My Europe trip was in 2006. Almost three years ago now! This site is in dire need of updating.

HOWEVER, I am about to embark on another overseas adventure – to Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, and wI promise to update this site with tales of my South East Asian Adventure. At the same time I will also post the rest of my Europe trip

Our next stop: Eden! Claudia from Bike a Dyke (yup, that was the name of the bike hire place) took us on a very relaxing bike ride through the town. Her accent was hilarious. The bikes were awesome granny bikes, they took a while to get used to. Jackie Chan was almost run over by a car – an unlikely occurrence considering the lack of motor vehicles in the town! After our bike ride, we visited a diamond factory where I was tempted by a E30,000 ring. Decided against the purchase though.

Our accommodation tonight is at a youth hostel – sharing with Rachel, Karen and Kathy. We have our own bathroom, it’s fantastic. After dinner, Dave took us through the Red Light District (an eye opener for certain)… people selling drugs in broad daylight, prostitutes showing off in their windows (not a pretty sight) and sex shops everywhere you look. After a quick tour of the other parts of town, and a low-down on the best places to ..uh… smoke pot – we stopped in at the Grasshopper for some… you guessed it, marijuana! Admittedly I’ve never known how to smoke so after attempting and failing, we headed to a ‘coffee shop’ for some chocolate brownies. Much easier to digest. In fact it was delicious.

Everyone’s eyes were quite bloodshot by the time we met up outside the Casa Rosso Theatre for a live sex show. To set the mood we were given a penis lolly pop to suck on. Won’t go into details… if you really wanna know, ask me.

Back at the bar at the hostel, we had some ‘Flugel’ shots (tasted like cherry-flavoured medicine). The bar was extremely quiet as everyone was off their heads, staring into space. I wrote some emails which were amusing to re-read the next day… went to bed, and passed out as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Most of the group went wine tasting … they got a free shot glass but the reports were that it was crap – glad I didn’t waste my money. Tonight we are staying at “Grandma’s House”! The place is so cute. Grandma didn’t appreciate the loud drunken group and kept shushing us. I had a great night’s sleep though!!

We only stayed out in the snow for about 10 minutes.. none of us were really wearing appropriate clothing (I didn’t even have gloves on), and my fingers were starting to get very cold. Nevertheless, I was in snow! After a dodgy cafeteria-style lunch, we got on the train back down the mountain. Karen made fun of how I was falling asleep, and my head was rolling everywhere.

Back at the Chalet, I had a much needed nap in our room, which doesn’t lock. I had a shower (one of those where you have to keep pushing the button for water to come out…. FUN). Dinner was a good Aussie meal: hamburgers, with bread this time! We hung out in the hallway (like all the cool kids do) and ate paprika chips in someone’s room. Double Bicep (Jo) farted so loudly and it stunk out the room so I left, then RETARDO RENATO broke my iPod! How dare he!!! An awesome day all up.

Liechtenstein is famous for its stoned cows but they passed a law so you can’t feed them cannabis anymore. (Random fact of the day)

Anyway so Dave told us about a good place to have a sandwich for lunch so we stopepd ther. After attempting to interpret the menu, we went to order our meals. Firstly, the waiter completely ignored Kasi and didn’t take her order, and she stormed in after him and he ushered her back to her seat saying “I come, I come!” then didn’t come back for ages…. Kristy & kasi asked for brown bread on their sandwiches, but instead, the waiter came out with a basket of brown bread. It was hilarious. I thought I was safe when I ordered a hamburger and fries, but when the waitress brought it out to the table, we all burst out laughing. My “hamburger” was simply a meat pattie on a plate!! No bread. Just a lump of meat in the middle of the plate. Tasted great though. Dave walked out, looked at me with a very strange expression on his face and put a plate of fries down in front of me… then walked off. Um… thanks Dave? Funny boy, he’s grown on me.

I was five minutes late for the bus because of the boys, AND I didn’t leave enough time to get my passport stamped for 2 Francs. Annoyed about that!!! We stopped at Lucern, one of the most beautiful places in the world, I love it. Skipped the swiss army knife demonstration and hit the shops instead. Bought myself a cute little red top… happy birthday to me? Dave gave us all Swiss chocolates on the bus and gave me the left overs, yum. Didn’t have very long in Lucern which sucks, but then we headed off to Lauterbrunnen, which is also beautiful so I guess that’s ok. I got a birthday cake at dinner! With 5 candles…ahem. We celebrated at ‘the bombshelter’ that night (the pub downstairs)… you have to walk through the laundry and past the showers to get to it. Didn’t pay for any drinks tonight which was awesome… extended birthdays rock, I think I will have to adopt Clare’s family tradition of a ‘birthday octave’.

Oh I also cut a chunk of flesh out of my finger… my razor had fallen out of the ziplock bag  I put it in ,and I stuck my hand in my bag and… well… ouch. I was running around with my hand in the air like a maniac asking if anyone had a bandaid, and in the end, turns out I had one myself. Idiot.

At 5pm the Glockenspiel went off. i want that 5 minutes of my life back. Haha nah its amazing how its 600-something years old and is powered by hydrolics. I don’t even know if that’s true, I just heard some American tourist tell his kid that. Katie & I were the only ones who didn’t go to the Bavarian Beer Hall for dinner (my reason: too expensive, Katie’s reason: actually I don’t know why she didn’t go). Instead, we found ‘Cafe Am Nordbad’, had a fantastic meal and a Chi Chi cocktail… they were 15euros each but so worth it. It was nice to have a relaxing dinner just the two of us. Back at the Hostel, when everyone had come back from the beer hall, we went to the pub downstairs and danced a fair bit. At midnight I got some Happy Birthday kisses and I was dikened a million times … I feel so violated… but it was fun :-p wish I’d taken a photo when most of the boys had their shirts off.

It was awesome, everyone put heaps of effort into it!! Kristy did my hair and I wore Margie’s pajamas, possibly THE MOST COMFORTABLE party clothes ever. All in all it was an awesome night… got some great photos. Austria has been one of my favourite places.

We didn’t stop at Hansel and Gretel’s place (the gingerbread house???) because we were short on time, which is a pity. We dropped the white water rafters off – they looked hot in their wet suit, boots and helmets. (We totally didn’t perve at the boys getting changed from the bus…) Apparently the water was freezing… we heard stories of boat hopping and pushing each other into the water. After waiting for the rafters and sending a few emails, we drove another hour and a half to “Contiki’s Own Gasthof”. This place is the best. We’re staying in a gorgeous wooden building, we aren’t in cabins (thank the lord) and we have a bathroom IN OUR ROOM! And there is HOT water in the shower. I’m in heaven. Tonight, some of us ventured five minutes into town to go to the silver bullet pub, but I watched Old School in the bar for a while then headed off to bed.

At the campsite, which was on the mainland, I had a room all to myself!! Katie shared with the Canadians (Lisa, Megan & Christie) We hung out at the bar tonight. They sold a drink called the Attitude Adjuster for €8. Made with Vodka, Gin, white rum, dark rum, orange soda and red grenadine – it is named appropriately. One of those would have been more than enough for me, but Ben bought me one, and I drunk half of Renato’s (or so I was told). I should have worn the medal but John threw up after me. Oh the shame. I woke up with Mark’s shirt in my room.