24.07.2012 to 17.08.2012
Caught the train from Geneva at 8.30am, heading for Hamburg,
completely addicted to this TV series Yves put me on to ‘Breaking Bad’, I had
the downloaded first season on my laptop plus a movie so I had ample
entertainment for the 9 hour train journey North.
Time past pretty quickly and before I knew it I was in Hamburg, with
Pia waiting for me on the platform.
Was so wicked to see her again, we then dumped my gear in her car and
walked into the city centre to have dinner on the lakeside. Hamburg is a really
pretty city with a jet coming out of the lake like in Geneva but not as big, I
was looking forward to exploring more of Hamburg when we got back.
We headed back to her family house in Itzahoe (yes it is pronounced ‘Its
a hoe’) and had my first experience on an autobahn, Pia said her normal
cruising speed on the motorway to her house was around 180km/h and after
driving with her in NZ it took a little bit to get used to the idea!
Her family doesn’t speak any English, her Mum apparently speaks a
little but she was too nervous to have a go at talking to me.
That evening we got all our gear together ready to leave the next day,
Pia had about 30kg in her suitcase and the pile of stuff we had it seemed like
we were going for months. It’s funny how I have carried 15kgs on my back for
the past 4 months and done just fine and here we were with a car completely
packed full of stuff to just go for 2 weeks.
The next day we finished off the packing of the car, we were totally
disorganised and it took us 3 go’s to get out the driveway as we kept
forgetting something and having to run back inside.
The motorways through Germany and into Holland don’t provide much
entertainment, it’s pretty much the same view out the window the whole way so
the journey tends to drag quite a bit. However soon enough we were in Amsterdam
and started to make our way to the campground.
We wound our way down these country roads that seemed to get narrower
as we went along and it seemed like it wasn’t really the place for a
campground, there were houses that were more like dumping grounds for junk and
we were a little nervous as to where the GPS was taking us.
The campground just popped up out of nowhere and we relaxed a bit when
we saw that it was a genuine establishment and not the backyard of some strange
hoarders.
Checked in and drove through the campground looking for a spot, we
were super lucky in that we managed to find a car par right next to a piece of
grass with our name on it, so out came the tent and we staked our claim for the
next 2 days.
Instantly the thing that brings so many people to Amsterdam becomes
evident, the moment we opened the car doors you are hit in the face with the
smell of marijuana, we look around there are a groups of young guys smoking
freely everywhere.
After our tent was up, I looked to the skies in hope that it wouldn’t
rain cause the tent Pia got was more like the type you would take to the beach
for sun protection, and then we headed off into the city.
There was a tram stop just down the road from the campground that took
us directly into the city centre, super handy and quick, we jumped off in the
main square and soaked in the atmosphere.
I instantly took a great liking to Amsterdam, it’s full of young
people, it’s beautiful, and everyone seems to be having a wonderful time, can’t
think why ;)
There are bicycles everywhere, whether they are riding down the road
or locked to the side of the canals, there are literally thousands and
thousands of bicycles and very rarely you will see a car and if you do they
seem so out of place and the roads are more like footpaths.
The houses along the canals are beautiful, with flowers hanging from
the windows and talking about windows, Pia made a good observation, all the
windows of these beautiful homes are spotless. The windows glisten like crystal
in the sun they are so clean, and I guess that small detail made these houses
that much prettier.
In much need of a beer, we found a bar that looked out onto a park, full
of people enjoying the last of the sun for the day. There was a busker next to
the monument in the middle of the park with an amp, playing chilled out music
for the people there, again everyone just seems to be living life and without a
care in the world, the city has just a lovely energy about it.
After paying an exorbitant price for our beer, we headed off for
another walk through the city after dark, it takes on a different look at
night, the canals are beautifully lit up and the city comes alive.
Before arriving in Amsterdam, even when I was back in New Zealand, I
had heard that there was a new law in place which meant that only citizens of
Holland were able to take advantage of the famous coffee shops. However we soon
realise that this is not the case, there are coffee shops everywhere, and
people from all walks of life just casually enjoy a joint outside on the
terraces watching the people walk by.
We headed back to the campground and settled in for the first night in
the tent, when we undid the zip of the door the next day we were hit with
another wall of dope smoke, it was probably about 7.30am, guess the local
campers were making the most of their time here!
