Eurotrip 2007: a ridiculous novella

Also known as my mass emails from the rest of my trip put all together.

I arrived in Stockholm completed exhausted from my (inevitably last minute and disorganized) departure from Edinburgh. Thankfully, the weather was exquisite in Stockholm, sunny and unseasonably warm, and Maya's family home is in a beautiful neighborhood outside the city centre, full of adorable houses and lilac trees, so we spent a good portion of our time lounging in the sun and getting some much needed post-exam rest. Of course, we also did the touristy thing in Stockholm, exploring the Old Town with its beautiful historical buildings and very dull castle, the South Island with its adorable boutiques WAY out of our price range, chic cafes and fantastic vintage shops, and of course the city centre - with an inevitable H&M on every block. I hadn't known before arriving that Stockholm was actually a series of islands, and it was so nice to be close to the water all the time. Of course, courtesy of Maya we also had the inside scoop on cool little restaurants with great lunch specials and fun bars to while away the evenings. I also celebrated my birthday in Stockholm, with shopping, soy icecream cake, a lovely bottle of wine Luc brought me from Paris, and a screening of Pirates of the Caribbean 3 (with Swedish subtitles).

The overnight ship ride (or mini cruise) from Stockholm to Tallinn was hilariously fun. We had a nice cabin with a sea view, courtesy of Helen's ever elusive and generous mother (who we never ended up meeting in Tallinn - we'd just get back to the flat, and there'd be something new there waiting for us). The cruise boat had everything I'd dreamed and more - an overpriced buffet, tacky live dance show, karaoke and a little night club playing obscure Europop... it was really really fun.

Tallinn is a stunning city. It has an amazing Old Town with a very distinctive flavour, especially the stone towers with red pointed rooves. There weren't as many tourists as I'd expected, either. We had some good weather, some unbelievably hot weather, and one day of constant drizzle in which the wandered the deserted streets of Old Town - it was so misty and empty that it felt as if we'd wandered back in time. Other highlights included the amazing restaurant Helen took us to, called the Garden (Aed in Estonian), which served incredible vegetarian food and this carob-halvah cafe that was to die for; Tallinn's new art museum, which was super cheap and had a stunning permament collection, ranging from 18th century landscapes to Soviet propaganda to some crazy modern stuff; the rooftop of Helen's apartment building, where we lay watching the stars and listening to Leonard Cohen; and of course LADY'S NIGHT on Wednesday night, with free entrance to a terrifyingly entertaining club called Club Hollywood. Oh yeah, and I also got all my hair chopped off - it was getting on my nerves. So now it's super-short, a la Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby.

Janet and I have spent the last day and a half in Riga, which is much prettier than I was expecing. It also has an exquisite Old Town, including a fantastic old cathedral (originally built in 1211 when the Teutonic Germans came and forcibly converted the Latvian pagans) where we went tonight to hear an organ concert. Yesterday we wandered for about six hours, just taking in the great mix or architecture from a variety of periods, ranging from the crumbling remains of the medieval town wall to brightly coloured art nouveau buildings with fantastically sculpted doorways. Today we visited the Latvian National Museum of Art and the Museum of Occupation, which were striking contrasts from one another: one chronicling the development of a
disinctively Latvian artistic vision, the other showing how various super-powers have tried to crush Latvian culture throughout the past century. Tomorrow we move on to Vilnius in Lithuania, and from there are travel plans are uncertain - but I'll be sure to keep you updated.

***

Last I left off I believe we were about to depart Riga for Vilnius. We ended up having quite a bit of time in Lithuania, just because the overnight bus we wanted to take to Krakow only left once a week. So on top of getting a chance to explore Vilnius - which is an amazing city, if it is sort of Church heavy even for my tastes - we also go to do a couple of wonderful day trips.

