London ( Again) & Edinburgh Fringe Festival

So After being in Prague i grabbed a train headed to Berlin for a couple of days, then to Brussles then back into London, to meet up with Sam.

So i went bacck to stay with the lovely Fenton's. Sam and I had a lovely couple of days staying with them and wondered about town seeing this and that. One thing we did go an see was a relly interesting exhibition called the museum of broken relationships. which is a collection of objects that have been donated to this exhibit, but all include a long or short story about the relationship/broken heart that is symbolised my the object. Its so interesting, but really leaves you with a heavy heart, as it seems every love no matter how great evetually ends terribly.

Then it was roadtrip day, which is one of my favourite kinds of days. So we meet up with Pat, he took the drivers seat, Sam beside him, and i spread out in the back. I think it was like a 7hr or so drive, but it felt much quicker, because we had such a great time. we had done all the right things, brought tones of great snacks, plenty of good music, and gossip. It was defintly one of the highlighs of my trip so far.

this is my favourite, because you can see Pat in the rearview mirror.

it should be mention that at diffrent points i have lost both the sunglasses in this photo, and that head scraf...:( I never managed to lose Sam though.. so i guess that's a plus.

classic Pat & Steph pose.

the border!!! i should also mention that i also lost this jacket..actually i have lost alot of stuff.

it was pretty exciting

Ok so then we were at the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe... and it was so super Rad, it is hard to tell you how mint it really was. I can't really distinguish days or anything anymore.. so here is a collection of thoughts about our time there.. i only took like 3 photos in 6 days.. so yep you can tell we were busy.

So to start... the shows.

Sammy J and Randy: Ricketts Lane - I first met Sammy J at Melbourne Cabret Festival, and loved his show, and thought he was a super great guy too boot. So Sam and I were super keen to bring Pat to the joys of Sammy J with the added bonus of the Randy duo. I don't think i stopped laughing the entire show, it was so funny. Def one of my favourites of the whole festival.

The Pajama Men : In the middle of No One - This was my faourite show. Bianca, our super lovliest lady of the fringe, suggested this one to us and i was so super thankful. this was the funnist thing i have seen in my entire life, and one of the most quotable shows of the festival, so it was able to be replayed again and again.

New Art Club: Quiet Act of Destruction - Sam and I saw this together later in the week... im not sure if we were just a bit tired or something by then...because we just thought it was very strange, and weird... however there was a food fight, and that was enjoyable. And i think Sam enjoyed eating stale cornflakes.

Yianni: Things That Make You Go 'Oooooh!' - performing in the free fringe, and a friend of Bianca's, this comedy show did have its moments, although it was hindered by a very drunk crowd memer who took a long time to convince to leave.

Le Gateau Chocolat - A show that we had the pleasure of seeing more than once in our venue in Cabaret Festival we could not help but watching George again in Edinburgh. A most amazing performer, and all round great guy, this show always takes my breath away.

Nina Conti - a ventriloquist and comedian. who by the way i knew looked very familar, and just realised that she was in an ep of Black Books - which has just made like her even more. I think this was one of Sam's favourite acts. She was bloody amazing, and did things such sing a duet with her puppet ( how the heck she did i have no idea) and also did the voice of her puppet whilst she was drinking a cup of water!

Margarett Cho - An American Comdedian, Sam wasnät too much ito the countless lesbain jokes.

Hannibal - Also an American Comedian. This poor guy who was actually quite funny. Had two huge guys sit in the front row, and looked as if there were going to kill him. seriously. no one wanted to make a wrong move. it was so tense in that room, and i have never seen a performer leave a venue so quickly after a set. Bianca and Sam will tell you im not exagerating, he was seriously going to get killed.

unknown play - I thought it would be good idea to take a rest from the comedy and see a serious play so Sam and I picked a random one and skipped along to the venue. Little did i know it was a one person monologue that went for 90 minutes and detailed how the character killed and disposed of child molesters. so intense. but beauitfully written and performed...yep..

We also saw a couple best of fests, where we got to see a number of acts. In fact we could of seen some more shows, but i think im doing pretty damn well to even remember this many.

Ofcourse there was also the Mirazozo, where countless hours were lost on a couple of diffrent days. im not really sure how to describe it so check out http://www.architects-of-air.com/luminaria/mirazozo.html

this is what it looks like when you take photos.

Ofcourse this is not all we did, we also did alot of drinking, and some eating, too balance it out. Bianca was nice enough to lead us into the staff & Artist bars every night, which often lead to at least one expresso martini and other delights.