We caught the tram into the city again, got some lunch then went on a
boat tour through the canals. Sharing the canals with us were lots of young
people on their own little boats, having beers and a picnic in the sun, such a
great idea, if I lived there I would totally get myself a boat.
The sights we saw along the way were Anne Frank House, with a huge
queue outside which deterred us from going there for a look, although I would
probably go there next time. Also the dancing houses – a group of 4-5 houses
next to each other, all leaning on a different angle from each other to make
them appear as though they were dancing. We passed the narrowest house in Amsterdam,
which was only a couple of metres wide, I’m sure the novelty of living in that
place would wear off pretty quick.
You can’t go wrong with Wagamamas for a decent feed, so we dined there
for an early dinner then headed to the park to soak up the sun and listen to a
busker entertaining everyone.
Both Pia and I fell asleep on the grass in the sun for a good half an
hour, and once the sun went down we headed back to the campgrounds to see what
was happening at the bar there.
Not much was going on, so we just retired to the tent, we had a big
drive the next day and didn’t want to be wrecked for it.
That night at what seemed to be the middle of it, a group of guys
started setting up a tent right next to ours, they were loud and obnoxious and
took ages! Then a couple of hours later, 2 of them started to have a row right
outside our tent, just yelling and just having an argument in a foreign
language that I couldn’t pick out. It was about 3am, I was grumpy Sam and wasn’t
gonna put up with it for much longer.
I got up, walked up to them and gave them an earful of what was on my
mind, told them to bugger off in not so polite words and they looked at me
dumbfounded, apologised and went away.
On the road again, Pia still not letting me drive, we make our way
towards Paris and with roads in France, comes tolls and lots of them. The first
lot of tolls to get from the Belgium border to Paris cost us 25 pounds.
The navigation system takes us to the hotel we booked in at, we
decided against the tent seeing as there were thunderstorms forecast and our
tent probably wouldn’t handle the jandal on that on.
The tricky thing was though that there wasn’t an easy way to get into
the driveway of the hotel, Pia was hypoglycaemic, and wasn’t coping with the
situation.
Basically the driveway came off a bus way, and it looked as though
only buses were allowed to go down the part of the road where the driveway was,
but there were cars parked in the driveway and only one way of getting there so
surely we could just go down there but Pia was driving and she didn’t want to
go anywhere that we might not be able to go.
So she pulled over and called the hotel to ask how we get in the
driveway, turns out we just go down the part of the road where the driveways
comes off. So we did and all was well, I guess this was the first time I
realised not to let Pia’s blood sugars to drop too far again.
Our hotel room was very average, maybe a little below average, the
room smelt terrible and consisted of a room big enough to have 2 single beds
(each of different heights), shoved next to each other. The bathroom was
similar to the one on the ferry I went on from Split to Ancona, except the one
of the boat didn’t smell terrible like this one, the window was unable to be
opened too so there was no escaping it.
Looking out the window it didn’t feel like Paris, I wasn’t sure what I
expected Paris to feel like, but it wasn’t this, I was unmotivated and disappointed
but we decided to put some glad rags on and head into the city to see what we
could find. We got Subway for dinner and caught the underground to go see the
outside of the Moulin Rouge, there was a show playing at 11pm and we decided
off the cuff that we would try and get tickets, so we phoned up and booked in.
Super excited, we went for a drink while we waited for the show, there
was a pretty nice bar next to the theatre with very good looking men working
serving the drinks so decided it was the perfect place.
At about 10.30pm we headed out to queue up for the show, we thought we
found the end of the queue outside the bar we were in but the bouncers pointed
down the street, and the line seemed to go on forever. But once it started
moving we were in there pretty quick, they have it down to a fine art getting
people out from the previous show and the new people in.
The metro on a Friday night closes at 2.15am, we weren’t sure if we
were going to make it in time as the show goes for a few hours but if we did
miss it then I’m sure Paris could entertain us till they started up again at
5.30am.
Walking through the main doors at the Moulin Rouge, you could feel the
energy of the place from all the years of hosting shows there, it was
glamorous, beautiful and elegant.
Into the stunning theatre, there are tables everywhere with everyone
dressed to the nines, the staff are as busy as bee’s getting everyone seated
and delivering their champagne to their tables, the popping of corks cutting
through the giggly excited laughter of everyone.
I guess I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the show, I knew it
was burlesque but still didn’t have a great idea of what was going to happen.
