TravelStream™ news feed for member chelbynz on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/chelbynz en-us Copyright ©2010 TravelPod.com Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:54:08 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chelbynz/oe_2006-2008/1184000880/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chelbynz/oe_2006-2008/1184000880/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chelbynz/oe_2006-2008/1184000880/tpod.html Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:54:08 -0400 OE Experience of a lifetime.. UK, Ireland and Europe.. and anywhere else my feet will take me!

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Copenhagen, Denmark

Well this was the one and only day I really had to myself.. and I was flying out the next day! After working at Roskilde festival for 4 days.. I worked some LONG hours and got hardly any sleep. But my last day was the Sunday and we finished at about 2am and we headed to one of the stages that was stayin open til like 4am to watch some of the last music playing. It was house/dance music which I'm not all that into but it was a lot of fun. It was the only night I went out after work, every other night I went straight to bed while the others went out drinking and smoking and whatever else they do.. We were in the Arena til about 3.30am boppin along to the music that was playing. I met some Kiwi guys from Napier who live in London and I met a Dane though I don't remember his name but had a bit of fun with him until the music stopped and I left with my workmates! We headed back to our camp (which was like 20min walk from where we were working!) and met up with the guys from the other trailer who didn't finish until way after us. And they had a fire going and were gettin drunk and high.. so I hung out with them for awhile and then headed to bed at like 5am. We had to get up at like 10am to pack up the tents and our stuff and get it back up to the truck before they had to leave to get the ferry.

I decided that I wanted to go into Copenhagen and do some sightseeing coz I wasn't sure I'd ever have the chance to go back and one of the girls I worked with wanted to go with me so we told the others who didn't want us to go! But I said that I had no intention of sitting around all afternoon drinking and I was heading into town and would meet them later.. I think they expected me to stay with them and do nothing. Silly people.. Haha!

Anyways.. me and Billie headed into Copenhagen on our own though we didn't really know what we were guna do when we got there. So when we arrived we got lunch and I was sitting on the side of a water fountain thing in a huge town square and some Canadian guy started talkin to me and told us we should check out the canal tours as a way to seeing the city fairly quickly so we decided to head on down to the canal to check it out. There's canals all through the city and it took about an hour for the tour, and we got to see so much of the city and learnt a fair bit about the history of the place. Saw the Little Mermaid statue in the bay and learnt that the Disney story is not the real story.. Why I ever thought it was true I'll never know.. but I guess when no one informs you of anything else you just believe what you're shown.. I don't know.. Haha.

We saw some VERY flash houses along the canal. There's an old torpedo warehouse that was used to make torpedoes during the War (duh!) and has now been converted into some of the most expensive apartments in Denmark. And just along from there, we saw some old run down boat sheds that had been used to make arms for the warships and they open into the water.. they are now the most expensive apartments in Denmark at 10 million Krona each! Which is about 1 million GBP.. There are lots and lots of house boats along the canals as well and some of them were incredibly fancy while others were very run down.

Got to see the palace as well and the Queen's rooms and the royal ship. Which was not all that royal looking though there was a sailor on a cell phone on the deck! Very exciting haha!
Also saw some old warships that had death chargers on them and some submarines as well as a lot of old buildings.. and some weird shaped ones as well.

That night we stayed at some guy's (Morten) apartment. He had been volunteering at the other trailer and I met him that night but he was lovely and took us out to Chrisitania which is an old army barracks that has been turned into something that kinda resembles the ghetto! But it has an amazing jazz club and a couple of other bars as well.. We spent most of the night in the jazz club. Though I actually spent most of the night looking after Billie who'd way too much to drink and was throwing up and passing out on the pavement! I met some interesting people though.. met a Yank who was on his way back to Sweden for a few days then back home to New York. He'd been travellin around Europe for the past 6 months and was in Copenhagen for the night until he could get a bus to Sweden. He spent most of the night with me hanging out with everyone and ended up crashing with us at Morten's place.. He was luffly haha!

