I'LL TELL YOU WHERE I GO.

Denmark/germany

I haven't been bloggin recently...im sorry. But let me now tell you what iv been up to.

After copenhagen I stayed on an island on the south coast of Denmark for just over a week. The island was so beautiful and absolutely tiny! Took me about 15mins to walk all the way around! I was volunteering in the restaurant there...basically washing dishes...all the time. but i was with good company so we made the most of our duties and lucky for us...at the weekend there was an electro/trance festival!!! haha! I swear im the luckiest person in europe! (By the way i love electro music) And then Jess and I were given a different task, which was very important, to collect the food tokens from the crew at meal times. So unfortunately we couldn't help wash up at that time. But the festival was brilliant and the friends we made there were equally lovely. I will have to steal some photos off Jess to show you what it was like. My camera has broken.

.....then i went to hamburg ----->

copenhagen dizzy days

I'm going to save you guys some reading time and put my adventure in Bergen and Copenhagen in the same condensed post.

Bergen was properly chilled out. And because we stayed on a nice guys couch who was also very very chilled out I think our paced slowed down quite a lot for a couple of days so that even though Bergen is half the size of Oslo, we took the same amount of time walking around it. Its a pretty place. Lots of nice colourful building by the seaside surrounded by mountains. We took the train there and it is actually know as the best train ride in Europe because its so beautiful...you can look at my photo's but maybe you should come and have a look for yourself too?

We tried Norwegian beer which was horrible and Hakon, our couch host was a musician so we listened to his music which was cool.

Copenhagen was mental. Hahaha!

We flew in from Bergen around half nine ish and headed straight to Christiania. We had some idea of what it was going to be like but it was pretty unreal. We walked along this road lined with walls of Graffiti and came across this corner where a bright halogen light was shinning from a little way away with all these slow moving silhouettes walking in front of it. Imagine that bit in ET when the space ship lands but in a London back alley, in slow motion. We walked towards the light and then we saw the Christiania archway...we'd found it! From there on it was a completely different scene from the rest of Copenhagen...like a little folk village.

So we spent the night there and once again we hadn't sorted any place to stay so we just didn't sleep! AGGH! We were so tired! but was a great night! And the the next day we were feeling pretty rock and roll so we got a Tattoo.........

We saw quite a lot of Copenhagen over the two days we were there but I'd love to go back again!

Oslo tiiiime!

I have said goodbye to Sweden now and have made my way to Oslo in Norway. I will miss my little home in Sweden actually! Its was so lovely! Now to get back to the rough and ready world of the backpacker...it took me and Jess about 5 hours to hitch a ride from Sweden to Oslo! We were waiting in a petrol station for all this time and we even had an offer from a guy who had driven past a couple of times who lived near by that we could sleep at his place if we couldn't get a lift! How nice! But a Tony the Lorry driver took pitty on us and picked us up. He was a good story teller so was an entertaining journey.

When we arrived in Oslo it was about half 11 and we hadn't sorted any place to sleep...I'm just going to tell it to you straight because there's no point trying to make it sound romantic. We ended having to sleep in the changing rooms for a football team who had accidentally left the building unlocked. Haha! To be honest it was a pretty good nights sleep because we had taken the cushions off the bench in the hallway and made a bed out of them and we had a nice en suite room too!!! Someone came in the morning but we had locked the room so they just checked the door and we had time to sneak out before they knew.

Luckily we found a nice place to stay in oslo for the next few nights! We tried some couch surfing and stayed with a lovely lady who took us to stay in her Cabin in the country side for a few days!! Was not expecting that at all! So we had a lovely little weekend with 10 other people and good weather and plenty of food and drink. On the 1st night there we ended up going for a walk in the woods with candles and blankets to find the lake. Then we SWAM in the lake and it was so cooold!!

So Oslo was very nice.

Update: Stockholm

Right now I am on a mega train journey from Oslo to Bergen...so i thought I'd kill some time (its a seven hour ride) and pre right some posts so that one day this blog will be up to date with where I am in the world...like a true travel blog!

Back to Sweden...Its a shame that I didn't keep this up to date at the time because I am sure I have already forgotten some nice parts I even fogot to tell you about Stockholm! And I loved Stockholm!

