (except it´s expensive here), Chinese, kebabs, Italian, and pretzels galore. Love pretzels. PRETZELS I ADORE YOU with your shiny brown skin and rock salt, so soft and doughy inside, like biting into something... really tasty. Speaking of which, my sister now has a child. Its name is Oliver.

Loved Hossegor. Loved meeting up with Elisabeth again. I want to go visit her in Sweden in September or October. Well, apparently October is already really cold, so I´ll see about September. I got a beautiful tan. Even though I slathered on sunscreen every morning and midday and sometimes in the afternoon as well. Hardly anyone wears sunscreen in France, at least not the women. And topless bathing was freakily prevalent. And lots of pregnant women sunbathing. I wonder if it damages the baby.

I got sick suddenly when I got back to Logrono. I was inexplicably struck down in the middle of the night when I got back with a fever close on 40 degrees, and I was freezing cold so I had to use my hot water bottle and heat pack. Let me assure you, it is NOT comfortable travelling when sick, although you get more space because you´ve got a feverish glint in your eye and people think you´re either crazy (especially since I was the only one in 37 degree Barcelona wearing long pants and a jacket) or contagious.

Bulls and more bulls

Dad and I rented a car in Logroño for two days and we drove up to Pamplona to see the running of the bulls. It´s crazy during San Fermin- the streets are sticky and gross from all the spilt alcohol and everyone´s white clothes have been stained purple from sangria and wine and kalimocho. We slept for a few hours in the car, then went up to grab a decent spot to watch the bulls run but about half an hour before they were due to run, the police came and told everyone standing on our strip that no one was allowed there so we had to move. By this time, around 7:30 am, everyone who wasn´t going to run had found a place and most of the areas were fenced off and closed so we were stuck in the street with all the other runners which meant we had to run.

Dad found a spot near the fence where he could duck in when the bulls came, but I figured since I was here, I may as well run as far as I could. So we arranged a meeting place and I moved further up the street where it wasn´t so uphill. At 8 o´clock the church bell rang and they let off a bang to let the people know the bulls had been released. For a few seconds nothing happened then the crowd started running madly up the street and I got pushed along and some idiot stepped on my poor feet (which were clothed only in thongs because I hadn´t planned on running). Then the crowd veered towards the walls and when I turned to look, the bulls were running past. It was over in a few seconds. Everyone stood around for a while longer, waiting for something else to happen and I decided to walk further up, towards the Plaza de Toros and then everyone started doing a mad dash again and crammed towards the walls and the second lot of bulls ran past.

That was pretty much it. I jogged with the rest of the crowd towards the arena but the doors were closed and no one knew what was happening so I went back to look for Dad. He thought I´d been trampled on because I took my time getting back and actually went to ask the ambulance assistant if anyone had been injured.

It was heaps of fun. There´s so much hype and people are stretching and saying goodbye to each other like they´re going to die, it´s really funny. We drove to San Sebastian afterwards and took the scenic route to Bilbao. The Spanish countryside is absolutely amazing. Nothing like the Australian one with blackened tree trunks and brown everywhere.

I have food poisoning. I blame the shrimps I ate. Going back to bed, am exhausted.

Back from Turkey (but I didn´t see any)

So exciting! So exciting! Loved it! Loved it! It was fantastic. I loved Turkey. At first I was very disillusioned because I was tired and hot and everyone kept trying to rip us off and asking us if we were Japanese or Korean. But then we went to Ephesus and I fell in love with Turkey. (This is a photo of me exhaling an apple flavoured water pipe. I didn´t realise it had tobacco- I thought it was just tea leaves so I got really dizzy.)

On the first day my dad insisted we watch the soccer match between Ghana and Brazil and afterwards we just walked around our area in Istanbul. On the second day we went on a tour and went to Asia for about half an hour before driving back. We went to the Spice Market, got ferried along the Bosphorus... all the usual touristy places. We also saw Dolmabache Palace which was really cool because practically everything including the walls and floors were made of wood. On the third day we went around by ourselves and saw the stuff in Sultanahmet, like the Blue Mosque (which smelt like feet because you had to take your shoes off), Topkapi Palace and its harem, Hagia Sofya, the Grand Bazaar... And then we caught a plane the next day to Izmir where we were going on a two day tour to see Pamukkale and Ephesus.

Pamukkale was pretty cool to look at because it has natural hot springs that have left calcium deposits that look like snow but there were so many tourists it felt a bit artificial. Ephesus on the other hand... there were tourists there too but for some reason it didn´t matter so much. It just felt so weird and exhilarating to be walking on marble placed there more than 2000 years ago, where Paul went, where one of the first churches was set up, where you could imagine the ancient Romans walking around in togas and using the public latrine (which was very nicely built, although probably cold in Winter). There was an ad carved in the marble on the roads too, for the ancient brothel that was across the road from the library which got burnt down. (Photos of Dad at Pamukkale and sitting on the latrines in Ephesus.)

We caught a night bus back to Istanbul and it took 10 hours. I think Turkish women generally travel with their kids because there were heaps of screaming, crying, awful smelling little brats on the bus. Ugh. It was a torturous journey. And then at Istanbul airport our plane was delayed by almost 4 hours. I think there´s a conspiracy going on with airports. I suspect they tell plane companies to delay at least 10% of all flights so people will feel more inclined to shop at the duty free stores. It´s so evil.

I had so much fun; it felt so dull to be going back to Spain. I mean, Turkey´s exotic and colourful and full of history and decadence and delectable sweets while Spain´s... just Spain. I guess if I lived in Turkey I´d feel differently. One week isn´t enough- I didn´t realise what a big country it is. And it´s very long horizontally too, so to travel from west to east and visit all of Turkey would take at least a month.