Europe

My inspiration for this trip came from Michael Palin's tremendous travelling series New Europe. He was part of the Monty Python squad, who's Fish-slapping dance is to date my most favourite comedy sketch ever (Michael Palin's the one with the small fish by the way). After his Monty Python Years, he started doing travelling series for the BBC, which took him into the Himalaya, through the Saraha, from Pole To Pole ...
I just finished downloading his complete travelling series collection (excluding the latest one, New Europe), which was about 30GB and took me 2 bloody months. The continuous slow connection was a real pain in the ass, although more for my brother than for me most of the time.
In my final year at school, I had the plan to cycle through Eastern Europe, meeting people in Carpathians and visiting some large bat in Transylvania. That plan gave way for my volunteer service in Ghana and the preceding money earning scheme in London. However, after leaving Ghana early, I decided to make that trip in summer.
After changing the plans many times it will be as follows:
This Monday til Wednesday I'll be in Aachen to sort out some things about my (hopefully) soon to be Uni.
Anyway, on Friday the 3rd the proper adventure starts wit a flight to London. Although I was living there for 8 years, there are still many parts of it I haven't seen yet. So apart from visiting old friends and going to the German school summer festival, I will just walk a lot through London.
Some may think now 'Hang on a minute! Wasn't he just talking about travelling through Eastern Europe?' Well, considering the huge amount of Polish people in London I thought I might as well start there.
To give the general outline of the trip, my journey is devided in two parts:
The first one is a train-based journey (Interrail) alone. Starting in London, I'll go northwards to Scotland, then fly to Oslo and travel through Scandinavia taking in mainly the capitals until I arriva in Helsinki from where I'll go southwards through the Baltic states, Poland and back to Hamburg. My accommodation will be mostly Couchsurfing. For those who don't know, couchsurfing.org is a network where members can sleep on other member's couches for free. The point of it is the cultural exchange, properly getting to know different people from different places. After all the network is global and anyone can be a member. This part will take up July and a little bit of August.
The second part will start near Munich, from where my friend Sandy and I (and my other friend Paul for the first week or so) will drive with Sandy's car with the general direction being southwards. Going through Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, Zagreb, Ljiubljiana and Venice we will end up in Bari, Italy, from where we'll set over to Greece. From Greece, Sandy and I will drive northwards again through the Balkan. Covering Bulgaria, Romania, the Ukraine, southern Poland and the Czech Republic we will end up in eastern Germany. From there we'll possibly head to the west, because he wants to walk through France afterwards and I want to start studying in Aachen in september. The accommodation isn't clear yet. It will probably consist of couchsurfing and sleeping in a tent.
That's the general outline and I'll write about the details once I get there. (Kind of obvious, isn't it?)
I don't know how frequent the posts will be, because I'll be constantly on the move, especially during the second part. Feel free to comment or write a message or email while I'm travelling. I'm always happy to hear that somebody's actually reading this bullshit and I'll try and answer as quickly as I can. And if anyone wants me to put in a good word for him or her when I visit Santa in Finland, I'll gladly do that;)

The story of meeting smaller people

First of all I'd like to explain the title:
Travels Into Several Remote Nations Of The World is the original title for Jonathan Swift's classic 'Gulliver's travels', but since for now I want to travel through Europe and maybe China and Russia next year, I left out the 'Remote' bit. My name's not Gulliver, neither am I gullible, which might have been a recognisable link to Swift's work, so I decided to go for the original name, which might be original but then again not very recognisable...
You might still wonder why I chose to pay my homage to Swift; Well to be honest I read Gulliver's travels after deciding to name my blog this way, and neither have I ever read any other work from Swift. So that still leaves the question: Why the fuck this name?
The clue is in the heading of this post. Being 1.92m is above average but not that tall for a German, but luckily Germany is my homecountry, so my travels will be taking me to places elsewhere. Apart from that I grew up in England where the average height is not that high, which lead to me (just 1.92) being cockey about my height, apart from being self-deprecating:)
Having read the book, I also saw many similarities between his travels and my planned travels.
My main aim, at least on my travels through Europe this summer, will be to get to know lots of different people; see the diversity in the cities I travel through. For that I have thought up a way to record the progress of that goal: I will take an empty book or blog and some pens with me, and I want every person I meet along the way to fill an entire page and on the other page I will put the person's name and photo. Let's see how that works out...
Travelling through Sandinavia, I'll probably even meet some giants and perhaps I'll even talk to a horse...

My new blog

Hello and welcome to my new blog.
This one will be for all my travels from now on (possibly)
If you're interested in my old blog about my volunteer service in Ghana:
eingrawinghana.blogspot.com

I'll start my travels through Europe next week, I'll see how often I'll post...
Have fun