One particulary enjoyable day, evening, night, day , we spent drinking in the garden, meeting other people, and then had a long and enjoyable dance, before going for more dancing at late and live, at which point sam went to buy our next drinks and dint turn up for another hour and half.. later he was forgiven, as Pat and i had a great time jiving on the dance floor.. who needs sam anyway. After some more drinks to apogise, we left the bar ( and unfortunetly sams camera), and headed home at 6am.

This leads me to tell you aout the best hostel ive come across. so continuing with the last story, i arrived home, to say what was becoming the usual goodmorning and chat to the lovely sydney sider who worked the night shift at the hostel reception. who told me where i should go sleep ( because i made 3 diffrent lots of reservations, i changed rooms 5 nights out of 6, and it was just easier to leave my bag in the storage room, and just go sleep in the bed i was assigned). The next day i woke up late, and ate some vegie mite toast ( free breaky ran until 12pm, so if you were up early enough you could have free breakfast and lunch) and then Sam came over and we went to lie down in the bean bag movie room ( a pitch black room full of beanbags, which has a big projector and a billion movies to choose from)... seriously what more could you want... i dont know maybe a nesresso coffee from the hotel bar which is only 1 pound, and the best coffee in the entire of edinburgh..and we tried alots of them. Serously perfect.

And that how we spent our time there, eating , drinking, watching movies in the bean bag room and seeing tones of shows... oh yer and when it rained we hid in Biancas hut, under a blanket drinking tea and eating vegimite rolls... tough life.

we will never see that photo.

Prague (Czech Republic)

ok so it turns out im the worst blogger ever, i am not i think about 6 weeks and at least 6 countries behind..also i have the worst memory ever.

lucky or un luckily for you, depending on how you look at it, after i was in prague i began writting notes on what i did there, and although i didnt finish them.. i do have at least something that tells you what i did.

Also if the writting bores you, as it might, just ski down to the photos.

After a very pleasant sleep on my overnight train, I arrived at the main station in Prague. From here I quickly grappled the metro system ( which happens to be the easiest in the world ) and headed to another station to meet akash and incey, who caught a slightly less comfortable bus. By this I mean, i had a lady serve me breakfast in bed in the morning on the train, and they were squishes next to each other eating chocolate biscuits on a bus. From here we caught a couple more trains a short way to our accommodation. Which was a pretty sweet studio apartment. There was a small moment of tension when we walked in, to a room with 3 men, who shut the door behind us... Did I mention the apartment was in the basement. However all went smoothly, and nobody was mugged or killed... at least that day. So we all jumped on our computers and onto the net to make a list of what we wanted to do in Prague. You see we felt we had made the mistake of not doing this in Amsterdam or Belgium, and hence felt we didn't make the most of those places. That night I made a big pasta with tones of veggies for dinner and it was so nice to have a proper meal, and I really enjoyed cooking.

The next day started off very well, there was a little food market near our aparment, and I got a punet of fresh raspberries for what would be something like $1.30 Aussie dollars. The sun was shining, which hadn't been the case for a while, and we headed to what akash remembered as one of the best markets he had eve been too.... , a it turned out it wasn't the market he remembered, also mostly this market just sold weapons; knives, tassers, bb guns, knuckle dusters, you name it. Fail akash. So we decided to move on into the city for the free walking tour, except now we had some time to kill. So we started to wonder around, and we began to realise we were surrounded by police, police in riot gear, loud scary police dogs, police on every corner. So we were like... Ok what have we stumbled into here... When we saw a protest, of skin heads, a this point we kind of thought hmmm, akash is the only person of ethnicity we can see, maybe it's time to retreat a bit. However as we rounded a corner we bumped into what was really going on... The Czech Republic first ever pride parade... It was huge, and was as much as a celebration as a protest, as their president is a bit of an idiot ( please see video link further down) and also homophobic. So now we felt a bit more comfortable with our safety, we skipped along to our free walking tour. A two hour walk around the city full of information on architecture, history and cultural insights, such as the Czech's think vegetarianism is an illness. I really do think the walking tours are the best way to start in a new city. By this time it was raining again, so we headed back to the apartment to make dinner, a delicious veggie soup. After some more planning on the net ( how People traveled, backpacker style before the Internet I don't know). We headed out to a cafe/bar and revelled in how cheap drinks were.

