Welcome to 2007 - Jan in London

31 Jan 2007

The fact that we arrived back in London in the wee hours on the 7th and we were out drinking and dancing by 12noon should have been a hint as to what my first month back in London was going to be like. The last day for a mate Steven was spent enjoying a few hours at The Church (my first time) and then continuing on for some live music at Redback getting home at 2am - a pretty Australian influenced day all up! but still a good time : ) Getting back into the swing of work after over 3 weeks off was a bit tough but I had a lot to catch up on and keep me out of trouble and Gosia to drag me out most evenings and keep me in trouble.




















The Centaur Awards (my works version of a Christmas Party with Awards) was held on the 10th at the Royal Lancaster Hotel. Despite most of my HR team not being able to make it I was surprised how many people I knew across the company and had a great time dancing and drinking and ended up sleeping on one of the hotel room floors that a friend had hired with some other mates rather than catching the night bus home. Getting up at 6am was a bit of a mission and got quite a few stares on the tube going home in the morning in a cocktail dress!! but had to get home, shower, change and be back into work by 8:30, being a Thursday the day just kept going with Scouts and then Ceroc after work so definitely glad I don't work Fridays. Although because I had the day off Gosis wanted to make the most of it so we decided to take a free walking tour of the city which was really informative but the best part was the people giving away free hugs - never one to pass up an opportunity I was totally in there!

We had a new flatmate Cam move into Jarrod's room in the middle of the month, another Aussie guy whose nice and chilled so has fitted into our house really easily. Friday the 19th was time for another house party - this was one a little bigger than last time I think, slightly different crowd because a few of the flatmates have changed since the last party but still very multicultural (we even had some British neighbours from over the back fence come and join in!) It was really pumping until about 4:30am with the last person leaving at 9am when we went out for breakfast : )



















In amoungst all the partying and dancing I even managed to get a bit of culture in this month heading out to see Blue Man Group (the same show I saw in Chicago) with Jayne and a bunch of her Kiwi mates on the 21st and Stomp with some flatties and friends from dancing on the 23rd. Had a great time at both of them and you can get some really good prices if you have time to hunt around, we got into Stomp for £20 including a wood-fired pizza dinner beforehand! It was an amazing show with them able to make some awesome percussion out of anything - matchboxes, paper bags, newspapers, water bottles, brooms, plungers and even the kitchen sink!










It snowed on the 23rd which was beautiful, really hard to believe that less than a week ago everyone had been out in our backyard for the party! It was the perfect send-off for Gosia who left London on the 24th to head to Spain for a month before Argentina - Its really weird with her leaving as she's been here my whole time in London but it gives me an excuse to get down to Spain and visit her sometime in February. The last week of Jan has been pretty relaxed, went on a hospitality course to learn how to do silver service (why not?!), danced away at another Ceroc function aboard the HMS President, caught up with friends for dinner and just had a great time. It's been an awesome month and can't believe its only 10 months till I will be back in NZ - time goes so quickly, February here I come!

New Years in Berlin

30 December 2006 - 5 January 2007

Arrived in Berlin on the 30th of December, to catch up with a German mate from Japan and to spend New Years 07 in this funky city. After missing my stop on the minibus I eventually found Arne at Alexanderplatz (which is huge!) and spent the next couple of days relaxing with his family and friends from university in the Netherlands

New Years was an awesome experience, we went to a mates place for dinner and drinks and ended up watching the whole city lit up by fireworks. On the bridge it was almost like a war zone with even kids have little sticks that looked like dynamite but looking out over the city it was really amazing. Not one huge fireworks display put on by the city like back home but instead the night sky was filled with individual fireworks from groups of friends and families welcoming in the new year. With lines to get into most clubs after 12 we ended up dancing in an underground drum and bass bar with a crazy bubble man until 5am - good times!

The next couple of days was spent chilling, catching up on sleep and relaxing with friends. Arne had organised a big get-together with a bunch of his mates and it was awesome to get to know/see some of them again - really amazing people. Lots of hanging out in funky restaurants, cafes and bars, eating, drinking and chatting the first few days of the new year away. Got to have a bit of a wander through the city and even had chocolate fondue at the Haagen-dazs cafe with Konrad and Alex (so much for new years resolutions!!) Checked out Babel - a movie about interwining lives which was great trying to understand it with German subtitles but at least two of the stories were in English and Japanese (even some Japanese sign) - great to be able to relax and just hang out with a great group of mates - made me remember a lot of good times back home.

