Bye Newcastle

Castles & Cathedrals

I've been told that we need to limit the amount of castles and cathedrals we visit on our trip or we'll quickly get sick of them. So far, I've marked a few, but I'd love any suggestions for the must-visit castles and cathedrals of Europe.

Castles:

• Conwy, Wales
• Edinburgh, Scotland
• Chateau de Bonaguil, France
• Neuschwanstein, Bavaria, Germany
• Cheimsee, Austria/Germany border

Cathedrals:

• St Pauls, London
• Westminster Abbey, London
• Salisbury, England
• York Minster, England
• Canterbury, England
• Rouen, France
• Pisa, Italy
• St Peter's, Vatican
• Pantheon, Rome
• Siena, Italy
• Notre Dame, Paris
• Chatres, France (from @philhenley)
• Notre Dame, Paris
• Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, Spain (suggested by my hairdresser)

If I've missed something ridiculously good, comment below.

Preparing to leave

Due to the fact that we're going away for 4 months and then moving to Sydney soon after, we're currently in the process of moving out of our house as well as preparing for 4 months in Europe.

Essentially, for 4 months, our primary address will be our campervan, which adds serious confusion when it comes to documentation.

As far as the bank, phone company, RTA, tax office and government know, we're living with my parents. I can only imagine what they're saying.

"Gee, these two were optimistic! Married in May, back with the parents by July! Fools! I wonder why they just converted all their money to Pounds and Euros? A desperate attempt to save the rotting husk of their marriage by taking a shot at currency trading! Hapless fools. Oh why did I take a job at the tax office? WHY?."

No offence if you work at the tax office. I'm sure it's very fulfilling.

Last week

It's really quite complicated, planning for 4 months away.

We leave on Friday, and before then we have to make sure all our equipment is working, that we will be able to get Internet once we get there and that we put enough pounds and euros in our account for 4 months of diesel fuel, food and tourist attractions.

I tried to work out how much we'd need based on the Big Mac Index (google it) but apparently The Economist hasn't published it's report yet, besides it doesn't isolate individual EU countries. I somehow doubt that a Big Mac costs the same in Greece or Ireland as it does in Germany at the moment, but cest la vie (it's probably different in France too).

After leaving Australia we need to change currencies 10 times (Australia> South Korea> EU> Britain> EU> Britain> EU> Poland> Czech Republic> EU> Australia). It's going to be complicated.

Also, on a nerdier note, I'm trying to work out how to streamline the checking in process on my iPhone. At the moment, I can check in on Foursquare, Facebook and now Google+. It's going to take a while to do all three. I'd say it's likely that I'll end up doing none of them and just leaving it to the location marker on twitter to let the more paranoid of my family members and stalkier of my friends know where we are. Still, it seems like a problem that could be solved by a canny app developer.

Off to the bank to convert AUD to EUR and GBP. The bank is going to take a substantial amount of money out of that transaction for themselves, but it turns out (after a bit of research) that nothing can be done about that.

Oh. I'm really excited and all that as well.

Things I'll miss

On Friday, I'm leaving for Europe for 4 months.

Things I'll miss about Australia while I'm gone:

• My family
• My friends
• Newcastle
• Australia

Things I won't miss about Australia while I'm gone:

• The carbon tax debate
• "News"papers
• Politicians hijacking #QandA and making it awful
• Commercial talkback radio
• The Laman St fig tree debate
• The Newcastle inner-city rail line debate
• Poll and focus-group driven politics
• Speeches by the leader of any federal political party
• The words: "Most Australians"
• Alan Jones
• People in the media who emulate Alan Jones
• Feasibility studies
• The pokies debate
• The plain packaging debate
• Australian television
• The NBN debate
• Electricity prices
• "I'm not a climate scientist, but..."
• The leader of one coalition saying that another coalition is "illegitimate"
• The idea of two CONSECUTIVE elections
• CityRail
• Level crossings (although I think they have those in Europe too)

Have all that fixed by the time I get back, won't you?