Mission Accomplished

Maybe we should have called this blog Europe Recon 2004... anyway we are at home now.

Our original goals were all achieved. This has been one of the busiest period of my life and everything went quite smoothly.

A trip I will never forget.

It's time to return to my day-to-day duties now, but I will be back again in some of the countries soon.

At home

At 14:50, today, our Intercity train from Genoa reached Turin. The holiday has gone.
I'm tired, of course, but extremally happy for the wonderful journey we have made.

As it was in our intentions, this ride served to find what to do in the next few trips. For sure, one of the Lands that we will try to discover in every corner is Scotland.

Take a look at this wonderful sunset in Edinburgh, to understand why we will go there...

EuroTour News Update

At 3:23 (local time, 4:23 in Italy) London Stansted seems a camping area: everywhere you turn your eyes there are people sleeping on the floor and on the chairs. Many of them over their own luggages.

The first flight will leave to Alicante at 5:50, so in about 20 minutes the check in desk will begin working.

After this first plane 52 other flights will depart until 7:45. Our one too we hope.

0:15 London!

Here we are: at the end, 4 hours and an half late, we are at Standsted.

Obviously the hotel is gone: we are going to pass the night in the terminal with a couple of friends from Palermo, Fabio and Alessandra, we have known at Dublin Airport.

Good night from London.

Dublin, 20:42

I was sitting on the plane and just about to write a post, a minute before the take off, about the fact that Ryanair flights are always on time.

Fortunatelly I didn't. Our flight is delayed at last until 22:15. And what is worst, is that we had to pay the night in the hotel in London even if probably we will not arrive there in time!

Let's hope we can leave Dublin until night!!!

Dublin: Ireland: Guinness

Could a visit to Dublin end without a stop at the Guinness factory? Of course not!

And indeed we ended our visit a while ago: it has been really nice to see the place where one of the better stouts of the world is made.

Dublin in general has not impressed me as much as the other cities we have touched (may be because we are tired or for the orrible weather we have found) but this last touch with this peice of history has repaid the trip.

We have now to make the last part of the journey, with a technical stop for a night near London, and then the holiday will be at its end ... unfortunately ...

Sad times

Today I decided to make a call to my parents, the first one during this trip, because I had a strange feeling. I knew something was wrong.

And I got the bad news. My Great Grandmother died yesterday.

She was ill, so it was somewhat expected. But you can never be prepared to such events. Nor was I.

She was very old.... was able to survive two wars and to grew up three children.

I last saw her a few months ago and hoped to meet her again in this summer. However many things changed in my life in the last few months and, as a result, I'm now in Dublin where I should have been with my parents.

She was very religious and always trained me that way. I haven't yet found a religion that suits me, but hope that God will take care of her the way she deserve.

I will miss you, nonna.

The soundtrack for this post is 'Gocce di memoria'. Hear it, close you eyes, pray with me.

Edi

It is exactly as I left it 15 years ago. The only regret is not having more time to visit every street and every "close" (small passages around Royal Mile, the main street that climbs to the Castle) of the city.

We, instead, are on the bus to Glasgow already, ready to take off to Dublin. We have been assured by a guy who was 2 days ago in our same hostel in Glasgow and who we met some minutes ago at Edinburgh bus station (how little is the world sometimes...) that we will like it. Let's see.

Glasgow

I've been told that Glasgow wasn't worth a visit.... as usual, different people has different opinions.

I found Glasgow quite interesting. We used an hop-on/hop-off bus to have a quick grasp and then choiced to visit the transportation museum. It was simply amazing.

Our time was limited and Glasgow has a lot of museums, most of which are free of charge, so I think we'll come here again in the future.

Glasgow was an important naval station and famous for the number of movie theaters. Some of these aspects are still part of the contemporary city.

Approaching Glasgow

The plane landed 10 min before the expected time (as usual, with Ryan Air), so we were able to catch the last train from the airport to the town (cheaper and faster than the bus).

Arrived at Glasgow Central Station it was raining slowly (we are in the UK, what else could we expect?), but the hostel was near the station. Then, surprise: due to a mistake there were no rooms available.

The guy at the reception made some calls and arranged for us a free accomodation for the night in another hostel. He called a taxi and ... the driver didn't neither know where the street of the other hostel was.
He went in to speak to the guy at the reception who showed him a map, after 5 minutes came back to the car, saying he didn't understand where he had to bring us, took a look to his own map and he went in the wrong place, as expected... Finally, to make a long story short, we found the beds and the first night in Glasgow went by.

PS: May be because of the time, it was around 2:00 local time (3:00, for our bodys, set to CET), but it was really hard to understand Sottish people to speak! Their one is absolutely not English!

Archipelago tour

M/s Gustafberg VII, Stockolm's docs area. We are waiting to start our tour of the archipelago that surrounds the Venice of the North.

This 2.5 hours tour will lead us thru some of the 24000 islands of this archipelago.

We'll have another tour of Stockholm later today and will then give our farewell to this country. Our next hop will be Glasgow.