Firstly the women dancers in the show are just beautiful, they have
killer bodies and are all 99% of the time topless. Their dancing skills were
less than amazing, however the costume and choreography made up for that and
there was a constant array of colour, feathers, sparkles and all things shiny.
There were some animals too, some miniature horses got led around the
stage at one point and then out of nowhere a huge swimming pool came up from
the centre of the stage with glass walls and full of giants snakes. One of the
dancers jumps in with the snakes and swims around with them, grabbing them and
wrapping them around her, the crowd thought that was pretty awesome and gave a
lot of ooohh’s and ahhh’s.
Another highlight of the show was a couple doing acrobatics and show
dance type stuff, lots of incredible and mind boggling lifts and balance acts.
The male dancers were a bit disappointing, they weren’t great dancers
and they didn’t get their gear off at all, so they just blended into the
background.
After the show, we had missed the last train back so we headed back to
the bar next door which was full at that stage and a dance area was now open
out the back of the bar.
We grabbed a drink and walked into an area with not many people
sitting in there, so we took a seat and then realised that we had managed to
just waltz our way into the VIP section of the club. There was a group of guys
at a table that we sat near and they invited us over to join them. We hung with
them and danced the night away till it was close to 5.30pm and reckoned it was
time to head back to the hotel as we had a massive day of whirlwind sightseeing
to do around Paris.
We slept until about 12pm then slowly dragged ourselves up and out the
door to see how much of Paris we could get through in one day, we started with
Basilique de Sacre Coeur. As with most places throughout Europe, at the popular
tourist spots, you are also confronted by people trying to sell you stuff but I
have not met any that were in my face as much as the ones here.
At the base of the steps up to the church were men trying to tie
coloured string around your finger to then make a weave and then make you buy
it. I tried my usual tactic of getting past people like this by not making eye
contact but when one came up to me stood right up in front of me and began
yelling at me to hold out my hand, it got my hackles up. First I said no firmly
and kept walking, however when he yelled right in my face and tried to grab my
wrist I just lost it with him, I was not going to let him think he could get
away with speaking to me like that.
I stood right up to him and yelled in his face to ‘F#$k Off’ and leave
me alone, he then swore back at me and as I walked off he spat at me, which
thankfully missed me.
It disgusts me that these people think that they can behave that way
and get away with it, looking around you could see them treating everyone this
way and I wasn’t going to stand by and be treated like that either.
The view from the top of the hill was nice, couldn’t really see
anything of interest from up there apart from just another big city and the
church at the top of the hill was prettier on the outside however it was free
to get in.
Outside there was a guy doing tricks with a basketball to hip hop
music, Pia was impressed, but I think I was just over having people ruining
scenery and ambiance of places by scabbing for money although at least this guy
was a bit of entertainment. The worst of them all are the ones that have an Egyptian
pharaoh’s mask and wrapped themselves in a gold piece of fabric, they stand
there expecting people to give them money and all they do is stand right in
front of stuff that you want to take photos of and completely ruin the photo.
Who wants to have an Egyptian pharaoh in the front of a Parisian church, bloody
annoying, normal people who get in the way of photos are bad enough!
We caught the metro to the Arc de Triomph, and Pia’s bloody sugar
levels began to wane. We took the standard photos there then headed towards the
Eiffel Tower, I really wish there was a Starbucks en route cause poor Pia
wasn’t coping by the time we got there.
This part of Paris is really quite beautiful, they really made this
part well and I was impressed. There were thousands of people everywhere, but
the most important thing right now was to get Pia fed, cause there is no point
trying to sightsee in Paris with a tired Pia.
We got ourselves an ice-cream and that picked her up and we continued
on, we walked under the tower and along the lawns in front of it heading
towards the closest metro station for us to catch it to the Louvre.
The ice-cream lasted about 30 mins and then we urgently needed to find
a Starbucks and a toilet, a Starbucks was nowhere to be found though and
priority went to finding a toilet.
On the way, we found ourselves walking down a very high end street and
two very good looking guys in a Mercedes 4wd pulled over next to us, they were
from Switzerland and wanted to know if we wanted to hang with them that night
as they had just arrived in Paris. They couldn’t stop anywhere and the traffic
behind them started beeping until they had to keep going, was a good little ego
boost for us though J
We eventually found a loo near the Louvre, which by this stage very
urgent, but once all sorted continued on walking through a park towards the
glass pyramid.
