Europe tour Interail 2006 : České Budějovice, a colored city

En français
We needed to take several trains to go from Pula to České Budějovice, we missed our train in Salzburg as one in the previous train was late. We arrived in České Budějovice in the afternoon. It is the largest city of the south Bohemian region in Czech Republic but it is still a quiet place. The houses are all very colorful which makes the city particular, it is also well know for its beer brewed since the 13th century. The city also present different type of architecture form Baroque, Gothic, Renaissance and 19th century period, and all that around the main place.
There are the ruins of a castle some 30 km south in the city of Český Krumlov but the interail pass only allows us to go to places accessible by train so we couldn't see them. That can probably be added to the long list of future destinations.
We take the train to our next destination at 1am, being alone in it allow us to get some well deserved sleep.
Europe tour Interail 2006 : Introduction 
Travel table of content  

Europe tour Interail 2006 : Pula, bath in the adriatic sea

En français
We took our train to Pula at 7.00 am and arrived at the end of the morning. Pula is the largest city in Istria, a region of Croatia which was known by the Romans as the Terra Magica. It's name comes from the Histri an Illyrian tribe that the Romans as pirates. There are several caves near Pula, Lim fjord, Šandalja and Roumald's with archaeological remains from stone age, we didn't have a chance to visit them so we will have to go back in the future.
The first thing we saw in the city was the Pula amphitheater that looks a bit like the Colosseo. We really wanted to go to the sea so I used my Croatian to get direction. That was kinda fun, I just don't speak Croatian so I had trouble understand the answers. We walk to the sea, that was pretty far and took a bath there. Sebastian got stuck by urchin, he probably stepped on them. We started to go back and were almost sure to be late for the train but fortunately the hitch-hacking worked and an someone from Lugano took us back to the city center. We have the time to enjoy ourselves and have a drink before taking the next trains.
Europe tour Interail 2006 : Introduction 
Travel table of content

カードキャプターさくら (Cardcaptor Sakura)

En français

カードキャプターさくら is a anime from Shōjo manga series written and illustrated by Clamp which appear on the screens in 1998. Clamp is a group of people writing mangas who are often adapted into anime. The particularity is that the main characters appear in several series with different life. I really like Clamp's style and I'll try to watch more of their anime and post about them. カードキャプターさくら series contains 70 episodes, divided in 3 seasons.

When she is alone at home, little Sakura hears some noise in her father's library. She decides to go have a look and open the wrong book letting the Clow cards being released in the world, and causing trouble. She becomes a cards hunter to find them all back. Of course she has friends to help her :

Tomoyo, her best friend who always wanted to film her, recording all her adventure with the capture of the cards and providing different outfit. I like the fact that the characters in this anime are changing outfits, in a lot of anime I have seen so far that wasn't the case.
Xiaolan, the chinese transfered student who is also capturing cards.

Kerochan (real name Cerberus)  kind of Sakura's pet who appeared when the Clow card got released. (I also have my Kerochan) Kerochan has his own section during the first episodes to explain about Sakura's outfit of the day.
Some more helpers appear during the episodes.
Cinema, Manga, Animation Content

Europe tour Interail 2006 : Ljubljana and the curious bridges

En français
Going away from Roma was just a little more comfortable than going there. We arrived in Ljubljana in the morning after changing train in Venezia. Ljubljana is the main city of Slovenia. It's a very nice city with interesting construction showing the medieval history.
Ljubljanski grad the castle of Ljubljana was built in the 12th century but we can notice the architectural evolution in time. It has a defensive function and has continuously been inhabited.
Ljubljana also has several nice bridges : Zmajski most, the Dragon bridge with statues of dragons, Tromostovje, the three bridge is a bridge build in three parts, Čevljarski most, the shoemaker bridge.
 We spend a part of the night in front of the train station waiting for the train to our next adventures.
Europe tour Interail 2006 : Introduction 
Travel table of content  

Writing projects

En français
With things progressing on different levels for my writing projects, I felt the necessity to get make an update or calendar to check on my progression. This is what I want to share with you today.

Demon Soul

Demon Soul is my first novel ever completed. It tells the story of a girl, Brownie who will do everything to get the soul of her demon boy friend back, but as with magic unexpected things happen, Sahel will appear in her life and she has to protect him.
Few days ago as some of you might know already, I sent it back to Create space, the web site I use for self publication and the manuscript with the black and white illustration have been accepted. I should receive the proof print in few days. Hopefully this time, the book will be good enough in my eyes for allowing me to have it on sell on amazon. If not I will review it once more. I tend to be perfectionist on some project and my first novel is one of these projects.

Attic Mirror

Attic Mirror is the second novel I wrote, the story is not really related to Demon Soul even though Brownie and Sahel appear in the story and the house where most of the action takes place is the same. This is the story of a girl, Hitomi who find a magic mirror showing an other world in the attic. She will try to cross the barrier between the world to find love. At the moment the first draft is completed. I need to edit it and to draw some more illustrations. I'm hoping to be able to have a final version of the text and all the hand made illustration by the end of October.

