Blogalog

Korea Day 9 (Sept 25)

2010-09-30T17:00:00.003-05:00

The last "real" day of the vacation today… considering the following morning is where I am right now… finally catching up on the last few days of travel experiences.

Once again we decided to go on a bit of a drive and hit up the town of Gyeonju… at this point we have pretty much gone everywhere in this country. In fact, more than the average Korean does in their lifetime…. so we were just pretty out of it at this point… regardless, the travel must go on!!!

Along the way we made a pit stop at one of the biggest temples in Korea, (name here). Supposedly it holds a body part of some famous monk, similar to pilgrimage chapels throughout Europe. I find it kinda odd how everyone thinks someone's femur has divine power, but whatever attracts tourists and keeps the money flowing into the churches coffers I guess. The surrounding area was actually prettier than the temple, the outside was absolutely gorgeous.

Pathway to the temple

Oh man deez rocks got writin all over them

Neato!

Afterward we went over to another big temple area, and checked it out rather briefly. To be honest, at this point me and Amy were pretty jaded to the whole temple thing, and everything sort of blended together into a temple mass that all looked the same.

On our way out, we were harassed like crazy by this little lady who demanded we eat at her restaurant. It creeped us out so much, we went the opposite direction but she made a roundabout charge and followed us to the location. We ducked into a different restaurant in protest to her assaults, and she finally left us alone. We then had some delicious beef with rice.

Our last stop was a pretty cool stone Buddha at the top of the mountain. There was actually roads all the way up, but they were DAMN scary as terrible Korean drivers barreled down, sometimes crossing into the opposite lane. These people are insane. We were tailgated by people thinking we were just too slow… going up a mountain.. after a small path, we finally reached the shrine and snapped a shot of the "no photo" Buddha. It was pretty cool.

Big ass bell near the start of the hike

Don't take photos of the Buddha, or you'll steal his SOUL!

The same building with the bell in it... i just liked how this looked a lot.

View from the top!

After being friends for over a decade mark finally wanted to be the tall one.

Another rocking view (good shots Amy!)

At this point we were done done. Super done, so tired and beat and stressed we didn't even want to meet any more of Mark's friends when we finally arrived back at Masan. We had some delicious Korean pancakes, and then called it a night since we had to get up so very very early this morning.

Korea Day 8 (Sept 24

2010-09-30T16:55:00.003-05:00

Mark was stuck working again today (bahaha!), so we had another day to ourselves. This time we decided to check out the main area of the city mark lived in, Changwon. Now some of you may be a little confused since I've been using Masan the entire time. It's basically a small town that has been absorbed into Changwon, but everyone still references Masan by it's name, and all of the signs still say Masan, so it's kind of strange they bothered at all.

Mark dropped us off at a park in the central area, and we had a fairly mellow day just checking out the town.

We walked along a nice peaceful road, and then checked out the local mall… which was pretty insane. 3 cones connected to each other by bridges, the mall was all outside, yet all inside at the same time. Pretty bizarre.

One of the three.

Inside... and yet outside..

There was also a minor art gallery where all the works were done in beeswax, they were pretty sweet.

Skulls!

We hit up some more Mr pizza while we were there.

Delicious seafood pizza!

After that we just walked around, got sorta bored and took a cab back to the Masan area where Mark lived. He wasn't out of work by the time, so we went ahead and hit up the Movie room again and watched "9". It sucked. At least it passed some time though… eventually we met up with Mark and stopped over at Chris's place so we could go get some drinks.

At a fried chicken joint, we played the game "titanic" which involved a glass of beer with a floating shotglass. The idea was to take turns pouring Sojou (a sort of rice vodka) into the drink and whoever sunk the glass, had to drink the mix… the locals even started buying us more liquor.. which we dumped out after they left so we didn't feel like utter crap the next day ;). It was great times.

Monster plate of chicken... soo good, should have gotten more.

Korea Day 7 (Sept 23)

2010-09-28T14:29:00.004-05:00

More and more I find that I'm more of a small city person than a big one. The big cities just stress me out. Initially we thought of having another Amy/Jesse day in Seoul but we decided in the morning that we would just be heading back with mark instead. We still had another whole Seoul day ahead of us!

Mark's biggest desire in the entire Seoul trip, was to hit the coveted Taco Bell that was located in the military district of Seoul. This is where all the foreigners could sit around and have everything they could back home, which seemed rather boring to me. Me and Amy hit up thai again while mark was chomping on burritos, to an even more lavish restaurant. It was too bad that the food was actually far worse than the little local place we stopped at the day before.

Near the military district was (believe it or not!) a US military base. This, of course, provoked little to no interest at all, for we were here to see the War Memorial/Military Museum right next to it.

The big 'ol front sculpture, complete with metal dudes.

Tanks

Artillery...

Planes...

And balloons... Amy was SO excited to have extra shit to carry around all day. She couldn't say no to the kindly gent who was giving them out.

The main plaza... they host weddings here... o_O

This place was loaded with all sorts of military vehicles, most of which were used in the Korean war. There were also tablet memorials to all the soldiers, foreign and local, who died in the war. At the heart of the memorial was a war museum.

Korea certainly had a war torn past. For thousands of years, it was invaded again and again. By the chinese, japanese, and of course, itself in it's own civil war. The exhibits inside were impressive.

Swords! Complete with zodiac foofa

Wared out, Mark suggested we hit up one of the primary shopping districts in Seoul to check out some wares, as well as meet up with his brother Tristan who was also teaching in Korea. He was stationed in Seoul. Sadly, this district was about as touristy as it got, swarming with massive amounts of people. Once again I became the meeting point for all of my friends, as I stood out feet above the rest of the pedestrians. We pretty much got nothing here, and at this point we were tired to the max.

I run into this dude EVERYWHERE. What a stalker.... on a side note.. didn't he originally not want any sculptures of himself? Reminds me of the bible too.. in the end no one gives a shit and wants statues to worship.

We briefly checked out another small temple in the middle of the city, then took a cab back to the park where we parked marks car (we couldn't stay parked at the hotel)…. then got the HELL OUT…. aghhhhhhhhhhhh big cities are stressful. After another long drive we made it back to Masan and sacked out at Marks.

