Well, I figured I would do another blog entry, to summarise the last little while in Europe! I arrived here in Vancouver after big delays leaving Frankfurt.
It's living up to the tradition of my diarrhoea blogging style, so you'll be here for a while if you have the patience to read the entire post.

Taghazout was a great way to finish Morocco. I took some surf lessons, and chilled out there on the beach for 5 days.
When I finally left, I flew from Marrakech back to Barcelona, where I spent 5 nights.
My time in Morocco left me pretty drained, so this really felt like recovery and my time in Barcelona was relatively quiet. Still really nice, just low key and touristy.I found some nice tapas places again this visit, on the recommendations of some friends.

The pope came to town while I was there, and there was quite a buzz around. Lots of protests, and more police than I have ever seen anywhere, including riot police complete with shields and balaclavas (who got mighty angry when I took a photo of them). I happened to walk past a street corner where papa was doing a drive-by in his little golf cart. Thousands of people and media had waited there for I dunno how long… The streets were packed, as were a lot of the windows and balconies down the streets. I just happened to stop at the right time. He quite literally whizzed pass with his motorcade amid the screams of Spanish nannas waving flags. It was surprising to me how fast he was actually going…

After these restful few days, it was time to move again! I had booked a cheap flight to Basel in Switzerland, and ended up catching a train to Zurich the same day. Zurich is a beautiful city, and I told myself that if I ever get rich (doubtful), I would live in Zurich. It is crazy how expensive it is there though… Pasta and jar'o sauce was the diet for my 5 nights here…
The 11th of the 11th is carnival day, the whole city dresses up in crazy outfits and marching bands strut their stuff around town. Beer and gluhvein flows pretty freely, and it's all very jolly.
It is known as the day when the pretty straight Swiss get loose and dance in the streets. Definitely fun to see…
Everything in Switzerland is very ordered, structured and precise. You can tell that the Swiss take a lot of pride in this fact… Kind of the opposite to Morocco.

I also stayed one night with a friend named Micha who I had met climbing in Thailand. He and his family were lovely and I realised how nice it is to have these little breaks spending time outside a hostel. They fed me dinner, and we had a mini photo session of my travels so far.

I then decided to move on to Austria. My plan was to travel by train to Innsbruck, which you can do direct from Zurich. I have wanted to go to Innsbruck for a while; I have heard good things about the city surrounded by high mountains, and was looking forward to seeing it. On the way there though, I decided to go and visit another friend I'd met in Thailand named Stefanie.
She lives in a beautiful ski village named St Anton am Arlberg. Her parents own a hotel there, and they were nice enough to give me a room while I stayed there. Total luxury, including a shower that I hadn't experienced the likes of for quite a while….
It was nice to hang in St Anton, although the ski season hadn't started yet. I spent my days hanging out with Stef, her twin sister Katrin, and Katrin's boyfriend Chris. I intended to look for work there, but it was too early and not many businesses were open for the season yet. I made the call to go to on Innsbruck, and return around the 26th of November when the village officially opened.

The hostel at Innsbruck is one of the nicer hostels I have stayed in. The owners basically own the whole block of buildings, including the oldest patisserie in the city. Included in the price of the bed was a delicious breakfast in the patisserie, which consisted of bread with delicious homemade jams and a big slice of cake!!
Thankfully I was still exercising… Innsbruck is home to one of the most famous indoor climbing gyms in the world, named Tivoli. I made regular visits there in the 10 days I spent in the city. It was inspiring and intimidating at the same time, to be training among a handful of the strongest climbers in the world- people I have watched in movies or read about.

One night I arrived in the patisserie after it had closed to try and extend my visit for a few more days (I was not super-organised). Luckily the owners were having family drinks and dinner in there and I managed to get a few more nights booked. They insisted that I stay for dinner, and before I knew it, I had a beer in my hand and a glass of wine poured for me. They were already quite jolly, but it was really nice of them to allow me to join them. It wasn't long before I was jolly myself, as the beer in my hand had a nasty habit of replacing itself. The family have owned the property since the late 1700's, and the current son and head baker Christoph was super friendly. He roasts coffee for the café as well and invited me to take a tour the next day and roast some coffee with him.

It was an interesting tour, and most of the equipment they still use probably belonged in a museum, including bakery ovens from the 1920's and a coffee roaster from 1907.

On the 26th I headed back to St Anton, for the opening night of the village. By now it had snowed there enough to cover everything, and temps were -5ish. Very fairytale looking Austrian village with the snow and christmas trees. On the opening night, they have a popular outdoor winter fashion show. At first I laughed at the thought of it- sexy catwalk models prancing around in puffy down-jackets and baggy gore-tex pants… That's exactly what it was, except it was all very serious. An outdoor catwalk had been set up, and a handful of models sported the winter season's clothes and skis while doing funky choreographed dance routines. I still thought it was all very funny, but the whole village turned out to watch what is a big annual event. The next day Chris took me out for a day of snowboarding, which was good fun. The beginners slopes weren't open yet, so I learned the hard way on the steeper slopes on top of the mountain. I had an extremely sore arse and body from stacking it so many times. The seed was planted though, and I definitely improved as the day went on.

As for my lodgings, the hotel where I had stayed last time had opened for the season, and therefore had no space for a bum like me.
Chris had mentioned a lady who rents beds dorm-style in her basement in town. I planned to stay and look for work, so took up one of the beds in her rabbit-warren of a basement in what is actually the laundry. The owner- named Gitti, is known around town as an alcoholic and during my stay there I learned this to be true. Luckily she took a shining to me. My co-inhabitants were all young Swedish ski bums. A ski bum is a very similar beast to a rock-climbing bum, just the winter version. Unfortunately, Gitti hadn't taken such a shining to the Swedes; they have a bad reputation in town for being too rowdy. In one of her drunken rampages she kicked out a bunch of them for partying too much. It was something to behold…
I loved the irony of it, because she probably drinks harder than the entire group combined.
I had no troubles though, and it was very cosy in my room with 3 other beds plus the washers and driers.

