Our hotel in Vienna was a treat—spacious rooms, spa and pool facilities, and even volleyball and squash courts, but unfortunately for me, no squash-playing equipment (or indeed anyone against whom to play), which was a shame because I had been hanging out for a game, and indeed for any physical activity whatsoever that could have offset the many days and nights of sloth and gluttony prior and since.

Austria is the home of classical music and the birthplace of Mozart. Austrians are celebrating this, the 250^th year since the birth of Mozart, with great gusto, Mozart memorabilia and snacks flying off shelves like that brilliant simile that didn’t occur to you until long after you’d already pressed “Publish” on the article. Our first night in Vienna comprised a delightful Mozart concert performed by a company of skilled, yet easygoing, musicians and dancers, delivering a solid set of the familiar Mozart standards punctuated by moments of comic relief and audience participation.

You notice a lot of changes passing into the ‘Germanic’ countries from a place like Italy. The quality of food, drink, and service take a giant leap upward. Toilets have seats again. And buildings and infrastructure are generally newer, on account of Austria and Germany getting bombed back into the Charlemagne age at the end of WW2. Vienna is one city that chose to rebuild in the pre-war architectural style, so it’s both old and new at the same time.

The ubiquitous Christmas markets always have sausages, glühwein—a warm, spicy wine served in a mug—and other traditional holiday food and drink, plus a broad selection of craft, toys, and other knick-knacks for sale. In any major German or Austrian city, there is a Christmas market (Weihnachtsmarkt) in literally every conceivable public space, bottlenecking major pedestrian thoroughfares that you’d like to get through at more than ten metres per minute. Your attendance at, and enjoyment of, Weihnachtsmärkten is therefore not open to negotiation if you live in Germany or Austria.

The full day in Vienna, I slept in, missed breakfast, missed the daily briefing of where and when the bus was picking up from, and lost my map. I caught a train to a station that looked reasonably central and then walked around arbitrarily until I randomly spotted an Australian pub, where I requested a Coopers and a map. At schnapps tasting I bought some absinthe and learned about the large schnapps factory that was obliterated by the Allies and is now a small schnapps factory. We wandered around Vienna looking for a decent place to drink and settled on The Duke, a pub run by a couple of Scottish dudes with no Austrian beer at all.

Our journey toward Germany took in the rain-soaked town of Mondsee, where we saw Christmas markets, and unfortunately a lot of scaffolding in the way of the altar at St. Michael’s, the church made famous by The Sound of Music apparently—I haven’t seen it.

Smo

On the way to Venice, we stopped by the Republic of San Marino for just a couple of hours. San Marino is a small enclave of Italy, the size of a town, that has somehow avoided being annexed by Italy over the years that all of the other small states on this peninsula were. San Marino is something of a tax haven, where Italians (and indeed other foreigners like us) can come for cheaper liquor, cigarettes, and deadly weapons. It was a surreal experience up on the mountain, with many shops closed, very few other visitors, and a thick mist stretching as far as the eye could see giving us the illusion of being alone above the clouds.

Venice is quite pleasant in the wintertime—I had heard stories of how bad the place smells due to the stagnant water in some of the canals, but I think the cool weather probably kept the odours to an acceptable level. For some reason I had initially opted out of the optional gondola ride and dinner, in favour of doing my own thing, but I came to my senses upon arriving in Venice, realising that it isn’t the best place to freestyle. It is a place where you want to do the standard touristy activities like gondola rides, because there isn’t much else to do. After all, it is a bunch of islands and semi-submerged old buildings situated a decent ferry trip from anywhere. It was great fun selecting a range of wines in the town, then cruising around the canals drinking the wine and exchanging cups of it with the other gondolas.

My innate skepticism (not outright rejection, though) of standard touristy activities, combined with my preference for quiet reflection over posing for photographs every 0.1 sec, earned me the title of ‘grinch’ in this city. Kym, I am in your debt—really.