Korea Day 6 (Sept 22)

2010-09-28T10:11:00.006-05:00

AT LAST. No more freaking driving. A day just waking up in a hotel and not necessarily needing to. Of course, we still woke up at a relatively decent time, but the fact that we didn't have to felt great.

Our hotel room.. if you hadn't noticed.. no beds ever!

The first thing we did was hit up a cab to the center of Seoul, a grand city indeed. I knew cities around asia were bigger than their USA counterparts, but the insane amount of people and structures is still staggering. Busan was huge, but it was dwarfed in comparison to the capitol.

How do you get a statue of yourself in the center of town? Why, simple! Just invent the korean alphabet (which is vastly superior to chinese/japanese characters I might add)

We decided to mix things up a little bit in the food department and had some delicious thai food. We all had some pad thai, which was some of the best i've ever had.

Being sated, we began our pilgrimage to all of the big sites of the city. The first, the grand palace Gyeongbok .

Upon entering, we stumbled upon a recreation of the calling of the guard, which was pretty interesting to watch. I would have had a video of the event, but my camera ran out of juice midway.

Front of the Gyeongbok palaaaceeee

This place was pretty epic, lots of very interesting structures. Unfortunately , all temples and castles in korea pretty much use the same color/design scheme… which we later confirmed countless times.

Still pretty cool looking tho.

"NEAT!"

Alright, you've convinced me... I'd live here.

Next, we wanted to check out the "stream" inside of the city. Originally it was a stream, then it was a sewer, then they took out the road onto of it and turned it back into a stream again. Just a cool site inside of a big city. Apparently a lot of festivals and concerts go on in the area. I can understand why.

The beginning of the stream

It's rather long

Amy's big desire while in korea was to check out the art, so away we went to the big art museum of Seoul. Outside there were some very very cool sculputres… but the inside was rather lacking…. pretty much all video art and photographs. Which we all agreed where about the dullest media to witness. There were still a couple cool ones inside anyways.

trippy sculpture in the front.. made you think you were staring at a convex mirror

what the hell is this thing? oh... modern art.. i get it.. =/

Stopped for some korean food along the way for Gimbap (shushi like rolls), Dumplings, and of course Kimchi!

We then went out to check out the Seoul tower. In korea, it seems that every big city needed its tower to be able to have tourists come in and witness the surrounding area. Being the capitol, seoul was the most popular by far (much to our later dismay). We had a pretty cool hike up to the tower, which itself wasn't very high at all, but happened to be on top of a very large hill… we went up to the top of it.. but we had to wait through quite a few lines.

Amy was miserable the entire hike up... turns out she had 7 blisters on her feet.. yeowch

we made it! How exciting!

Apparently lines are fairly commonplace here at big sites, being that there are so many people. In fact, at most fairs the lines for rides are about 20-30 minutes long, something similar to the biggest theme parks in america, but everyone's used to it and just shrugs it off.

View from the top.. Seoul is rather huge btw

We had it with sightseeing, being tired and all that we decided to go back… to hit up the pubs! We enjoyed a few brews and then hit back to the hotel.

Drinkin away... they love putting napkins on top for twistoff bottles (but still put them on for ones that needed to be popped as well...)

Korea day 5 (Sept 21)

2010-09-28T09:47:00.003-05:00

We slept in till about the last second possible, and then booked it out. For some reason Mark decided he only needed 3 hours of sleep, so he was a little out of it. We drove to Seraksan. To go on some freaking hiking!

Our lovely bathroom...

view outside of our hotel

Rest stop snacks on the way, delicious dumplings and Korean pancakes
Well… it would have been amazing… but it was raining like crazy the entire day. When I say crazy, I mean we got hit by a Typhoon all day, which I guess is an interesting experience from an indoor vantage point, but driving it was absolute hell.

Instead, we had to cop out and hit up the cable cars.. we would have gotten some rocking views as well, but the fog obscured everything in the area… even still, it was a fairly nice view. I guess you can't have everything go right during traveling. There was also a temple on the mountain, but it was

At least we gotta see a rocking Buddha statue. Unfortunately, the only "XL" poncho available wasn't quite my size or color preference.

Despite the fog, we still got some pretty sweet views.

On our way down
Feeling very wet, cold and dampened, we decided to head out as the rain wasn't letting up at all… so on to Seoul!

Neat bridge along the way that we stopped at.

Chris didn't wanna go to Seoul, so we made a side trip to drop him off at a bus station at another somewhat large city. Unfortunately it was a wasted effort because the buses didn't even go to Masan. Wa wa… this meant we instead had to drive into Seoul to drop Chris off, rather than our original plan to just ride a bus into the city. Man… what a nightmare decision that was… upon reflection we all agreed we should have just let him suck it up and stay in a hotel outside the city for a night.

Dropping Chris off wasn't the big deal, but the rest of the day… well, night, was nasty. We had to find a hotel to stay at, but also one that would allow a spot to park.. well also happened to be low on gas as well, and whenever we tried to get to a station we were blocked by a billion other cars who would not let us in.

Eventually we found gas and a nice little hotel to stay at and booked it for the night and the following one. Not exactly the greatest day ever..

Korea Day 4 (Sept 20)

2010-09-24T20:07:00.004-05:00

Argh! I'm already hopelessly behind. I have a feeling a great deal of this won't even see publication still after I'm back in St Cloud. I've had the worst luck getting wireless and I've been absolutely pooped when it's around.

Woo, waking up at 5:45 and watching the sun rise on the beach is incredible. Good times. Of course, now that I'm writing this I sort of wish I stayed asleep a little longer. Why? The town is pretty dead in the morning. Everyone sleeps in here, since everyone works late. Chuseok has already begun over here as well so everyone seems to be pretty merry. Today me and Amy are spending the day by ourselves while Markus teaches back in Masan.

View from the hotel room, writing some blog posts!

