A Sicilian Adventure

It feels like forever since I've written a blog, and it feels like this one is going to take me forever to write, but I'll try to get it done for heading off again in a couple days. Since my last update all of the UNB students met here in Schwenningen for a meeting at the university and most people ending up staying the night to party with a couple of my German friends, I think there were seven of us that crashed in my room, with a few more at Sean and Marc's place across town. It was a great night, although it led to a rough morning. The next day a group of six of us headed to Freiburg, after recovering a wallet that was lost the night before. We wandered the city for a bit and had some supper, one person headed home that evening, and the rest of us found a quaint little hotel to stay in. We had an interesting night out in Freiburg, met an American who led us to a pretty shady bar, before we headed to another bar that had been recommended to me by some Americans we had met in Stuttgart. The second place was much better. The next day we decided to stop in Lake Titisee before heading home, it turned out to be an awesome day at the lake. We went out on the peddle boat for an hour, had some lunch, and then went swimming at a club where we had access to a beach and a pool. It turned out to be a pretty hot day, and there were a few sunburns. The work week went incredibly slow as we all knew that an unforgettable weekend was coming up.

So I don't have time to add pictures of Sicily at the moment, but maybe you can see them via this link even if you don't have facebook: Sicily, Italy 2012 Album

After lots of planning and coordination, ten of us headed to the airport near Baden-Baden after work on Thursday. It was about a 3 hour trip for me, although seven of us ended up getting on the same train so it was a good time, and the 3 hours flew by. We arrived at the hotel which was directly across the road from the airport, a road called Halifax Avenue as the airport was a former Canadian military base, around 8:30pm and were met by Laura and the other Scott who had arrived an hour earlier. We had three rooms for the 10 of us so I checked in to the third room, we got some supper, and watched a very intense thunder and lightning storm. We headed to bed early although we were much too excited to get to sleep very quickly.

We set our alarms for shortly before 5am and got ready before walking over to the airport at 5:30am. We checked in and to my surprise had no problems at all. We grabbed something to eat and started boarding at 6:55am. We departed around 7:30am, and with no assigned seating on RyanAir flights, most of us were able to sit together.  We landed at the Trapani airport around 9:30am and were hit by the heat wave a few moments later, it was great! Much to my delight, our drive to the villa was just coming into the airport as we walked into the arrivals area. Having been responsible for the booking of the villa, there was always the thought of what if nobody shows up and we got scammed. Part of my skepticism was due to a lack of independent reviews of the place we were staying, Villa Anna (www.get2sicily.com) so maybe this blog will show up in the future when other people are researching it. We all introduced ourselves to Mario, the father of the guys I had arranged everything with over the internet. Five of us and Mario piled into his car and began the drive to the villa, it was a short distance away but took about 20 minutes as the roads are not at all conducive to fast driving. We talked with Mario along the way, he was very friendly and willing to help with whatever we needed. We checked out the villa while the other 5 were picked up at the airport, and Joseph went to find his friend Mitch who had been staying at a hostel nearby. Everyone seemed impressed with the villa, there were plenty of places to sleep, 3 bathrooms, a full kitchen, and a kitchenette upstairs with a well needed extra mini fridge.

Once everyone arrived, Danielle and I went into the town of Marausa with Mario to buy some groceries. It was a bit of a challenge, most people didn't speak a word of English but thankfully Mario was a great translator having worked at a university in England for 50 years he could speak English pretty well. We got a bunch of food at the supermarket, if you can call it that, it was pretty tiny, and we also stopped at the butcher and the bakery. We took everything back to the villa and Joseph and I went with Mario to get a pair of bicycles from his house just down the road so we'd have a quicker way to get back into town to buy more drinks later as we didn't have space to buy much on our first trip. We had a bite to eat for lunch and loaded up on sunscreen before spending an awesome afternoon in the Mediterranean. The water was a great temperature and once the rare fog cleared it was a beautiful day. I headed back to the villa with Marc, Joseph, and Mitch while the others stayed at the beach. Joe and Mitch took the bikes to go buy some beer and wine, and I ended up falling asleep on the roof in the midday sun. I woke up a while later with a burnt back despite sleeping facing the sun. Everyone coming back from the beach also came back with a sunburn.  We started preparing supper, I ended up in charge of the BBQing, which was quite the challenge with damp charcoal and limited matches. It took a while but we had an awesome dinner of sausages and hamburgers with potatoes, onion, and peppers on the side. After cleaning up supper we headed to the 'Beach Bar & Restaurant' at the end of the street to watch the Germany vs. Greece football match. We were all cheering for Germany, although I think the locals may have been hoping for Greece. Germany won it 4-2 so we were happy. I should mention that in the town we were staying we were pretty much the only tourists for the whole weekend, it was a great change from being just another tourist like most weekends. We watched the game inside the restaurant and headed across the street to the outdoor section over the water where the bar/disco was to have a few drinks. Turns out most of it was reserved for an 18 year-olds birthday party so we ending up crashing it. We took to the dance floor and made it a party. They ended up giving us free food and beer, and eventually joined in with the singing and dancing, it was a pretty awesome night, getting to know the locals is one of the best parts of travelling.

