Simon Rumble’s blog

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.

We arrived in Rome yesterday and it's fantastic finally seeing the place. It's just completely jammed with Old Shit (and tourists), you can't wander around without running into something incredibly old. Loads of fun!

Today we went to the Colosseum, Forum and Paladine. Pretty warm day for those of us used to London, so we were pretty exhausted by the end of it. Not helped by the girl in our dorm room coughing all night.

The hostel has free Internet so I've uploaded all our remaining photos of Florence and Sienna, as well as today's (as yet unedited) photos from Rome. See them at http://rumble.smugmug.com/

We've finally found a reasonably priced Internet cafe that lets us plug in our camera, so there's now photos from Granada, San Jose, Valencia, Peniscola, Como and the first pics from Florence. See them at my photo gallery.

So we're in Florence and it's just beautiful! Doesn't look like we'll get to see the Uffizi Gallery as we didn't get our shit together and book tickets in advance. Might head off to Sienna tomorrow for a day trip.

We left Barcelona yesterday and flew into Milan in Italy. We're now in a hostel beside lovely Lake Como. We just got back from a boat ride up the lake to Bellagio. Great place! Tomorrow we're off to Milan for the day, then Florence the following day.

I've finally found an Internet cafe where I can upload photos, so stay tuned to the photo site for the latest.

Well I guess it had to happen at some point. I got pickpocketed in Barcelona a couple of days ago. We had just arrived in town, with our huge backpacks on the metro. Classic tactics, they saw my wallet come out to buy the tickets and followed us. Then the diversion while an accomplice dips into my pocket (which I though secure, evidently not) and they're off at the next stop.

Not a huge problem, though I resent being involved in forced wealth redistribution. Shittybank, amazingly, have been very good about replacement card. Should be in Florence by the time we get there. For now we're using Holly's card.

As you might imagine, we're spending a fair amount of time sitting around either waiting for transport or travelling. There's also the inevitable nights when it's raining or cold and we want to sit in a cafe and chill out. Ploughing through English language books is one option, but finding enough books to keep the engine running is expensive and difficult.

So anyone got any tips for good two player card games? I bought Holly a book of card games for her birthday, but most require either more than one deck of cards or more players. We've almost played out Rummy...