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Bratislava is a place I had barely heard of when I arrived. I had heard nothing of it’s reputation, good or bad. My ignorance of the place can be summed up when I arrived in the station and didn’t know whether they used Euro or not. They do, as it happens, and everything is amazingly cheap. It was fantastic, beer was €1.20 and I had a two course meal for €3.50. It was only soup, chicken and chips but still. Even fancier meals never broke the 10 Euro mark. I had had a few days on my own between saying goodbye to Andrea and getting to Bratislava where I was being joined by Astrid, my friend who I had visited in Paris, and Sebastian, a German guy who I know from college in Dublin. Astrid was arriving on the 7th like me, and Seb the next day and Astrid wanted to go out for drinks. I should preface this story by saying that Astrid, if you didn’t gather from my Paris post, is a bit mad. She’d deny it down to the ground but the fact is, if she takes you out drinking there’s really no guessing where you will end up.

It’s reputation is as a party town, the home of drunken stag nights. Almost everyone in the hostel was British or French and making full use of the €1.20 beer. Both Astrid and I were the only women in our respective rooms, and hers was so crowded it felt more like a refugee camp than a hostel. Due to phones not working properly and slight miscommunication when I was ready and met her down at the bar, she’d been waiting for around 30 minutes so of course had befriended a crowd of Liverpudlians. We all chatted away for a few hours with beer and then followed them to a club. As friendly as they were, they weren’t actually interested in us particularly and drifted off to dance leaving Astrid and I to fend for ourselves. We was set upon by another trio of Englishmen, with posh accents and leering stares. One chap, after discovering we were staying not only in the same hostel but the same apartment, tried to hit on me by crossing that oh so subtle line between flirting and threatening rape. Something about surprising me in my room after I had gone to sleep. I politely declined and then ran like hell.

We left the club and went out to find some food. It was about 3.30am and a Sunday so everything was closed. Spotting a group of young people across the road walking purposefully Astrid roared at them to ask if they knew where to get food. They replied that they were heading to McDonalds and she gleefully asked if we could come. They agreed. They turned out to be the first actual Slovakians we had met and by far the nicest people I’ve come across my whole trip. The McDonalds they had in mind was closed and after visiting another bar with them, decided to try and find another. After a few more tries it was suggested we try the one 24 hour McDonald open – in the suburbs of Bratislava. Still drunk and very hungry (and really needing to pee) we agreed and followed them on two trams to the location. The main restaurant was closed so we ordered through the drive-thru window. I have a vague memory of making car noises but I’m hoping I dreamt that…

We went into the main shopping centre and discovered the most beautiful thing of all: a 24 hour Tesco! We ran around happily and bought some bread before being told off by a security guard for taking pictures. Apparently it’s illegal to take pictures of a Tesco (I think anyway, he was speaking Slovak, maybe he just didn’t like our 6am Tesco glee). Our new friends ordered a taxi back to town for us and I crawled into bed fully dressed just after 7. I woke up in a completely empty and cleaned room, having not even heard the hoovering. Rape threats and Slovakian McDonalds, just an average night with ms Astrid Soufflay.

One of the things I really notice while travelling are the random cultural differences. Not things like fashion, food or music which of course vary hugely (though not as much as before TV, this trip would be way better with time machine) but the little ones you don’t expect to be different. Like crossing the road. Every country crosses the road differently. In Ireland, my base line for normality, there is a traffic light, and you wait for the green man to cross unless there are no cars in which case you cross whenever you like. Cars always stop for the green man, regardless of pedestrians.

My first stop was Düsseldorf where Ciaran had to explain to me the German way of crossing. There people wait for the green man, whether there are cars or not. It’s quite strange to see drunken partiers waiting patiently for the light at four in the morning in a completely abandoned street. I crossed once without waiting on an empty road and was stared at as if I had 3 heads, even though I was pretty sure I hadn’t. They are an orderly bunch the Germans, don’t you just love when stereotypes are true?

Paris is a bit more risky. You wait for the green man unless you see an opportunity to cross. This isn’t for an empty road, because there are no empty roads, but more of a gap in the traffic. It was a bit frightening and several times the Parisians I was with dashed across the road leaving my stranded waiting for the salvation of the green man.

Italy is another thing altogether. Here the green man is a mere token of road regulations. Not only does nobody wait for the man, but the cars don’t actually stop for it. I don’t know why they even installed traffic lights there, they are seemingly meaningless. The only way to cross here is fling yourself desperately into traffic and hope the cars stop, or set up a new life by the side of the road. When you see a person sleeping on the street it’s impossible to know whether they are a drug addicted hobo or merely cautious. A few years ago I went to Rome with my mum and we had terrible trouble moving around. In the end we adopted a policy of waiting for a local to start crossing and we would cross behind them, trusting that at least if the car didn’t stop, the local’s twisted corpse would slow it a little.

I’m now in Austria and back to the orderly patient crossing, though it’s not quite as strict as Düsseldorf. I think overall I prefer the Germanic way, being hit by cars is overrated.