First, Vilnius. It has a huge old town, so plenty of cobbled streets to wander, but unlike more popular tourist destinations the buildings aren't all spruced up, so in a lot of places you can really see the signs of age and wear. This was particularly the case in Uzupis, an unofficially independent republic on the other side of a stream, signified by a statue of an angel and their own consitution, translated into three languages and posted on mirror-like steel on the side of one of the area's many decrepit but beautiful buildings. Our first night there we headed to the only vegetarian restaurant mentioned by Lonely Planet, which turned out to be the basement of a former Duke's palace, and the one remaining hall, augmented by tarps
and wooden beams. There was a makeshift stage on one side where a local rasta band (doing Polish covers of Bob Marley) were performing. We had cabbage curry. It was hilarious. The first daytrip was to a small town about 40 minutes from Trakai,
called Vilnius. What drew us there was mention of a tiny religious sect known as the Karaim. They're a late offshoot of Judaism that developed post-Islam; originally Turkish, they eventually moved into the Crimea. Then, in the 14th century, Vytautas the Great of Lithuania brought them to Trakai to guard his castle, and they built a community and settled there. They managed to avoid much of the devestation of the Holocaust because the Nazis considered not ethnic Jews but later
converts to the religion - and there they continue to live, in their small traditional houses, with their temple and their ethnographical museum and a restaurant serving their traditional food (mostly cabbage-stuffed pastries, surprisingly little Turkish influence). There are 260 Karaim in the world, and the majority of them live in Trakai. We spent a wonderful day there exploring the small town, which also included the aforementioned castle, and a great old Russian Gothic Church with a 12th century Byzantine icon of the Virgin Mary.

The second day trip was to see the Hill of Crosses, which is exactly what it sounds like. In the countryside outside a town called Siauliai the Lithuanian people have erected a hill bristling with crosses - thousands of them, huge crucifixes hung in turn with countless tiny crosses and tangles of rosaries. The day we went was astoundingly sunny and warm; from where the bus lets you off it's a 2 km walk through farmers fields, and the sight of the hill rising up in the distance, dark against the perfectly blue sky, was one of the most breathtaking things I've ever seen. We spent hours exploring the hill, which despite its increasing fame is still surprisingly un-touristed (outhouses and no refreshement carts in sight) - the beauty and
variety of crosses was truly incredible. On the way back we missed our bus and decided, instead of waiting an hour and a half for the next one, we would brave the walk back. It turned out a bit longer than we thought - over 15 km through some intense summer heat - but the sight of the Siauliai town church's steeple rising in the distance was like a beacon, and I've never been so happy to taste water in my life!

After Vilnius we took an overnight bus to Krakow. I have to admit, I didn't know what to expect from Krakow, but I fell in love with the city so thoroughly that part of me is considering learning Polish and moving there! It's an excellent balance of the old and the new, with plenty of culture and history and a never-ending supply of stuff to do. We explored a variety of museums - from Jewish history to art galleries to an archaeological museum featuring displays of traditional Polish dress since 50000 BC (here's a hint: it involved a lot fo fur); we also lucked out in being in town for the celebration of the town's 750th anniversary, which was marked by lots of free outdoor concerts. On our first night we saw a symphony orchestra play in the middle of the town square against the background of ancient churches; on our last night we saw a performance of Yiddish and Hebrew music in Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter that was devestated by the Holocaust but has since been experiencing something of a revival, including turning several of the Synagogues into museums - but the fact that the small district contains six or seven Syngagogues serves as a chilling reminder of the bustling community that once existed there.

Speaking of chilling: we also took a day trip to nearby Auschwitz and Birkenau, and experience for which I have still not found the words. It was, to say the very least, deeply disturbing and upsetting; the most memorable was the collections of Jewish murder victims' possessions collected by the Soviet troops who freed the camp, from the warehouses where the Nazis were storing them. The museum now displays them in huge cases: thousand of baby shoes, tangles of eyeglasses a metre high, an entire ocean of suitcases... it only began to give an idea of the scale of the crimes that occurred there. Our trip has been an interesting combination of fun, and sobering education; all of the countries we've passed through thus far lived
under Soviet rule throughout the Cold War, and many of them were also victims of the Nazis, and signs of their hard past are visible in varying degrees, depending on how thoroughly Western capitalism has managed to infiltrate the cities. Riga, for example,.still showed a certain Soviet bleakness and poverty in its outskirts, and Krakow's Jewish quarter remains largely empty, mostly a student neighborhood now with a lot of Jewish theme restaurants.