On the 4th I decided it was really time to get out and explore this amazing city with a history to match and embarked on a free 4-hour walking tour of Berlin. It was a little chilly but the tour was really informative. We saw the Brandenburg Gate, Reichstag (Parliament Buildings), Holocaust Memorial (collection of concrete blocks at different heights - definitely one of my favourite places in Berlin), Hitler's Bunker, The Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie and some more memorials, historically significant builings and Berlin-esque architecture around the city. It was really a great day out ending with the afternoon chilling at Arne's work (a Reggae record label)

On my last day in Berlin I decided to head back to the Reichstag to check it out properly. You can walk right up to the top of the glass dome and look down on Parliament in work (when they are in session its supposed to remind them that they are always working below the people for the people). This offered some really beautiful views out around the city and gave you a new appreciation for the design of a city rebuilt.

I had an amazing time in Berlin and want to say a huge thanks to Arne and all his friends and family (I could list them all here but Id probably spell your names wrong) - you know who you are. Thanks for making my week in Berlin an amazing experience and a great start to 2007

Christmas in Poland

15 - 30 December 2006

Well, if you can't spend Christmas back home with your family why not spend it with someone elses!! This year I adopted my ex-roomates family in Poland and had a great time. In two days three of us drove with a caravan all the way from London to Szczecin, taking the ferry from Dover to Calais we passed through France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany (where we spent the night in a truck stop welcomed to an amazing sunrise) and I almost doubled the amount of countries Ive ever visited!

Arriving on the 16th I had some time to do a bit of travelling before Christmas and get out and about in Poland. Leaving Gosia at home, Arthur and I drove to Torun to stay with her old next door neighbour for a night. Torun was a really beautiful city, the birthplace of Copernicus with an amazing central marketplace and some great old buildings. We wandered around town for a bit, ate delicious chocolate covered gingerbread called "piernicki" and even got introduced to the Christmas ritual of sharing wafer bread and good wishes for the new year with a group of university students.

Unfortunately I could only stay in Torun one night as Warsaw, the capital of Poland with its unmistakable Palace of Science and Culture, beckoned. Here I stayed with Gosia's brother and his family - I even got to baby-sit the two little ones (which is hard when my Polish doesn't extend much past; morning, thanks, hi, coffee, tea, milk, goodnight, yes, no and I'm Melissa - but it was a lot of fun) I checked out the Royal Castle, the Palace on the Lake and spent some time wandering around old town (Stare Miasto) reconstructed after WW2.

Next stop on my journey was Krakow - probably one of the most visited Polish cities this place had a really cool vibe. Stayed at a youth hostel 5 minutes from the main market square and had a great time. The night I arrived there was a pre-Christmas Eve party on there so got to try traditional beetroot soup and some not so traditional cakes :) As well as having a great time in the city (partying it up with new friends from the hostel) there were quite a few cool things to do outside of the city so took a couple of day tours to World Heritage Sites. I visited two of the Nazi German Extermination Camps in Auschwitz (the German name for the nearby city of Oswiecim) it was a very surreal and emotional experience but out of respect for anyone reading this public blog I won't elaborate. Secondly I visited the Wieliczka salt mine, which is over 300km long although I only wandered through the 3.5km tourist route which includes a number of statues carved by the miners from rock salt - pretty impressive

Taking the night train back to Szczecin I had a great couple of days chilling and enjoying Christmas with Gosia and her family. Had Christmas eve with her mum and stepfather, oldest brother and his family (who I had stayed with in Warsaw) and her other brother and his new fiancé. The feast is supposed to start with the appearance of the first star (in remembrance of the star of Bethlehem) but with pressures to meet in-laws families we ended up eating around 3pm. Gifts seemed to be a small part of Christmas here (children are taught that the little star brings the gifts) but they have beautiful tree decorations and we had an amazing meal starting with breaking wafer bread Opłatek and sharing good wishes for the new year.

There was time to do one last quick road trip up to Gdansk before I had to leave Poland. Travelling with Arthur we stayed in a hostel close to the centre of town, met some nice people and really enjoyed wandering around the old town in the winter sun. Took a day trip up to Hel Peninsula (only 100m wide at its narrowest point) which seperates the Bay of Puck and the Baltic Sea and had time to check out one last UNESCO World Heritage site visiting Malbork Castle (the World's largest Brick Castle) on the way home.

So no white christmas but I had a great time in Poland, making it my first time travelling in Europe, and my first time in a country where I don't speak the language. Definitely somewhere I didn't plan to venture to myself so am glad I got to go there with Gosia to enjoy the Polish hospitality! Thanks to everyone who helped make this trip what it was : )