I'm Taking Europe With Me

Ack! It's the last weekday before I leave! Have done so little in the last month. That's a lie - I've done a lot, but I'm a curious mix of painstaking planner and distractable flibbertigibbet, so I've researched everything, but not much has actually happened. And now I'm packing up my room and there's a lot more to do than I thought. Thank God I don't have to move anything to a storage. My brother is just moving into my room, so I can shove everything into the cupboard. Woo!

I thought I'd better check that I can use my credit-debit card overseas. It turns out I can - for an outrageous fee! It would cost me five dollars plus a two per cent conversion fee for each transaction. Ouch. It turns out my bank have only recently realised that this is insane - it's as though globalisation never happened - and launched a product that will now only cost me three dollars per transaction with no conversion fee. It's been getting product placement in all of my recent conversations, so sorry if I've raved to you about it.

I was looking forward to a very quiet last week in Sydney, but it has been madness. I've caught up with friends for nearly every meal and have been ricocheting between banks, camping stores, solicitors offices, bars and cafes. It's been exhausting but so much fun.

But how ridiculous is this? I haven't even left the country yet and I'm onto my third blog post. So here's my rought itinerary (the elastic nature of it is driving my worry-wart mother insane):

Aug. 3: Land in Amsterdam, Holland, and stay with one of my dearest friends for a week or two, visiting Rotterdam and The Hague while I'm in the country.
Aug. 14(-ish): Head over the border and visit a high school friend living in Hanover, Germany.
Aug. 17: Maybe Berlin, Germany?
Aug. 25: Head up to Sweden. I'm really excited to see Stockholm. I realised only recently that many of my favourite bands and authors are Swedish, so I'm interested to see the environment that created them.
Sep. 1: Cross the bridge to Denmark, where I'll be staying with a friend of a friend in Copenhagen. I'm going to see the Knife's electro-opera about Charles Darwin (double-yoo-tee-eff, right?) and then head over to Aarhus.
Sep. 8: Come back through, and maybe stop off at Munich or similar on my way to Poland. I'm very much looking forward to seeing Auschwitz, Krakow and Warsaw. I always imagined Poland to be a country full of haybales and hicks, but I then did a bit of research and discovered that Poland is a beautiful country, and I'm maybe a bit racist.
Sep. 15: Head over to Paris, France to visit a uni friend before finally arriving in London, England, where I'll look for a home and a job, and see many amazing bands.

And then I live happily ever after.