We did another, considerably lighter, day trip in Krakow, to visit some incredible salt mines that date back 900 years and are the source of the city's early wealth. They've been open to tourists for several centuries now, and are quite breathtaking, featuring vast chapels full of bas relief Bibilical scenes carved entirely from rock salt; there's also a beautiful crucifixion carved from a single huge tree, and in perfect condition despite being 400 years old because the salt preserves wood. The air in the mines is also restorative, and I believe must be responsible for my finally kicking the cough that had been doggin me since Riga.

The last thing I'll mention about Krakow is Janet and my discovery of a Polish art nouveau artist who led us to the most beautiful church either of us have ever seen. The artist is Stanislaw Wyspianski, and he was a turn-of-the-century artist who did much to revive a sense of Polish national art - he was a real Renaissance man, writing plays and designing the sets and costumes, designing furniture, making architectural proposals for the city... but he's best known now for his work in local churches, particularly the stained glass. He was responsible for the entire interior decorating scheme of the Franciscan Basilica: the walls are covered, floor to ceiling, with patterns in bright colours evoking nature and the elements, in accord with St. Francis' well-known love of nature; there are abstract patterns resembling flames of peacock feathers, as well as huge flowers climbing the walls, varying from sunflowers to roses to lillies and more. The ceiling is decorating with huge snowflake-like stars. But the most astonishing is the stained glass windows. They are massive, brilliantly coloured, and astonishingly lovely; at the front atlar there are several depicting flowers and trees, while the two central ones show the blessed Salomea and St. Francis himself receivng the stigmata; at the back of the church, above the doorway, is an image of God the Father in the act of creating, which is so beautiful I must have spent 15 minutes staring at it slack-jawed. I feel sort of bad for the rest of the churches I've yet to visit, because I'm afraid in my mind they'll all pale next to this one.
I'm leaving out a ridiculous amount of stuff, but it is all dutifully noted down in my journal against danger of forgetting, and if anyone wants a more detailed account you'll just have to wait until I get home!

Last night we took an overnight bus to Budapest, and today had a relaxed time exploring the city and getting our bearings... as well as chilling at the oldest cafe in Budapest with some excellent made-from-scratch lemonade. Our plans for the next couple of days in the city include a canoe trip down the Danube, the curative waters of authentic 16th c. Turkish baths, and if the budget allows perhaps a little Klezmer music. Today we ate at the Budapest branch of Godiva's, which was both super-cheap and comfortingly like home, complete with background Indian chanting and statues of ganesha on the walls.

***

Well, where did I leave off? Oh yes, Budapest. We had a wonderful but overwhelming time exploring the city - compared to some of the other places Janet and I visited it is intimidatingly huge with a vast number of things to see. For one thing, it's a combination of Buda and Pest, and both cities have their own sets of attractions, and a very different feel to them. Buda feels much older, and is more picturesque with its high heels and sweeping panoramic views. It also has a castle, the oldest church in the city, and some very cool subterranean labrynths that we explored, much to our terror. Actually, it was pretty pathetic how scared we were - but the tunnels were really poorly lit and full of eerie sound effects like beating hearts and whistling wind - so creepy! Pest, on the other hand, reminded me quite a bit of Paris, with its wide boulevards and excellent shopping, along with a vibrant nightlife. I've totally started sounding like a travel guide. What's happening to me?

