Es war in Oberwinter....

Nicht davor und nicht dahinter,
Es war gleich mittendrin, als ich damals auf dich reingefallen bin.....

These corrupted lyrics form the basis of an old-Volksmusik song heard on a train (original title "Es war in Königswinter") on the way from Koblenz to Köln, sung not only by a group of drunken Germans......but by a group of drunken Germans on a stag do, who we had met randomly in the centre of Koblenz, bought us an entire night's worth of drinks and had even after all of that then invited us up to Köln on the train with a free ticket that they had already bought. We passed quite a few stations en route, and Oberwinter was one of those which sparked an enormous amount of singing and cheering from 10 drunken men on the train. It was awesome.

Me and Liam (who i'm currently staying with until I find a fucking apartment grrr) only went out for a quiet drink and a shisha in one of the bars in the Koblenz Altstadt. 12 hours later we were still drunk and wandering around Köln after one of the best nights of my entire life.

I realise that it's an enormous cliché to say that, but really....the bizarre way that the night had panned out and the warmth and friendliness of almost everyone we met that night was a credit to the German people and a great starter for the third (and not necessarily the last) part of my Erasmus-Auslandssemester's adventure of awesomeness.

And we were surprisingly dressed for the occasion, as we ended up in an exclusive bar in the Rudolfplatz area of Köln with a surprisingly tight dress code on entry. Liam had his entire outfit scoped out, but we got in nevertheless. There were cocktail dresses and suits everywhere and without wanting to draw out my already enormous posts on here, it was fab.

After all of this we then stumbled upon a squat bar (?) underneath a growshop covered in graffiti, smoked a bit, drank a few, listened to the now-stoned DJ play some light jazz-house and then we made our way back home on the Bahn.


To go into stereotypes and to make stereotypes of Germans without mentioning strict following of rules and a no-tolerance attitude from the 'establishment' would be unthinkable. And not to mention schwarzfahren translating loosely as fare-dodging, it is one of the crimes punishable by execution by the German rail network Deutsche Bahn and can cost you quite a large sump of money if you're caught without holding a valid ticket, stamped and verified twice or three times (just to make sure) by the conductors.
so drunk and with minutes to spare until the next train back to Koblenz we decided it would be fine.

It worked. 3.50€ each later and a whole load of pretending to be drunk, stupid English tourists without any money, ID or other means of getting home to Koblenz, we were back where it all started.......

It's 2013.

So I have actually set this blog to post at exactly the time that the clock on the computer changes from 2012 to 2013, because I have no idea yet what I'll be doing. 

I'll most likely be drunk somewhere not knowing what time it is, and missing the countdown like every year.....(it's getting to be a bit of a running joke with my friends after I went to outside a club for a cigarette in 2010 and came back in 2011, totally missing all the countdown and hugging stuff that happens around that time of year).

And now i'm in France.

The coming of the new year, at this moment, signifies two big things to me: I have just under a month left here; and time is going way too quickly on my year abroad. The first semester felt like just a few weeks and not actually 5 months!

With regards to resolution-making, I've got a list of quite realistic goals that i'm likely to do, rather than things like 'i'm going to be a more motivated person' since at the time and place, no-one thinks "oh I must wake up early tomorrow and every day after because it's 2013 and I said I would". No.

I'm going to start going back to the gym in Spain, start learning Spanish properly and try as hard as possible to stick to a monthly budget I've set myself. I'm also going to try and look for a job in the area (although that may be easier said than done given i'm only there for 3 months-ish) and put money away into my savings account by direct debit every month.

None of this, gym every day, be a better person rubbish or that old 'eat less, smoke less' chestnut....it never lasts. I enjoy my vices too much.

Na, was geht ab, Berlin?: Techno, Glühwein, Bretzeln and hipster markets in Kreuzberg.....