The Piazza di San Marco, featuring the basilica and its campanile, is probably a good candidate for one of those lengthy and expensive restoration efforts I’ve heard so much about. It is a natural meeting place for people and pigeons. Millions and millions of them. Temporary wooden platforms around the place showed that the town was in a state of readiness for an upcoming flood. Or they get flooded all the time, and they are always ready.

Smo

Our first day in Rome, we awoke at the crack o’ dawn in an attempt to beat the crowds that would inevitably have amassed at the Vatican Museum if we didn’t bust a move. To say that we had beaten a crowd would definitely be a lie—the line already stretched around the block shortly after 8:00am, and it is a large block—but we certainly got there before the majority of people.

Once you cross the threshold into the Vatican City, you are technically entering a sovereign country, of which the Pope is a sort of monarch. We didn’t see the Pope at the Vatican, as he probably had the good sense to be in bed at that time. But we did get a very informed guided tour of the museum and the Sistine Chapel, which looks magnificent in its post-restored state. Centuries of neglect had blackened the paintings covering the walls and ceiling of the chapel, including Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, and much effort and money had to be expended to restore it. Small sections have been left uncleaned as a sort of historical record.

I felt somewhat conflicted walking around Saint Peter’s Basilica, the largest and most significant church in Christendom. The building is like a massive work of art with exquisite painting, sculpture, and masonry in every direction, and impossibly tall ceilings. Whilst certainly impressed, all I could think of was how much it all must have cost, and how the church could have built things many, many times more useful with the money.

We saw the Colosseum, the Vittorio Emanuele II memorial, the Spanish Steps, the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain, and drank a beer on a red carpet outside a restaurant. We had dinner at a place called Pizza and Beer, where we ate tube pasta, chicken, and apples, and drank wine. I had got more tourist-y value out of Rome than the other cities so far, and I was sad not to see Mario anywhere, but there is always next time.

Smo

Florence was another city that I enjoyed more at night than during the day. This is simply because we arrived at night and I wasn’t hung over yet.

When a Contiki bus arrives in a city, it almost seems as though the local boganry has been pre-warned that a lot of foreign talent is going to be present at a certain bar/club at a certain time. Florence’s sausage-magnet was called Space Electronic Discoteque, where admittedly some pretty good DJing was going on, but I felt little motivation to do anything except get drunk. Italians do things differently, whether it be the toilets without seats, men’s much more grabby flirting style, or the way my credit card didn’t work when it was time to pay for my drinks.

To the best of my recollection, the morning after involved a trip to a leather goods store called Leonardo’s, followed by some free time and a walking tour of the town. The massive Santa Maria del Fiore along with its tower and baptistry are a spectacular sight in their three colours of marble: red, green, white. There is the Ponte Vecchio (old bridge), and that museum containing the statue of David that we didn’t have time to go into, outside which are likenesses of every Italian you’ve ever heard of—Dante, Galileo, all four ‘Ninja Turtles’, the list goes on—all of which either were born, or spent the best part of their careers, in or around Florence.

People travelling in Italy often remark upon how dirty they believe the country to be. As true as this may be, cut them a little bit of slack. A single statue in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence cost the city €1 million to restore after it was broken. One statue. Think about how much of Italy could do with that level of restoration, or at least a quick blast from a Kärcher. There is just not enough time or money, and meanwhile there’s all this great food and wine to be had. It is simply not an easy task.

I also had some gelato.

L

He knows when you are sleeping
He knows when you’re on the can
He’ll hunt you down and blast your ass
from here to Pakistan.

Grandma got run over by a reindeer
Walking home from our house Christmas eve
You can say there’s no such thing as Santa
But as for me and grandpa we believe.

Put on your yarmulke
Here comes Hanukkah
So much fun-ukah
To celebrate Hanukkah
Hanukkah is the festival of lights
Instead of one day of presents, we have eight crazy nights.

Mr Hankey
The Christmas poo
He loves me
I love you
Therefore vicariously he loves you.

The three places we visited in Italy were Florence, Rome, and Venice. Thankfully we got a full day to visit Rome and Venice; with Florence we were not so lucky, but thankfully it had been a short drive, so we were not only able to check out this beautiful city for a few hours, but we stopped by Pisa as well.