Anyway, highlights of our time in Budapest included: eating fried bread with sauerkraut, a local specialty, on high stools in the Central Market; getting caught in a thunder storm in the main city park and hiding out on ping pong tables along with a bunch of local kids; drinking wine-and-water, another bizarre local speciality, in a tiny garden bar with no sign and NO other tourists; and above all, the canoe ride on the Danube. It poured rain for about the first thirty minutes until we were all complete drenched, and then cleared up enough for us to gradually dry out. Our guide, a local guy whose name I can neither pronounce nor spell, drove us up North past the ruins of an old Roman fortress to a place roughly translated as the Roman Beach, which was where we cast off. From there we canoed upstream for about an hour and a half until we reached this
tiny island that was a total Soviet throwback, with the cheapest bar in the universe - beers for about 50 cents Canadian. Our guide drank wine-and-water and ate fried bread. I'm not kidding.

Okay. So Budapest was brilliant. From there we went to Vienna, which I expected to be kind of similar what with the whole Austro-Hungarian influence and the Hapsburgs and all, but besides a little bit of overlap in late 19th century architecture, the cities had a completed different feel. Vienna was much younger and cooler than I expected, with tons of local music and great bars, and a fantastic cafe culture where you can sit around sipping espresso for hours without anyone frowning at you. They also LOVE sidewalk cafes, so the cheapest falafel stand has a few little tables and chairs out on the sidewalk where you can dawdle over your meal and people watch, which was our main activity whilst there. My other favourite things about Vienna were Opera, Klimt, and vegetarian food. At the Staatsoper (the huge ornate opera house built in that ubiquitous Baroque frilly-manner) students can line up to buy last-minute unsold tickets for only 10 euro. I went to the opera two of my three nights in Vienna, and saw Les Contes d'Hoffmann and Othello, both of which were incredible - and both times I had amazing seats which normally would have cost a fortune. Getting the tickets involved standing in line for an hour and a half, but it was fun to chat with the other students and opera fans - in line I met two girls from Montreal studying to be opera singers, who explained to me the different types of sopranos. On my second night I also met a lovely German Swiss guy who gave me a tour of the operahouse during intermission, including the little-known terrace that, unlike the balcony, affords a lovely view of the city and isn't swamped with wealthy champagne-sipping Viennese people. But I digress.

Vienna, being the home of Klimt, also contains a number of his most famous works, including the Kiss (housed in the Belvedere, a Versaille-esque former palace-thing with fancy ornamental gardens and an impressive collection of Austrian art) and the Beethoven Frieze (in the Secession House, an early Art Nouveau building that has kept up its dedication to emerging forms of art, and also housed some incredibly strange modern exhibitions, like a room full of some guy's used clothes). For those of you who don't know, I loooove Klimt. So that was also good. Finally, because this section on Vienna is getting really long, there was an impressive availability of beautiful fresh fruits and vegetables at a huge open-air market, and lots of Asian
supermarkets thus offering up lots and lots of tofu. Janet and I made a huge stirfry our last night there, and I'm really glad we did, because both tofu and fresh, cheap vegetables are foreign concepts to Florence.

Janet and I parted ways in Vienna, and I continued on toward Italy solo - but I'm happy to say so far I've had no shortage of interesting encounters with friendly co-travellers. On the bus from Vienna to Salzburg I met a lovely woman (also German Swiss - is this a sign?), and then on the train from Salzburg to Innsbruch I met a Canadian woman of Italian background who was also continuing on to Florence; Lisa (that's her name) and I ended up spending quite a bit of time together in Florence, and even exchanged emails because I promised to visit her next time I'm in Toronto. But once again I'm getting ahead of myself.

