Edinburgh, Scotland

Dana in the Castle
Us in front of Edinburgh Castle
Steve using the phone, ok... not really

We walked 30 minutes from the bus station to our next hosts apartment. A polish couple working and studying in Scotland. In the morning we walked into town, a fox ran right across the road infront of us. We took a quick look at the Royal Palace before walking up Royal Mile Road to Edinburgh (Ed-in-bur-ra) Castle. Our first real castle, but not worth the 22 pounds to get in! Afterwards we had some food at the Elephant house cafe. This is where Harry Potter was first written! We had a virus on our memory stick, and had lost some pictures. Lukasz had a program to recover pictures from our memory card. So fortunately we got them all back and even got rid of the virus on the memory stick. The next day we did some shopping and went to the National Scotland Musuem. The museum has a huge interactive section which we spent most of our time in; building robots, driving a Formula 1 simulator, and testing our reaction time. We made Lukasz and Wiola dinner, then they walked with us back to the bus station. We caught a bus back to Glasgow to catch our over night bus to London, England!

Glasgow, Scotland

Us in front of Glasgow University
Us, Marianne, and Dave at Ketchup
Dana opening up our haggis!!

Our flight from Dublin to Glasgow took 55 minutes, and cost us $75 for everything! (way cheaper than a ferry and trains) We found our hosts easily from the airport, Dave and Marianne had done a 6 month trip around the world two years ago; so they had a lot of stories to share. We went to a great burger joint called Ketchup where we got two for one burgers which were huge and delicious! They showed us around a bit before we called it a night. The next day Marianne was off so she went with us to the Kelvingrove Museum, and the University and Park. We got haggis, mashed potatoes, and mashed carrots and Rutabega for a late lunch. It was quite good, wouldn’t be first on our list to order again, but definitely tastes better than it sounds! We left shortly after to the bus station where we caught a bus to Edinburgh to meet our next couch surfers!

Dublin in two parts!

Central Dublin
St. Patrick's Church
Dana at Ha-Penny bridge

So the first time we arrived in Dublin was on Jan. 13^th, it was cold and raining as we were fleeing... ah...silently leaving Berlin and the Shengan Area. We stayed with a couch surfing couple; Rod who is from Brazil, and Maret who is from Estonia. Really easy going friendly people so we got along just great. The first day in Dublin was spent speaking to embassies to try and see if we could get back to the Shengan Area. When not doing that we walked to the Temple Bar area (Like Cordyon area in Winnipeg), saw St. Patrick’s Church and the courtyard of a castle. The crosswalks make a noise like you are being warped across to the other side of the street. Steve thouroughly enjoyed each intersection, Dana became less pleased with Steve with each intersection! The next day we left in the afternoon for our help exchange in Tralee.

The second time in Dublin was on Jan. 30^th. We stayed with Rod and Maret again. The weather was a little nicer this time, not raining or windy. We bought some luggage for our next two trips we will be taking to the Ukraine and Morocco. We mostly hung out and watched movies with Rod and Maret. We stayed up too late the last night watching movies when we had to be up at 7am in order to catch our trains and bus to the airport to fly to Glasgow, Scotland, oh well! Time to go from green to plaid!

Tramore, Ireland

Dana, Kayleigh, Karen, Mark, and Steve
Dana getting ready for some painting
Steve driving a right wheel car!
Dana and Karen on the Copper Coast

We took another two trains to get to Waterford, then took a public bus into Tramore. We walked into the residential area of Meadowbrook and found Karen and her daughter Kayleigh watching t.v. Karen is very involved with couchsurfing, but we found her through help exchange. Karen and Kayleigh are both very friendly and welcoming. Karen showed us around Tramore, and also took us along the copper coast to the many beaches. She organized a pot luck with a couple of friends one night, then we headed out to the pub to have a drink as well. Two more times we went to the pub to listen to traditional Irish music called trad. The last time we went Steve sang a song, and Dana danced with a much older man (Steve kept his eye on him).
While we were at Karen's we patched and painted a room on the main floor, we tackled Kayleigh's room so that she could once again function in it and find things. Steve put up a curtain for the closet in her room, and Dana cleaned the main floor. Steve also fixed the leaf in the dinning room table. We just had a great time relaxing and chatting with Karen, she is very easy to talk to. She even let us use her car to drive to the Dunmore caves, and the town of Kilkenny. Steve drove the right wheeled vehicle without any "issues" ! It was really neat inside the cave, we got our own private tour for 2 euro ! Unfortunately we didn't get to see any bats, they were still hibernating! We got great tips from Karen about couchsurfing and are excited to host when we get back home. Actually as of today, it is just under 6 weeks until we fly back to Toronto. We are now heading back to Dublin for a few days before flying to Scotland!

Tralee, IRELAND

Baby calf born two days after we arrived
Looking into the backyard of Claire and Gerard's farm
On our bike ride in Killarney
Ross Castle in Killarney National Park
Baby Lan

Anna and Francis

Us at the top of the mountain

We arrived in Dublin, Ireland in the afternoon, and hung around just for two days. And we will get to that a little later, fast forward to our next help exchange. We took a four hour train ride from Dublin down to Tralee; a small town in the south west of Ireland. Claire greeted us at the train station and took us back to the house to meet the rest of the family. Her husband Gerard and her live on a dairy farm with about 70 cows, and 100 chickens. They have three adopted Vietnamese daughters, Anna (7), Francis (5), and Lan (11 months). It is not a busy time with the cows at the moment, most of them start giving birth in February (Although one birth happened while we were there).

