France

Sorry about the lack of updates - Internet cafes are a little hard to find around here. Jim and I met up easily in Nice; he called me the night before so we both knew about the flight changes. We picked up our car and headed out into the wide world of France.

We have done a lot of travelling in the last week and a half. It takes foverever and a day to get anywhere in France if you are not travelling by the toll roads. The first day we drove down past Cannes to look at the beaches and it took about 3 hours to travel the 20km back to St-Laurent-du-Var. We also drove through the Alpes along some of the routes that Jim cycled - a very very long process since the average speed is about 50km an hour.

The places we have stayed have been very beautiful. We have been trying to stay in little villages instead of the bigger towns - there aren't as many people around as there was earlier in August. We have been very good tourists - we have spent a lot of time walking around Medieval and Roman villages. We have tasted a lot of French wine - I'm not sure that we are super impressed with the wine - Jim prefers the Barossa variety.

French geography has become a bit of a pig's breakfast. Obviously it was rather easier in the 12-14 siecle -- which incidentally is when most of the houses were built. Certainly when most of the plumbing was put in -- before the invention of the toilet! So anyway, in those days it sems France was split between two saints, Les and Des. Lots of places are identified by which body part remains there -- Les Dentelles, eg. Since then obviously a lot of big players have come on the scene: A. Louer and A. Vendre just to name two. Still, we are struggling through.

Indeed, the wine is a little thin compared to what we are used to. Still, it has been fun to try the different regions and to see differences. Cotes du Rhone (post L&D) is very similar to Braossa experience -- tasting is free etc. Wine is in the GSM/9 Popes style: majority grenache and mainly rest shiraz. Bordeaux is rather wanky. You have to pay for tasting typically, and book to go to a Chateau. They only taste a couple of their selection. If you don't like it you have not much to go on. They don't taste their "big" wines. In between these are smaller regions like Cahors and Languedoc. Still, huge amounts of vineyards. These are more fun in the sense that the people are more interesting and typically know more about the wine.

Love to all,

Kylie & Jim

Frankfurt

The summer school finished yesterday morning and I came to Frankfurt today. The free bus from Marktoberdorf left at 5:45 am this morning - so I had an early start. My flight wasn't scheduled until 5pm, but since everybody I knew was going on the bus, it seemed like a better prospect than spending the day alone in Marktoberdorf and getting a train in the afternoon.

German efficiency won out howeverr, I managed to change my flight to 10am, so no waiting at the airport. I also managed to change my Nice flight tomorrow, I originally was arriving at 5pm, so about 5 hours after Jim (he is picking up the car at the airport). I will now arrive at 10am, so hopefully I will be able to find both the car rental place, and him, since I have no way of letting him know my flight changed (unless he checks our email account, or he gets my ESP messages and calls me).

I wish I had investigated this hostel a little better before making a non-refundable booking. While it is very close to the train station (so $3 euro to get to the airport instead of $25 for a taxi), it is in the middle of the red light district; the main city district is a about a 5 minute walk, so the same proximity between Hinley Street and Rundle Mall. I think Germans must be a lot more accepting about that type of thing than Australians - the ads for the 'services' offered next door are quite explicit. I'm really glad that I'm only staying overnight, and that I won't have the whole day here tomorrow like I had originally planned with the flight. On the plus side, breakfast is free!

Love to all,

Kylie

Edit: Internet access might be more difficult from now on, so don't panic if I don't immediately respond to an email. If you need to contact me urgently, just send an SMS (or call - but SMS would be better).

Marktoberdorf

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, but I have been busy at the Marktoberdorf Summer School. As I said, the beer here is quite good, and it is free which is a very good quality to have in a beer.

The food is okay, but is very repetitive. I think the cook has a formula of good food, and he is sticking to it. Every night we have had a watery salty soup with meat in it; it was very nice the first night, but now at night number 10 it isn't so good. On Friday we had individual roast pork - all served with a massive knife poking out. A very original way of serving a roast, I might try it the next time I make one.

The excursion for the School was held yesterday; they went climbing in the Alps. Unfortunately, they didn't have an easy version (it was an 8 hour trek), so I stayed behind and prepared the talk I gave today. Missing out has made me more determined to see the French side of the Alps because the pictures people bought back were lovely.

Thanks for all of the comments and email. It is nice to know that people are reading it, and you are all safe.

4 more sleeps till I see Jim again!