After only an hour or so sleep we were up and heading back to Malmo.. back to London and home again.. All ready for the next festival in Guildford..
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chelbynz/oe_2006-2008/1183543560/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chelbynz/oe_2006-2008/1183543560/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chelbynz/oe_2006-2008/1183543560/tpod.html Tue, 17 Jul 2007 06:46:47 -0400 OE Experience of a lifetime.. UK, Ireland and Europe.. and anywhere else my feet will take me!

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Malmö, Sweden

My first time away since I been in the UK! We had to leave my bosses place at like 4.30am to get to the airport so we all camped out at his place the night before and none of us got much sleep.. I think I got like an hour sleep.. And as usual it was raining when we left England. Our flight was delayed like an hour so we all had to sit on the plane til we were able to take off.

When we arrived at the other end (we thought we were in Denmark) we had to try and make our way from Malmo (Sweden!) to Roskilde where we were working but no one had told us how we were supposed to get there and there was one bus a day that left from the airport that went to Copenhagen but we missed that because our flight was delayed. So when we worked out which country we had actaully arrived in we gradually made our way into Copenhagen.

When we got into Copenhagen at lunch time we walked around for a bit (there was 8 of us all together and we were following one of the guys around) and then got some food and found a park to sit down in. It was a beautiful warm sunny day in Copenhagen so it was good to sit down outside and relax for awhile.

Everyone in Copenhagen seems to ride around on bicycles! They're everywhere! People just leave them outside shops or the train station and they're not locked up or anything.. so someone could easily come along and just take any bike they like but that doesn't really appear to happen. People are so relaxed as well so there's a nice atmosphere in the city. While we were in the park we weren't really disturbed by traffic even though we were by the main road.. would quite often hear a bicycle bell though! They ring them when people are in their way and they want you to move.

A strange guy name Tom came an joined us. He said he'd run away from the Psych hospital about two weeks before and had been living on the streets since then. Though I'm not so sure about that. He had nice, clean clothes, clean hair and nails and a neatly trimmed beard.. did not look like someone who had been living on the streets and on the run! I don't think he was all there though! He acted like he was more our age than a 40yr old man so I think he just had some developmental problems but nothing too serious. He was a laugh and very much against authority figures like doctors and nurses and police officers, as well as government officials and almost anyone else!

After a few hours in Copenhagen we had to make our way to Roskilde for work so we headed back to the train station and got a packed train to Roskilde then had to walk to the festival which was miles away! And it was raining in Roskilde too so we got wet on the walk to the festival..

Then we spent the next few days working.. but that story is in the next blog thing!
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Swindon, United Kingdom

My first Christmas away from my famiy! I spent the holidays with the Sandersons as I was living with them at the time and I'd only been in the UK for about 3 or 4 weeks and didn't know anyone and all that jazz..

I got a lot of Betty Boop stuff from Janine and Shane and some Tigger stuff from Sammy.. my presents from home were at Dennis and Lindsey's so I didn't get them until I got to their place on the weekend after Christmas..

We went to Swindon and spent the day with Shane's aunty and uncle and cousin. It was a good day.. had a roast turkey lunch and leftovers for dinner. Just like we do at home. But it was very quiet compared to things at home and me and Sam were the only young people there! Everyone else was 40 and above!

It was a lot of fun though and it was nice to spend it the with the Sanderson since I couldn't be with my own family..
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Reading, United Kingdom

Night out for dinner with most of the people from work. Before I started at Costa, the team had won about GBP500 (I don't have a pound symbol on my PC.. only dollars!) for having the best marks over 6 months from the mystery shopper things we had. So we all went out to dinner at an Indian restaurant called Sandar Palace in Reading.. First time I'd ever really had Indian before but it was all good.

