Spontaneity!!

Halina is a friend I know from year 11 and 12 at school. She's doing a placement as a matron at a top-end boarding school for boys in England, but right now they've got summer holidays and so Halina has been travelling Europe. She was also kind enough to come visit me, and this worked out will now that I'm on holidays from nearly being fired.

Last Wednesday we hitch-hiked to Berlin and caught up with Kate Walker and Dim Archer. It was fun. We also got to stay in the apartment of the guy who drove us there. Lucky!
We wanted to go to Krakow in Poland but missed our train on Saturday, so we decided to go back to Dresden for the night. It was also fun. We had burritos with a girl from Belarus.

Sunday afternoon at 14:15, Halina comes home from the station asking about Poland trains and says "wanna go to Venice instead? Train leaves in 40 minutes!"
And I was saying "no, this is such a stupid idea" the entire time as I packed my stuff back into my backpack.
We decided on a train that left two hours later cause the 14:55 one was just too soon to be able to catch.
So we were in four different trains, the last one arriving in Venice the next morning at 8:30!
We had two full days together there, and it's pretty awesome. Like everyone's heard, it's got canals. There are cars, but only on a few sections of land. Usually it's canals or simply pedestrian streets. There are also many islands separated from the city centre. We camped on one of the islands, Lido, bordering the Adriatic Sea. It has a beach, and the water is warmer than in Tasmania. We went swimming both days.
So, basically, yeah. An expensive spontaneous decision. As in the train cost me 122€ to get there and Halina has a Eurail pass. Grrr.

Yesterday (Wednesday) morning I had to get moving because tomorrow (Friday) I have to work. I wanted to get home as cheaply as possible, maybe including some hitch-hiking. But I began with a bus from Venice to Villach, then took a train all the way to Munich cause it was only 39€. Munich is where I spent last night. I found a ride-share going the next morning at 6:15am to Dresden and rang the guy. He told me where he'd leave from and I took the S-Bahn there last night sometime after midnight. I found a kind of park near the spot and rolled out my sleeping mat and sleeping bag next to a bush and just slept there for the next 5 hours or so. Luckily enough, nobody had stolen my stuff when I woke up this morning at 5:30 and ate breakfast of crackers with tomato. I found the guy and we set off.

Now, I've always said nobody in Tasmania needs a car faster or more polluting than a Holden Barina, cause they can drive 110km/h and that's your limit in Tasmania. I now believe nobody ANYWHERE needs anything faster or more polluting because the guy had one (an Opel Corsa, which is the same car in Europe) and we drove at 180km/h the whole way to Dresden. I thought it would take at least 5 hours but it only took 3. So at 9:20am he pulled up and told me we were there and I was like WOAH.

Ok, I lied. This isn't all about Halina, cause there should definitely be a section devoted to another friend of mine. Camilla Kruize of Timaru, New Zealand was at Pat's Dahlienheim as the English teacher from September 2008 until August 2009. Today is her last day of work. We'll be going out with a few friends to eat dinner tonight, and tomorrow evening she gets on a train to head to The Netherlands, followed by England, then after her mini-break, she heads to Stuttgart to work as an au-pair for a few months. She will be sorely missed.

So I'm going to work tomorrow and finding out what exactly they want me to do.
Bis dann, Leute!
Patrick