I spent one day in Salzburg because it sounded fun and was on the way - and it's a really adorable little town. Nestled in a valley in the midst of the Alps, it's one of the most stunning places I've ever been - and it finally afforded me the Medieval frenzy I've been longing for all trip. There's an ancient fortress perched up on a hill above the town, an impressive climb, but completely worth it, because it turned out that Sunday was some sort of children's festival featuring craft booths, performers, food stalls and all sorts of old-fashionedy music and dress. The kids were even dressed up in makeshift tunics with wooden swords! It was great. The stalls sold my new favourite, fried bread with sauerkraut, but I decided to give it a miss this time. The other fun thing about Salzburg was seeing all those familiar sights from the Sound of Music in person - including the convent where the movie begins. My hostel had really decided to play into this connection, because when I got back there in the evening they were playing the movie on a big screen TV, which is apparently a nightly tradition there. Apropos of nothing, the hostel's free breakfast included miso soup. Strange but delicious.

Okay, on to Florence. Today is my fifth and final day here, and I've had a great, if occassionally frustrating, time. For one thing, it is SOOO hot, and so crowded with tourists, that the main part of the city is pretty much intolerable during the day, so I've been saving most of my explorations for evening, when I can get a gelato and stroll through the streets listening to straight performers and dodging the guys trying to sell me knock-off Louis Vuitton purses. My hostel, which used to be a 15th century convent and still has the airy and spartan look of one, is quite cool (in the literal sense, shady and pleasant) but I still have to take at least two showers a day. I'm looking forward to Croatia, and more specifically the beaches - in case you can't tell, my trip thus far has been packed and thus exhausting, and I'm looking forward to lying on a beach with a book for a while.

I spent one entire day at the Galleria degli Uffizi - seven hours in total, which was exhausting but completely worth it. It's an
astonishing art collection, and was sort of like walking through an art history course come the life, but it's also a manageable size, unlike the terrifying vastness of the Louvre for example. The best part was that the massive hordes of tourists got tired after the first section and disappeared, so once you got past the Botticelli there were barely any crowds any more. I had the Caravaggio rooms practically to myself! Uffizi is the only thing I paid to go into, because everything in Florence is SO expensive and they don't have student discounts. Instead I've been spending my days wandering and getting hopelessly lost, which I've found is the best way to find unexpectedly beautiful and tourist-free parts of a city. One afternoon Lisa and I went walking and stumbled across this exquisite street in the Oltrarno (the southern side of the river, with much fewer tourist attractions) called the Via San Leonardo, which winds all the way down from the top of a hill, affording great views of the city, to the river bank. It took us about three hours in total to find it and then walk all the way down it, but it was indescribably beautiful, and full of locals walking their dogs, playing in the parks, or gathering in their gardens for big family parties. The best things always seem to be where the locals are, and the tourists aren't - for example, today I stumbled across a little panini shop where everyone was speaking Italian; they were sitting on the curb drinking tiny glasses of red wine, and getting refills from the shop, that was little more than a wooden counter. I took it as a good sign and decided to get lunch there, and for 2.50 ended up with the most delicious sandwhich I've ever had.

Yesterday I also did a day-trip to Sienna, which is stunningingly beautiful, and also quite charming one you get off the Piazza del Campo and away from the tourists. My favourite part, other than the simple (and free!) pleasure of the views, was the Basilica di San Lorenzo, where I saw the mummified head of St. Catharine. That was quite the experience. Today I was planning on another day trip, perhaps to Bologna, but the Italian train workers have gone on strike, so instead I did a little more wandering, finally found somewhere with some decent fresh produce, and decided to send another mass email.

***

Well, I'm sitting safe and sound in my Dad's place in Kemptville, so obviously I survived the duration of my trip, though it was not without incident! Indeed, the last stretch of my trip was definitely the most eventful, even if I spent the majority of my time in Croatia lying on beaches in the insane heat.

