south polar times

well, i am still in europe contrary to thoughts of a week ago. after london, i went to lovely haarlem, followed by bruges. the nicest thing anyone said in bruges was on the train. the snow caused the trains to be intensely delayed and i was finally arriving in bruges at midnight instead of the planned 5 pm, and it was beautiful to finally hear ‘dames en here, we komen aan in brugge’. after bruges it was strasbourg, which had the worst hostel ever, but strasbourg was still moderately nice anyway. i then took the train to gryon, intending to spend 3 nights here before going to salzburg then vienna then home. a combination of missing trains to salzburg and gryon being awesome lead me to change my plane ticket and extend my stay here, and i’ve now been here 9 days and plan to probably stay another week or two. i’ve been doing lots of awesome things here. the first day i went paragliding which was supercool, beautiful views, and so weird just floating in the air. i’ve been hiking quite a lot as well, getting lost most of the time and rarely ending up where i planned to go. i’ve done some downhill skiing too, 2 days of it so far, and my skiing prowess is still very low but improving. the guys at the hostel are insanely good skiiers and snowboarders, a few of them come for the entire season and ride every day, and the reception closes from 12-5 each day as the staff ski. there is a nice castle nearby down on lake geneva known as the chateau de chillon, it is rather cool and very iconic. i plan to walk to the salt mines some time and i think tonight i will do moonlight cross country skiing.
so as you can see, gryon is an amazing place and the hostel is wonderful and i don’t really ever want to leave. hope you’re all having fun in hot aus…hahhaa. keep your fingers crossed that i get some snow up here, its forecast that we may get some on sunday night.

today was my first day in london. it was a very nice day, london is lovely, and there are lots of cool christmas things going on. i first decided to go to buckingham palace to witness the changing of the guards at 11 30. i got there at 11 25 and there was a large crowd. the guards proceeded to march around and play lots of nice music and look very british and pompous. two of them marched to the fence where i was standing and despite the rumours that they don’t have emotions, they chatted to us all for a few bars of music until it was time for them to turn around and march back. they were all wearing grey coats, which is apparently their winter uniform. after a while of marching and music, some ladies behind me were talking, and i discovered that todays guard movements were special, and the changing doesn’t normally go this long or get such a crowd or have music in winter. it was all going on because it was the day that the royal family was leaving on their christmas break, the ladies thought it was in norfolk or balmoral. 10 minutes later, two shiny black cars left the palace, and they apparently contained the royal family. it was all quite exciting, despite the fact that we didn’t see any royals.
after that, i wandered across the river to the tate gallery of modern art. it is a fairly amazing gallery, housed in a very ugly building which apparently has architectural significance. i spent quite a long time in tate modern, viewing all the weird things. some of it was very good, some of it terrible. i particularly liked the dali and the picasso of course, and also the cindy sherman photos and some other stuff i can’t remember the names of. i particularly dislike those sculptors, i think the worst one was called kueys or tueys or gueys or something. he had one big installation and it had lots of little things on the floor under a great big ugly piece of brass and the things were meant to be abstract creatures but they were brown and sort of cylindrical and they looked like poos, which would’ve been quite cool if he’d admitted they were poos, but he seemed to think they were good abstract small creatures. after tate modern i went to a supermarket and got a selection of indian pakora and samosa for lunch. english food is good. i like the idea of serving peas and mash with everything, and you can get a massive cup of tea from almost any cafe for only 40p (about $1).
after that, it was getting late and many galleries and things were closing, but seeing as the national gallery is open late on wednesdays i went there. londons galleries have a lovely way of being free, so you can just pop in for an hour or two, see a few of the rooms, and return later if you want. so i went to the national gallery for a while and saw the van gogh and monet and manet and renoir and seurat and all those masters. i think i liked the renoir best. after the national gallery, i walked to the nearest tube station and caught a train back to the hostel. on the way to the tube station, i crossed trafalger square and there was a choir singing christmas carols and the crowd joining in. london is very nicely decorated for christmas too, the british know how to celebrate christmas (unlike the parisians).
the london underground is almost as good as the paris metro. it is more expensive, in fact the single tickets are ridiculously priced, but the day passes are good. it is a little harder to use as well, and the trains are a bit less frequent. the paris metro is, as far as i have experienced so far, the most wonderful public transport system ever. i don’t understand how they could create such a beautiful thing and then couple it with the RER (the regional system, slightly further-reaching than the metro) which is the most crap, hard to use, stupid system ever.

