Florence - Ponte Vecchio in background.

Finally having a gelati in Italy!

In Rome - Trevi fountain in background.

Dali museum.

If you happen to be in Montmartre we recommend the Dali museum (called Espace Dali). Here's a sculpture which represents God creating man and life on Earth:

Amelie Cafe.

For those of you who liked the movie, here's some pics of the cafe which featured in the Amelie movie:

What does one do with coins?

A big thing in Europe seems to be to throw coins in water - fountains, wells, puddles on the ground, etc. I'm sure I've seen this in Australia too, but not to the same extent as in Europe. I've also noticed people throwing coins over their left shoulder with their right hand. And I have even seen a hole (without any water) with coins at the bottom of it?!?

I'm pretty sure this is supposed to generate some sort of luck for the coin throwers. But does anyone know what sort of luck? And how this tradition all started?!?!

(P.S. For those of you living in Europe now, I was thinking that if you put a bucket of water outside your residence it might be a way of generating some extra money. If it works let me know. And you'll need to send me a percentage of your earnings since it was my idea! ;)

Something you don't see in Australia (2)

In Berlin, and I also saw it in Rome, they are building a new U-Bahn - aka Metro, aka Tube - line. That is they are building an entirely new tunnel under the city plus digging out underground stations too. In Australia you would be shot for such behaviour.

The Liberals had ads which pointed out at the last election that Labour wasted money by building high-speed train links to regional Victoria! This was intended to be shown as an obviously ridiculous thing to do!

Even the now-promised "new" South Morang line is on a line and station that already exists (was closed in the 50s according to Wikipedia), and just needs to be renovated, modern signalling added and electrified. And basically they won't even do that.

*sigh*

Something you don't see in Australia (1)

Walking over to the bakery near Jack's place in Berlin, and suddenly I almost fell flat on my face. I look back to what I slipped on, and all I can see is a little puddle (like when its almost gone - its just damp, no reflection etc,...). Thinks to myself "that puddle must have been a bit slimey, because it was damn slippery.

The more perceptive of you (and more perceptive than me) will have worked out that the puddle wasn't slimey, it was Ice. On the street, in an otherwise civilised city. And no sign of anyone having spilled a drink or dropped an ice-bag.

This is just an abomination against the natural order of things (in Australia).

(side-note: the fact that the maximum temperature forcast for today was 0 didn't even register with me)

A day at the beach.

Den Haag (The Netherlands)

Look what Greg did!!!

Oops. (Ancient City in Rome - thoroughly recommended but now ruined ;)

House of Music - highly recommended.

We'd read that the House of Music (Haus der Musik) was a fantastic place to visit, so we decided to give it a go. And we ended up spending 3 hours in there!! Though I suggest if you have a free day in Vienna then allow a whole day for the House of Music, because there was heaps more to see and do but we didn't have time!! It had a lot of history of musicians and music, which was really interesting after being immersed in religion for the previous few weeks. But it also had a lot of interactive activities, which were really fun! We conducted the Vienna Philharmonic from a virtual conductor’s podium (and i don't think we were very good at it because the orchestra shouted at us in German! They were probably saying "You suck - keep your day job!"). We composed our own Waltz, with the use of dice. And composed other music while we were there (using bodily sounds and other noises. We think it'll be a hit!). We also learnt heaps about music! All in a fun, interactive way! I wish that we had a spare day to go back and complete the museum.

The only weird.. but also very good.. thing was that it was almost completely empty. It is a massive place and we only saw people very occasionally. This meant we could spend as long as we wanted on the interactive stuff. And at times i felt like we were the only two people left on earth, as we wondered from room to room to room not seeing a single sole. It's probably because it's Winter time, but also because it is open every day from 10am to 10pm.

I also recommend looking at their website, which has a lot of fun, interactive features. (Go to the interactive bit.)

The only thing I want to know is.. why don't we have a place like that??? From an educators point of view it was so clever and engaging and would be a fantastic place to take kids! And for adults it's just as interesting and engaging and fun. I want one in Melbourne!