From the beauty of France and the south coast, Berlin is somewhat different: Industrial, moody and dark but energetic and friendly and obscure at the same time. It's also lovely and festive down here. Christmas markets and Feuerzangenbowle are everywhere: a type of alcoholic punch, like glühwein but stuffed full of rum (which has been poured over giant lumps of sugar and set ablaze) and other lovely things, with speculoos biscuits and a lot of festive cheer and impending drunkenness.

We did all that lovely touristy shit; explored the Berlin wall and its graffiti at the openair East Side Gallery; stood infront of the Brandenburger Tor in awe; ate enormous amounts of Bratwurst and 'Champignons mit Krautersoße' and every other clichéd wonder that comes to mind when thinking about Berlin, but I really want to talk about the obscure things we've found and done.

Last night we planned on going to Berghain, the world's best techno club and certainly the most mysterious one, but didn't make it past the scrupulously bizarre door policy and instead ended up in some small, alternative and cosy techno warehouse in Kreuzberg. Going until 9am on Sunday morning it's still not open as long as the behemoth of techno, but it was fucking awesome. We came back home on the U-bahn at 5am ish with severe back ache and drunk as hell, it was awesome. There was even a 60-yr old hipster looking DJ going at it in the other smaller room of this abandoned warehouse, so bizarre.
On trying to find an art gallery here in Berlin we ended up in some hipster market selling expensive clothes to expensive (but obviously vintage) looking people and being completely drowned in interesting things to buy and wear. It's a wonder my bank balance is still looking healthy.

If anything is going to kill me here in Berlin, itäs going to be the 24hr party policy and the shit loads of amazing food available on every corner. Also Currywurst. nom nom nom.

Off to Amsterdam tomorrow, i'l post something about the Dutch legend if i'm not too baked off my tits

That time of the year.

While exam time back at uni in England is generally best kept at the back of my mind until after gorging myself over Christmas and spending the 2/3 week holiday not actually doing revision, the university system here spreads the exams and assessments before and after the holidays, and whereas I would love normally to just get everything out of the way in one big block rather than bitty assessments here there and everywhere, I can imagine if this year was to count towards my final degree mark I would be shitting bricks doing it that way.

We've got it pretty sweet here as Erasmus students to be honest though, averaging on 1 exam per week over the next two months, maybe with a presentation here or there. And as stated before, they're all spread out to make things even easier.

Easier. That's all depending on actually turning up to classes, which Gareth has not been doing.
I'm normally good at exams, but that's because I normally spend moments of my life actually doing some revision and not drowning myself in mulled wine à la Katy a few nights before an exam I haven't even taken class notes for.

In fact, so many cares have been given so far this year that I actually forgot until today that one of my exams is tomorrow, as well as having a tense, revealing group presentation which certainly wasn't the highlight of my university career (...despite how well it actually went the planning stage was the most horrific thing i've possibly ever done).
I'm not such a good student, especially here in Europe....there's just too many distractions. I definitely blame the distractions: If it's not the lure of café culture and lounging around with a café crème all day long, or the lure of going somewhere exciting and seeing something brand new each day, it's the lure of my comfy bed and/or the people in it.

However, I'm not too worried about these next few weeks, the exam content is basically exactly what we studied last year in MFL (sigh), and the rest is common sense stuff. I would suggest to anyone studying abroad to make sure that your language skills are top before worrying too hard about the content. In our case, as long as we can explain something concisely and clearly we're off to a good start....


As well as December being a time for exams, i'm also off on my travels again. Myself and Lauren are all booked up for my birthday jailbreak from the 14th-20th this month. We're visiting Nice, Berlin, Amsterdam and Brussels and I am so excited it's unreal. Once again the king of corner cutting has managed to get a week long holiday for pennies, while staying in some amazing looking accommodation and cities around the world. I can't contain my excitement so i'm just gonna leave it there.