The sun was just starting to set as we arrived and I got some amazing
photographs, the sun sets directly behind the Champs Elysees, so from the
Louvre you look up the road and you see the Arc De Triomph, the oblesque and a
big fountain, all with the sun setting behind them, it was stunning.
The building of the Louvre is just ginormous, and so beautiful, I was
disappointed to know that I wasn’t going to be able to go inside this time, but
I know I will be back at some stage so will tackle that one at a later date.
We continued through the complex and out the other side onto Pont des
Arts, which was glistening gold in the setting sun with thousands upon
thousands of padlocks left by couples with their names engraved or written upon
them.
Pia and I were both wrecked by this stage and starving, we found a
takeaway pasta place, chowed down and caught the train home.
55 euros in tolls later, we arrived in Carcans, France. A tiny little
beach town that you can imagine being on the coast of Australia somewhere,
consisting of a small convenience shop, a couple of restaurants and about 5-6
surf shops all sitting directly behind huge sand dunes.
We had no idea where to start looking for the surf camp, so we went
into a surf shop thinking they would be able to help. I had heard that the
French can on occasion be a little rude, but I figured we aren’t in a big city,
this place probably had a population of 100, so surely they would know where it
was and it would be easy to find.
We went through about 3-4 different shops, all of them told us they
knew nothing and were grumpy in telling us that unhelpful fact. The last shop
we tried had a lovely lady in it that directed us towards the main camping
grounds and said that the surf camps all stay in there.
Eventually we located the site of our camp, parked up and tried to
find some people to talk to about checking in. We were greeted by the lovely
Emmy, from Christchurch, the yoga teacher for us for the week.
After we set ourselves up in the tent, we went and chilled out in the
‘Chill out zone’ on the bean bags with the peeps that were there and slowly
other joined us as they came back from surfing for the day.
After dinner, a few of us headed down to the beach to watch the sunset
and some that had already been there for a week wanted to go for a sunset surf.
We got down to the beach but the surf was terrible so the surf boards turned
into some great seats, one of the guys had brought some wine with him and we
watch the most spectacular sunset over the Atlantic Ocean.
Our instructor for the week was Al, he was about 23, from England, and
a great teacher. We had to carry the boards from the camp to the beach, and
they aren’t the smallest things in the world so instead of taking one each we
would have the end of one under each arm and share the load.
We got in our wetsuits and the first lesson was all about how to catch
a wave, knowing when to paddle and when to stop. It just so happen that that
week the surf was a nightmare, and was due to be a nightmare for the first few
days of surf camp. Coming from a place where there are no waves and not having
much experience swimming in surf, due to my fear of sharks mainly, it was a
little shock to the system how strong even the small looking waves can be.
We were taught how to brace our head and neck to protect our upper
cervical spine if we fell off the board and smash into the sand, and I really
needed it a couple of times, cause man did I nose dive like crazy.
Battling to even get out to a part of the waves that you can get on
your board was so difficult, the distance or ‘period’ between the waves was so
short so you would get smashed in the face by a wave, clear the super salty
water from your eyes, then get smashed in the face again. This would happen
until one of the waves completely takes you out and brings you back into shore
and all that hard work battling the waves to get to where you did was all for
nothing.
Eventually when I would catch a wave, the nose of the board would dig
into the water and there is no hope once that happens in those conditions, you
just need to brace your head and neck and wait for the water to pop you back up
again.
Each lesson went for 2 hours and man, by the end of it I was utterly
exhausted, there was no chance of even trying to get up on the board at this
stage, I barely had enough time to even just lie on my board!
After our lesson, we peeled off our wetsuits and sat in the sun for
the rest of the day working on my tan, thought about going back in the water
but figured I should take it easy on the first day, plus the conditions weren’t
getting any better.
That night I joined the yoga class, which was a great way to stretch
out and relax after the days events, we all had a very quiet evening after
dinner but I was really looking forward to tackling the ocean again the next
day.
Day 2 was all about how to pop up on the board, of which I found super
difficult to do, couldn’t get my front leg through fast enough and with my
super short calves I had flash backs of my snowboarding experiences and how
hard it is for me and my munted calves.