They had a sex toy vending machine on the stairs... pretty funny

Right after we woke up we decided to go out and walk the beach, there were many very cool sculptures in the area. Sadly, I already started to regret the whole waking up early decision and started to feel very sleep deprived. A white chocolate mocha (from a starbucks, they're everywhere here) and a double shot later, I started to feel quite a bit better.

Cool head sculptures on the beach..

Each one had a different theme.. I bet you can't guess this guy

Rather than hail a cab, we decided we'd walk to our first destination, the art museum. I mean, it can't be that far right? It's oh so close on the map! We had no idea the magnitude of the size of this city. So we basically walked about the 4th of the way and then headed back to our base at the beach. Then when we got back we realized the art museum was actually closed because of the holiday. Luckily Amy wasn't distressed and too high on the foreign travel to really mind. Instead we decided to go to the giant Korean war memorial. Shortly afterwards we hired a cab.

Another classic Korean site we saw along the way, free outside gyms.

I figure this is a good time to talk about the whole cab/car system here. Back in the states, I considered them a medium of transport for the lethargic, wealthy or drunk folk, but here, they are a lifeline. Pretty much as cheap as can be at about 12000 won for going across town (~10 dollars). Unfortunately, you need a picture or some korean words ahead of time to avoid a very lengthy charades process, but luckily Mark warned us of this before hand. As far as the average driver goes, everyone.. EVERYONE has a GPS. Why? Because the roads are clearly made by drunken Irishmen to quote our old muscle head governor. There are no signs, and intersections are like some spider's web where the spinner was a lab test subject on Meth. Everyone parks every which way, and people literally stop in the middle of the road, turn on their hazard lights, and run over to the nearest bush to take a leak. The driving is also crazy, and makes St Cloud drivers look a little more sane, although probably still more dense.

We arrived at the war memorial and were amazed at the monuments constructed to commemorate such a struggle. When one thinks of the cold war, they generally think of the past, but officially it is still going on every day, the Korean war never ended.

War is hell. I think this picture sums it up pretty nicely.

A picture of the main memorial, the inside part had a small shrine covered with tablets inscribed with the names of hose who died. It was also on a very tiny island in the middle.

Another memorial, with Amy at the center

Afterwards we headed back to the area around the bus terminal, so we could get an easy exit from the city. Being hungry again we decided to hit up the local pizza place, Mr. Pizza. Man, foreign pizza is so much more interesting than the basics america has to offer.

check it out! 4 types! It was good!

Time to hit up the bus station.. and how much did an hour bus ride to Masan cost? <70 cents! Woot. Upon arrival, we still had some time to kill before walking around so we decided to check out the area around Masan. We didn't end up really finding anything interesting, but I got one of my first admirers. While we were talking a young girl just dead stopped in her tracks and pivoted around as we walked by. About 30 yards further I looked back and she was STILL staring at me and she waved, I waved back and I think I made her day. It was pretty funny. As a result of this we decided to have a minor competition as to who would get stared at more… Amy won.

Afterwards we hailed another taxi driver to get back into Mark's area, unfortunately the fellow wasn't too sure as to where our destination was, so we were quite worried for a bit… luckily I started to recognize the area and we were able to find Mark's place of work just in time to frighten his students with my height.

Afterwards we met up with Mark's friend Steven and decided to hit up a vietnamese restaurant, good stuff. We decided we'd drive out tonight to potentially avoid the chusung traffic, so we picked up Chris who was coming and along and headed out on a very very looong drive…. 6-7 hours.

It's fairly nuts when you think about the driving here, because the country is smaller than the size of Minnesota. However, it's so mountainous that something that could take about an hour and 30 minutes could take, well… 7 hours… needless to say by the time we arrived at a hotel (4-5am) we were really tired.

Korea Day 3 (Sept 19)

2010-09-23T10:20:00.002-05:00

Don't get me wrong, I like having these jam packed vacations where I'm going around everywhere, but well, a vacation is a vacation. Sometimes you just gotta sleep in a little… today.. Busan!

Briefly before heading out, we watched a short documentary on North Korea. Being so close to such a place when you're in an area like South Korea is absolutely mind blowing. The complete and utter dedication (slavery) that the north korean people follow for their glorious leader is absurd and really one of the saddest things in the modern world today. The contrast between the two is staggering. We had talked about checking out the DMZ, but we didn't really want to dedicate an entire day to crossing the border. I also really HATE the idea at all that North Korean dictatorship would profit off of my petty curiosity.

The four of us set out once again shortly after waking up to the beautiful city of Busan. Upon arrival mark gave us the ropes about where to go, the bus station and all sorts of other goodies. The reason being is that both of us would be spending the night here while Mark and Keziah went back since they had to work the next day. I am pretty stoked.

After our tutorial we went once again to some authentic Korean cuisine… KFC! We had some Tower Burgers, and cold tasteless fries , but it was quick and we were absolutely starving.

look! even the drink is in a bag, haha

Afterwords we decided to go shoppin and check out all of the local stores. I am one for hating knickknacks, but… technological knickknacks? count me in!

USB drive transformer! hell yeah!

Amy picked up some goodies for friends, and I proceeded to selfishly shop for myself and get some neat clothes/stuff.

I picked up a shirt and they hand tailored it for me on the spot, very nice :D.

After some shopping we decided we'd go check out the local bookmarked.. which was closed. However, it was kind of fortuitous because when all the shops shutters are down, it displayed one of the most badass graffiti galleries ever! Once again many, many pictures were taken.

showing on a Jesse Weaver desktop wallpaper near you!

The book street

I don't really have much of a reason to put this one up, other than I think it's pretty great =).

About this time it was getting lunchy/dinnery so we needed to find some kickass cuisine to feast upon. Korean barbecue? Hell yeah! Once again another amazing setup, with a billion sides (which, by the way, koreans LOVE their sides, you get more sides than main dishes: picture). We were able to cook our own meal and then promptly eat it. We ate a bunch… even Dajong got some.

Already it was getting kind of late, so Mark led us over to the beach to help us find a hotel. He got us one he had rented in the past , which has an absolutely gorgeous view. After getting accommodations we said our goobyes, they headed out and we walked the beach for a bit. Tommorrow, Busan day 2! Amy/Jesse only!