Everyone at work is very nice and a lot of fun to hang out with so it was nice to be included in the group even though I hadn't been there long at the time.. A couple of the guys didn't come coz they had "better" things to do like spend the evening with their other halves! But it was all good, the rest of us had fun without them.

We didn't spend all the money either so we had some left for the next staff party! Which was great fun too an a little sad but that'll pop up in another blog thing later.. the only problem with tryin to write everything out 6-8 months after the fact!
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Gravesend, United Kingdom

December 27 2006 - January 2 2007

Well.. this was my first weekend to go anywhere in the UK that wasn't Reading! I spent a few days in Kent with Dennis and Lindsey in Gravesend. From here they took me to see Rochester - a very old town that was built upon the originaly foundations of the Roman city wall, which has actually recently been discovered underneath the castle and was big news to the area apparently! Well it was exciting for the archaeologist who found it anyway..

Anyways.. to carry on. It was raining in Rochester when i went and very, very cold so I didn't actually see a lot. But I did see the Cathedral inside and kind of outside (it was like 4pm so it was dark!), but was very amazing to see none the less. I also saw the remains of the castle but we weren't allowed inside it at that stage.. but to my knowledge it's only the outer walls of the castle that remain.. nothing inside to look at. So I haven't really seen a castle yet..

Lindsey took me to Canterbury to check out the Cathedral and a bit of the town.. also has remains of Roman walls.. The Cathedral was absolutely amazing and we spent a long time in there. The gothic architecture was like nothing I've ever seen before.. we don't have that kind of thing so much back home! But once you've seen one cathedral, it's a little pointless to see more.. they all look very much the same and just vary in size.. Lots of people that I've neve heard of buried there too, but their tombs where pretty amazing. Especially if they were important people. I had a very quick look around the town (once again it was raining!) and found out more about Roman walls and civilisation.. was very interesting.

I spend New Years with Dennis and Lindsey at their friend Guy's pub with a couple of other people who they're friends with. There was a live band playing, who we all felt sorry for coz after every song they played Dennis would go over to talk to the lead singer! He was even talking to the guy while he started to play the next song at one point! It was a good night even if it was spent with the oldies! Looking forward to the next New Years which will hopefully either be in London or Paris.. mmm.. will have to see..
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London, United Kingdom

Ahhh.. first proper weekend in London with Frankie for her birthday and now I can't remember what I did.. Ooo no now I remember..

I met Frankie on the Friday night after work and we went to Trafalgar Square to meet up with Alex at nightclub which was underground and was quite a good night.. one of the barmen was really hot and had AMAZING blue eyes! He did lots of tricks, throwing the bottles and glasses around and stuff.. lots of fun to watch.

Ummm.. On Saturday we went to the Imperial War Museum which used to be an insane asylum called "Bedlam" (haha!). And that's like 4 floors of war memorabilia which was very interesting though I haven't yet seen the whole thing. I saw ALL the WWI exhibition and most of the WWII stuff.. we went into a Blitz reconstruction thing which was pretty boring but there was a huge line outside of it none the less.. Also went through a trench reconstruction in the WWI bit and that STUCK! But Frankie got all freaked out by a mannequin which was a great laugh! We went through the Halocaust exhibition too which was a real eye-opener an fairly depressing so after that we decided to go to the Aquarium to make ourselves feel better (selfish i know.. but there you go!). We weren't impressed with the aquarium though.. nothing like Kelly Tarltons but it was ok.. we got to see sharks which is what we both like so we were happy..

We tried to get tickets to a show that night but couldn't really get anything cheap enough so gave it a miss.. then on Sunday before we headed home we went to the London Dungeon which was a lot of fun! It's a ghost tour/haunted house type thing that leads you through the gory history of London.. it smells a bit and people in costumes creep up on you and scare the hell out of people. We went through a high court thing and I was out up in front of the judge and sentenced to death coz I'm from NZ! An everyone that was in the group were sentenced to death for having any kind of association with me! But it was a good laugh and we had a lot of fun!
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