I hear Baghdad is quite nice this season.
SUCH a shame I'm not going right now then.
Wow Ali, this sounds fantastic!!!! i am ultra impressed
Of the european destinations here's my top 3 in order
* Prague, Czech Republic
* Vienna, Austria
* Paris, France
I used to hate paris, but that was back when i had no money and had hitched around the farmlands of france and really loved it, and altho i was warned about the arrogance of the parisiens, nothing quite prepared me for the reality of it. Now, going with a few pennies and more of an understanding - it's beautiful.
Prague is an amazing place, and i would say to anyone go, and spend a week there, get an underground ticket, and explore everything within the underground limits, you will see culture to rival some of paris, music of true genius, timeless archetecture (well if buildings interest you, there's at least 3 weeks of tourism there), museums of art/culture/music/war/peace/modern life... and there's also the amazingly cheap beer and food!!! and if you like countryside, they have some of the most amazing central eastern european villages (think walled towns with a castle in the middle surrounded by amazing forrests and hills) - also there's very ceap flights back to the UK if you want to pop back for the weekend - if you were going for a year, you may get bored with the place tho as it's not got the variety of Paris.
Vienna is just somewhere that i would have loved to spend longer in, it's on my list to visit again, i wish it could be for a few weeks to see more than just the tourist bits.
as for the others, i would have to say go Sydney - i'm planning a big trip to Oz next year, and that looks a superb place, plus i have a friend there who says it's an amazing place to live in.
* Sydney, Australia
* New York, USA
* Boston, USA
failing that new york probably suits our UK stance on things and to spend a year there sounds amazing.
Ooh, thanks Mumei, you're so useful.
I've already definitely settled on Paris as one of my choices, I've done it on the cheap a couple of times before and adored it. I'm good enough at French that it shouldn't pose too many difficulties and the Conservatoire is truly incredible so basically everything about it is happytimes.
I figured I'd put Paris, another European choice and then an American/Australian choice although I'm getting more and more tempted to use both my other choices on American/Australian schools. The journey to Australia actually terrifies me, can't begin to imagine travelling for that long! It was part of the reason I posted though, I thought somebody might have a fairly strong opinion about the American/Australian cities that could be helpful!
Funnily enough, I was considering Prague and Vienna more than the others for my European choices anyway.
I quite fancy the idea of Prague, largely because I'm a language whore and I've never considered learning Czech before.
Although apparently the Academy there are very happy to teach me in French, possibly even English depending on who my violin teacher ended up being and how good they are with the language. I only get 3 months in any of the European cities, boo hiss.