Shattered dreams

Baltic sea, 11500 ft asl, the lights of some Swedish cities can be seen from the windows of this Boeing 737-800.

We are enroute to the Stockholm Skavsta airport; estimated time arrival is 2245.

With a dark sky around us and a deep, blu sea below us, my mind goes to her, to the moments we have been together, the places we've seen, the feelings we have shared.

The soundtrack for this post is 'All at once' by Whitney Houston. As usual, read the lyrics, feel the music.

Eating in Frankfurt

I didn't think it was so difficult to find a German resturant in Frankfurt... If you are looking for a pizza or italian food there is no problem: one at every corner.
To find a typical local we've had to go to Wiesbaden.
Now it's time to leave Frankfurt: auf Wiedersehen.

Lorely

The sweet melody of Lorely couldn't be resisted... we decided to take a boat for a small trip on the Rehine to see her rock and hear her legend.

We then landed at Kaub and quickly took a train which will eventually lead us to a typical restaurant in Wiesbadem.

Das Rhien Hügel (The hills of the Rhine)

I'm here, looking thru the windows of a train directed to Koblenz. The hills of the Rhine completly fills my sight, bringing with them memories of past, ancient times.

These are the places of old legends and tales, of Sigfrido and the gold of the Rhine.

Stefano and I both agree in saying that these such kind of places, such feelings are those of a kind which should be shared with the significant other... unluckly, this is not the case.

The soundtrack of this post is 'My Immortal' (Evanescence). This song has been introduced to me by my great friend Laura (hi sweetie! Hope to see you soon in Malta).
Hear it, read its lyrics, and maybe you will understand my feelings...

The red lights of Frankfurt

We arrived at the Frankfurt Hahn airport at the 8 o'clock... it's a very nice structure, only a little bit far from our destination.

A bus took us from the airport to Frankfurt in just 1 hour and 45 minutes for a mere 12EUR each (!).

It's a rainy day...nothing you can't handle.. but it was raining inside the bus ;(

Once arrived in the city, the hostel has been easy to locate. We've been assigned a room and were able to eat a complimentary breakfast.

The hostel master was very kind and quickly described us a few interesting itineraries in Frankfurt.

Once in the street we noticed that our hostel was only a block away from the red lights district.. maybe we'll give it a look this evening ;-9

Frankfurt is a medium city, about 600.000 souls, and has been rebuilt from scratch after World War II. You will find modern structures alongside ancient-looking ones. A very strange panorama.

The city centre is fully dedicated to the tourists. You will find a lot of coffee shops (don't drink it! is just like the waste-water from a coffee machine) and restourants. We have also seen coffee areas within other shops (coffee and lingerie..nice combo.).

I'm "online" since 0430 this morning... it's time to rest a bit.. i've been told there's a spaghetti-for-free at 1900 and I hope to see a nice german girl i've met at the check-in ;)

Waiting for a bus

Bergamo, 0523 local time. If you ever wondered why ryan air flights are so dirty cheap, I can give you two valid reasons:
1) the airports are far away from the cities
2) the flights depart early in the morning

btw we've got some nice ryan hostess on this same bus...

D-Day

Everything begins today. We will board a train enroute to Bergamo in the next few hours.
Our first plane will depart tomorrow, in the early morning from the Bergamo/Orio al Serio airport, directed to Frankfurt am Main, where we plan to stay 3 days.

For more information about Frankfurt, give a look to this page.

How to reach us

Should you need to reach us while we are abroad, please send an SMS. Our mobile phones will be kept off for most of the time in order to economize the batteries.

You can also send us an email, we will try to read our mailboxes daily.

Overview

Here it is a quick glimpse of the journey (click on the image to enlarge it) ...

FAQ

Here are some of the questions we have been asked in the last few days. Answers
are marked with "a)" when Alessandro is speaking, with "s)" for Stefano's ones
and with "b)" when we both agree.

q) Do you really think you can enjoy a city in just one or two days?
a) We are doing this to enjoy the path, not the destinations.
s) It's just to touch the cities, take a look, and choose where to go for a longer period...

q) You won't fool me! What's the real reason?
b) We hope to meet a lot of girls.

q) Are you going banana? (trad: siete diventati matti?)
a) Yes. It must have been the day I was born. Most of my friends think I'm mad, and each one only knows a small part of my life...
s) Of course we are: why makeing tis journey else?

q) Why are you blogging in english? You're Italian after all!
a) Yes, I'm. And I'm proud of it. The english language is anywere nowadays. I keep my mobile phone in english and so my computer. I read and write in english each day.. it was a natural choice.
s) Why not, after all we are going to travel to a lot of countries and maybe also foreign people, met during the trip, will read this blog.

Quick intro

This blog is about 2 people, 1 trip, 5 nations, 8 cities, 6 planes and a couple of trains.
Oh, yes, all in 10 days.

We will try to update this blog as often as possible. You will read about our feelings
and emotions and maybe learn a bit about us and the places we are going to visit.

Everything will begin on Aug, 13. We will post more details in the next few hours.