It was a beautiful city.I wont tell you too much more because I think everyone should see it for themselves it could possibly be my favourite city so far!

I wasn't really expecting to do much in Stockholm, after spending a sleepless night in Reykjavick airport I was more looking forward to a comfy bed than a cool city...but damn Beirut and their cheerful music! After listening to them on the bus into Stockholm I was very much tempted to skip my afternoon nap and head straight into exploring.

I thought I'd get an early night and get up bright and early in the morning so that i could check out some more of stockholm before catching a train to Gothenburg.

However once again my "early night" plan was ruined as I was making my way back to my hostel around nine o'clock....Two guys were sat having a Kebab or something outside a cafe...one gave me a shout as i was passing by and invited me to join them. I thought about how this might be a bit dodge but I quickly realised this was a nice opportunity to make new friends! And they were very nice! They showed me their favourite place in stockholm and the guy was so genuinely friendly that me made a lot of friends along the way too!

diggng

So I have told you a bit about Greenstones already and now I have left I miss it very much!It was so nice!

The second week I was there I met Clemence, Pauline, Josh and Gywen. Lovely people! We were set the task by the Greenstones team to clear a space for the Watsu pool they want to start building in September. You should have a peep at the photos from before and after to appriciate how hard we worked on that spot AND mostly in the rain or in the boiling heat of the Swedish summer. But we got quite into it and built ourselves a tent to work under and got some reggae music playing to give us some rhythm with the shovel and the pick. We revealed some beautiful rocks, a nice oak tree and built a little stone wall to level off the area with the soil we dug out....if anyone wants to know.

CINEMA UNDER THE STARS!

The day that Josh, Clemence and Pauline left Greenstones I went with them to an island just north of Flaton, where Josh's friend was holding a "Cinema Under the Stars!" It was wicked! We went there early to help her set up but before we got working we took their motor boat out to a rocky island and had a dip in the sea!

Then it was all hands on deck with popping pop corn, lighting candles and making the place all cool and cosy. It looked amazing and the films she screened were impressive...i would love to do something like this! About 80 people turned up so it was pretty successful and they had a little bar set up and a DJ so was all in all a great evening for everyone! (especially us because we got free beer for helping out) Once everyone had left we danced the night away in the forest to some nice electro music....

3rd week in sweden

For the 3rd week Jess was coming to stay at Greenstones as well ( I met Jess in Iceland) Our task along with Stephan was to insulate the Yurt and make it water proof. The insulation was made out of recycled glass or something and so we had to wera cool face masks. You can see just how cool I look in the photo's. So now I know how to insulate a building. Yeah! Then me and Jess spent the rest of the week sleeping in the Yurt which was so nice with its cloth walls and fairy lights all around!

My main task at Greenstones was helping Stephan build a bridge/road to where the Watsu pool was going to be as it was up some steep rocks. From this I am quite skilled at drilling holes into rock, and I will proudly put this on my CV when i get home. I also bolted a lot of wood to wood with massive 120mm bolts (if that means anything to anyone?) ...you can see how happy I am bolting things here in the photo's.

To my great delight Greenstones have named the road "Rachel's Road"!

Now its sweden

Hey! I'm back on the blog again but this time im in Sweden! Its been about two - three weeks since I arrived here and I 've had to put the blog on the back burner for a while because now i build things instead.

I'm on the west coast, a small island called Flaton, living with a very nice bunch of people who are currently creating an eco village to inspire people to become more resourceful and eco friendly. They moved here last winter so this is their first summer and they have made a lot of progress so far. The place is lovely!

Day one...i was straight in there with a hammer and a drill helping to build some steps up to a building called a Yurt. We had to use 'L Plates', 'T Squares', 'piolet holes' and even pythogorases theorem to make sure the steps were sturdy and square. And so they are! I had to drill several holes in to the rock to place support foots for the steps and now i have massive muscles.

weekend off

The daily run down has quite a lot more going on than in Iceland. We get up and have breakfast about 8 ish then have a "meeting" about what projects we need to start or what odd jobs need doing...then we get on and do it! Most days I work till about 6 o clock because I'm actually quite enjoying building some muscles and the people who are working here as well are good fun to work with. We have delicious food! And usually have a well deserved coffee and chocolate break in the afternoon! And if its a hot day...which it has been mostly...a quick dip in the pool/sea is THE BEST way to cool down after a hard days work!

