STUTTGART - GERMANY

stuttgart has great memories for myself. football fans would remember stuttgart is where australia drew to croatia which took us to the next stage of the 2006 world cup. also the comical graeme poll 3 yellow card incident.

i have a good friend christina that lives here. she stayed with us in 2005 in adelaide and me and the boys stayed with her in 2006, so i thought on my way to prague il come visit her for a couple of nights.

it was a good chance to relax as its been all go since i have left. during the days i just relaxed watching tv, reading and sleeping which is exactly wat i wanted. i have already seen a lot of stuttgart last time i was here so i wasnt interested in goin into town.

1st night christina had friends over for dinner n drinks to celebrate finishing uni. it was a good night with a german meal of steamed würsswurst, pretzels n warm salad and wheat beer. 3/4 of the conversation was in german and i had no idea wat they where talking about but it was fun.
2nd night i cooked tea. exactly the same but bbq würsswurst, cold salad and grilled bread. we went to christina's uni for drinks. thursday night is their party night. it was another good night with good german beer.

auf wiedersehen

LUXEMBOURG CITY - LUXEMBOURG

luxembourg is the 3rd smallest country in europe with only 500,000 people. it usually gets missed by tourist as its main visitors are there for work. it is well known for banking and is part home for the european union. so i thought i'ld check it out.

i went to go for a walk 1st day and it took me an hour to work out what everything meant. there is no english signs and to make it even more confusing some signs are german, some are french and some are luxembourgese. luckily for me i cant speak any. eventually i was away walking around like i was from luxembourg myself. cutting thru side alleys, under bridges, across glorious parks.

luxembourg is nice, not to busy and has a lot of history. being in between germany and france you can imagine the crossfire and attempts to take over luxembourg. luxembourg people are very proud to be an independant counrty.

i checked out the casemates, which are tunnels below a fortified castle that was built in 900's and gradually got bigger and bigger. the defence walls and moats ran 25km and tunnels were used to protect families and soldiers. in the 1980's when netraulity was declared between european nations they decided to demolished the walls and tunnels. however a stretch of over 2km could not been brought down and now is a tourist attraction. pretty interesting.

i also checked out the notre dame cathedral and other sights. luxembourg has plenty of greenery and has a valley thru the middle of the town. overall luxembourg is a plesent city and was worth seeing.

ROCKWERCHTER, LEUVEN - BELGIUM

rockwerchter is Belgium's main music festival.
it is over 4nights with the choice of camping or single day trips. i chose the 4night camping tickets.
as i had been to rockwerchter in '06 for just a day i was pretty amped to get bak there and take in the whole festival.

it has a simple set up with one main stage and a marque, similar to the falls festival set up. it gets around 50,000 people and the line up is wat makes it so impressive. as well as how good it is run. no queues for beer, food or toilets and definately the cleanest festival toilets i have used.

now for the people. like all festivals everyone is in good spirits and are friendly. the language barrier wasnt to bad, even tho everything was in german and flemish most campers obviously spoke english coz it was english music being played. i ended meeting great people again, my main crew were from ireland and brisbane. so many aussies travel.

now for the music. awesome line up with bands gettin at least an hour set each. overall it was another awesome festival that i recommend highly to anyone in europe over the first weekend of july.

i ended up seein jay-z, glasto's headliners who got good reviews so i thought ild give him ago. he has 99problems and i saw them all of them in his music. he plays other artist music and ruins them by talkin over the top. worst part of the festival was wen he used ac/dc. also radiohead bored me again.

my favourites bands were:
nêil young - the legend himself, played for 2hours.
kings of leon - cemented their spot as my favourite band along with pearl jam n muse
ben harper and the innocent criminals - didnt dissapoint
john butler trio - i take them for granted being from oz but they were amazing
chemical brothers - have to close BDO on the main stage next year not boiler room
hives, mark ronson, mgmt, beck, rem the list goes on.....

bring on rockwerchter 2009! who's comin with me?

AMSTERDAM - THE NETHERLANDS

its the start of europe part of my oversea's trip.
first stop amsterdam for a night.

that is all.

GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL @ WORTHY FARM, ENGLAND - UK

GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL! one of if not the best festival in the world.

over more than 1000 performing artist over 20 venues. 140,000 punters and 35,000 crew, staff n performers. its glasto baby!

i headed to glastonbury from liverpool on my own. i met 2 sound girls on the coach ended up bein my glasto buddys. sabrina a.k.a knackers and maria a.k.a bucky.

knackers knew some other peeps that we camped with so we had a strong gathering of 12ish. got their on the wednesday to set up with the festival not officially starting til friday. in saying that their was plenty of smaller stages with bands and bars open for wed n thurs. thursday night cut copy played!

by friday i was well into glasto mode and couldnt wait for it to explode. glasto over the last 5 or more years has had constant rain. it is a must to bring wellies. however we only had one night of rain. it still called for wellies for the next 2 days as mud is everywhere.