Al showed us an easier way to get up, which was a bit slower, so I was
going to try that one out in the water. The surf was similar to the day before,
except the swell was a little bigger, so once again it was 2 hours of taking 3
steps forward and 2 steps back when trying to get out. The other thing to
battle was the current going sideways along the beach, it was so strong, we had
to keep coming out of the water and moving up the beach to get out of it.
I stopped nose diving which was good, as I was starting to get a bit
scared of the waves after a few times I was held under for much longer than I
was comfortable. And by the end of the lesson I was able to catch waves and
knee board the surf board, which was fun and a good feeling to know that at
least I was improving and not smashing myself up as much.
Absolutely destroyed again, we sat in the sun for the rest of the day
and had another session of yoga before dinner.
Yoga was 5 euros a session, but I managed to barter with Emmy and
swapped her a massage for her yoga.
Day 3, Al showed me a new way of trying to get up on the board, where
I get up on my knees, slip my left leg through in front of me, then just
twisting my body into standing. This seemed to work and I managed to get up on
the board, it’s funny how once you get up on the board, all the hard work of
getting out there is worth it and it makes you way more motivated to battle the
waves.
By the third day we were starting to get a bit sick of the baguettes,
every breakfast and lunch was exactly the same, baguettes with ham, cheese
& tomato, although after 2 hours in the surf you would just about eat
anything.
After dinner Pia and I were all motivated and decided to go for a
sunset surf, and after telling everyone where we were going the whole camp
ended up coming with us and thank god they did with what happened next.
I was loving the surf, having such a wicked time, I was getting better
at getting up and staying up and just wanted to keep going. After catching a
great wave in, I was walking back out again when I stood on what seemed to me
to be a sharp rock, it didn’t really hurt too much and kinda felt as though I
had a stone bruise, nothing worth complaining about or stopping the fun for.
After a couple of minutes, my foot began to feel as though I had cut
it open, stinging a little bit, so I lifted up my foot and asked Pia to check
if it was cut which is wasn’t so I carried on paddling.
Then all of a sudden it was as if something had just ripped my whole
foot completely off my leg, the pain was incredible and I had to get myself
back into shore. I couldn’t put any weight on my foot and the pain seemed to
get worse with every second that past. I looked at the bottom of my foot and
there were two purple spots that looked like bruises so I tried to push through
the pain and squeeze my foot to try and stop any further bruising, I realised
that they probably weren’t bruises when I let go of my foot. If the pain was at
a 9/10 before, it was now at 11, it was excruciating and there seemed to be
nothing I could do to stop it.
Pia grabbed Emmy when she came out of the water and it was then that I
found out that it was a poisonous fish that I had stood on and I had to get
back to camp to do anything about it, but I couldn’t walk and we were a fair
hike down the beach from the beach entrance.
Everyone came over to see what the fuss was about and eventually after
trying to hop while leaning on two guys without success, one of the guys
scooped me up and carried me back from the water to where our stuff was on the
beach.
The sand on the beach in Carcans is super soft, and its hard to walk
on without carrying someone, so they tried to figure out how to get me back to
camp from there and putting me on a surfboard was the solution. I have never
felt so heavy in my life! Now I know I’ve put on a couple of kilos in the past
couple of months but these guys made me feel like I had put on about 50! There
was 4 guys to start with carrying me, then when they weren’t coping another 2
joined in and they were struggling, I was so embarrassed and hated every minute
of it.
They eventually got me back to the wooden path that went over the sand
dunes, where one of the guys piggy backed me to where a got hold of a bike and
I jumped on that and rode my own way back to camp to save any more
embarrassment.
Once back at camp, they filled a bucket full of superhot water, nearly
boiling, and I had to try and put my foot in it. It was nearly burning me it
was so hot but I had to try my hardest to keep my foot in. By the time I was
back at camp my foot had swollen so much that I couldn’t move any of my toes,
but after an hour in the hot water it had gone down heaps and the pain had
subsided.
I later found out that the type of fish I stood on was a Weever Fish,
very common off the coast of Portugal, but not very common in Carcans, however
I had managed to step on one.
Day 4, my foot was back to normal, a little sore to stand on the ball
of my foot where the spike went in but it was totally surfable and it was going
to take a lot to keep me out of the water.
Had a great day and great lesson, the swell was huge out back, even
the experienced guys were weary about going out in it, so we just played in the
white water and it was the best day yet.
