Simon Rumble’s blog

We went out to the Tallinn Beer Festival last night. Lots of fun and we had some interesting beers. My favourite was the incredibly cloudy one from Saareema. It makes Coopers look clear!

It's been really hot here in Tallinn. 33 degrees today and 34 forecast for tomorrow. It's been great staying in Olga's flat though, able to spend lots of time relaxing and doing bugger all.

Tomorrow we're off to Parnu down in the South of Estonia. Apparently it's something of an Ibiza on the Baltic. Should be fun, though staying in a tent when it's forecast to be 34 degrees could be interesting.

I've uploaded a bunch of new photos. Our camera broke when we were in Berlin, so we used a disposable film camera for Germany. I've had one of those developed and you can see those photos. We bought a new digital camera yesterday. Our budget was limited but it seems to be okay. You can see the results in the Estonia folder. Photos are here.

We're currently in Tallinn, Estonia, staying in our friend Olga's flat about ten minutes' walk from the old city. It's a lovely city which retains its timbered old houses and towering church spires. Having a flat to ourselves is particularly nice after all this time on the road, and a high-speed Internet connection to boot.

Olga's parents took us around the city for some sightseeing, to see the beaches and an old convent as well as spectacular views of the old city. We spent a day at home doing bugger all, which was necessary to help us recover from the last month of madness.

Today we're going to the beer festival, billed as Scandinavia's biggest. Should be loads of fun!

On Sunday we're heading off to the island of Saaremaa for a couple of days' camping before heading South into Latvia.

So Roskilde finished last Sunday and what a great festival! We saw some amazing bands and the weather was fantastic. Hot and sunny the whole weekend. It was great to catch up with Justine, Jenny and Beth; and we met a lovely German lad called Tobi who ended up camping with us.

Sigur Ros played their usual dreamy, ecstatic music. Radio Soulwax mixed newer techno with old classics in their inimitable style. Axl Rose's Guns n Roses cover band (innacurately billed as "Guns N Roses") was crap: coming out one hour late doesn't cut it at a festival where there are ample other attractions. We gave up and went to see Sigur Ros instead.

New Zealand's Fat Freddys Drop was fantastic, getting the crowd moving with their funked up reggae stylings. Bob Dylan was worth seeing, though the guy is getting a little old for this kind of thing.

Bellowhead played excellent, crowd-friendly British folk music. Orange Blossom is a French band playing hip hop infused North African music, and were loads of fun in the midday heat. Two Gallants were really amazing, with incredibly powerful vocals telling dark stories in like Johnny Cash with rockier tempo. George Clinton was amazing, with at least 25 people in his entourage tearing the roof off the sucker.

On the final day, Wolfmother jammed one of the smaller tents with their Ozzy Osbourne styles. Goldfrapp disappointed by cancelling at the last moment. Franz Ferdinand, as expected, played a storming, ridiculously tight set filling the main stage with their slick sound. Roger Waters playing Dark Side of the Moon was a great nostalgia trip, though sitting through his solo work was a bit tedious.

One feature of Roskilde that I could live without was the toilet facilities. Toilets are never a high point at an outdoor festival, but these Scandinavians seem to think pissing anywhere is normal. The main feature of the festival was the smell off piss. Could definitely improve here!

So we're at Roskilde Festival in Denmark. There's some time before the first band I wanna see (Four Tet) and they have Internet, so...

We spent a couple of days in Hamburg, staying in a hotel even. Nice to have our own space and shower. Hamburg was pretty cool. The model train museum was a real highlight. It's enormous and incredibly detailed. Crazy shit. Then we hopped the train to Roskilde.

It's odd being at a big festival after three months of travel. Normally we'd be really hyped up about it, emailing all the other people going and working it out, looking at the lineup and getting excited. So it's a bit different when we've already been on holidays.

It's a great festival! The lineup is incredible and the Northern European crowd is very much up for it. No hanging back being cool, they dive right in and dance away to all the bands. Good fun.