After Florence I went to Trieste, which may be one of my favourite cities that I've visited, for three reasons. It was beautiful, it had hardly any tourists, and I got plenty of chances to use my Italian. The hostel was a good 20-minute bus ride from the city proper, right on the water, with balconies in all the rooms that provided stunning views of the sun setting over the bright blue Adriatic Sea. The whole street into town was lined with a walkway that, during the weekends, was swarming with the whole city's population, lying on towels and sunbathing the day away, or jumping right over the edge into the water to cool off. You could swim absolutely ANYwhere. I could have spent my whole time at the hostel without even seeing the city itself. The city was definitely worth visiting, though. It has, at different times, belonged to a variety of countries. It was once the primary port of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so the port and surrounding areas are incredibly Hapsburgian, with big ceremonial squares and huge blocky baroque buildings, as well as beautiful 19th century cafes every bit as fine as those in Vienna, serving even better coffee. However, as soon as you walk a little beyond that, you enter a real Mediterranean city, with winding streets, narrow stairways, and all the red clay rooves and white stone churches your little heart could desire.

My simple enjoyment of the city was complicated by the fact that, on a bus ride out to the hostel, someone stole my wallet. However, rather than this being a trip-ruining sort of fiasco, it turned out to be only inconvenient - and the inconvenience was largely on the part of my father! The hostel not only let me leave town without paying (I promised to come back on my way through to France), but an employee there even gave me some money so I wouldn't be completely destitue on my way into Zagreb! I also had to go deliver a police report, and of course Trieste being a small town the carabinieri (Italian police
officers) spoke nary a word of English, so I had to deliver the report entirely in Italian - a fun test of my grasp of the language.

I was actually only without money for about 48 hours, because Dad sent me a Western Union transfer right away. I arrived in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, the day after my wallet was stolen, only to find out that it was a national holiday and EVERYthing was closed. I was hot, sticky, exhausted, hungry and stressed, but my hostel (when I eventually found it) was wonderfully clean and relaxing, and I managed to buy myself some dinner with the money from the hostel in Trieste. My second day in Zagreb, after I'd picked up the money transfer, was a little more enjoyable, though I have to say that, by and large, I wasn't enchanted with the city. It was a little too Austrian, a little too bleak, and didn't have anywhere to swim. I did enjoy the Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters, a beautiful old building with an impressive collection of largely Medieval religious art that, when I visited it, was completely empty.

I took an overnight train and then a bus to Dubrovnik, which was well worth the extra travel (it was a good 13 hours from Zagreb in total). Dubrovnik is a beautiful city, with a lovely and unusual old town, an exorbitant quantity of beaches, and several surrounding islands where you can go hiking or swim some more.

As you may be able to tell, I spent most of my time in Dubrovnik on the beach. There were so many that I could go to a different one each day, and every one had a different character - some were big and busy, packed with kids, others tiny and shaded with older folks reading and chatting. The weather was exquisite, hot and dry - it was so hot, in fact, that it melted the glue in the spine of my books, and all the pages kept falling out! I spent most evenings in the old town, a triangular walled city made entirely of glossy white stone, all the buildings topped with red clay tiles; the heat faded away after dark, and the streets were full of people wandering around, eating gelato, watching the street performers or sitting on benches watching the moon reflected on the sea. This was definitely the most relaxing part of my travels, and the part that felt most like an actual vacation. On my final day I took a boat out to Lokrum Island, a nature reserve not far off the coast, with botanical gardens, peacocks so tame they'll eat out of your hand, and an inland salt-water lake fed by an underground cave.

After Dubrovnik I spent two days in Split, where the highlights were the sand beach (Croatia has pebble beaches because the Adriatic doesn't provide enough of a tide to ground the rock down to sand, but on this beach they'd imported the sand from elsewhere), the hostel (Al's place, a tiny 12-bed establishment owned by an eccentric British ex-pat who loved to take us all out to local bars and regale us with tales of his equally eccentric life), and Diocletian's Palace. In the 3rd century the Emperor Dioceltian built himself a summer resort in Split, and it was never really knocked down. Instead, later invading civilizations built around, in and on top of it, turning courtyards into neighborhoods, building walls into archways, and converting the
Emperor's mausoleum into a cathedral. I was also here for Canada Day, which I celebrated in style with another Canadian and two friendly Swedish girls, twins named Rebecca and Frida. The other high point of Split was receiving an email from the hostel in Trieste informing me that my wallet had been found! The thief had of course taken my cash, but left all my ID, my drivers license, and my bank cards - and since I was passing back through Trieste anyway, I could reclaim them without a problem.