Beach outside of the hotel

Korea Day 2 (Sept 18)

2010-09-18T19:45:00.005-05:00

Whew, I'm getting behind already! More to follow at some point.. XD
---------heeere we go

Man, I sure can't sleep in when my time zones are totally hosed . Much to Amy and Mark's sorrow, I woke everyone up at about 6:30 in the morning… then we headed out to some breakfast. Shortly afterwords we picked up Mark's girlfriend Keziah and proceeded to go out to Tongyeon to go check out Yokji Island.

After a couple of hours driving down the Korean highways.. we arrived! After checking the times for the ferry, we headed out to get some food, where we stopped to get some quite mediocre pork stew from a nearby shop. One of the interesting things about Korea is many small restaurants exist right next to each other, a lot of them serving the exactly same menu and each just owned by a particular family that lives in the same building.

Breaking back to the Ferry, we boarded the boat for about an hour ride to Yokji island. The views along the way were spectacular:

Upon arrival we didn't have a whole lot of time, as the last ferry left a couple hours later, but we did get the chance to ride some go-carts around the mountain. This was amazing and fun, but sadly my tallness stabbed me in the back again and no matter how I maneuvered my gangly legs I couldn't drive without pressing them against the steering wheel and drastically impeding my ability to avoid cars, so I became the photo guy.

The views while driving on the island

Riding it up

After the drive we headed back to the ferry where Marks dog got loads attention from the locals (par usual). Really though, everyone LOVES marks dog, Dajong. The 4 of us get constant stares from the natives but marks dog really takes the spotlight (some of the first Korean words we learned were dog, and cute).

Quite a ferocious creature.

When we got back we decided we'd go check out this entire street covered with murals. After navigating through a gigantic local fish market, we headed up a hill to where every single wall on the street was just completely covered in artwork, an Amy's paradise! Needless to say our progress was slow as the girls (Keziah loves taking photos as well) took copious amounts of pictures (luckily for you readers, since I'm a complete slacker). We watched a beautiful sunset on the top of the hill and then headed back to the car for our journey back to Masan.

When we arrived we picked up Keziah's roommate Chris, and then headed to one of their local favorite restaurants, . It was pretty neat, just threw a bunch of veggies and meat into a big pot, cooked it in front of us and threw it all on rice and dug in. Yummah.

Bellies full, we decided to waltz around the town until we decided on something to do, which turned into movie rooms. Holy crap. Movie rooms are freaking amazing. Imagine a theatre, but without all the shitty people, slightly cheaper, and your own private room with a projector and some of the comfiest seating around. If movie theaters back home rocked this style, I would be watching movies daily instead of declining every single invitation I get and generally looking upon the movie scene with absolute distain. Not to mention there were a lot of pretty good Korean movies available. They can be pretty silly, but even the most comedic film seems to end brutally, which is pretty interesting. We watched a war comedy where at the end all of the main characters died horribly to machine-gun fire and bombs. "Welcome to Dongmakgol"
Video room seating... other side was projector screen + wall. Very nice!

Post viewing we briefly pondered the option of going out for drinks, but we were all a bit tuckered out. After dropping Keziah off, we went back to Mark's and passed right out, no waking up early tomorrow for me.

Korea Day 1 (Sept 16/17)

2010-09-18T19:16:00.007-05:00

Well, here I am again. Traveling. Due to the raving reviews and demands from my ravenous fans (hi Mom & Dad!) I have decided to once again continue to journal my epic exploits across the globe. 2/2 years for leaving the country, so far so good.

Sadly, my journey this time begins with a day of flights which includes little to no legroom, body parts falling asleep, poor movie choices and the company of an occasional fart from a nearby flightee. On the bright , I've got an Amy Brown following me around this time full of good cheer ("JESSE, my side hurts GRRR JESSE MY CHEST HURTS, JESSE MY FOOT IS ASLEEP"). I'm sitting here typing this in the airplane of the Narita airport in Tokyo, waiting to take off our flight to Busan. Right before entering the plane however, I had a horrifying encounter with one of my old foes, a bidet.

thanks, but no thanks...also note the obscene amount of controls.

Upon arrival we went through pointless security (they scanned our bags, but anyone who walked through the detector and went off were just ignored) then searched for a payphone to call up Mark. After some fumbled attempts at communication with the locals, I finally managed to get some change so I could use a payphone.

Mark picked us up at airport without too much difficulty and we headed to his place. His apartment is actually pretty nice, although it's kinda small..

His place is small, but Amy's having a blast!

After stopping at Mark's we headed out to the nightlife of Masan. Across the street we took an elevator up to a small restaurant/bar on the rooftop and had my first taste of Korean beer which wasn't the most amazing thing ever... however, these were: (button picture... i don't have one yet, caption: service buttons! If only bars in America had these.... seriously)

After getting reasonably intoxicated we decided to call it an evening.. it was about 2am in Korea and about 1PM back home ;).

April ??????? A whole connection of Reflection. Linguistic Mystic.

2009-04-20T14:08:00.002-05:00

Time and time again I would hear the phrase " what an eye opener the experience can be, what a perception change". I came to kind tire of it, I mean, I "know" in the sense of accepting other peoples statements, computing them in my mind and figuring "yes, this must indeed be true, I mean, I'm going across the world". But yeah, it really is, what a trip.

Even this plane ride back seems an insignificant price, despite my severe amounts of travel anxiety that I've had my whole life. These past couple years I've really pushed my limits and not only overcome a fear, but breath it in, accept it and allow it to completely pass through me and watch it as it leaves.

Being in a different country(s) was amazing. Despite my loathing of some, I don't regret a single event, occasion, other than the fact that I wish I did even MORE. The trip itself wasn't the kind of relaxing sensation that one usually invokes in their mind then they brood over the word "vacation". In fact, it was probably a much more stressful experience than my normal, somewhat mundane, everyday life. But in the end, it allowed me to grow into more of a person, and I'm grateful for it. Gosh, just by rereading this paragraph, and despite how much I used to resent it, I'm starting to sound like my parents. Luckily, they can take it.

