Unfortunately I have not had the opportunity to write in a little while for a few reasons. Firstly, I decided to move my writing to paper in this beautiful new diary I purchased in Venice recently. Secondly, I may have mentioned before that I failed to get a scholarship for my masters degree and I failed to get the free accommodation that comes with being a senior student in halls. All of this added together means that I had to pause my studies and return to being an adult. So I got a job. I am, however, not going to speak out my job because..well....it's just a job. It pays the bills and allows me to save for future studies.
One perk is that I have a little bit of extra cash to pursue a favourite past time of mine...travelling :D. A very dear friend of mine had to return to his own country recently (lets not even start discussing about how much I dislike UK immigration laws) so we made some plans together to visit some places in Europe.
Venice, Bologna, Rome and Vienna were on the menu and below are some photos for you to enjoy however, due to my pause in writing, I don't think I can go into as much depth as I usually like to. Italy is fairly easy to sum up though as overall very beautiful with on the whole, great food. The people are mixed, most are just indifferent towards tourists, some are irritated by tourists and a few are genuinely friendly.
The most annoying is the Italian lack of action against graffiti, in fact, they seem to like it. It is something of a painful experience seeing ruins that are 2000 years old with some random pray canned characters written across the sides. The most important reason for these visits though was for my friend Emrys. I really hope he took away some great memories despite the heat, the smell of car induced pollution and his (blasphemous) lack of interest in classical antiquity.
After Italy we went onto Vienna, a place I had never been so was quite excited for. Alas, Vienna is beautiful and clean but relatively dull. The museum of natural history has some great exhibits and the royal residence is very grand but 4 days is probably enough for anyone. Sorry for anyone that may have been excited to visit some day. Even the food is just standard Northern European and was quite expensive. Maybe the fact that it rained for 3 our of four days subconsciously damaged my opinion.
A few weeks later, we jetted off on a weekend trip to Cologne, Germany. A small, Roman built town that again has the typical Germanic clean and tidy atmosphere. For my, the main attraction was just to see what the Romans built. Cologne is also a one-visit place for me. You can do most things in a weekend including a visit to the chocolate factory (yummy and cheap chocolate). Again, the main effort was for Emrys to enjoy himself and unfortunately the mists of time and my indifference to the place is making it hard for me to say much more.
So with that said, I will use this blog post as a 'get back into it' and I promise that my next one (Naples and Pompeii) will be much more of a fun read.
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