It was just as fun reclaiming my wallet as it was reporting it stolen, if not moreso - the carabinieri were again incredibly friendly and easy-going, and kept me around chatting long after the paperwork was done. I was a little freaked out upon arriving to find out that the hostel was full - but I almost immediately met a friendly Czech woman named Radka who suggested me find a cheap double room in town. This turned out to be a great idea - we found a little room in an older Italian woman's apartment. The owner, a lovely lady named Claudia, spoke not a word of English, and once again I got to really push my grasp of the language, since Claudia insisted on lengthy conversations. We got along really well - I can't express how exciting it was for me to finally see the fruition of two years of study, just in the form of being able to get to know someone who, otherwise, I wouldn't have known at all. Also, she kept cooking for me because I was doing everything wrong. And when your named is Claudia and you live in Trieste, you are completely allowed to tell me how to cook pasta.

The rest of my trip went by in a total blur. I spent a few hours in Venice (I've never been a big fan of Venice, too crowded and too touristy, and this didn't do much to change my mind), before catching my overnight train to Dijon. I spent a day in Dijon, which is an absolutely charming town. Unfortunately I never did get a map or travel guide to Dijon, so I can't give you any details - I spent most of the day wandering through a series of picturesque streets, charming parks and scenic squares, and cafe-hopping whenever I go tired from carrying my massive backpack. In the evening I took the train to Lyon to meet back up with Janet and stay with her for a couple of days. Unfortunately it was pretty much pouring train the entire time I was in town so we didn't have the chance to see much of the city - which is to say, Janet didn't have a chance to show me much. She did take me to a very cool place called Ground Zero (or possibly Grrrrrnd Zero), an empty office building outside the city given over to avant garde artists mostly of the musical persuasion, where we drank 2 euro beers out of plastic cups and sat on the bare concrete floor to listen to experimental performers. It was intriguing, to say the least. On Sunday morning we went to a fantastic outdoor market where we bought beautiful, fresh fruits and vegetables (Lyon is sort of the culinary mecca of France, which is saying a lot) and made ourselves a huge stirfry. Janet also took me up the funicular to see the world's most ridiculously opulent 20th-century cathedral, with a great view of the rest of the city.

My final stop before heading back to Edinburgh was Paris, which was the best place to finish my trip because I really do love that city. I took the opportunity to see some things I'd never seen before (the Orangerie where Monet's Water Lillies are housed, the Musee de Carnavalet, dedicated to the history of Paris, and much more of both the Marais and Montmartre) as well as to return to my old favourite (Notre Dame, the Latin Quarter, and my favourite falafel stand in the world). I only had about a day and a half, but I enjoyed every minute of it!

My last two days in Edinburgh were also a lovely chance to say goodbye to the city - though it was a real shock going (even gradually) from the heat of Croatia to the chilly, rainy weather of Scotland. I stayed with Helen at her HUGE new flat, and we spent lots of time wandering the city, as well as visiting the museum and seeing Dolly (stuffed), and having my last authentic vegetarian haggis with neeps and tatties at a pub in the Grassmarket.

There's not much to say about my trip back to Canada except that it was long, gruelling, and sort of vaguely depressing the whole way. I was constantly stressed over my drastically overweight baggage and making my connecting flights, but the moment I walked through the gates in Ottawa and saw my friends and family waiting for me - my stress headache disappeared in a minute and coming back to Canada suddenly seemed like a really good idea.

Now the real world is slowly starting to sink in, in the form of job searches, insurance claims, apartment hunting and laundry, none of which I particularly enjoy. Well, apartment hunting's not too bad.

So there you have it. The epic that was me in Europe. I would like to make some pithy or insightful remarks to wrap this up, but I think I've already said too much, so I will leave you here.