The next morning we woke up, grabbed a bite to eat and headed to Trapani for the day. We had thought about taking the boat to the islands off the coast, but Mario said that it wasn't worth it at this point in the day, we should have gotten up at 6 or 7am and headed over, so he said he'd look into to and maybe try the next day. We walked around the city for a bit, had some lunch, Mitch had an interesting octopus sandwich, and we had some more gelato. We then headed for the beach, we had to pay to get on the beach, and we got umbrellas and a few of us got beds. The beach itself was nice, but the swimming was not so great, too many rocks and seaweed, but most of us were avoiding the direct sunlight at this point anyways as it was extremely hot out, around 35°C. After we had enough of the beach we headed back to the city center, got some more gelato on the way, and figured out a bus we could take back to Marausa. While waiting for the bus a few of us walked through the old city and found a souvenir shop. Then we were joined by a old Italian man at the bus stop who had just one tooth and made lots of strange noises. We caught the bus and eventually made it back to Marausa. Some of us got a drive back to the villa with Mario from there, while the others walked. We figured out the plan for the next day with Mario and the owner of the Beach Bar and Restaurant. We ended up eating an excellent 3 course seafood and pasta dinner that included squid, octopus, and swordfish among other things, at the restaurant while watching an awesome sunset. We then walked along the beach forever and went for a swim in the dark, it was a great night.

The next morning we woke up and had scrambled eggs for breakfast and headed to marina a short walk away where we were to meet the boat we chartered for the day. Our driver (captain?) was a 22 year-old guy from Trapani who didn't speak a word of English. We managed to fit 12 people on the boat, and before departing, one of the guys working at the marina told Mitch that we were not to say anything if stopped by the police, great way to start the boat cruise haha! We sped across the sea to the island of Favignana, where the waters were amazing blue and turquoise, I had never seen water like it before in my life. We circled the entire island, swimming from the boat at one point, although the water was much cooler, it was quite refreshing. We docked the boat and went into the town on the island. Bartolo, the captain, walked us through the town, we ate our lunch which was included in the chartering of the boat, and spent a while on the beach, there were groups of tourists on this island, although most of them had arrived on the large ferries and hydrofoils. I was really glad we ended up doing it with a private boat, it felt like a much more authentic experience. We left Favignana and headed to the island nearby. We saw an impressive cave up on the side of the island, and went into a cove where there were probably over 100 boats, many of them tied together to in groups of 4 or 5. It was all the locals who just party on the water for the day. Bartolo found some of his friends so we tied up with them and they gave us chips, wine and beer, it was awesome. We swam from the boat, saw some fish, and had a great time. The friends invited us to their house for a BBQ later that night, so we said we'd go. We headed back to Lido di Marausa around 3pm and probably had some more gelato. We ordered pizza because we all wanted to try some Sicilian pizza, and we also cooked the pasta we had bought. Some people went for another swim, and I took a bicycle out and saw the beach on a Sunday, it was absolutely packed. The pizza arrived around 6pm, we ate and tried to finish some of the wine we still had left. We went back to the bar for a few more drinks and to watch part of the game as we were meeting our new friends there at 9 to head to their place for a BBQ.

We were waiting outside the bar and there were lots of people around and cars driving and a Mercedes SUV pulled up and I said to Breagh it would be funny if they picked us up in that. Turns out it was one of the vehicles to get us, the other was a new BMW sports car. We only drove for about 500m, we easily could have walked it, but it was interesting. There were 7 of us who went to their house, it was a pretty awesome night, we saw Italy beat England, had some great barbecued food, had way, way too much wine, and bonded with more locals. There was some debate as to whether they could have been mafia or not, the expensive cars and guns were the indicators (somebody only saw them putting their guns away into another room, nothing serious), but regardless, they were extremely friendly, and it was an evening none of us will soon forget. Some people went for a late night dip and then we headed to bed. We woke up early and headed to the airport where we caught our flight back to Germany and then the trains back to our home towns. It was a pretty amazing weekend, hard to be repeated!

Heading off to Paris in 15 minutes! Have a great Canada Day weekend for all you Canadians!

Budapest, Hungary!