i just arrived at avignon yesterday. my train was very delayed so it was dark by the time i got here. i think the french xmas hols have begun cos the train station was insanely busy with loads of families heading off to the beach or the mountains. there seemed to be a lot of kids being sent away to camps as well. the hostel i am at is a bit scary and very empty and sadly doesn’t give breakfast but it is cheap and the only hostel here. it also has quite nice showers, which is good after the lyon hostel, which had by far the worst showers i have ever experienced.
today i went to the pont d’avignon, which was pretty cool, and i nearly got blown off it. the winds are insane, i read in the paper that last night a girl was killed in marseille because of them. the pont d’avignon is actually called pont st benezet. st benezet was a man and god spoke to him as he was working in the fields and told him to build a bridge across the rhône. he went to the townspeople and the guy in charge of building things in avignon and he told them and they laughed at him, and they said if god told you to do this why don’t you pick up that stone and begin the foundations. and there was a really big boulder nearby, left over from the building of the cathedral, which the builders had left cos it was too big to move, and he picked it up and carried it to the river and laid it down. the townspeople were astonished and so they built pont st benezet. it is a thin and dangerous bridge and many people have been swept off it by the fierce winds, especially when it used to get icey in winter. no one ever danced on it, despite the song, but they danced on the large islands in the rhone and had picnics and such.
after the pont i went to the rocher des doms, which is a big park on top of a big big big rock next to the palais des papes. it had the most stunning views and was a beautiful park.
it is now 2 and so finally everything will open, bless christmas and shops opening on the 18th of december for a prechristmas extra day of shopping. any other sunday of the year and they wouldn’t open.
this afternoon i am going to an art museum which i’ve heard is good and i also think i will go to a restaurant for lunch. avignon has an abundance of good looking restaurants with lunch menus.

wel i just wrote a really cool long post and then seem to have accidentally deleted it by pressing enter or something. and i can’t be bothered writing it again now. dad, if you can find it i’ll be very grateful, perhaps it just got put somewhere.
anyway the important stuff was i am in lyon which seems nice and i have a nice hostel.

hello again. its been a while since i last wrote. i haven’t been doing all that much though. i went to the arc de triomphe which was very lzarge but not really terrible attractive. and i didn’t climb it cos it was too cloudy and i couldn’t have seen anything. i also went to champs elysees and i went to the peugeot shop. there was i really cool yellow peugeot there, it was kind of like an extended scooter. it had four wheels but scooter handelbars inside and the drivers seat was in the middle and it had no doors on the sides. i took a photo of it which you can view in the gallery. yesterday i went to versailles and it was very cold and all the puddles were covered in ice and so were the fountains and it was also extremely foggy so you couldn’t see far which made it all look weird but pretty. and on the way back from versailles i met a dog and a kid came up and patted the dog too and i asked the kid if it was hers and she told me it belonged to the people in the fruit shop and it all happened in french and i understood which was exciting. today i am going to chartres, which is about 80km in some direction for france. i don’t know what direction. i will take the train there.
so farewell, hope you are all warmer than i am,
lize.

well, i have made it to paris. i got lost on the walk to my hostel from gare du nord but i eventually found it. paris is lovely, if a little cold. all the houses are the same and all are beautiful. my hostel is in a classic paris house so it looks just like all the others. the people in my room are all nice and all speak english. one is a girl from adelaide who has been travelling alone through europe for the last 3 months and the others are from poland but the all speak english cos they are australians and and brits who live in poland to teach english.
today i went to the galeries lafayette, which is the biggest shopping centre i have ever seen and is full of expensive things like gaultier clothes and prada bags. after that i once more ventured into the snow and walked across the river. i had i cheese baguette and a cafe au lait in a small cafe that had the worst service i have ever encountered, even worse than mine when i worked at brumbies! i then spent the afternoon at the musee d’orsay, where i saw many wonderful paintings and sculptures. i like the neo-impressionism best. the monets were stunning, no picture i had seen of the before did them justice.
i then caught the metro back to montmartre. my first time on the metro and i didn’t get lost, hardly had to wait for the train at all, didn’t feel like i was going to be mugged and didn’t think the tickets were overpriced. the metro is a wonderful thing and metlink should learn from it and improve melbourne’s public transport.
anyway, thats all for today, i think i will go and have some dinner.
hope everyone is well,
-eliza.

hello
i’ve never written on this before so i don’t really know what to say.
i am at uni, though i’m sure everyone reading this knows that. it is cold here.
my pracs started this week which is a horrible development. i hate pracs. i wish you could do science by just learning it without ever having to look down a microscope.
except at paramecium. we did one cool thing in prac today. we got yeast stained with an indicator called congo red that turns blue when in acidic conditions, and we made a wet mount with it in some methyl celluloe. methyl cellulose is a sort of sticky fibrous thing that slows the paramecium down so you can look at the better. and then we put the paramecium on the mount and watched them through a microscope and you could see them move the little red yeasties into their oral grooves and then the yeasties moved slowly through their bodies and eventually they turned blue, which was, i guess, when they were digested.
anyway, that will do for now.