Taking trips

I just stumbled again on my old blog which, written in 2009 at the tender age of 19, was supposed to 'document my life before, during and after university'. It's now the end of 2012, i'm almost 22, still at uni and reading this blog makes it sound like a million years ago. It also reads like what you would expect an angsty teenager's blog to be like. There is a lot of angry ranting posts towards my housemates in Coventry who I really hated, as well as mushy posts about my ex Kai, who i'd been going out with for almost 2 months in a weird Anglo-German LDR via the internet.

I'm not going to show the world it however, especially because there is one post where I uploaded almost-naked pictures of Kai, who was posing with only a trilby hat covering his modesty. As much as we didn't break up on enormously great terms, I'm still not that much of a bastard to potentially embarrass him over the internet especially after so long without hearing from him.

Anyways, i'm not entirely sure whether that little discovery has cheered me up or made me feel a little bit more down today, it's made me realise that i'm still not finished university, and made me think again how long left I actually still have. I don't want to be a perpetual student anymore...

Everyone promised me that i'd have a fucking billboard time in France and that I wouldn't have anything to worry about, yet here I am sat in my chambre traditionelle in just my boxers eating vine tomatoes as a 'main course'. I just cannot wait until the next installment of my uni Erasmus grant comes through in a few weeks.

It's about time to get on to the real topic about this post and something a hell of a lot more relevant to the title than moaning about my lack of wealth. I was going to be substantially more subtle about this topic because I didn't want people to judge me, but fuck it. If you judge me, you judge me. An ex-boyfriend of mine even suggested that I should go on my Erasmus year and come back to England a much more mature person, yet I can safely say that I am a hell of a lot more world-wise and a lot happier from not following his advice.

I recently took quite a lot of a legal hallucinogenic drug (legal in France) while here in Aix-en-Provence and it was a really fucked-up experience. It was LSA, similar to acid, but in grain form and it's quite cheap but still very powerful.
What I definitely do remember was the effect it had on language, making it seem much 'smoother', easier to comprehend and sound a lot more pleasant. I find it quite interesting to note how alcohol changes language ability, and without trying to sound like a PhD student or a junkie, I certainly do like to test that theory quite a lot. I turned up to my German and French oral exams last academic year quite tipsy. It worked well and I did surprisingly better than what I thought I would.

Aaaanyways, it was fun. it's only the the second time i've done something like that and the first was better, but our mistake was going outside. Meeting some friends in a packed Irish bar in the middle of Aix through Dark provençal alleyways and lots of drunk people is not the best idea for when you're tripping balls on acid.

It's not the glorified colour-changing mind trip that films make it out to be. And there's certainly no little dragons that pop out from nowhere. Lights were brighter and colours were more intense and my pupils were as big as dinner plates but according to friends we just looked really drunk. I did get very lost though trying to find a toilet in an Irish bar across the street, ended up wandering alleyways a little bit and then panicked (not a good idea), but all was well.

There's not enough letters in the alphabet for all the things I've done in the last few weeks.....

Newcastle, reverse culture shock, Greggs pasties and drugs and jazz.

Returning from Provence was a trek. Instead of taking the train from Marseille - Montpellier as was planned (due to train strikes on that exact date), I had to explore a few of my options:

1. Stay in Provence. Okay, so it's a lot warmer, the food is better and it's maybe even more of a place i'd like to live in than Newcastle, but I still really miss home, my friends and my family. This was not an option
2. Covoiturage from Aix -> Montpellier. A car share website just like CouchSurfing, where you apply to people's pre-given routes/destinations and organise a possible carshare together, for a small fee given to the driver to cover petrol.
3. Staying in a hostel in Montpellier the day before my flight. This was my preferred option, but unfortunately due to the time restrictions of actually having responsibilities for once, I couldn't miss my B2 French class. It's a shame, because it's a city I would have loved to explore.

Those were genuinely my only options around this time of year, so me and a friend from class who coincidentally booked the same flights/dates & times/UK destination chose to try out Covoiturage. It was awesome. We got picked up at 7am just outside of Aix, had a bizarre conversation with one of the passengers who was about 70 and travelling on her own until I ended up falling asleep and woke up to being poked awake when arrive at the airport.