I had assumed that Pisa consisted entirely of the historic Leaning Tower of Pisa (known locally as the leaning tower of pizza) and little else worth looking at—just municipal buildings and houses. Photos of Pisa rarely include the tower’s surrounding buildings. In actual fact, there is a whole array of leaning structures in Pisa, from the leaning baptistry to the leaning souvenir stand.

Italians have mastered the art of the souvenir. In all my travels to date (I’m writing from Amsterdam) there have never been more random people trying to sell various crappy goods on the street than in Italy. Each of them sells precisely one thing—a toy, a fake handbag or watch, a gadget of some kind. I figure that capitalism allows these men (never, ever women—rarely European either now that I think about it) to thrive or perish based upon the demand for their wares.

Smo

Next stop was the French Riviera (Côte d’Azur) in the south of France. Think Cannes, Saint-Tropez, Nice—of course the tiny principality of Monaco is nearby—and it is obvious this part of the world has a lot of attractive views both natural and man-made. We were lucky enough to stay in a hotel pretty much right on the Promenade des Anglais which runs along the beach in Nice. The Promenade was built, back in the day (which, by the way, was a Wednesday) by wealthy English who would flock to the town during winter. It was t-shirt weather (certainly as far as I was concerned) so I can understand wanting to give London the flick to chill out here.

I enjoyed putting my French to use in Nice and I’m looking forward to spending more time in the country at some point in the near future. The lady at one clothing store (yes, fellows—she was a looker) expressed surprise that I was buying a t-shirt in winter. When I explained that I was from Australia, she suggested that this weather must be depressing in comparison to the weather down there. Maybe that would be true if I weren’t so stoked about finally seeing France.

We visited Monaco for a meal and a trip to one of the casinos. Not being a casino fan, I walked around checking out a lot of nice cars, which seem to be more the rule than the exception on the streets of Monte Carlo. Oh, there’s a Ferrari. Oh, there’s another Ferrari. Monaco is a very affluent little country and paupers are given the bum’s rush.

If Monaco had any paupers in the first place, when you get to Nice it is obvious where they ended up. There is an abundance of begging and I heard of someone getting beaten and robbed on the way back from the nightclub. I myself was approached by a man who I believe was requesting money and the kebab that I was eating. I initially gave him the kebab but then thought better of it and snatched it back.

Nice at night is home to a sufficient array of nightlife destinations; again most of us hit an English-speaking pub, Wayne’s, where we danced to a live English band whilst drinking Irish beer. Again not the most authentic experience; I think I was semi–hit on in French but at any rate it was a pretty lazy effort on her part.

Smo

On the way south from Paris to Barcelona, we stop by the historic site of the Pont du Gard near Remoulins. It is a Roman aqueduct built around 2,000 years ago, solid enough to have survived floods which have smashed to pieces more modern bridges over that river. As the Romans took over new areas, they would have to build infrastructure to get water there. There is not much that slave labour can not achieve.

Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia, a region of Spain with its own particular dialect and cultural identity. The most obvious example of Catalonian culture is flamenco, where women in pretty dresses rattle castanets and clap their hands to a very complex and melancholy acoustic guitar arrangement that seems to go on for days.

Most of my day time in this city was spent just walking around looking at buildings. Barcelona is famous for Gaudi’s over-rated, unfinishable, towering eye-sore the Sagrada Famí­lia church, a tremendous white elephant that will dwarf all secular buildings in the town. Gaudi’s eccentric architectural style is certainly a signature of Barcelona.

The night life is pretty good, actually a fairly good crowd at the Mare Magnum clubs near the marina. On these tours it becomes obvious that there are ‘tourist’ pubs and the ones where the locals go, but I actually didn’t end up caring about this as much as I had thought I would have. I’m pretty easy to please when it comes to pubs and clubs; as long as there is good music and quality booze, that will do me fine.

Smo

The next destination was Lyon, France. This was the first of the overnight stops, so sadly there was not much time to see the place. Lyon is another one of these historic cities with a lot of remarkable buildings well lit up at night.