The space between the waves was a good 10 seconds, which meant there
was heaps of time to get ready on the board, also it was so much easier to get
out and I had the best time. I was starting to turn the board and able to ride
the wave for ages.
I saw Pia sitting on the edge of the water with Mirna, a girl from
Spain, just chilling out and I decided to go for one more wave before going in
for a break and some lunch.
Never ever say, ‘I’ll just go out for one more’, this was my demise.
I caught an awesome wave and rode it all the way into the beach, I
stepped off the board and my foot went ankle deep into really soft sand, the
unexpected sink of my foot caught me off guard and I fell, however my foot
stayed put and my body went the opposite direction and I heard and felt a giant
crack.
I couldn’t believe it, first the fish and now this, I just hoped that
it wasn’t broken, it hurt, big time it hurt, but I never hurt my ankles, they
are like steel and it takes a huge amount of force to be able to damage them. I
crawled to the edge of the water next to Pia, dragging my board behind me, I
sat down and assessed the damage.
It clicked again and I thought that maybe I had just dislocated a bone
and I just popped it back in and it would be fine, I could walk on it after
that and I told myself that it would be sweet tomorrow.
I even managed to walk back to camp carrying the surfboards, it hurt,
but I kept ignoring it and hoped it would just subside cause I didn’t want to
think the terrible thought that I might not be able to surf for the rest of the
week.
Over the course of the evening, my ankle got progressively worse,
until I could barely put weight on it and I knew something was pretty wrong
with it, although there was no bruising so I didn’t worry too much.
Day 5 and I could barely walk at all, there was no way I was going to
be able to surf and I was gutted, I would have rathered to have stood on
another poisonous fish than have this happen. I strapped it up and as I wasn’t
about to sit at camp all day while everyone else enjoyed the beach so I started
the very painful and slow walk to the beach.
I rode a bike as far as I could, but once I had to walk on the sand I
knew it was going to take me a lot longer than I originally thought.
The spot on the beach where Star Surf Camp sets up is about a
kilometre down the beach from the beach entrance, so was glad when I finally
got there.
It sucked to watch everyone else have a wicked time surfing, but I got
a good chance to work on my tan so it wasn’t all bad J
The swell was at about 7ft and one of the guys Phil from Switzerland
who had been there for a week already wanted to go out back with the good guys,
it provided us with some serious entertainment as some of those waves were just
huge but he did really well.
That evening the camp played flunkyball, a drinking game where the
winners of the game drink the most. The basic play is this: Three 1.5l water
bottles filled half with water are lined up on the half way line of a beach
volleyball court, there are 3 players per team and each player has 2 beers each
and stand at the serving line of the court. Each team takes turns in throwing
another half filled water bottle at the ones in the middle of the court in the
aim of knocking down as many as possible. The opposing team have to run and
stand up the fallen bottles and collect the thrown one and run back to their
line while the throwing team scull as much beer as possible. The first team to
finish all their beers win.
I was on a team with Pia & Jess, another kiwi chick who was
travelling around Europe surfing with her man Arlo, both from Christchurch and
there visiting Emmy. As I was crippled, the other girls were in charge of
running and I was in charge of the throwing, we were only just beaten but it
was probably a good thing!
That evening we all went out to Lacanau, I was hobbling around but I was
determined just to keep going, I wasn’t about to let my ankle stop me doing
anything.
We had a great night out on the town, but I hadn’t done my ankle any
favours at all.
I decided that it was probably a bad idea to attempt the beach the
next day, so I chilled out at camp playing guitar and reading.
Later that evening after dinner, the surf instructors and Arlo headed
down for a sunset surf as the swell was at about 7 foot, so I headed down with
everyone and we all sat pretty close to the wooden walkway so there wasn’t much
sand walking. One of the guys brought his guitar down with him and we chilled
out there with a few wines and watched the sun go down.
Not much happened on the last night, everyone was wrecked from the
large night before and we had a mcmassive drive ahead of us, it was onto
Freiburg.
The drive from Carcans to Frieburg was roughly about 10 hours, that’s
without stops, and it felt that long. The scenery out the window didn’t change
all that much, we were on a motorway, it was just trees either side and endless
road ahead, so there’s not all that much to tell really. But the road
eventually ended at Victors house in Freiburg.
We chilled out at his place for a couple of hours and then headed out
for some pizza and Victor wanted to take us to the lake to and then to a place
where we could get a good view of the city at night.