The highlight for me so far was Fat Freddies Drop from New Zealand. They tore the roof off the tent and played a blinding set. There's also a silent disco, where everyone wears headphones to listen to the same DJ set. They're playing cheesy 80s stuff, so of course we sing along to every tune while the kids wonder what all this old fogie music is about.

After the festival we spend a night in Malmo, then fly to Talinn where we'll stay in the wonderful Olga's flat and go to the beer festival. Woo!

Hey folks. Well wasn't that the most disappointing end to our World Cup campaign? Knocked out by a dodgy penalty when we'd been the better team on the pitch for the full 90 minutes! Well, we certainly were upset but I guess we'll be back stronger than ever in South Africa.

We're now in Hamburg after a fantastic week travelling with Scott, Katie and Aidan around Southern Germany.

We met up with the crew in Munich where a friend of Scott's owns a flat. So we had our own pad and spent a few days drinking giant 1L beers, eating loads of pig and hanging out. The fan fest near the Olympic Stadium for the big game with Brazil was loads of fun, and the Brazilians were gracious in victory. Lots of fun, those guys.

The following day we had a swim in the English Garden which has this amazing fast-flowing river. You jump in and in seconds you're carried downstream. Very exciting and the water is freezing, so just what we needed on a hot day.

We did a day trip out to Fussen, home of the classic fairytale castle, Neuschwanstein which was every bit as fabulous as you'd expect. Being stinking hot, we then had a swim in Germany's deepest lake. Very refreshing.

Next was Stuttgart where we also hooked up with John and Anne. They, lucky buggers, had tickets to the game against Croatia. We weren't so lucky and had to make do with the fan fest. Still, what an exciting game! We were all hoarse for the next few days from all our screaming. Amazing stuff!

Next stop was Heidelberg, camping on a cable water skiing lake. Nice place and nice swimming. Then Trier, an old town on the Moselle, camping in a nice little place. Scott even swam in the river. Brave man!

We meandered along the Moselle and camped in another place further downstream. It's a gorgeous river.

Finally we ended up in Cologne. Sadly Australia was robbed at the match, which we watched in a little bar near the giant cathedral. Here we parted ways with Scott, Katie and Aidan. They're back in London now and we hopped the train to Hamburg.

No photos yet, as our digital camera is broken. Waiting to get our photos developed and for Scott's photos.

Next stop, on Thursday, is Roskilde Festival in Denmark with Jenny, Beth and Justine. Can't wait! Bob Dylan!

We're back in Munich. Our train trip down to Berchtesgaden passed through and I needed to get my glasses fixed, so we stopped off for a couple of hours on the way through.

Berchtesgaden was fantastic. It's located in a little strip in the corner of Bavaria that pokes out into Austria. Our camp site was gorgeous, surrounded by high mountain peaks still dusted with snow. Despite the snow, it's been damn hot: 26-28 degrees. Nice weather. We spent a day in Berchtesgaden lazing beside the enormous Lake Konigsee. The next day we went down to Dokumentation Obersalzberg, a museum chronicling the Nazi era of Germany's history.

Then we went up to the Kehlsteinhaus, known in English as the Eagle's Nest. It's Hitler's mountain-top chalet, which you've probably seen in Eva Braun's home movies in documentaries and the like. You reach it by a 20 minute bus ride going right up the side of the mountain, with incredible and scary views down either side. Then it's a brass-panelled elevator to the peak and incredible views all the way into Austria to Salzburg. Brilliant!

Between this and all the stuff we saw in Berlin, I think we're pretty much WWIIed out, so we won't be mentioning the war. I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it!

Speaking of wars, we went to see the Germany vs Poland game in Berchtesgaden's public viewing area. It was always going to be a grudge match, this one, but I think the souvenir sellers could do with learning some historical sensitivity. A few of the guys were wearing little plastic helmets in the shape of WWI-era hun helmets, with the colours of the (modern) German flag. Not exactly appropriate when playing the country that has always borne the brunt of German expansionism.