We did a variety of things while we were there; stain a table and benches, help organize the garage, put up shelves, clean windows, pick sea-weed from the beach and bring it back for fertilizer in their green houses. We also collected eggs, helped milk the cows, give teenager cows medicine, Dana tried to consolidate two address books into one and Steve fixed a bunch of things around the house! We even babysat the kids in the evening twice just so Claire and Gerard could have a night out together to celebrate their birthdays before things get really busy on the farm. On one of our days off we went with Claire and the girls to the local church for mass, then we went hiking with Gerard and his two friends up a mountain in Kerry county. It was actually a tough climb, but very enjoyable. On our other day off we took bikes and hopped on the train to Killarney. There we tried biking on the Kerry Ring road, but were pressed for time. So we took a detour and went into the National Park and rode to Ross Castle. The area was quite wet in parts and we had to bike very slowly through some flooded paths. It took us only half and hour to get down to the train station, and 2 hours to get back up the hill to the farm in the dark on a country road with no lights! We are definitely not in as good shape as we wish we were! Claire, Gerard and the girls were great hosts and we were sad we were only staying for one week, but Friday morning we said good-bye and took our next set of trains to the south east corner of Ireland to Waterford. Then we caught a 40 minute bus ride to the town of Tramore to go to our next help exchange with Karen and her daughter Kayleigh!

STEVE + DANA + BERLIN = NAKED ??

Looking down the original wall
Us infront of the Brandenburg Gate
I think it's pretty obvious
Dana in front of the church which was bombed during WWII

Now that we have peeked your interest, and also haven't blogged for awhile, we share about Berlin. We arrived in Berlin in the evening and found our host Claudia not far from the S-bahn (inter-city train) stop. She had a large comfy couch for us to crash on, along with her two cats. It was a little cool in Berlin, minus five, but it was nice to have snow. Friday night we did something a little different, we went to a sauna with a group of other couch surfers. The difference is that when you go to a sauna in Germany, you are naked! It was very strange at first, but once you see everyone else finds it normal, you are able to relax, mostly! The facility is in three enclosed boats that are on the river; with a pool and two saunas and a bunch of lounge chairs. (where you cover up with a towel)
Saturday morning we had a traditional German breakfast with Claudia, then headed out to do some shopping and joined a free walking tour around Berlin. It started blowing snow during the tour, so we took off and did some window shopping. Steve went to a bar later that evening to watch an NFL playoff game with a couple of couch surfers. Next day we checked out an open market, then went to the berlin wall documentation centre, and then saw 1.6 km of the original wall, which had been repainted by the original artisits 10 years ago. We also visited a church which has been preserved in its shattered state as a reminder of WWII. We also saw Checkpoint Charlie and the Brandenburg gate. We have now run into a problem with how long we have been in the Shengan Area so.... we have changed our plans a bit and are now going to fly to Ireland!!

Ringing in the New Year in Austria !

A scene from the Opera
Just hanging out with Pinocio (no idea if its spelled right)
Dana infront of St. Stephan's Church
In the Opera house
Fireworks at New Years Eve

Happy New Year to everyone! Ours started out in a cloud of smoke and lights flashing everywhere. We ended up getting off the metro in Vienna, Austria 3 minutes before midnight, and found pepole setting off fireworks and firecrackers EVERYWHERE!! We just stopped and watched for a good ten minutes. A group of people beside us even gave us some champagne to toast to the new year! The fireworks did not stop until two am. Actually to be more accurate, they continued on for about three more days, just a little more sparatic. The crazy thing is that everyone is lighting off fireworks in the streets (its illegal but they get to do it once a year, so everyone takes full advantage of it) We did another help exchange in Vienna, with a host who was not even home! One of his renters Keith was there to give us instruction on what took us a total of 3 hours to clean up a demolitioned room. The rest of the time was ours with a free place to stay for the week. We actually became pretty lazy with staying up late, sleeping in late, and just taking a few short walks around the area.
When we did head out we checked out the Opera house and actually went to see Die Fleidermouse (the bat), for 4 euro each. They were standing room only tickets we bought 2 hours before the show, but they were dead center facing the stage in the back, so they were fabulous! This is actually the first ever opera we saw back in Winnipeg with Grandma and Grandpa Rempel, so this made us think of them! There was a little Austrian woman who put up a good fight to get a front row spot, she came with elbows flying and several women got an elbow in the back as she went by! We ended up standing for 5 hours including waiting in line, but it was worth it. Oh yah, the Opera house is very elegant and fancy. Many people were dressed up, and drinking champagne during the intermission. Needless to say we were completely under dressed. So as I reflect on this week in our trip, I realize we did not do too many things in Vienna, but we enjoyed the slower pace it provided. Thursday morning we packed up and caught a train to Berlin, Germany. 10 hours on a train, here we come!