Weekends we have off, so the 1st weekend I spent here we went Kayaking. The area is made up of loads of small islands some have small towns on them and others are completely empty. We paddled our way around most of them and had a pic nic on a nice deserted one...took about 4 hours but was wicked. On the Sunday, me and the other WOOFer (we are called WOOfers here which stands for Workers On Organic Farms) at the time, a nice French lad called Cosme, went on a bike ride. We ended up taking a foot path which was more for hikers than bikers so it was a rough ride but now at least my leg muscles are balanced with my massive arms.

First Impressions

Iceland is MAD! It is incredibly peaceful and it just seems like there is no schedule for anything. Things happen when they're ready because even if its 3'oclock in the morning you could still go and do some "outdoor activities" because its still light outside! This may just be a very wrong first impression as i'm sure people are probably used to this aspect of the place and probably still get tired and have to go to the shops before they close...But last night I had dinner at like half 11?!?! and now it is half 11 in the morning and I am the only person awake in the house. Yeah, its pretty crazy.

I will have to put up some more pictures of the landscape too once I have had a chance to explore a bit more. Driving from Reykjavik to Baugstaðir (near Selfoss) where I will be living for the next month, the landscape was incredible, covered in frozen flows of black volcanic rock with purple flowers dotted everywhere and an abundance of mounds and mountains.

I was sat next to a Geologist from Madrid on the bus so I had a very useful lesson in Icelandic geology on my way from the airport. Apparently the weather changes so frequently that they make new forecasts every 15 minutes! It is raining at the moment so I hope it changes soon!

A Day Trip Treat

I've spent a couple of days getting to know how Iceland rolls and i'm still under the impression that things are pretty laid back here. Most of the house wakes up around mid-day so I go out for a nice walk before then to wake me up! The sea is right in the back garden and their land is also home to a Light House and a Creamery! So it's not a bad place to have a stroll! Then as part of my "duties" for staying here, I do the dishes, maybe hoover, feed the dogs and just have a general tidy up. So not much at all.

As a treat for all my hard work the couple who I'm staying with took me with them to see an old Army car which the guy fancied having. Then they surprised me by taking me to see the Geysers and THEN the largest waterfall in Iceland, at Gulfoss! Amazing!!!!! Check out the pictures...or just come and join me? Its nice here.

Horse Riding Begins

I gave horse riding a go the other day. It was pouring with rain the first time so my wet face preoccupied me more so than the horse, but even though I was terrible, I did enjoy it. I tried it again and I think I had it all wrong so the horse was pretty annoyed with me and we didn't have a good time. Then yesterday I tried it AGAIN and Sjofn (pronounced Shep) showed me how to put my feet in the styrups, how to hold the reins, how to sit properly and how to shout UP UP UP!!. So it went much better and me and the horse are getting on well now. For about 5 seconds she got up to quite a fast pace along the beach and it was wicked!!

Sjofn and I also had a go at "shoeing" a horse. I think we all agreed by the end of it that it was a bad idea, and I ended up getting a horse shoe nail spiked in my knee...whilst it was in the horses hoof! so you can imagine that it all got a bit out of hand.

Iceland Sunshine!

After a good few days of rain and grey skies, the sun came out. And its surprisingly warm when the sun is out! Probably about 17 degrees! We decided to go to the outdoor swimming pool which was heated to soak up some rays...Sjofn told me that Icelandic people need to make sure they take in a lot of Vitamin D from the sun in the summer because it is so dark in the winter.

Then we had a hot dog which was delicious.

The evening sun in Iceland is beautiful. Its like someone is holding a big halogen lamp over the ground just bellow the clouds, so that the ground is extremely bright but the clouds are still a dark grey. And then from about 11 onwards to about 7 in the morning the sky is an amazing shade of reddy purple. You should have a little look at the photo's I took at about 1 o'clock in the morning 2 days ago. Absolutely lovely evening.