its sort of hard to explain how good glasto, u sort of hav to c it to understand. theres so much goin on away from the 9 main stages that u get caught wandering.

the diverse range of music is amazing. from older music in neil diamond, shankin stevens,to commercial music of jay-z, amy whinehouse, john mayer to dance legends groove armada, fat boy slim it just blows u away. its impossible to attend and not find something that u will love.

i randomly ran into heap of people from adelaide on the satday. great group that i ended up hanging with for a fair bit of glasto. it would hav been great to go with my mates, especially my falls crew but in saying that wen ya got 140,000 punters at festival u meet some awesome people.

representing australia was midnight juggernaughts, hilltop hoods, crowded house, hoodoo gurus, presets, cut copy and operator please( operator were so good!)

anyway il leave ya's with my favourite acts of glastonbury 2008.
kings of leon - repeat of falls
crowded house - legends
eric bibbs - bibbsy, say no more
mgmt - the newest best thing i have seen
battles - nothin sounds like em
the presets - rocked disco lounge
editors - solid
last shadow puppets - alex turner from artics with special geust jack white

cant wait for glasto 2009! who is comin with me?!

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - USA

las vegas with 9 lads! it doesnt get bigger than this. it was life changing for the better. but as u can imaging like a footy trip wat happens in vegas stays in vegas.

well most of it.

the reason for the vegas trip was for Guido's 30th. to join him to celebrate was myself, kinta, weeman, marky, sharpey, scotty, macca and the suprise of huss.
we stayed at new york new york, which we all were happy with. it had a rollercoaster on it,outside pool, coyote ugly bar plus a heap of other bars.

a few highlights are:
headin to hooters on guido's actual bday then coyote ugly bar.
saw pene & teller (magicians) at rio followed by the rooftop bar overlooking vegas drinking fishbowls.
hellicopter past hoover damm to the floor of the grand canyon for a champagne lunch.
balagio water feature show.

apart from that peeps i cant go into any more details, all i have to say is go to vegas!

TIJUANA - MEXICO

we headed to the border of mexico, only 30 mins from the luxury of san diego.
crossing the border was weird, a turnstile and a policeman that was sleeping. that is it. no checks or nothing. coming bak into america on the otherhand was the opposite.

tijuana has the most murders, rapes n notorious behaviour in the world so to go their was very interesting. like anywhere you have to respect their land but in saying that they still will try to get the best of you. dodgey bastards haha.

on the plus side tijuana is cheap. $1 corona is the goin rate. wen in tijuana u hav to do as the mexicans do. so tequilla shot from the bottles was on the cards.

the strange thing is that i enjoyed it. talkin to local bar staff and street kids comin up to try and sell u bracelets n other little gifts. it reminds u that the difference in people's quality of life is huge. travelling to main cities is nice but it sorta hides the countrys problems. within a half hour i went from the massions and beaches of san diego to the shantys and dirty streets of tijuana. it makes ya appreciate things a little more.

LOS ANGELAS & SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA - USA

the country of stars n stripes is next on my itenary. first stop LA.
the city of angels!

i had accomadation sussed out in santa monica, which in on the west coast. first day was just relaxin after the 11hour flight from the UK. the next day i went on a mammoth walk through santa monica and venice beach, 2 nice beaches with the sun shining.

the second night john girvan a.k.a girv came up fron san diego for a bevie. we just stayed local but it was a funny night taking advantage of naive americans. they all believed i was an animal psychologist over in america to check up on all the kangaroos well being. whether they had enough space, correct diet etc. everyone believed me. girv was over for work to as a dolphin scientoligist. yep, they believed him too.

on thursday day we jumped in girvs convertable and cruised from LA to his gaff in San diego. along the drive we visited venice beach, beverly hills, hollywood, san clamente, oc and malibu. we ended at a local bar to watch the lakers v boston game on tv. they love their basketball!

i found out that girv knows everything about everything which makes him the best tour guide ever. we stayed around san diego friday, with girv explaining the set up. we saw pacific beach-PB, mission beach-MB, ocean beach-OB and mission bay. girv lives at PB.

saturday we headed to torrey pines to watch the golf US open. it was awesome. we set ourselfs at hole 13 and watched a heap of players come through. i had a life sporting memory as tiger miss hit of the tee and the ball landed metres away. being only 5m away on his recovery. also wen i went to the toilet on hole 14, as i came out sonny garcia was waiting to use my cubicle. it was belter of a day that i wont forget to soon.

sunday we went downtown san diego which is known as the gaslamp district. we checked out the padres ground, decent stadium. ended bak in PB to watch game 5 of the laker v boston series. wanted to go the game but the cheapest tickets was $600!

monday we scored tickets to the US open playoff between woods and mediate. another boss day, unfortunately rocco didnt get up, tiger is just a freak. after the golf we went to a batting cage and had a hit at driving range.

not planning on headed to america untill last minute, i was suprised with the seppo's friendliness. they love an aussie! i had a good time in cali especially san diego. thanks tour guide girv.