So now we're in Munich. Lovely city with fantastic beer. We're finally seeing lots of Aussie fans, as opposed to the bandwagon-jumping Brazilian shirt wearers you see everywhere (and who are invariably not Brazilian. We're meeting up with Scott, Katie and Aidan who have driven across from London. We'll see the Brazil vs Australia match on Sunday, then drive around Southern Germany until the next match in Stuttgart.

No, we don't have tickets to any matches. Those have all been taken by bloody sponsors who don't bother turning up. Bastards! Still, the atmosphere in the fan fests has been pretty amazing so far, and I'm sure between Australians and Brazilians we can have a pretty wild time!

That's all for now. No photos just yet, as our camera has gone on the fritz again. We've got a little disposable camera and are planning to buy a new digital. Any suggestions? We want ultra-compact 4MP or more and taking SD cards.

We won! Well the vibe wasn't exactly pumping here in Bamberg. I think we're the only Aussies in town, though the Poms in the Irish pub with us were celebrating with us. What a game. I felt like I'd run the whole 90 minutes with the team, it was that nerve wracking.

So I've beena bit slack with the blogging since Berlin. We've been to Aachen, where we watched the opening game in a pub with locals. Then we visited Cologne to see the England vs Paraguay in the Fan Fest area. Lots of fun and beautiful weather for it all. After a few days in Aachen, we headed yesterday to Bamberg, a lovely little town in the North of Bavaria.

Here in Bamberg we're camping next to the river in a very peaceful place. Really nice place to chill out and enjoy ourselves. A big mobile home next to us houses a bunch of Trinidad fans and a couple of English fans escaping the excesses of their countrymates are nearby.

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We arrived in Berlin on Friday night and have been loving it! It's such a buzzing town with so much on, particularly with the World Cup coming to town. So far we've wandered around the main sights, seen the Stasi Museum, saw a great Chilean band in a squat and been to an outdoor parade. Quite a lot to pack into a couple of days!

I think we're going to love Germany. Cheap food and cheap, great beer makes quite a change from expensive food and expensive, crap beer in Spain and Italy. €0.89 for a bottle of Erdinger, and 15c of that is the deposit on the bottle!

We've finally found a cheap Internet cafe -- €1! -- so I've uploaded all our photos to date. Rome still needs to be trimmed, but the rest are well edited. So go and check out Villa Adriana, Capri, Pompei, Alberobello and Berlin. In particular, check out the sausage vendor in the Berlin folder!

Those photos are here.

We've spent the last three nights camping in Alberobello, home of all these cute little "Trulli" houses which are cone-shaped limestone roofs. Quite nice. This is down in South-East Italy, the heel of the boot.

During our stay we met a few Aussies from Perth in the campsite. One was cycling around Italy on quite a trek. The other two were campervanning around Europe. We made a rather excellent discovery of a €1.65 bottle of local Puglian wine that was quite drinkable. Yummy!

We're back in Bari for our flight to Germany. Can't wait for some tasty German beer and sausages. We meet up with Scott, Katie and Aidan in Munich on the 16th for some Aussie World Cup madness. We'll be the ones outside the stadium in the Eureka Stockade flag t-shirts, if you're looking for us on the telly!

Hi folks. We're currently down in Southern Italy, staying in a caravan park near Sorrento. We had a fantastic time in Rome, seeing all the major sights and staying in a pretty fun hostel (but for the rich American trust fund college kids).

We've been somewhat incommunicado down at the camp site because there's minimal mobile coverage and Internet access is 3 Euro/15 minutes! Been great to get some beach time in, swimming every day and we're both very brown. We went out to the island of Capri one day, though unfortunately we couldn't go into the blue grotto.

Tomorrow we're off to the other side of the boot for a few more days, then we fly from Bari to Frankfurt to start the German part of our trip.

Good to see we beat Greece in the latest friendly. That bodes well for us beating Brazil.