Westman Island

Yesterday we went to visit the Westman Islands. We got the ferry over and passed the island where Bjork's house is (look at the photo, im not lying) and once we arrived at the central island we climbed a volcano! Word on the street was that the ground up there was hot enough to bake a cake. So instead of buying all the ingredients for that...we just bought a chocolate fondu kit and some digestives and once we got to the top we dug a hole and buried the kit for about an hour. When we came back to it, it had worked! The chocolate had melted! So we sat in a really cosy little hole, heated by the volcano and just ate it. Lovely. I think volcano's are now in my top five favourite things...as well as chocolate and biscuits.

After the volcano sesh' we went to a place called Stragnad (i think) where they have a rope hanging from the rocks which people swing off. It is actually considered a popular sport in Iceland! So we gave it ago and I'll try putting a video up at some point but we weren't that good at it.

All in all a great day trip! The Westman Islands are beautiful.

2nd week down

So its been another good week here. We've had a group of four kids aged about 6 staying with us, and then we've had about 10 other kids of the same age all hanging out with us as well. Its been fun and absolutely mental at the same time. I 'm trying to remember what order some of these stories go in, but i might just reel a few out whilst I remember them.

For example today Jess was giving me a neat little hair cut in the bathroom and this really excited one of the boys who fancied having ago himself, so we let him. And then another girl who is staying with us who is 17 but has a mental issue also joined in and started cutting Jess's hair. And everyone was very shouty and giggly about it, and there was a lot of hair everywhere and now my hair is quite a lot shorter than it was. But we have to think of the children.

Last night I had to walk about 20 mins down the road after a girl who had had a paddy and I had to convince her to "put the rock down and come back to the house" and now I am her favourite and she slept in my room last night....but tonight she wanted to stay in the other room because she is looking after some eggs (????).

We've been swimming a couple more times, and had a pic-nic in a Icelandic man made forest (because they dont really have trees here) and there they had a treasure hunt. We've also taken the kids horse riding, and one girl would only go if she had bare feet, so we let her. (I dont think me and Jess really know how to negotiate with these people) And we've baked cake, and these massive pancake things called LUMS which are sweeeeeet....

aside from the kids

I've eaten a lot of food here. They sell big CUPS of icecream which you can mix with sweets and chocolate which are really good. Sjofn bakes cake nearly every day and today me and Jess made an Apple Pie AND sjofn made chocolate cake AND lums (the pancakes). The meal routine is heavy...breakfast at 10 ish then lunch at 12 ish then some kind of cake at 3ish then dinner at about half 6, then evening snak at 9. Thats a lot of food for me! Its good.

A couple of days ago me and Jess went to an International Food party at Sjofn's sisters house. She has a farm and uses about 16 volunteers who we met last week and are from all over the world. Sjofn had to stay and look after the kids but she said we could take the car and drive the hour journey south to the party. We had to take something which was a traditional dish from our country. I thought I'd steal the show and decided to cook cauliflower cheese. Haha! Jess is from Taiwan so she made noodles and soy sauce.

So we headed off to the party after cooking our dishes. I had to teach Jess how to drive because she only new automatic. I had found one of Sjofn's disney albums so I put that on and we had some tortilla chips and a bag of pic-n-mix and I had a beer and then we saw a hitch hiker and we got pretty excited about it and pulled over but because we were excited about catching a hitch hiker we were giggling quite a bit and couldn't really speak and I think the combination of that, and the music and all the snaks and the fact that I was trying to roll Jess a cigarette and then Jess couldn't remember how to start the car if it was still in gear, might of worried him a bit. But after we calmed down and we offered him some food and we explained that it wasn't our car, but we had borrowed it, we were all cool and he was a very nice man from Norway. He said i spoke very good English. Nice man.

We arrived at the party and there was so much food! I had lambs head, and whale and there were some delicious spanish dishes and I think the cauliflower cheese went down a treat! We were also given a "traditional" icelandic shot where you have to take a bite of shark meat and then swig something awful.

Hitch Hiking Iceland

Hello! So a week ago me and co-iceland explorer, Jess, started our hitch hiking expedition. And I survie to blog the story.