So now I'm amusing the mind by watching a variety of films, that the plane has willingly thrown at the customers, to placate them. Normally I wouldn't convert to such witchery, but it was the new james bond movie, which I had not had a chance to see. For a gun blasting, hot babe loving spy flick, it was quite enjoyable.

Despite how much fun it is to ramble about my life, this will probably be the end of this whole blog experience, other than the random possible thought for my hobbies, such as brewing to keep myself remembering the various techniques I use. I hope people have enjoyed reading this as much as I have enjoyed (sometimes not enjoyed, these things can be really a giant chore, but I kept forcing myself to finish it) writing.

Well, by the time this is up, I'll be back in Saint Cloud. So if you feel like hanging out, or just plain old pestering me, feel free. Tchues.

Done. And tired.

Tourism Central - April 18th

2009-04-20T13:56:00.005-05:00

Urrg.. must.. wake and make trains. With constant mental reminders of the woes of yesterday Ted and I set out early to make sure we didn't fail quite so horribly.

Even the vending machines in Belgium give you beer. My kind of place!

With the train rides made, we can at last set out to the big city, the numbero uno destination for all travelers throughout the world. Paris. I hope it lives up to the high standards it has (possibly pretentiously) set for itself. Should be an interesting final hurrah.

Well, it would be if we had the foresight to actually write down the directions to our already reserved place of stay. Whoops. Such is life. As a result of this we were forced to wander around aimlessly (In the rain no less, but at least it has been our only rainy day throughout the entire trip) until giving into stopping into another hotel to see if we could purchase an hour or so of wireless. Normally we would have tried to find a McDonald's (they all have wifi usually) or some sort of internet cafe, but the neighborhood was completely barren of these outposts of modern times. At this point we were pretty hungry too, so we took a quick stop at a local bakery and had some true french croissants and chocolate filled ones (not exactly filled, just a tiny bit inside which makes them more of a lunch object than a sugar filled nightmare).

The place we managed to stop in was pretty much the most lavish hotel I have ever seen in my life. It was flocking with elderly and middle aged Americans who were more than happy to part with about seven hundred and fifty euro a night (the big suits were 5k :-O ). Geesh, I don't know how anyone could empathize with that kind of decadence. As there weren't a whole lot of other hotels in the area, we decided to stick here and harass the already busy clerks at their desks.

The pleasant and kind young lady at the desk quickly turned into a sour wench when she discovered we were indeed not staying at this establishment. She tried to look up the location for us, but had no luck. I couldn't understand this at ALL. So many times we have had people search for us, and they have a great deal of difficulty finding anything. We were able to finally get an hour of wireless for 7E (yikes). We were willing to pay it so we didn't spend our only day in the big city wandering around like fools.

At last, we managed to find our hotel ( a mere several blocks away ) and were able to check in and get our room so we could drop off all our baggage.. in 20 minutes. We stopped at a local bakery and had a sandwich and some (french word here). Now we could do things!

And so.. we strode down the Champs el 'eses. The first section of this well known famous road of france was smothered with lavish parks in which the french could salute themselves at how lavish it was. The second area, was basically a gigantic strip mall. Many big names (Mcdonalds, Disney, Adidas) had claimed their own little portion of this highly expensive road to say "look at me!".

At last, we had finally reached the end of this long and busy (12 lanes of busy) stretch to the focal point at the end, the Arc De Triumph. The thing to remember here, is it really isn't the only "Arc De Triumph". Every single battle/war that the French felt was a great victory resulted in the construction of one of these, but this one, just happens to be the biggest and arguably the best. So the parisians have dubbed this monument as THE Arc De Triumph. Anyways, we took a quick look around at it.

Really? They actually won something? :O!

These French guys were trying to play golf, using the tomb of the unknown soldier as the first hole. This old guy was not pleased at all. It's funny how you can tell exactly what someone is saying when they're just THAT angry, regardless of the language.

Don't forget the underside, it's ornate too!

Afterwards we went back down to the river (name?) and checked out one of the most overrated structures in history, the Eiffel Tower. I deemed it worthy to glance at from the other side of the river, but that was as far as I decreed we should go.

pshhh it's not that big..

Our next destination was the big cathedral, the Notre Dam. Well, it is big, but don't let the name mislead you into thinking it is the biggest. It's more of the most famous because of its history (being "gothic" aka "barbaric" and almost destroyed) and the fact that it's the most well rounded (think of 4/5 on all categories, as other cathedrals might have a 5/5 in one, but a 2/5 in another). The lines were long, but they moved quickly. Along the way we were asked "do you speak english" (always say "non" "nyet" "nein" as they just want to strike you up for money) and if we wanted an umbrella for 5E (it was still raining, but just a very very slight drizzle). Ahh the tourist trap hazards. At any rate, we found our way inside, checked around it and then left.

Here's the back of it, i think this shot looks much better than: the low lighted interior "no flashes!" <-- Our country mates took them anyway, of course and the front, coated with a writhing mass of people. Now, I like history, and Museums are pretty fun, but we were running low on time. I really did want to see what was proclaimed "the biggest and best museum in the world" so we went at a brisk pace to the Louvre. Only having about an hour, we set out to look at the various areas with gusto. I was surprised at how much empty space there was, but I suppose it made sense since the building used to be a gigantic palace for the king. It was kind of irritating, as you had to walk all over the place to see something that you would think could have been easily fit into something much smaller. I was also baffled at the fact that a lot of the pieces had no descriptions at all, so everyone was forced to get one of those exceptionally irritating (and expensive) ear devices just to learn the history of an object. At any rate, I got to see a lot of cool art and such in the few hours I was there. I hold the art of the world in the palm of my hand!

I even got a picture of a hot babe, she's not very photogenic though

I can has mummification.. nom nom nom

We set out for my last european meal, to a local (and recommended by our hotel clerk) crepe eatery. What's crepe? Why a "pancake" with anything you well please inside. They're pretty good.

