Update update update update!

Firstly, just so you know:
ANNA is my friend from England who I've known for just over a week. We met at a CouchSurfing barbecue. She is my age, and living in Dresden at the moment being a language assistant in a primary school.
FRANZISKA is my friend from Dresden who I've known for a couple of months now. We met at a CouchSurfing pub get-together. She's 23 and studying at university here.

Ok.
On Friday May 1st, a festival called "Thanks Jimi" (as in Hendrix) happened in Wrocław, Poland. Our Dresden CouchSurfing city ambassador Stefan organised a bit of a trip for anybody interested in going. It ended up being Anna, Franziska, Stefan, his friend Galka from Russia, and me. Franziska got there on Thursday evening using mitfahrgelegenheit.de. The other four of us had a hitch-hiking race, set up by Stefan - he and Galka vs. Anna and me. We began the race at Bahnhof Neustadt at 5pm on Thursday and the winning team would be the first to arrive at the main entrance of Wrocław's main station. Anna and I headed up the road to a Shell petrol station and asked 3 drivers if they were headed east before we got a yes, and the man took us about halfway to the border to another petrol station. Again, after asking just 2 cars, we found a Polish couple heading all the way to Wrocław, who kindly took us with them. Even though there was a traffic jam before Wrocław on the highway, and they let us out near the highway so we had to get a bus in there, we took like 4.5 hours in total to arrive and beat Stefan and Galka by like an hour. It was quite nice, since both of us were first-time hitch-hikers and Stefan had done it before.

Anna and I spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday night at the apartment of a girl called Nathalia, who we found using CouchSurfing. She was great, really nice and really helpful. And it was free!

On Friday, the festival took place. The main attraction, the reason we went, was a Guinness world record attempt that they do at the festival every year - most guitarists playing at the same time. I had brought my guitar with me, unfortunately I was the only one of the five of us who had one, but nonetheless, I took part in playing of Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple and then Hey Joe by Jimi Hendrix, in an absolutely packed market square. The old record stood somewhere near 2,000, and after we played, it was announced that this year, over 6,000 guitarists took part. Naturally, the crowd cheered. So now I can say that I (jointly) hold a real official Guinness World Record! Stefan and Galka hitched back to Dresden later that day. In the evening, there was a Wrocław CouchSurfing gathering, and in total there were like 30 CouchSurfers in a bar, drinking and talking, including another Australian, and what's more, he was from Tasmania! Pretty astounding really. Nathalia, Anna and I went there, and got KFC afterwards.

On Saturday, Franziska, Anna and I cruised around Wrocław, looking north of the city centre at all the islands and bridges that lead to the nickname "the Venice of Poland". It was quite a nice sunny day and I enjoyed it very much. Later, we hung in a cafe with Franziska's CouchSurfing host.

On Sunday, Anna and I began the task of hitch-hiking back to Dresden. We cheated a little, because the buses to the highway didn't run since it was Sunday, so we got a taxi there. But our priority was to get home, not to be able to say we hitched 100% of the way. We took three trips back, each about a third of the journey, with our longest wait being about an hour and a half in a small-ish petrol station outside Legnica. But we eventually found someone there to take us to the German border, and another person to take us to Dresden. We were stoked!

I was especially happy - I had pulled off a long weekend trip to Poland for less than 20 euros - well, that's how much I converted to Polish money, and I still have a little left! So that's getting there and back, sleeping 3 nights, 2 cafe lunches, KFC, plus a merchandise t-shirt at the world record attempt on Friday that would cost 20 euros alone in Germany or even Australia.


Now:
Steve, Jack and Ollie from Hobart/Friends' are staying with me!
Dresden is their latest stop on their mad trip round Europe, taking all the free accommodation they can get. Steve and Jack are staying about 20 days, and Ollie will stay longer. It's absolutely hilarious - it's the four of us big guys living together in my 1-person apartment! We had to put my furniture out on the balcony to fit our mattresses on the floor, and using the bathroom and kitchen is... you can imagine! I'll post an update later to say how we're going and stuff.

For now, I have to get off the computer, cause I overstayed my time limit writing this thing!
Peace!

Patrick