Sjofn dropped us off in Selfoss (after we had topped up on supplies...ice cream, maryland cookies, etc) and we just stuck out a thumb to the 1st car that passed and he gave us a ride! Several hitches later we arrived in a place called Laugavant, a really tiny town north of Selfoss. It was about 10pm when we arrived and by the time we had tried to be cheeky and stay at a hostel for free...and failed, it was 11, so most places were closed and we decided to pitch our tent and have a wonder.

Laugavant is smaaaall. Theres a campsite, a youth hostel, a couple of petrol stations and a restaurant, between a lake and a mountain. So we thought, 'ah, early night, maybe a hike in the morning and then on to the next place'. But as we were walking around some guy called us over...we introduced ourselves and turned out he was the chef in the restaurant. He was very excited to meet new people in such a small town and before we knew it he was showing us around his new apartment (we were slightly worried when he asked us to test the mattress) but then he offered us to join him and his friend in his restaurant to have a few beers! He even cooked us burgers for free and gave us a couple of traditional icelandic shots! So turned out to be quite a heavy night and hiking was definitely not happening the next day....

Hitch hike day 2

...the next day of hitch hiking was equally successful. We down graded the planned hike to a stroll around the base of the mountain, then we headed on to hitch our next ride. We were interested in heading to a place called Solheimar which we were told was an "alternative community". But we waited sometime and had no luck hitching that direction, so instead we tried another road and we were picked up by a bunch of Germans in a mini bus! They were very nice and lucky for us they were planning to make a stop at a beauty spot called Þingvallavegur along the way to Reykjavik.

It was another incredibly impressive natural wonder, where the american plate meets the european plate. Between them there is a great valley with a waterfall and a girl staying with us just told me that Vikings used to hang out there and push people off the edge to kill them! Then they would drink their blood! Maate. The drive to Reykjavik was beautiful too. We arrived at the campsite that evening and were quite tired so took it easy.

hitch hike day 3

Day 3 and we are in the capital of Iceland, Reykjavik. Its again quite small but is spread out over a large area so in fact it is bigger than Paris! But i think thats just down to bad City planning (sorry iceland). It is a wicked city though. Lots of nice cafe's and cool shops selling vintage clothes and independent designers. We had a wonder and bought lots of cake. There was a big market going on which is a bit like our car boot sales in england but mixed with the markets of camden town, so that was pretty cool too. Then after a beer in the park, we headed back to the campsite to bbq something. We found a whole lamb roast in the corner shop which the guy said we could have for quite cheap so we thought this would be perfect for dinner! Turns out it wasn't perfect. But after hacking it into little pieces and getting the coals nice and hot and a lot of fellow campers pointing a laughing...we had a mighty dinner of pure roast lamb which I think Steve will be proud of! Haha!

Whilst cooking the lamb we spotted the guy who had hitched a ride with us at the beginning of the week! He looked a bit dazed and turns out he had been in a terrible hiking incident on a glacier where he fell down a cravas and had to be rescued! He said his family had now banned him from hiking so he was doing some low key site seeing around reykjavik! Poor man!

After dinner we joined two others, one staying and one working at the campsite, and walked back into the city center to experience what the nightlife had to offer. It was a good night! Went to a couple of bars with good 80's music and dodgy live bands. We walked along the sea side home with a lovely sunrise behind us!

Somehow the next day we managed to hitch hike back to right outside our farm house from Reykjavik in under two hours! Definitely recommend giving hitch hiking ago in iceland!

A day with the horses.

The place I am staying is a horse farm and the owners, Sjofn and Gummi, invite children to stay with them for a few weeks in the summer, so that their parents get a break, or so that they get to experience the country side or have a break from staying with social services. So the kids tend to have a great time here. We take them swimming every other day, horse riding most days and, in general, let them run wild with all the other various animals around here.

Yesterday was good fun! After swimming in the morning we went on a massive horse ride to meet a school of other horse riders, then we all rode back to the farm along the beach. The kids built tents, and we had a bbq with old school toasted marsh mallows and then played a few games. I was beaten up by a four year old.