I would recommend it to anyone who wants to save some money, or save their journey because of some higher uncontrollable problem such as striking for sure!

Coming back to Newcastle (via Leeds and York) was surprisingly different than I expected. As I approached Durham on the east coast line, I began to see snow and as soon I arrived in Newcastle all hell had seemingly broken loose.
Newcastle Central Station was packed with travellers like me, waiting for delayed services to Scotland and even more central parts of the Arctic Circle.... Buses were running skeleton services and, despite the snow and rain being pretty gruesome, there were still middle aged women prancing around in t-shirts and belts (can't bring myself to describe what they were wearing as even mini-skirts).

Such things are quite ordinary up here, but after living here for around 20 years, being away for just 4 months and then coming back, these things become more glaringly obvious and slightly bizarre.

I'm not about to bad-mouth my hometown, and home for most of my life so far, but there really are things I bloody hate about this place. I'm not giving up on it so easily though, and i'm not sure i've been totally bowled over yet by the promise of moving to Provence after my graduation.

Anyways moving on, someone commented on this blog congratulating me for not posting 'self centered' tit-bits of my travels 'like most year abroad blogs', but I have quite a few cool things to tell, so here's a self-centred recall of one of the best. I don't want to blow up my ego after all.


We went to see Mr Scruff in a nightclub in Newcastle, he's a electro/jazz/reggae/funkywhatever DJ who is absolutely amazing and I would love to see again. The nightclub wasn't too packed which was awesome, there was brownies and a tea stand as well as normal alcohol at the bar and we all dropped a whole shitload of drugs just to top it all off. The best jazz is jazz with a side serving of mandy, after all.

We danced on the bar, talked to random people about absolute rubbish and pulled out some absolutely wicked dance moves (As usual, of course) and a great night was had even though the moustaches we were gonna wear fell off for most of us!

Apart from that i've just been hanging out with friend and seeing my family again. Tomorrow it's Halloween and I have my costume sorta planned so i'll let the interwebs know how that went and if I managed not to fall into a gutter in Newcastle or not. 

Croatia

Without getting too deep and spiritual, venturing into the unknown can be one of the most enriching experiences of your life. Until now I'd never been to Eastern Europe (and never understood the hype) and now I can totally check that off my bucket list...

Croatia really was amazing, I can't stress that enough, and i've probably already stressed that enough to the people who didn't come for the weekend. We've been quite annoying like "omgzzzz getting the Croatia blues guys!" so apologies. We just loved it.

As I said in my previous blog (which you should probably read first if you haven't already) we stayed in a hostel called the Drunken Monkey in Zadar which was just outside of the Old Town. What a great hostel that was, such a good atmosphere....

(some of these photos have been lovingly stolen from the Drunken Monkey hostel website and Facebook etc)

I was a sleepy bastard on the plane there. I hadn't slept in 2 days before getting to Zadar (night before because we woke up at 3am and I am shit at waking up nevermind at 3am...)

On the piss in Zadar

Zadar Old Town....the most interesting architecture and all that.

Krka National Park, Croatia.....so many waterfalls round here and excellent swimming!

Me and some of the girls chilling by the waterfalls

Bustling streets in Zadar

Ice cream is like a national hobby in Croatia. Who knew.

That's me (on the right) jumping into the Adriatic Sea

Finally a nice photo of me.....at dinner in a restaurant called La Bruschetta.  I had octopus salad and ravioli with truffle sauce. And a carafe of wine. haha sooo good.

Me and Mano went climbing the ancient walls which were round by the port. They're effectively defences against foreign troops and we scaled them, like badasses.

More beautiful waterfalls

The Gentlemen!!!