Crepes makes me strong! "The Popeye"

Desert Crepes make me large... mmmm

As I had a day full of traveling on the morrow starting at a very early time, we said our farewells to the big city and let our minds wander into that mental state which allows rest.

Woe betide yee (April 17th)

2009-04-20T13:23:00.005-05:00

Overall, we had been pretty train lucky throughout the trip. No real mishaps. This time however, we turned our potential "non train day" into a very much so "train day". Crap.

This pizza in the station was @)(%$&)!@$&)$U TASTY! I mean, it says it!

It all began with a mistake, of course. A mistake on me? A mistake on ted for listening to me? A mistake on the Dutch for the one time we really needed it, failing on their so-called sign zealotry. At any rate, I thought a stop that was indeed our stop, wasn't due to the complete lack of signs that said it was, and a sign that was in the exact same format as other city signs , saying something completely different. Argh.

At any rate, It's given me yet another typing session to get caught up with my blogging shenanigans.

Like I was saying, we're at last finally on our way to Antwerp. From there we'll be staying in the quaint little town of Gent, where I hope will be a place of checking out some of the local colors of red, dark, and light... beer of course! Local breweries ho!... errr..

Well, at least we got in town I suppose. Arriving at 5, we set out into Ghent to find our hotel. After another half an hour or so of wandering "do you have maps?" "NO!". We finally reached our destination... from the opposite end. Finally circling across the block, we managed to finally get into our hotel room, which was very nice.

Apples influence extends everywhere. iphones and macbooks are the rage in Europe.

idk, it looks nice

After a short break, we set out and explored the local area. Deciding it would be a prudent decision to change the train reserve the following morning (which would force us to wake up at 5) the two of us walked down the canals to the larger train station.

"All trains to Paris are FULL. No change!"
"!*@&"

Ghent had its fair share of big churches, a common sign you're in Europe

And big streets

Walking BACK, hunger was immanent. So the need for food was dire. Seeing as how we had to probably sleep very soon (sigh.) we settled for a local restaurant. Alas... we only settled for 1 beer

that is, one liter of beer.. mmmmmm. Never being much of a light beer fan, I had always kind of scoffed at these brighter relatives of the rich dark beers I preferred. Traveling through europe changed my perception as there were actually decent light beers, no linenkugels, miller, budwiser or coronas in sight. Praise be to the gods.

Due to the misfortune of the train time table, there was a rapid scurry back to the hotel, and a swift need for sleep. See you in 5 hours.

Smalltown, Bigtown, Redtown, Bluetown (April 16th)

2009-04-20T11:36:00.005-05:00

We woke up blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah breakfast blah blah. Train blah blah... to Den Haag. No, not to your grandmothers; bringing a picnic basket through the woods (kidding.. unless you agree, of course) but to the capital of this fair land.

The city was big, in the kind of sense that it was similar to one of the big skyscraper cities back 'ome. We walked around some big churches, and checked out the queen's palace. It was all quite nice. Alas, we didn't partake in any herring as we were already completely stuffed on a buffet breakfast, but we at least got to see how it was eaten (dangled high above the head, chin raised and chomping daintily).

2000 room house, "pool" included. Call now!

They turn their churches into restaurants :D

Well, not this one, but there's a lot of churches.

We only spent about an hour or so in the city, but once again we were able absorb the culture around us. Dutch is a really confusing language. With its similar background to english and German, I could always pull out random words, swearing that they were speaking one of the two... every time I looked back, they were still just speaking Dutch. It could be compared to communicating to a really inebriated American, who you could hardly understand.

Fortunately, like all countries that are forced to comply to our "primary" language; we hadn't even encountered a single Dutch citizen who couldn't speak English. Of course, it's not exactly nice to just sit there and assume the fact, so every time we invoked a conversation it started with "Hello, do you speak English?". My only hope is that it was recognized as a friendly gesture, rather than a demand (I've just seen so many people expecting English from everyone, which isn't exactly the nicest thing in the world).

Swinging from one vine to another in the Train jungle, we arrived at the smallish town of Delft. This wasn't exactly my first priority of a city, but Ted was quite interested in seeing it, so rather than breaking apart and spending hours trying to track each other down in the midst of the big city of Amsterdam which we would be going to later, we decided to just head through this city quick. Ted checked out a few churches ( they required some $$$, which I didn't really feel like parting with) and a little while later we were back on our way to the most well known city of the Netherlands.

Delfting

I'm not much of an Art museum guy. I'll see one, but it just seems like such a dreadful waste of time unless it's one of the most amazing museums in the world, and I have a ton of days in the location, so I can spend one just slowly wandering about. As a result of this, Ted and myself have been bypassing pretty much every giant museum we've come across.. there was one in Amsterdam however that I really wanted to check out for my own amusement, because really, where else is there one of it?

The Hemp/Marijuana museum was actually pretty interesting. Of course, it primarily was just a bunch of facts that could have just been Googled, but the same could really be said of pretty much any art/sculpture/history museum. It was also pretty neat to see the history behind it, the lack of acceptance and so-on. I'm not really a gigantic druggie advocate or anything, but really, I don't have much of an issue just letting people do what they want provided they don't shoot themselves in the foot, or have a stray bullet glance someone else's.
Pipe types

No... not an episode of Cops... just a legal growing room

Upon exiting, I met Ted waiting outside. As we beseeched the town map, a local netherlander with a camera came up to us. He was curious about what the big deal was with all of the kids coming to europe purely for the netherlands. We ended up talking to him for a while, he was pretty entertaining. Apparently, when he was in the states and mentioned he was indeed a Netherlander, everyone would insist to talk to him about this THC filled wonder, which was something he hadn't ever really thought about back home. So, here he was inquiring to random hashish pilgrims about what the big deal was.

We went to the Anne frank house, and declined paying 20 euro to see a tiny room, but just peeked outside.
This house?

or

This house?

