Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Date: 02 January 2008 17:55:40

First on my Christmas/New Year trip was my volunteer friend in Stuttgart. The overnight bus from Den Haag wasn't that bad at all and I even befriended the Dutch man next to me who gave me his pillow. I found out when I got to Stuttgart that my friend didn't actually live there but a village about 35 minutes drive away but she still turned up at 6am to pick me up.

This is the little village where my friend lived:

Something that amused me here was the pedantic firewood piles:

I had 4 days of fantastic German hospitality. The family made sure that I ate at least one traditional German dish each day. As part of their hospitality, I had three trips to different Christmas markets. They got quite busy but were very beautiful at night:

I also saw some beautiful castles (that's me on the steps):

I was there up until the 21st of December. They had bought the Christmas tree but we were delayed in decorating it because the father had put it in a bucket of water and it had frozen! It was fun getting prepared for a traditional Christmas and I even managed to fit in a bus tour of Stuttgart during my stay.

From there I flew to Bergamo and made my way to Lake Como to spend Christmas with my extended family. This was the view from my bedroom over the lake to the snow-capped mountains:

It was such a beautiful place and it was lovely to spend Christmas with such generous and lovely people. The village where we were staying had a nativity scene near the local church. We were lucky enough to be standing there when we witnessed the 'coming of Jesus':

We did some beautiful walks along the lake:

Christmas lunch was at a local restaurant and involved many, many courses. There was a ham platter, then chicken, then turkey (or was it the other way around?), then sorbet, then another meat course and then dessert. There possibly could have been another course.... It was all very lovely.

We eventually recovered from Christmas lunch and made our way to the local church for midnight mass. Some of the parts were in Latin so I understood them but the rest was in Italian so I was quite relieved that the sermon was short and all in all, the service only went for 50 minutes. It was followed by a fantastic brass band, mulled wine and panettone.

On one of the days, some of us did a trip to St Moritz (Switzerland) and it was in stark contrast to Ghana. There were people that seemed to be more interested in shopping at Pierre Cardin than in skiing. There were many people walking around in fur coats with their Louis Vitton bags and their little dogs in outfits. We ventured out onto a frozen lake and watched people walk out in the fur coats to have a cigarette.

After Lake Como, we had a few days in Milan. From here, we did a day trip to Pavia. The town has fantastic pebble walkways:

and some quite interesting, very tall, watch-towers:

We then spent a bit of time in Bergamo before I made my way to the airport. It was New Years Day so everything seemed to be closed. I am loathed to admit it but we lined up with other people at McDonalds to wait for it to open at 12.15 just so we could have something to eat and drink and somewhere to go to the toilet. I made my way up to the old town before going to the airport. I came across the most beautiful church I have seen in my travels. Its decoration inside was stunning. It had floor to roof tapestries around the walls and gold-lined paintings on the roof. I hope this photograph gives some idea of what it was like:

I then flew to the UK. There were no metros or buses running in Newcastle on New Years Day so I managed to share a taxi with some people to central station. I then had to wait for over an hour for a delayed train but the conductor said I didn't have to pay for my ticket so that was good. I am now safely in Berwick and will probably remain here until I return to Australia.