Demon and fairy

"Demon and fairy" is my last started novel. Of course I have little pieces for other novel here and there but I spend already two sucessful contests on "Demon and fairy" and it is still not finished. It tells the story of a demon boy with a special power who fall in love with a fairy who is engaged to the prince of fairies. They will need to cross worlds to be together. It can be considered as a kind of sequel to Demon Soul as it started exactly at the end of it. We just follow Seti instead of following Sahel. Sahel is also an important character in this story.
My first plan was to get the first draft done by the end of the week but with the submission of Demon Soul going on, that seems now impossible. At the same time I already have more than 94000 words for this story and the more I think about it, the more I think that I will need a lot more than a couple of thousand to be able to finish it. This will make it my longest story written so far. I'm still hoping to reach the end by the end of the month. It will also need illustrations but they are not my priority for the moment.

Vampire Heart

This is probably the only thing new for my usual readers. You have already met Viorel in Demon Soul and Attic Mirror. He is my very first vampire character and he is a very special vampire as he can do things normal vampires in the legend can't do for very particular reasons. This story is the one I will be working on during the next NaNoWriMo next November. I already have some kind of a plot for it and a beginning that need to be rewritten on Novel form. As this story is kind of an initiation travel through space (for the moment only an European part is planed) and through time as the story starts some 600 years ago. I am currently investigation history to make sure to have some kind of realistic setting around Viorel's story. More coming in November, stay tune.

Europe tour Interail 2006 : Roma

En français
After our crazy adventures of the previous day, we finally got the time to visit Roma the next day. We first started with checking the next train we needed to take before walking around in the city. One week in Roma is not enough to see everything, you could spend a life time there I'm not sure it would be enough either but we did the best we could with the day we had. We started to go to the Colosseo, that's the little things you have to go see when you are somewhere, the most famous one. Then the Foro Romano. I love ruins, and history and archeology. Historical monuments are everywhere so we where stopping frequently during our visit. I believe that I will have to dig more deeply in the city history some days. We throw our coin in the Fontana di Trevi, to be sure that we were going to come back to Roma. It worked for me the first time. Then we headed to the Vaticano city to visit the Basilica and Piazza San Pietro. We then finally got an Italian pizza before taking the train to other adventures.
Europe tour Interail 2006 : Introduction 
Travel table of content 

Europe tour Interail 2006 : The day when the Europe tour almost stop...

En français
Maybe I should renamed this post : "Europe tour Interail 2006 : The day when I discovered I can actually speak Italian". That would actually be a lot more positive but I think that the actual title fit very well.
First I have to tell you something about Italian trains. I hate them. I think they are the worse in the all world. Not because they are uncomfortable, you'll see how I care for comfort when I travel a bit later but because they are crowded. The basic idea is, sell tickets, if someone ask for a ticket you sell it. It doesn't matter if there are sits in the train or not, or even space in compartment or sits in the corridors. So you see what happens. Night trains in Italy, going from Venezia to Roma, standing in the corridor most night, finally getting a sit in the corridor, having to get your Interail pass out for the controller every ten minutes as he never seems to remember you. And finally, forgetting the Interail pass in the train, and letting the train go before you can realize it. Oups we were supposed to have three more weeks of travel, right ?
Well I guess at that stage when you go see the people in the train station and that they can do nothing for you and that you can only buy a pass in your home country most of people would have give up. I guess we were probably crazy but you'll realized with what follows.

The guy in the train station said he was going to call the train, then said he did and that the controller found nothing... when we had given the all explanation about where it was, not a chance, my guess is he didn't want to bother with that and didn't even call.
So I had to take care of things myself. I was used to trains I had been checking where trains where going in all Europe for a month( maybe more) before going on this trips. The European train lines where my playground and I didn't feel like giving it up just yet.
We bought a ticket for Sebastien to go to Salerno, I still had my pass :D And we followed the train 400 kilometer southern from our destination to get to Salerno. Nobody wanted to eat or drink, we were just trying to avoid a nervous break down I suppose. And we get there and the first thing we saw arriving in Salerno's train station was that our train was there. Thinking about it now it could have been gone somewhere else but luckily, it was there. We went to the train station to find someone to take us to get the pass Interrail and we find a nice girl.
Little summary of my conversation with her : "I can't go anything about it, you need to go to the police station in the train station. But don't tell them it's a train ticket, they are lazy they won't go in just for a train ticket, tell them it's your id."
So we went to the police station and I had to explain to them,
everything again, from the start to make them go look for Sebastien passport in the train (by the way Sebastien didn't have a passport at that time). Lying to policeman all in Italian, because Italy is like France, you have to speak the language, no English. At that time I can assure you I was fluent. It took me forever to make them go, and when the guy finally went, I was half suspecting that he was not going to really look for it. Actually he did, he came back with the pass and we were so happy about it
but we still had to pretend for a bit that we didn't know where the passport was. They finally let us go, making fun of us because we didn't know that we could travel in Europe without the passport. Of course we knew but we were not going to tell him. Secret victory, maybe, huge relieved, certainly, with the pass Interail back we could finish our Europe tour.
We waited four more hours in the train station for the next train to Roma, Italian trains are always late, you know when you'll arrive (kind of) but you will never know when you will be able to get in.

We arrived in Roma and started to look for a youth hostel. That was our first night in youth hostel during the trip. People told us that it was impossible to sleep here because they couldn't have conditioner as the building was too old, so that they needed to let the window open and the cross-road was very noisy. I can promise you that we slept very well.

Europe tour Interail 2006 : Introduction 
Travel table of content