We also just strolled around the canals some more, all the while dodging cars, bikes, mopeds and throngs of people... unfortunately, when we had our map in hand we were approached by the most sketchy looking of characters... It must have been a benevolent fellow, right? I mean look he decided to point out all these interesting things on the map! What an absolute gem! As his wild eyes glanced back and forth at my pockets and he shoved his face into mine, my hands swiftly took burrow inside of them, nestling quite pleasantly next to my wallet. Seeing he'd been foiled, the fellow changed his tune to being a poor "homeless" fellow, just positively stricken by the drastic times. As a reward for his well playted performance, I gave him a whopping .15 euro, Ted, being a bit more of a philanthropist, gave him about .40 . My only regret? That I didn't ask for a picture of him, that would have been a most fun souvenir.

Afterward, we decided to check out some Indonesian to go, which was pretty tasty. It wasn't the most extravagant place, but man, it was good!

I had really wanted to check out one of these fabled "coffee shops" while I was here. Even to just check out a menu, but its not exactly the kind of thing you want to do yourself. Ted, due to medical reasons, didn't want to enter such a place; and I didn't really want to sit around in that kind of situation in a city that was known for pickpockets and cheats (who mark us green tourists as well.. marks) in a potential stupor state where I could be taken advantage of. Sad day.. well, maybe next time I'm in the country I guess... at least I had gotten some sort of "fill" of this interesting tradition at the museum.

With one long parade wave goodbye, we boarded back onto the train, and back into Harrlem blah blah blah sleep blah blah.

This was going on when we got back. Complete with a churro stand of course.

Drugs, Hookers and.... bikes (April 14-15)

2009-04-20T11:19:00.004-05:00

Ah... the final hurrah for the long train rides. This one was, of course, from Berlin to Amsterdam. Like other long train rides, it was primarily uneventful aside from a few seat hops when we were in someone's "reserved" seat. The seats we sat in weren't reserved at all, but a flock of elderly folk swore they had reserved them, even though on their receipt they didn't even pay for a reservation. Oh well.

At long last, we arrived at our final hotel in Haarlem, Netherlands. Well, the final hotel in which we would be staying for over one day. Par usual, we lugged our bags to our place of staying, about a km or so from the station. Once we were situated, we set out to get a peek of Amsterdam before it was too late.

Due to our skillful planning... well, OK. I admit it, my planning contribution was pretty much null. So here's the part where I give a slew of kudos and props to Ted who basically single handedly made this trip happen. As a whole he set out most of the days, and plotted out train courses due to his experience overseas, discussing every step with me, but I usually just agreed whole heartedly to his idea. Of course, I threw my two cents in for destination suggestions, where we should stay longer and so on. As a whole Ted's sagely knowledge shined though in the way of train times (to get as much out of the trip as possible) and hotels (managing to weigh out cheap/good deals with the distance from the train station). So, hats off to you buddy!

So now we set out into the city famed throughout the states for its bikes, prostitutes, and legalized marijuana. All of which of course, are quite apparent in the city.

There are literally thousands upon thousands of bicycles scattered everywhere. All of the bike lanes even have their own signal lights. One thing I had not counted on, was the fact that mopeds could go through bicycle lanes.
They like their bikes. Morso than cars. Of course, this also means that the bike riders start driving like automobile drivers, so you still have to watch out, you just don't die when you get hit by them.

We discovered this a little late, as one went screaming by us as we unwittingly tried to take quick jaunt across the bike streets. Now, I couldn't really fathom the point of this. Why would they allow motorized vehicles on a lane that was purely intended for bicycles? It seemed rather contradictory to this whole bike lane scheme, as any motorized bike could easily follow the standard speed limits throughout the city. To be fair, even the cyclers are almost like automobile drivers. They zoom past everyone as well, thinking that they even prioritize over pedestrians who are constantly forced to cross their lane as the sidewalks keep flip flopping to other sides of the roads. Many a time a fist was waved or a slurred curse word was thrown in our direction as we walked the roads along canals.

Ahhh the canals, this is why this city was compared to Venice. Rather than just you know, build the city around water, the Dutch loved these little boat ways so much that they just decided to incorporate them into the city when it was built. It makes it quite lovely, despite the complete lack of extra space for individuals to walk around.

One of the many canals
After crisscrossing a few of these canals, we finally made our way into the notorious red light district. We decided to meander over here first, as we didn't want to get pick pocketed, sold drugs, or attacked by prostitute bouncers in the midst of the night. That meant, of course we weren't able to see this section of town in it's absolute "splendor" but I was OK with that. There were still many ladies of the night out in their various booths, perhaps giving some sort of "early bird special" to their patrons. Whenever we took a side glance at these corpulent (yeah, with the high risk and everything on top of that they're not exactly eye candy... blergh) female forms, they would, of course, coax us to come closer. Alas (for their pockets), their wails were in vain.

I would have a picture here, but not only would the content probably displease some people, my lack of interest of photographing this, and there was the fact that if you try to take a picture of any of these females, their "pimps" would quite swiftly bring retribution. Either in the form of your film being taken, your camera broken, to your face being broken. Needless to say, we avoided these possible outcomes.

There was another thing that was quite apparent in this district, well it was quite apparent throughout the entire city in random intervals. Our noses would randomly catch a quite pungent herbal smell on various drafts. This would of course, be a part of the "coffee shops" that ran rampant throughout the city. Of course, the primary attraction was not the grotesque smell of tobacco, but the milder earthy aroma of the most commonly used illegal drug throughout the world.

Woe. It's late already, and we be o so tired. Especially when we have big plans on the morrow. So with that we headed back from the big city, wallets thankfully intact, and took an early night.

These plans, would be bicycle riding of course! Rather than coast through the city, we decided to rent out some bikes in Haarlem.

Now, for this entire trip, we have had the most fortuitous events as far as the weather situation has been concerned. Every single day it has been rainless, hardly dark, and quite lovely. This biking day was no exception, in fact, it was probably one of the nicest days we've had so far. Excellent stuff.