It started raining while we were out, so the plan for the lake went
out the window, so we just parked on the side of the road and ate our pizza in
the car.
Victor was driving and he stopped at this building that was under
construction but nearly finished, it was the new chemistry building for the
medical school that Victor attended. However at night, to get up the building
we had to kind of break in through the temporary fencing and climb the fire
stairs to the top.
We got to the top and watched a big thunderstorm roll in over the
city.
When we got home, Victor gave me a tramadol to help with the pain of
my ankle, I didn’t expect it to completely knock me out for that night and the
whole of the next day!
When I eventually came to, we decided to head out and see a little of
the city, but to be honest there wasn’t really much to see, that we could find
anyway.
Victor cooked us dinner and we had an early night, yet another epic
drive was due for the next day.
The drive to Berlin was another 10-11 hour drive of nothing really to
see along the way, but at least there were no tolls and we could drive really
fast.
I had woken up feeling very average, I had a really sore throat and a
headache, Pia still wouldn’t let me drive so I slept most of the way and felt
more rotten as the day went on.
We arrived at Pia’s sisters apartment and we just stayed in, hoping
that I would feel better the next day after some salt water washes.
The following day I was worse, but like my attitude with everything
that’s tried to knock me down, I’ve just ignored it and hoped like hell that
it’d get better the following day.
We went out and saw some of the sights of Berlin, we went to the top
of a tall building overlooking the city and checked out the place where the
Berlin wall used to stand and today they have pieces of the wall still up.
The weather was terrible so we just drove around the rest of the city,
saw Checkpoint Charlie etc, but I was keen just to go home as I was going
downhill fast.
We were hoping to go out that night in Berlin but unfortunately
between my poisoned foot, my twisted ankle and what seemed to be tonsillitis
there was no hope of that happening.
The next day I needed to see a doctor so we went to a GP who told me
that I had tonsillitis and prescribed me antibiotics, I absolutely hated not
being able to talk to the doctor in English, well she could speak English but
preferred to speak German with Pia which was just awful when its your health
they are talking about. That evening we drove back to Hamburg and I went straight
to bed.
I wasn’t getting any better over the next couple of days so I went to
a doctor there, who took one look at me then had a big discussion with Pia in
German, then Pia turns to me and asks if I would like to spend the night in
hospital or at home! With slight panic, in not having a clue what they were
just discussing, then to ask asked if I wanted to stay in hospital it wasn’t
nice at all. He wrote down that he thought I had Mononucleosis Infectiosa, and
told me to stop taking antibiotics immediately cause the other doctor was
wrong. I realised once I spoke to Dr Google that it was Glandular Fever and I
couldn’t believe it and I didn’t want to. If I had that it meant I would need
to go home and I would be out for months! I had this feeling that it was another
misdiagnosis, I just didn’t feel sick enough, all I wanted was to speak to an
English speaking doctor, I was sick of being talked about in a different
language, so I booked a ticket to London.
Pia and her family were so wonderful in looking after me while there,
bringing me food and drink and just being great, was so lucky to have been
there and not in a hostel somewhere in the middle of nowhere!
I flew to London and Conrad picked me up from the airport and straight
to the walk in centre doctors to get checked out.
I told the doctor my scenario and he just shook his head and couldn’t
believe the diagnosis I was given, he said that I didn’t have GF and that
basically my immune system is shot from all my travelling and I had picked up a
nasty virus but that I would be sweet in a week or so of rest.
Feeling almost instantly better, Conrad picked me up and I planned to
take the rest of the week easy. Conrad and Karen were due to go on holiday to
Miami the next day, so I would just chill out at their place and recover.
Callum was at a friends place playing when I arrived, soon after I got
there they got a phone call from the mother of the kid where he was playing to
say that he had twisted his wrist badly and might need to go to hospital.
Conrad and Karen both went to pick him up, and it wasn’t a twisted wrist, he
had completely snapped his forearm in half and it was bent at right angles!
Callum had to stay overnight in hospital that night and needless to
say they weren’t going to Miami the next day.
Karen ended up going to Miami but only for 4 days for the big
competition her studio was attending, but poor Callum couldn’t fly due to his
cast.
Over the next few days I just chilled out and recovered, got better
and better every day, especially once I started taking immune boosters, my next
issue was now trying to figure out where and what I do next!