Wednesday evening after work was spent planning a few future weekend trips in July, and preparing for the weekend in Budapest. I found a drive to Stuttgart on the local carpooling site on Facebook so I didn't have to take a train, although it didn't really save me much money after chipping in for gas and then taking the train to the city center, but it is always nicer to travel with other people than sit on the train in silence. So I woke up Thursday morning and took my time getting ready and was able to make a decent breakfast for once. I met my drive just down the street from where I'm living and we headed to Stuttgart. It was a couple that are going to school here in Schwenningen that gave me the drive, one studying international business management and the other accounting. They were both very friendly and the drive went by very quickly. They were headed to a place in another state about 5 hours away, so they dropped me off on the outskirts of Stuttgart at the Porsche museum around noon. Since I was there and I knew I didn't have to head to the airport until 5pm, I decided to check out the museum. It was only 4€ for a student and included an audio tour. I took way to many pictures of all the nice cars, and learned a fair bit about the history of Porsche. It was a great way to kill a couple hours. Below are just a few of the cars and the museum.

 Super modern museum

I caught the local train to the main station and went to the free observation deck where I got a great view of Stuttgart. I grabbed a bite to eat and wandered around for a bit and got a few pictures of the historical buildings.

 The opera house

 The New Palace and fountains

 The hauptbahnhof, aka main train station

I then went to meet Breagh at the train station as her train was arriving at 3pm. We walked around the main shopping/pedestrian area for a while, searching for a bank that we could not find, and ended up running into Greg in the middle of the busiest area of the city, we were pretty surprised as we had no idea when he was arriving and thought we might just meet him at the airport. We went back to the train station and I showed them the observation deck, from which we spotted the bank we were trying to find. We headed to the bank, it appeared to be the headquarters, only to find that they don't have any atm's at their headquarters. Seemed pretty strange to us. We returned to the train station and caught a train to the airport. We checked in and got three seats all together. We were a bit early so we just sat around the airport for a bit and went down to our gate shortly before the boarding time of 7:10pm. The flight was a bit turbulent but it was a very short flight at only an hour and twenty minutes.

It got nicer the second time to the top

Upon arriving at the airport in Budapest we converted some of our money to Hungarian Forints, and caught a taxi to the Retox Party Hostel for around 6000HUF, which was about 21€. In Hungarian, an s is pronounced as sh, so the name of the place is actually pronounced Budapesht, and is made of up two cities Buda and Pest, we were learning things very quickly. We arrived at the hostel around 9:45pm, and checked in and got our beds. The hostel gave us a great first impression, everyone was so laid back, friendly, and all about having a good time. The workers at the hostel had some very unique names including Boss, Titties, and Flash. We were planning to have a quiet night, but upon arriving, everyone was asking if we were going out. We decided to go out for a bit and there was a guy from California, Derek, looking to catch up with the group that had gone out earlier, so Titties called us a cab and we headed off to the bar which was in the courtyard of a former school. It was very unique and we had an awesome time. We met people from many different countries and tried some Hungarian beer and liquor. We headed back to the hostel around 2am, grabbed Gyros to eat as we hadn't eaten supper that evening, and headed to bed.

 Pumped to be in Budapest!

 Outdoor bar

This girl thought we were the same person

I somehow managed to wake up around 7:30am, and I proceeded to wake up Breagh and Greg. We planned to accomplish a fair amount in our only full day in Budapest, so we had to get off to an early start. We grabbed showers, got directions on where to go to exchange some more money, and where to meet for a free walking tour of the city. There was a girl travelling by herself from Australia, Bree, who also wanted to do the walking tour, so we planned to meet her at the starting location. We exchanged some money and walked a bit before we found the square where the tour started from. We still had 45 minutes to spare so we sat down at an outdoor cafe and had breakfast. It took forever to get the bill, like in Germany, so we made it to the tour with just minutes to spare. The tour guide was very enthusiastic and we learned a lot about Budapest. Below are some of the pictures from the walk tour.

 How do you double the value of a Trabant? Fill it with gasoline.

After the walking tour, which ended at 1pm, we headed to the Great Market for lunch. It took nearly an hour to get to the market, and it was apparently 30 degrees with a humidex of 38, so it was a hot one! It was worth it though, the market was huge and a great place to buy some souvenirs. I had some goulash soup for lunch, a traditional Hungarian meal, and sampled some of the food the others bought. It was all pretty great. After getting some souvenirs we headed back to the hostel, taking a few breaks along the way. Greg and I got some ice cream and were thoroughly disappointed with what we ended up with, but it still tasted pretty good and gave everyone a good laugh.