The most remarkable such building was some kind of citadel up on the hill overlooking the city. Being that I have no idea what it is called, and that hooking up a camera to random internet terminals around the places is between hard and impossible, I have no way to elaborate on any of that. But trust me that it is pretty sweet.

We had dinner in a nice place called Le Tablier Bouchon Lyonnais. Please eat there if you can, and do not crack the shits if you see a black cat just chilling out in the dungeon seating area. The cat lives there, you’re just a guest. Apparently the people I was dining with have an objection to a cat sharing their dining space—not from a superstitious point of view, but on grounds of hygiene and a general hatred of cats. The waiter very obligingly took the cat away without further incident.

After the meal, a group of us took the advice of the lady outside the door of that restaurant (yes, fellows—she was a looker) who told us about an Australian pub in Lyon. Sure enough, we found the place (after I enquired of a local using my French-speaking knowledge—good times) in a small street in the city, Rue Desirée. It was called Ayers Rock Australian Café.

If you see these Australian pubs in foreign countries, you will notice the definition of ‘Australian pub’ is that there are road signs and basically pictures of kangaroos everywhere, and the bar and tables are made of unpolished wood. Also, more often than not, the (only) beer on tap will be Foster’s. In most other respects it is exactly like any other pub. Also Powderfinger’s latest album was playing on the PA. Nevertheless, it took me right back to my carefree days at the RE when I drank there.

Smo

Paris is a beautiful city—not least by night—which is when I took in the majority of the scenery, and when the majority of the people on the tour began to take their first photos, namely of the Eiffel Tower across the Champ de Mars. As wave after wave of visitors rock up to take photos of the tower, local kids—who just hang out in the Champ de Mars as it is their local park—helpfully shout “Cheese” in a range of languages, and expose their bare arses to the camera. Another very European thing I experienced for the first time is armies of dudes trying to sell you the exact same bullshit on every street, usually a crappy little toy or some other trinket or a flower.

After that, and a quick tour of the shops and restaurants along the Champs-Élysées, we drank pink champagne in a park near the presidential palace and spent two hours basically walking back to our hotel in La Défense, as the Metro was closed and taxis refused to take us such a short distance.

After spending the next morning at the Louvre museum—the Mona Lisa is quite small in real life, a fact that everyone in the world seems to know except for me—I felt the need to make a Metro and walking journey back to the hotel (I am too cheap for taxis) which can only be described as cruel and unusual punishment for the night before.

The main landmark in La Défense, the main financial area of Paris, is the massive Grande Arche, a gigantic office building and monument that looks like two long and tall skyscrapers with a third one lying flat across the top of them. As I was to find out many times in my tour of Europe, there would be a lot of looking up.

The bus journey from Paris to Lyon is a fairly long one, and the tour manager uses it to get everyone to come to the front of the bus to introduce themselves. I am an alcoholic who is into death metal and has an IT degree.

Smo

So I’ve embarked on a Contiki tour called the Winter Wanderer. So far it has taken me from London to Paris, to Lyon, to Barcelona, and now to Nice on the Côte d’Azur in France.

Some said that the Contiki tour would be full of bogans. I can now say from experience that this is not true—the tour is not full of bogans—there’s certainly some. Nah, it’s a pretty diverse group considering the fairly narrow range of age and nationalities that the people tend to come from.

The last couple of things I did in London were the British Museum—definitely a lot of fascinating stuff there and no place to take a heavy backpack. It is home to the Rosetta stone, which is protected by a buffer of thick glass plates and schoolchildren. The other thing was the House of Commons, which was fascinating to watch, even though it was the Queen’s Speech (not Question Time as I’d hoped) and largely featured MPs banging on about transport issues in their local constituencies.

Also my iBook broke again so if anyone has Googled this, tell me why an iBook would not boot (”disk0s3 IO error”) despite appearing to have no particular hardware faults or power issues. I’m enjoying the challenge of finding Internet cafés in foreign cities.