After changing accommodation, into a hostel next to the main square in the morning. We headed out on a castle tour, with a guide who was part Irish and part Greek, who was very nice, and thought himself a joker...though i belive this was questionable. The castle tour was super interesting, and went for like 5 hours, it was crazy - as it was a walking tour, it was fairly exhausting. We got so many little stories about different buildings and people, and learnt about many quirks and more tense moments in the Czech Republic's history. Our guide even acted out a more recent event in which their president stole the chili presidents pen - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uToMvq3yw2A&feature=related

Following the end of the tour were we saw a beautiful view of the whole of Prague, akash lead the way to kafta's ( a famous writer from prague) favorite park, and boy could you see why it was his favorite, and how it could be inspiring - it was so peaceful and breathtaking. Then we headed to a site I had been looking forward to the love locks and the Lennon wall. The love locks is something I saw on eurovision, as they had little clips with things from all over Germany. And it turns out there all over the world. It it when two lovers, buy a padlock, perhaps engrave or insrcibe their names then, lock it onto a brige or gate and throw away the key, into the water. And then more and more gather. Next to the prague love lock wall, is another wall full of love notes, so I added a tiny one in. The Lennon wall, was a point of youth rebellion during the communist regime, and appeared around the time of lennons death. It began with anti communist, and peace message, using the Beatles and in particular John Lennon as a vehicle. It kept getting painted over, but the writing and art work kept on re appearing. After the end of the communist regime, it was left, and continually added to. Except like so many things is ruined by stupid jerks.. Who paint things on top like "jez and joes euope tour 11".... But there is still a couple of nice pieces, and it is always changing.

By the time we were getting back over the bridge, it was nearly sundown, which was around 8.30 and the lot was beautiful, but after taking a bit of rest at the hostel we ran into a small problem, all the restraunts kitchens were closing, it was raining and we were hungry.. So we kept looking. Finally at about 10.45 we found a Mexican restraunt - I will always remember how yummy our food was that night, and how quickly we ate. Of course that wasn't the end of the day though beause when I headed back to the hostel, back into my all girl dorm... Someone was already asleep and this someone was snoring... Very awfully and very loudly. So I tried to ignore it, unsuccessfully, I tried getting out of bed and coming back a little later just in case it settled down, it didn't. I began to make a lot of noise every 2 minutes, as it caused the snoring to cease momentarily. In these two minutes I tried as hard as I could to will myself to fall asleep instantly. No luck.. Then the other two girls from the dorm came in, and fell asleep, so my noise tacktit didn't work anymore... Hours passed, murder plots were created, escape routes thought of... Until I felt like I was going to explode, so I decided to do the opposite of trying to sleep, ... Showering and getting up. It was 4.30 in the morning, I had gone to bed at about 12.30... So it was a bit ridiculous.

Needless to say the first thing we did that morning was stop for coffee ( although that was in fact what we did every morning) so after that we headed to the Jewish quarter , and proceeded to get terribly lost, and spent a lot of the time walking around in circles.

ok so thats all I wrote.. so here is what i can rember after this.. but in no particular order.

- We saw an exhbition of Alfons Mucha's artwork. - amazing, that some of his most beauitful artwork was on inviations and menus for dinner parties.

- We went to the old jewish cemetery which is crazy, it started in the 15th C, there is something like 12000 tombstones, but many more bodies are burried there, as there layers of earth kept of being added, to allow for more burials. - It is such a chilling and sombering place, that as usual is ruined by tourist, who for some reason think it will be a nice photo for their wall if the stand in front of the tombstones, grin and give the thumbs up.

- The Pikas Synagogue, which since the end of WW2 has been a memorial to the Jewish Victim of the second world war. On all the walls are the details of each victim, names, communities, and deates of their birth and death. There are 80,000 names of the Bohemian and Moravian. - it is astounding at how much space the names take up, which really gives more depth to the number of people lost.

- The Museum of Communism - in this museum was a video of all diffrent aspects and kind of the timeline of the communist regime ( which went from like 68 - 89. this was the most disturing video i have ever seen. i felt like i had seriously been lied to, as the call the protest that lead to the end of the regime the velvet revolution, because there wasn't any violence, i felt this was a bit of a sham, as up until the day before the communists were bashing people left right and centre. and it was clearly only because the whole regime all over europe was collasing.

- The Franz Kafka Museum - obviously in our aim to not waste our time, and miss out on anything in prague we went to every single museum, gallery and site possible.

- We went and saw the english band , The Wild Beasts.

- We were climbing a tower, and suddenly i heard some music, and i was like oh, that sounds like that band, Bond, who are a electornic string quartet, who my high school principle used to be obsessed with.. weird... yep turns out they were just across the way cracking out some tunes... weird...

umm thats all ive got i think for prague..dont worry i remember less and less about everwhere else, so a post wont be this long again.