In Zadar beer is cheaper than water, grapes and chewing gum. I have never known a holiday to be so bizarre. Trying to wade through the mystery of the currency was the hardest bit. A pizza for 40 kuna is actually only 5€ and taking 500 kuna out of the ATM works out to be £55...so confusing.


But a great time was had. We visited Krka National Park and we even rented out minivans to get there. Clément our French friend actually dived off the top of the waterfalls, which was super scary but fucking awesome.
We experienced Croatian techno bars, amazing night dancing with pole dancers and dancing like madmen with crazy weirdo Croatian men.
Walking around the Old Town we also found the Sea Organ. The sea organ is exactly what it says on the tin; it's an organ which is played by the movement of the water beneath it....and it's extremely bizarre to listen to, but it's so relaxing at the same time.

We went skinny dipping after a drunken night too which was hilarious, and the water was freezing, so running back to the hotel wearing wet clothes and being too naked with friends is definitely something you should try but maybe not on a cold night.

I couldn't think of a good title

I really don't have much to write for this post, a little bit like the last one I made, but i thought i'd upload some pretty pictures of things for your viewing pleasure. I've not been very good at taking photos of Aix recently (unlike Marseille/Sanary/Le Lavandou etc etc) since i've mostly been getting my bearings right and making sure i actually 'see' most of the town as opposed to doing the whole touristy thing too much. But there's a few anyways

Anyways, it was the Erasmus 'Flag on your Face' party a few nights ago and the first real outing with the Erasmus students as opposed to the group of French friends i've made. It was okay, it was really weird to see just how many people there are here in Aix just in this one bar from all four corners of the globe, and the bar was packed but I had a fun night with the girls from uni at home and some other English/Australian girls too. 

 We may have absolutely taken over the streets next to the Wohoo bar

Obviously I don't have to try to be sexy after two bottles of wine.

Being tourists on the Cours Mirabeau in Aix. That's Carey btw, she has a blog too.

We saw this procession of traditionally dressed people walking through Aix, but we still have no idea why. Anyone can explain? It was September 2nd 2012.

Me and my first baguette. It was love at first sight. And she was cheap.

After 2 weeks I finally made it to Provence...

After leaving Newcastle on the 14th of this month, I have finally made it to Provence. Via London and Paris for a week(ish) each I'm actually in the region which I will be calling my home for the next 6 months....but still not actually in the city where I will be living. Don't ask. I just get itchy feet.

I arrived in Marseille after taking the TGV from Paris Gare de Lyon, which presented itself as a huuuuge, long double-decker train with about 10 carriages. It really was an epic journey too, right through the rural heart of France, southward-bound to Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, or Marseille station in particular. 

For those not in the know, the region I am in is highlighted here (in red)

I will be staying here for 6 months in Aix-en-Provence, hopefully travelling around as much as possible, while at the same time learning about the local culture and lifestyle as well as taking up the language more easily. I'm studying here (if you haven't been reading my previous posts then you've missed the party) and then afterwards I will be schlepping over to Koblenz in Germany to do the exact same thing again.





So I made it to Marseille after a long TGV journey, lost and totally unaware where my hostel was in the city. Turns out it was right next to a métro station in the city centre, yet I still managed to get lost for an hour or two. Whoops! Ended up seeing a hell of a lot of the city centre though, which was lovely....regardless of how many hundreds of bags of sugar my rucksack felt like.

My hostel was nice, but in no way as communal as the hostel in Paris, which is a shame as there was no real place to hang out inside; we were almost forced to go to a cocktail bar to talk and share stories etc. I say forced......5€ mojitos were calling my name all night.

Marseille is a nice city, quite big and quite intimidating at first, but as soon as you have your bearings, understand the métro system and can find the boulangerie, there is no real major problem. It's a very culturally diverse city, lots of nationalities and different cultures meet at this city to create a melting-pot of hip-hop, provençal and typical touristy culture. Some say the city has its own mindset, but I am yet to see what this means exactly. Either way it's the nearest big city to me when i'm in Aix-en-Provence, so i'm sure I will be visiting often.