Today's post bought to you by Jim, it is short due to his hate of French keyboards:

currently in vaison la romaine tourist hell leaving tomorrow
has been eventful but fun so far, some hard work and more to come but glad to be on the road again
mountains very beautiful
came here for cote du rhone: spent yesterdqy wine tasting
similar to barossa

love to peter and sarah etc

Germany

Firstly, Jim rang me on Monday, and he is safe. He said he will try and email me later this week to let me know how and where he got his bike, since telling me over the phone would have been very expensive.

On my last night in Sweden I met up with Wuge, and met his wife and son. The most important piece of news for those of you who know Wuge is that his hair is now normal - no long curly bits - just a normal mans haircut. We didn't chat for long since we were meeting up in the train station at Stockholm before he got his train home - but he is well and his wife is very lovely. Arvid is a very cute little boy who would get along well with Max (a little boy of one our work collegues) because thez both adore trains.

I am now in Germany at the Marktoberdorf Summer School. As promised by Brendan, there is indeed a lot of German beer, and I have tasted several kinds already. I have also had five hours of lectures today which were all quite interesting. Ironically, the girl I am sharing a room with is from Romania, so we have been chatting about what I should see when we get there. We are staying in a high school boarding house which is a little odd - the beds are in small shelves - I think some of the taller men here are not very comfortable since even I can reach both ends of my shelf at the same time.

Stay in touch!

Sweden, part 2

Marie has headed off to the north of Sweden for the weekend, leaving me to explore Stockholm on my own. Stockholm is hosting a tall ships race over the next week or so. As far as I can tell, a tall ship is a sailing ship with very large masts, with about 30 crew each. I had great plans for yesterday, which included heading down to the Quay to watch the 'tall ships' come in for the race starting on Tuesday. Unfortunately, a big storm also came in yesterday, so I decided to stay at home and enjoy watching the rain from Marie's balcony - a pity I wasn't sitting in Australia watching the rain.

The weather has cleared up today, so I again plan to go and see the tall ships. I think there is an Australian competitor; I was watching the Swedish news last night, and I think the news reader said Australia and I'm pretty sure I saw our flag - however, since the news was in Swedish I only have a vague idea as to what the newsreader said.

I haven't heard from Jim yet, which was worrying me slightly, until I remembered to check to see if he had used his credit card. Last night he was at a rest stop in Choranche, which is about 230km from Geneva. I assume that he has therefore gotten a bike and is on his way to Nice.

Arrival

Just a quick note to let everybody know that we made it to Europe. The flight from Singapore was wonderful, we had a spare seat next to us, and Sudafed made Jïm's cold quite bareable. Unfortuately, the flight to Frankfurt was less enjoyable, but it finally ended and we arrived in Europe.

I hadn't checked my bag all the way to Sweden, so we had to navigate the turmoil of the Frankfurt airport to go and collect it. What should have been a five minute task turned into an hour and a half journey, since we had to go through customs to get the bag. While the line up was quite small, an error of judgement was made on my part by lining up behind a group of people who had something wrong with their passports, so it took me an hour to get through the line, with my total time talking to the immigration person only being 30 seconds. We also discovered that it is still legal to smoke in restuarants in Germany - this is not a nice thing to discover whist eating breakfast after 15 odd hours on a plane.

Jim and I said our goodbyes in Frankfurt and I headed to Sweden. Thankfully, Marie gave me excellent directions, and we met up without incident. We were both unsure if we would recognise each other after nearly 10 years, but apparently neither of us have changed and it was a happy reunion. We have spent the past two days exploring Stockholm by foot. I am not sure how I have managed to walk the distances I have in the last couple of days, but it feels like my legs are going to fall off. On Monday I had my first taste of Nordic animals - I never realised how big, and how ugly Bison are! This evening we went to an outdoor theatre - in Swedish. I understood about 3 words but it was still very funny because the actors were very good with their body language. I have tried to pick up a little Swedish, but everytime I use it, the other person answers me in English - I think my accent is not quite up to standard.

The incredible thing here is the sun. While Stockholm is too far south for the midnight sun, I haven't seen it become dark here yet. Apparently the sun goes down about 11, but it doesn't get properly dark, more a twilight kind of dark. The sun rises again at around 5:30 and comes up very quickly. I am writing this at 9:30 at night, and the sun is in the position you would expect at around 4 in the afternoon in Summer in Adelaide. Of course, it is the opposite in winter. Marie tells me that during the winter week she often won't see the sun at all since it rises at around 10:30 and sets at around 4 - and all that time she is in her office with no windows. I'm not sure I could handle such an extreme change for very long - day and night should be clearly seperated.

I have yet to hear if Jim has a bike, I will let you all know when I find out!