sonrisa

yes i have become a statistic: apparantly 80% of all blogs die in a year, as has mine. i would direct you to myspace but im about to give that the arse as well. facebook my friends, is the lazy womans blog. see you there...

I just had a lovely weekend in Bath. Its a cool place. Nice town with the river Avon running through it, nice and compact so you can walk around most of it. We stayed in a decent BnB, very affordable. Probably because they used child labour to serve us breakfast - there were these two nine year olds taking orders. It was school holidays so I don’t think they work there all the time, somehow. (It reminded me of when I was little and liked playing waitress, had my own little apron and everything. These kids got to do it for real – lucky bastards)

Anyway, as you can imagine Bath is so–named for the baths the Romans built in the 1st century AD, around the only hot springs in England. These springs churn out some phenomenal amount of water like a hundred litres a second or something. Its hard to imagine that they managed to turn some bubbling bog into a series of very civilised thermal pools and the system is still working today -most of the same pipes even.

Sadly you’re not allowed to swim in them but Troy and I tested out the rejuvenating qualities of the mineral rich water at the new baths complex. We thought it was a bit steep at £20 for 2 hours (mind you Troight-arse reckons everythings a bit steep) but we got to swim in a rooftop thermally heated pool, another one on ground level with these big jets and streams which massage you, and 4 steam rooms with different aromatherapy oils in them. It was SOOO good and we were walking around the rest of the day in a bit of a haze, smiles all round, cos we were so relaxed.

Little ball of crazyness,
my one and only frisky Fritz
who loves to run and climb and stalk,
we need to have a little talk.

I know you need to strutt your stuff,
but I have really had enough!
Quarrell with another kitty
and I'll be more than a tad shitty.

"Tis all fun and games" said I
til my sweet kitten lost an eye.
You frightened me you little brat!
Because I love you, darling cat,

to make this point I shall persist:
from fighting ways you must desist!
Be at peace, make love not war.
Spare me the vet bills, and the gore.

Snuggle, sleep, be cute and nice.
Even catch a bird or two, or mice,
if you must prove that you are tough.
Dont fight, be good, dear ball of fluff.

Erin and Troy have been on the road again and this time actually in England! We visited the lovely Kentish town of Canterbury. Now a little university town it was originally a Roman settlement, with the obligatory city walls and a massive tower/gate at the western entrance. Not to mention one hell of a cathedral.



We took the guided tour and, as usual, were the only ones under sixty - history nerds that we are. We were rewarded with the company of Bernie, a retired pharmacist who showed us all around the Cathedral and grounds. He was very informative, telling us all about the various coats of arms on display, the major events that took place in the cathedral like the murder of Thomas Becket, Archbishop at the time, by King Henry II’s Guards. Plus the usual tour guide stuff like how many tonnes of granite were shipped from France to build the thing., what parts were bombed in the war. But he was a lovely and witty little chap, like an older version of Giles, very English.



We also went to the Roman museum in the basement of one of the town’s buildings. Down in the depths we saw a seriously old roman mosaic tiled floor. It had been found accidentally when the building was bombed in WWII inside the crater they saw this 1500 year old piece of history.
But most of our time in Canterbury we spent outdoors, walking around the town which has lots of gorgeous little English gardens. The weather was freakishly warm and the daffodils were blooming way too early, but I couldn’t help but be cheered by it, despite a nagging concern for our changing climate. On the grass under a magnolia tree, with a newspaper and an ice cream, in the sun - the best way to spend a weekend



On our way home from Canterbury we stopped at Leeds castle, which was great. On the grounds there was a maze (which we actually got lost in), an aviary, a duckery (it’s a real word! There were lots of the little fellas!) not to mention the worlds best dog collar museum, with collars dating back to the 16th century. I absolutely loved the castle itself, typical story-book type thing. It had a kinda moat, huge wooden doors with those big studs in them, stone hallways with lanterns, a big posh tapestried dining room. You could just imagine some big feast happening in there, with everyone drinking wine from those silver chalice type cups, a couple of lutes and much merriment.
Twas a lovely weekend indeed.

been a while since i posted. coming back to londons a bit of a drag, and summarising our trip has been a daunting task. plus i've been persuaded into making a