Restaurants near the Vieux-Port

Boats on the Vieux Port

Nice tasty looking little things which I may or may not have gorged myself on in Marseille....

Irish pub in Marseille....definitely one of the busiest places I've found so far

View of the Cathedral from some Provençal-looking streets

view over the city from the train station down 102 stone steps....

So Marseille was nice, just very very hot. It's the end of August (one of the hottest summer months down here) and we really did experience the beginning of the heatwave.


After Marseille, I travelled to a large fishing port called Sanary-sur-Mer, which lies further to the south of France and therefore closer to the Mediterranean Sea. It's really a gorgeous place with over 310 days of heat/sun per year, totaly inverse to the UK where we have 310 days of constant rain throughout the year. We even had snow/hail/torrential rain this July!!!

I've been staying here a while, visiting some local Provençal towns/villages and sunbathing naked all casual and that. It was a great experience, although now i'm a little bit sunburnt on my back and my forehead. Not cool......
Here's some pictures of the town and the neighbouring beaches blah blah:

Sanary-sur-mer view over the port with palm trees and boats and all manner of pretty things

There's a night market here in Sanary - where you can buy local produce like soap, herbs, lavender and bottles of overpriced pastis

Le Lavandou beaches

There's a whole lot of totally bollock naked people sunbathing down there haha

This one's just for my mum and sister - So jealous of me being so close to St Tropez

And finally....a picture of the local drink pastis with a carafe of water in the background to dilute it to taste. It's basically aniseed liquer by Ricard or 51 which is great to drink allll day long. Drinking pastis is my new favourite hobby.

So that's about it from me until I finally arrive in Aix-en-Provence 2 and a half weeks later than when I left Newcastle, UK. Hopefully it won't be too scary an experience to move into halls and work out the bloody university administrative system.....

Forget romance, Paris is darker than you think

 From my arrival in Paris I have seen as many sex shops as cute boutique cafés and restaurants and as many drunk French guys falling out of back alley bars and closet alcoholics drinking all the night through at the Sacre Coeur as i've seen couples romancing each other over a bottle of champagne or decent wine in upmarket street bars and restaurants.

Love in Paris isn't a lie, but it's not an epidemic like Hollywood makes it out to be.

I'm staying the best hostel so far in my travels; this place is the meeting place of the world. We have a large courtyard as communal area decked out with graffiti of Dali and other artsy stuff.

So i've been hanging out with a lot of awesome travellers, coming from every corner of the world looking for a slice of Paris. An awesome set of friends from New York, Sam and Liam as well as  whole heap of Dutch guys/girls and some English girls too. I've met an artsy Russian girl who smokes a lot of everything, Polish guys who hate art and a Turkish guy who was drunkenly talking about people in his area having sex with donkeys. Madness.....

I'm not really gonna post too much of the tourist tat photos that I have.....simply because everyone has seen the bloody Eiffel Tower, but I might add a small collection of photos that I like for you all to see. I've been pretty much everywhere and today is my last day. I've been so far drunk and flying high under the Eiffel Tower, right around the Sacre Coeur and Montmartre...down the Champs Elyseé to the Tuilieries and down the Seine, the artsy fartsy Pompidou Centre and today i'm going to go to the Père Lachaise cemetery to make love to Oscar Wilde's grave.

Here's me with a fucking awesome car in the Mercedes-Benz store

drunk on the Sacre-Coeur at 3am with a whole bunch of the travellers and some random dude who fell asleep. The view from this hill is the most spectacular view of Paris at night, by far.

So from Paris, i'm moving to Marseille for two nights and then on to Cannes, unless I find an extremely cheap hostel like this one in Marseille......i'm also getting really fucking nervous about moving to Aix. I guess that's just normal before starting at a new school or, in this case, a new university.

I'm having an awesome time though. I miss home, but not for bad reasons.