I was going to write a blog about the city of Bergamo, where I was visiting my friend Andrea, about the beautiful medieval buildings and amazing views, but instead I’m going to talk about the food. I know Italian food was good but I was not prepared for this. I didn’t have single pasta or pizza dish, just traditional northern Italian food. Not only that, but I was fed by a real Italian parents. I didn’t just rent them, it was those of my friend Andrea who was hosting me for the week. It was also the birthday of his little brother so there was a particularly amazing feast on my first day. We had spent the day climbing a mountain in the heat so I was hungry enough to eat my own shoe but even I was defeated by the quantity of food they served me.

The dinner was polenta, sausages and salad. That may not sound so impressive, I’ve had all of these foods before and felt fairly indifferent to them but these were of another class altogether. The tomatoes so incredible I felt I could settle down and have a meaningful relationship with them. I kept helping myself to more whenever I thought no one was looking. When they were all gone Andrea prepared some more and I ate those too. They were better than chocolate.

The other unbeatable culinary experience was the gelato. Oh my god. The gelato. For the second part of my tour of Italy I was in desecano, a village on Lake Garda. On the first night there we went to explore the town and thought we’d walk around while eating some gelato. This plan had to be abandoned however as the ice cream was so delicious it absorbed our complete attention and we almost walked into traffic. It was just incredible. The shop had about 30 different flavours, most of which I’d never heard of at least never knew could be made into ice cream and when the lady behind the counter asked me I panicked slightly and pointed at the first 3 things I saw – Coconut, dark chocolate and Fior de latte which is sort of plain ice cream they don’t have in Ireland. I don’t have the adjectives necessary to describe how tasty they were. If I go back to Italy I won’t bother seeing a single thing besides gelateries and green grocers.

Milan is quite a nice city. Coming from Marseilles, everything seems nice but Milan just has class coming out of it’s arse. Even at the train station I was struck by the difference. There were a lot of my glamorous women walking round, and despite it being full of tired travellers I seemed to be the only one not wearing high heels. Second the minimum withdrawal from ATMs in €50. It’s not that they only have €50 notes – I got my €50 in 10s – but they can’t conceive of someone wanting less than that. I mean, how would you tip your chauffeur? When I was in the Metro staring at the map to try to figure out where to go, a man came up to me and started asking me something in Italian. I interrupted to explain I don’t speak any and he immediately changed to flawless English. He was asking me for money. Even the beggars are classy!

Today, on my only full day in Milan I really wanted to see as much as possible. I picked out 2 things which I thought sounded cool, the Castello Sforzesco and the Duomo. The Castello Sforzesco is an old castle featuring about 12 little museums in different parts of the building. I was allowed to enter for free because I’m under 25 which more than made up for the guy I saw vomiting into the fountain outside. My favourite part was their history of musical instruments exhibit. The best one was this:

I don’t know what it was actually called, there was no English but I call it the Guitarp.

After that I headed to the Duomo. I was wearing a sun dress that had bare shoulders so I knew from previous trips to Italy that I would have to cover them up. I had brought a cardigan with me that morning despite the stifling heat for this very purpose so I put it on as I walked up to the cathedral. I walked towards the entrance with confidence but while still about 4 metres away the Duomo guard caught sight of me. He didn’t say a word, he just wagged his finger and glared at my knees. Knees, damn it. Shoulders of the legs. I couldn’t go in. I took of the cardigan and stuffed it into my handbag, defeated. I looked at the outside for a while while I decided what to do and comforted myself with the fact that in the 15 minutes I was there, absolutely no one was allowed to enter.

I looked up what else there was to do in Milan, but most of the travel sites advised shopping for €500 handbags which I felt would ruin having got into a museum for free somewhat so I decided just to wander around for a bit and see what I found. I did find a shopping district but it was all the same boring shops that are all over Europe, the same stock for the same prices. I hate when you feel you could be anywhere. Apart from the ridiculously hot weather I could have been in Dublin. I went back to Castello Sforzesco to walk around the park around the castle and read my book for a while. Milan is very pretty but there’s actually not that much to do there.

I very stupidly decided to spend a night in Turin. Having looked at maps I thought it looked like a decent midpoint between Marseilles and Milan so I went ahead and booked a hostel. Then I went to book a train.

 I was incorrect. While there are several if expensive almost direct trains to Milan from Marseilles, Turin would take four trains and a grand total of 10 hours travel. I whipped out my laptop and logged straight on to Hostelworld to see if I could change my trip but there was nothing else free at such short notice. It was Turin or the streets. At least the trains were free with my Interrail pass.

It was a very cheap day all in all as I made myself lunch and brought it with me. Top travel tip: never carry an open packet of ham in your handbag. You will just end up with an empty packet of ham in your handbag, and some ham in your handbag. It was an all right day, I ended up at some weird stations out in the backwaters of southern France but I read my book, listened to music, played computer games.

In Turin I had terrible trouble finding the hostel. I was relying on my phone with google maps for directions which ran out of power as I got off the bus. I wandered up and down a long street for about an hour, in 27 degrees and my rucksack on my back. Eventually I found a bus stop with a map and found the right place.