Back at the hostel we grabbed a beer and then Breagh, Greg, and I headed back to the Buda side of the river to explore the labyrinth beneath the city. After 6pm they shut off the lighting and you get to navigate it with an oil lamp, it was pretty awesome, and as you can tell by the slightly blurry picture without the flash it was pretty dark. We spent about an hour in there and entered back into the hot temperatures to wander around a bit more and take a few more pictures.

 This place was flying a Canadian flag!

We walked back to the hostel and had supper there with Bree. I think us Canadians were missing the seafood as we all had fish and chips. It was pretty good, but it doesn't compare with what we can get in the Maritimes. We watched part of the first game of the Euro Cup (which I joined a pool at work for despite knowing nothing about it) and got ready for the evening. We had signed up earlier for the party boat that the hostel organizes in conjunction with three other hostels. We left the hostel, along with a parade of probably well over 100 other people, as two of the other hostels came to ours before heading out. We paraded our way to the river about 20 minutes away where we boarded the boat for an hour and a half party cruise on the Danube. Our ticket included a bottle of champagne so we all had something to drink as soon as we boarded. With 200 people on board, and most of them with bottles of champagne, corks were flying all over the place. Breagh got hit in the head with someone else's cork, and then proceeded to open mine, not knowing that the reason for the misfiring of the corks was because the bottles had enough pressure in them to pop as soon as you started to unwind the metal cage. This resulted in me getting hit in the face with my own hard plastic cork, just millimeters from my right eye. I was incredibly lucky as there was a lot of force behind the cork and I don't think my eye would have taken it so well. I wasn't until the next day that I realize how bad it could have been, but we all had an awesome time on the boat and saw Budapest all lit up at night. It is quite difficult to take night shots without a flash from a moving boat, so I wasn't able to get the best shots, although I got a few good ones of the partying on the boat. We met a lot of people on the boat, including a group of three from Toronto, and even a guy studying in Halifax.

After the disembarking from the boat, we then boarded another ship, this one a stationary one that has been converted into a bar. It was voted on Lonely Planet's website as the best bar in the world. We had a great time and heard some really interesting music. From there, we, Greg, Breagh, Bree, and I took a taxi back to the Pest side, although we didn't even realize the part boat has docked on the opposite side of the river, and went to a club called Aquarius, an underground club in the middle of a park after grabbing some food at one of the few places still open in this part of town. It was pretty cool, although not super busy, but it was great because they weren't playing the typical American music, but more Hungarian and Russian sounding stuff. There was some pretty awesome dancing taking place, and I've never seen so many people doing the running man at the same time, and they all did it well. We left there around 4am and ended up going to another club near the hostel that is open 24 hours. Greg and I did a shot of Palinko, the Hungarian alcohol that can be up to 70% alcohol, it was pretty rough. We partied there for a while, before heading back to the hostel to check out around 5:30-6 o'clock. We had earlier decided that we were going to stay up all night and make the most of the little time we had in Budpest. The city is known as the city of baths so we walked for what felt like an eternity to a public thermal bath that had about 15 different pools. I'll try to find a picture online of the one we went to an include it below as I didn't have my camera. It was pretty amazing and we tried most of the pools, some as cold as 15°C, others nearly 40°C, some of them had a very high sulfur content which is supposed to be medicating, but I found it just smelly. Bree had come with us to the baths too, and all four of us ended up falling asleep in the pools, with our heads out the water of course. It was extremely relaxing, I would have stayed all day if I could. If you're ever in a city with these thermal baths I highly recommend going, although some are gender separate, aka nude baths, but some, like the one we went to, require bathing suits and are mixed gender. We spend two or three hours in the pools and ended up pretty shrivelled up. We grabbed showers and then we said goodbye to Bree and headed to the airport. Our flight left at 12:45pm, and we were back in Stuttgart at 2:00pm. We all slept for nearly all of the flight.

We checked in at the Interhostel in Stuttgart and slept for a few hours before grabbing something for supper and I got a Deutschland t-shirt to wear to the Euro Cup football match that would be on later. We went back to the hostel, got changed and had a beer before heading to the Irish pub not far from the hostel. We had a good time watching the game, and we were surrounded by English speaking people, it was a strange occurrence. Germany managed to pull off a 1-0 win which resulted in the cars horns beeping for hours into the night. We were all dead tired so we went back to the hostel and were all asleep by 11:30pm, the earliest I've been to bed since I arrived in Germany I think. But considering we were awake for 40 hours with only 3-4 hours of broken up sleep, it was definitely warranted. We got up at 9:30am and headed for the train station where we had coffee and breakfast before catching our trains home.

 Looking tired

View from the hostel, the sound of the bells at 7am was not as nice

It was a weekend to be remembered, one of the craziest and most fun of my life. Can't wait for the next one!