myspace page

so its been distracting me. so enough excuses im just gonna do a half arsed non-witty post. because i just know my fans are itching for the latest:)
germany is cool. i LOVE good public transport. they can manage it so why cant the rest of the world just get it together? especially in these days of climate change. and dont give me any crap about germans being inherently organised, they've just got their priorities right. you can get around the country so easily and if youve got a travel buddy quite cheaply, and i mean tiny towns no ones heard of and stuff - like quedlinburg.
my munchener relatives hadnt heard of it. its a pretty little town a couple hundred k's west of berlin, with beautiful little cobbled streets and half-timbered houses. the whole towns unesco world heritage listed, i guess cos its so damn cute, so we were surprised to be the only foriegn tourists there. there were plenty of other germans on the weekend doing tours led by lantern carrying, leather-panted old dudes, but troy and i were happy just wandering aimlessly. it was small enough that you take it easy and slow, which made it more enjoyable. there was this monastery place on a hill, and a big bell tower, ah its all just so hard to describe, even if i was a great writer. it was just peaceful and smile-inspiring and cute and warm and you would walk around a corner and go oh! and oh! again cos it was pretty. and i took a million photos but none of them are good enough either. but i added them to the happy snaps link to the right there if you wanna check it out.
we also did lots of historical stuff. we went to a great museum in nuremberg where the massive nazi rallies had been held. we went to dachau concentration camp, which was apparantly the first one to be set up, and thus held heaps of the nazis political opponents. at first we went through the museum bit and read stories and it didnt feel like you were actually there. you'd look at pictures of these eighteen year old communists with this defiant look in their eyes and it didnt seem real, more like reading a book about it. then we saw a film, and walked through the crematorium. the nazis didnt actually gas people at this camp, it being in the middle of germany. they preffered to do the dirty work in poland, but they had the 'showers' all ready to go just in case. no, here they just left people - communists, gays, jews, the mentally ill - to starve slowly, overcrowd them and let them die of disease at such a rate that they couldnt keep up with the cramations, so then stacked up the bodies ten high. in that crematorium it finally hit me where i was, and it was horrible. even writing about it makes me choke up. again, it indescrib-able though not in a nice way like quedlinburg. germany: land of contradictions.
troy ate a bratwurst for every day we were in germany. (sorry, there was just no seamless way to go from the holocaust back to the adventures of erin and troy there) . troy wanted to try pigs knuckles the whole time, and in each new town would say "this is it, erin, im getting pigs knuckles" but when it came time to order, sticking with good old reliable bratwurst. in the end i went and got him some pigs knuckles in the augustiner beer hall in salzburg, austria, on one of the last days of our trip. i personally was more partial to a pretzel, which went well with the much beer on our journey through germany, the czeck republic and austria.
but im not really one for churches and architecture i must say. its all very nice, and fairly impressive, but somehow prague and vienna left me kind of un-moved. like there were just too many sculptures and fountains and stuff. i dont know, i'd say i'm a philistine, if i knew what that meant. despite the church-fatigue prague did grow on me over the three days we were there, despite the hoardes of tourists. it was good going to the museum of communism, which while mostly taking the piss out of soviet schoolbooks and posters, did provide a good history of prague spring and the soviet occupation. plus i got a candle shaped like lenins head.
no, more moving were the quiet train rides through snowy forests, the view of the alps from the castle at salzburg, walking around dresden at night, and the lovely bamberg with its town hall sitting on a bridge over the river.
the whole trip was fun and nice and interesting, and being back in london sucks. the life out of me, at times. but dont feel too sorry for me, the next trips coming up in spring, visiting maureen in spain - woohoo! arriba! so to fund it this wage slave will dutifully trot off on the tube every day to some dodgy NHS hospital to save lives and stamp out disease til the next installment of the adventures of erin and troy.

yay!! i DID get to make a snowman after all! me, troy, dimitri and maureen went on a road trip to neuschwanstein on boxing day, and there was actually snow there!



it was heaps harder than i thought it would be. and after troy realised that snow is actually wet, he refused to help me. the snow wasnt really sticking together very well so karl wasnt very big...



ok so maybe thats an understatement, he was tiny. and i had real trouble giving him a nose cos his head kept rolling off when i tried. eventually maureen came to the rescue and helped me hold his head while i attached a twig. no mouth but it was my first one so i was proud of the little chap:)
it was a very nice day all around. the castle we visited was built by the 'mad' Ludwig the 2nd, who decided that, as well as about a hundred swans decorating every room, a fake cave next to the bedroom was an essential part of any serious castle. after we toured the inside we walked up to this scary narrow bridge and got a good view of the whole castle which was fun, walking along some icy paths through the forest in the snow.
and dimitri slipped over which, once we all made sure he was ok, we all laughed ourselves silly about...just the angle he fell on...you had to be there. but it was a really nice day with the cousins, like being with my siblings, who i'm missing terribly.

Life is truly beautiful. I am having the best time travelling around Germany, the Czech Republic and now in Austria. My favourite place so far has been a little southern Czech town called Cesky Krumlov.
Arriving at the train station, you walk over a bridge into the city walls and into another world, it is just magic. The town is set in the bend of a pretty winding river in the peaceful countryside and has the cutest cobblestone streets, renaissance frescos, great big castle with a beautiful huge weddingcake-like tower. Troy and I have concluded that small towns are by far the best, and this one was really special.
We stayed in a great room, the attic of a cool hostel with wooden floorboards, funky couch covers, communal kitchen, and nice staff. We spent the first afternoon wandering around the streets and the lovely castle, and said hello to the bear living under the bridge. The Krumlov aristocracy decided sometime in the nineteenth century that what the castle was missing was a bear pit, so he is living there amongst the trees and apparantly every Christmas the local kids go and sing to him.
In the evening we went to a tiny little gypsy bar near the town square and heard some excellent gypsy music. The band had a clarinet, double bass, accordion (or two when the barmans 5-year-old grandson joined in) and the most amazing violinist. In the bar was a great mix of locals and a few tourists being merry, clapping, whistling, singing and dancing along. We were talking to a friendly local and she said some nights it gets really rowdy and people start dancing on the tables. Add some great Czeck beer for 20 crowns (70 cents) and you have got the recipe for a fantastic night out! Needless to say we ended up staying in Cesky Krumlov longer than we had planned, and were sad to say goodbye this morning. Next stop Viennna and Salzburg!