The hostel was quite strange. It was very big and eerily quiet. The kept asking for more and more documentation to check in, and kept shoving pieces of paper at me to sign. I’m pretty sure I gave one of the power of attorney. I went to my room which had four beds but nobody else arrived. It was very clean, but that just added to the strange atmosphere. It felt like I’d maybe checked myself into a mental asylum. I was hungry but discovered it had no kitchen. It was 9pm and it was so far from the civilization that there was no possibility of buying anything else. I just went to bed.

I had opted to pay €2.50 extra for the breakfast. I hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before and I was absolutely starving at this point, so I was a bit disappointed when I found that this breakfast was cereal. There was a very loud Italian lady serving coffee who would bellow across the room when asking what you wanted. I asked for a coffee. She shouted “coffee?” Yes, I replied at normal levels, some coffee please. “black coffee?” she roared. I nodded. She handed it over, rattling the windows with her wishes of a good breakfast. I approached the cereal. There were no bowls. Nor were there spoons. I retraced my steps, had I missed them when I got my coffee cup and tea spoon? No, nothing there. Just some flimsy plastic cups for orange juice. I sat down and pondered the situation while attempting to make my coffee drinkable. Should I ask the lady about the bowls? She might compromise the foundations of the building if given a question to answer. Some other people approached the cereal problem. They poured the cereal into the plastic party cups and ate them with the teaspoon.

 I decided to check out early.

The hostel didn’t have anywhere to store my bag and I was so tired and bewildered by the whole city that I decided to go to Milan without seeing a single thing in Turin apart from the hostel.

It was amazingly hot so I decided to wear shorts for the first time on the trip. It’s been a very long time since I’ve worn shorts, mostly because I’m from Ireland and it would be silly. Shorts give out a very strong message. In most places the message is: ‘its fucking hot’. In Ireland, because of the general state of the weather, the message is ‘I’m fucking hot’. It’s not something I would risk. I wore the shorts but I was a bit edgy about confronting the world with my thighs, made worse by a middle aged man staring fixedly at me on the bus. I was getting very nervous that I was committing a massive tourist faux pas and scandalising the nation when I looked back and realised he was actually staring at my tits. He was just a bog standard pervert, hooray! On to Milan.

Wow, Marseilles, where to start? There is so much to say about this city, but how to put it into words… It’s shit. There we go.

I know it says more about my sheltered life than Marseilles itself but this is the worst place I’ve ever been. And I grew up in Limerick. It’s incredibly run down. It is the oldest city in France, built in 600BC and I don’t think they’ve cleaned it since. The city has a strange vibe, with buildings that may have been pretty at one point but have been left to rot. Think Nice, if Nice had been run by a Romanian dictator for 30 years. The streets are filthy, rubbish and mysterious pools of dirt litter the paths. One street I found was covered in squashed olives, I don’t know why. I imagine they will be left until they also rot into mysterious stains, disappearing amongst the general decay.

I have also never seen so many homeless people before in my life. They are everywhere, it’s incredible. There seems to be as many homeless as homed. It’s terrifying trying to use an ATM as there are at least 3 people surrounding it, bellowing demands for money. My defence so far has been to say I don’t speak French and running away, or pretending my headphones have some sort of vagrant filter and ignoring them. One woman sent her toddler up to me to beg. I would have had more sympathy if she hadn’t been several feet behind him shouting at me. Earlier today I turned up a street and turned straight back out as there was a homeless man taking his trousers off in it. Next to a café. Strange people stalk the streets, and nobody feels safe. It’s like a zombie apocalypse, if Zombies were very aggressive homeless people.

To get out of the city as much as anything else, I took a boat to the Ile D’If, a small island where an old fortress turned prison is situated.

The Château D’If was made famous by The Count of Monte Cristo as the place Dante was imprisoned. The place really plays this up, it’s really the only thing it’s got going for it. They stretch it a bit far though, the inside is covered with things about the book, and signs over the cells saying things like “Edmund Dantes cell” and “This is where Dante went”.

No he didn’t. He’s fictional.

Oh look, it’s the tunnel that Abbé Faria dug to escape… no, wait, he never existed. The tourist board dug that.

It was a bit expensive for what it was, €10 for the boat and €5 for the Château which really is a cheat as it’s the only thing on the island so you have to pay it. There isn’t even a sodding café. I was waiting for the boat back within an hour. The views are beautiful and the boat ride was fun, but it wasn’t really worth it.

It’s very difficult to find anything here. It took me 20 minutes to find a shop in the centre that was selling bottles of water, and after half an hour unsuccessfully searching for a supermarket I eventually had to come pack to the hostel to ask where I could find one. On the other hand, shops selling very cheap and poorly made shoes are plentiful. On some streets that’s all there is. To break it up there is the odd poorly made-clothes shop. I saw a skirt for 3 Euro. It had stains. I didn’t try it on.

The only nice thing is the weather, which was perfect. Completely blue skies, hot without being stuffy and cool breezes. It’s just a shame I was enjoying it in Marseilles. It’s the only city in the world where I would advise you to look directly at he sun.