Finding work in St Anton was proving very difficult, as most business owners are too scared to hire workers with no visa. Apparently the places are checked quite regularly for Illegal workers. I was told if I could wait it out until mid-December, some work might present itself as it gets busier. I didn't have the cash to hang around, even with my cheap lodgings and eating lunch and dinner from a can… I also was aware that I had overstayed my tourist visa for Europe too long and that I could get fined or banned from return for a period. That's how I came to the decision to fly to Canada, where Aussies can stay 6 months. I'm waiting for a work visa which should make finding a job here pretty straightforward.
I managed to change my flights, and realised I only had a few days left in Europe. I decided I wanted to spend my final weekend in Berlin, so I said my goodbyes in St Anton. While being sad to leave it was exciting to be continuing on, feeling well rested from almost a month. I was too poor to catch the train, as they are very expensive. I opted instead to try my luck with a German car-sharing website, where drivers post their destinations and how many seats they have available. With the help of Google translator to decipher the ads, I found a lift from Innsbruck to Munich in the evening. It's only two hours travel and I wondered how/if I was going to travel the 750km's more to Berlin, or just spend the weekend in Munich. Late that night I got in contact with a guy who was making the journey the next day, with one other passenger. It was a scary ride. The roads were icy and we passed many accidents, including one that we almost became part of… Nice people though, the driver and the passenger were both students and we got along well for the journey.

We made it to Berlin, late on Friday night. I found my hostel, which was brand new and 5-star as far as hostels are concerned. I had a victory beer and planned the next day.
Berlin is a very funky-artsy city, as well as having the most interesting history of any city I've been to. 2 days was nowhere near enough, but hopefully I'll get back one day. I went on a free walking tour from the hostel, taken by a very dedicated and knowledgeable history student. If it wasn't so damn interesting I wouldn't have stayed for the entire 5 hours of walking outside in -9 temps. We visited many WW2 (Nazi) era sites, as well as checkpoint Charlie of the Berlin wall days.
I spent that night drinking with a group of Dutch merchant seaman in the hostel bar. All big rough blokes with a sailors thirst, having a holiday weekend in Berlin… It was a very funny night.

My next day was absolutely epic.
I had until mid-afternoon to tour around Berlin on Sunday, before leaving on a train. I couldn't contact a lift that had free space, and there were some people who didn't understand me and hung up.
I arrived at the train station, and went to the booking office to buy my ticket. 120 euros hurts, when the car-share costs 20. I went to pull out money to pay for my ticket. I was down to my normal bank card as I'd lost my credit card in Morocco. The bank machines in the station all rejected my card, I still had cash in my account so I guess they just couldn't work with my card. I started sweating, because I was flying out of Frankfurt the next morning, and I still had over 550km's to travel that night and 45 euros cash. Racking my brain I decided to take a long shot, and go to the meeting spot of one of the ride-share drivers who hadn't understood me on the phone. I wasn't even 100% that I was going to the right place, but I went anyway, because I couldn't think of what else to do. It was a few stations out of the city, and I arrived to where I thought the meeting place was at exactly 5:30-the meeting time. I started randomly asking people milling around the spot if they were doing the lift (I had no contact details handy), and by complete miracle stumbled across my man: Roger- a huge, fearsome looking bloke from Cameroon. He was actually a gentle giant; we piled into his car and hit the road blasting out his cool African music. It was another very hairy and long drive, thick snow and ice on the road with heavy snow coming down outside. It was also dark and I wasn't at all convinced of Roger's snow-driving experience, having come from Africa recently…. When we arrived in Frankfurt around midnight I was genuinely surprised to be alive. I hugged Roger and walked to my hostel smiling at my luck that everything happened the way it did.

I arrived at Frankfurt airport with 5 euros cash left after my hostel and paying Roger the night before. I bought some duty free chocolate and hopped on my flight here to Vancouver. We sat on the tarmac for almost 2 hours, due to difficulties with navigation computer, which was replaced finally.

Thankfully my bankcard works in Canada. I am actually grateful now to the machines in Germany for saving me 100 euro (although I wasn't at all grateful at the time)…

The weather here in Vancouver has been rainy, which is apparently what it's like in the city for most of winter. The hostel in downtown is well-placed and with a tasty free brekky. I slept terribly last night, because of the big time difference. Also because I had 2 blokes snoring so inhumanly loud, that I woke up and thought there were bears fighting in my dorm-room.

Vancouver has some pretty decent coffee shops and roasters, so I made today my mission to walk around and get caffeinated, to try and overcome my tiredness. The coffee was great; I'm absolutely wrecked tonight though. I guess it will take a few days to beat the jetlag. I plan to head 2 hours north on Thursday to visit some friends in a ski village named Whistler. I will check out work options there, it sounds like there are some possibilities. I'm tempted to stay in Vancouver too, so we'll see after I visit Whistler.

Again, I know it's a big dump. It's a fair while since my last post, and there are still many things which happened that I've skipped….
I heard a quote recently "adventure begins when everything goes wrong". I'm starting to agree… The last few months have been a pretty amazing adventure. I tend not to plan things very far ahead, it's not always a good thing but it has lead to some pretty funny experiences that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

Well it's time for some dinner, I'll sign off.
I hope everyone is well :)
Much love