After waking, breakfast and a quick point in the right direction we went over to the local bike rental. After departing with two bikes for a mere 8 Euro per bike, (+50 dollar deposit in case we fall into a man made canal) we set out towards.... the sea. The Noordsee in fact (think german fish chain). As we headed over, we had to dodge various mopeds as they careened past us. Even other bikers would blast by at almost inhuman speeds... well, Ok to be fair I could have probably cruised my brains out giving in to my desire to surpass all other bi-wheeled "competitors", but Ted preferred a more leisurely expedition to the body of water to bask more thoroughly in the nice weather and countryside, which being the easy going fellow that I am, I willingly accepted.

Eventually, after zooming around confused trying to find our exact destination, we pulled a u turn and we made our way to the great body of water; where we partook in a leisurely expedition down to the beach. Well, after grabbing an immense portion of fried seafood from one of the stands that were scattered throughout this vast beach landscape.

Just think, these little guys grew so hard just to fill my belly. What pals!

Like any remotely masculine man would do, we decided to parade shirtless and try to soak up the sun into our ghostly forms. I suppose it kind of worked, but I'm sure it was a blinding site to the passerby, which there were a lot of, as everyone was just enjoying the beach. There were also lots of cool shells. I'm not really much of a shell collector, but I thought I'd pick them up as it took little to no effort and they were quite interesting... for shells

Bike Trail along the beach

Pasty whiteness glowing in the sunlight

As much as I would have liked to slothfully lay around the beach all day, we decided to get up and bike some more. I didn't have too much of an opinion on where we should go, but Ted had quite a bit of interest in going to the flower fields. After some more mutual travel buddy petty squabbling (this happens), we headed back into Haarlem where we asked our receptionist at the hotel of the best means to get over to see some of these bouquet plazas the Dutch were so famous for.

And so, we biked, and we biked, and we biked some more, maybe just a little more.. a smidgen perhaps. At last, we had arrived at these immense fields of greenery. Boy, were they immense... and apparently... everywhere! The smell of them was overwhelming.
Of course, the dutch flower field wouldn't be complete without a windmill in the distance

Upon gazing at these fields, we decided it was about time to head back... by our loose mathematical skills we estimated the whole journey was just a tad over 30 miles. Luckily, we were able to just barely check our bikes back in (the guy was putting everything away for the day, and was on his last several bikes) and regain our deposit.

We then went and had some delicious Indian food, which I foolishly forgot to take a picture of. It was great though..... mmmmmmm... and with that, we just sat around watched some hilarious sounding Dutch TV ( OK actually it was primarily in english with Dutch subs) and fell asleep shortly after the fair (right below us that was obnoxiously loud) had at last died down.

April 13th- Old vs new

2009-04-19T19:52:00.004-05:00

Plane rides are horrible, but trains? Well.. I'd exchange a 9 hour plane flight for an 12 hour train ride any time, any day. Despite that, its not the funnest thing sitting here for the majority of ones morning/afternoon, but if nothing else, it gives me an obscene amount of time to type up all of these entries that I have been slacking on. Forgive me if they're all just a bit of a mind spew, but it's kind of rough to spontaneously produce somewhat interesting and thought provoking word plays. It's OK, you can deal, it's my blog anyways.

For the first time, both of us were forced to split up on the train, as a girl who had a seat reserved booted me out of my chair (despite the plethora of openings about her, but hey, maybe she wanted to flirt with Ted... alas she didn't). I got the honor of sitting next to a crotchety old man, who stuck his nose into our little game of moving around "Read the seat, it's reserved!". How very astute!

By mid afternoon, we had arrived in the most historic city of Germany, Berlin. Home of the wall (now destroyed, except for a tiny portion, which we were unable to visit) and the great arc: Brandenburg Gate.

Our hotel had these: efficient power savers which requires you to insert your key card, otherwise no power for you.. they suck when you leave your laptop on and think it's charging while you're gone...

When compared to Munich, the citys are quite different. Where Munich decided to rebuild their old buildings after having them be destroyed, Berlin set out to replace nearly everything with brand new architecture. As a result, it's one of the most modern cities I've seen. It does still manage to retain a great deal of an older European style, but everything is quite fancy.

Well hellooo mr fancypants

With only a few hours to spare, we set off, first searching for a food place as we hadn't had a chance to eat much all day. We stumbled upon a food court cove, which was really the coolest food place ever. Nearly everything was under 5E, and it contained a kababery, Italian, Chinese, Subway and an ice cream shop. I knew Berlin was one of the cheapest big cities to live in, but I didn't know it was that cheap, cool. I decided to have a döner kabab (fatty meat cleaved off a big rotisserie, it wasn't bad, but it did kind of make me think of it as European McDonalds).

Better than a McChicken

Several blocks later, we made a stop at Checkpoint Charlie. Crawling once again with tourists (even being Easter Monday) we snapped a few photos of the area (without paying 1E to be with the fake military people) and set out. Too much to see in too little time!

Charl's checkpoint

The iron curtain looks a bit beat up

Crisscrossing throughout... well I suppose that's a poor choise of words, since they rebuilt new. This was one of the first cities that didn't have quite so many random winding roads. They were much more organized, and it gave the city a little more of a USA feeling to it, although it was still much nicer. They also had the most unique street light system (people with hats!). Apparently even after east Berlin was liberated, the people there wanted those to stay, and so they did!

They even have a themed restaurant

Lets try that again.. as we went straight down the main roads, we were able to see a great many beautiful buildings. Forgive me if I don't go into to much detail on these, I've just seen so many and it has begun to kind bleed together in my brain.

Near the end of our little excursion, we finally ran upon the Brandenburg Gate. It's pretty monstrous.
ayiiee, Godzilla

After snapping a few senior pictures, we continued on into the massive park behind it, the Tiergarten. This park is probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest park inside of a major city in central Europe. Of course, inside there was another biergarten, and we spent about an hour and a half enjoying being outside, in what was practically a big forest.

well... and we enjoyed a good beer.... Ted a little more so perhaps? XD

...You can watch the congress from the top

After a bit more meandering about the town, we decreed it was about time for a bit of shut eye, as it would be netherlands time on the morrow.

April 12th- The hills are alive with the sound of..... Mozart

2009-04-19T19:26:00.005-05:00

Woo, Easter. As we awoke this morning we were greeted by a treat, a tasty hopping chocolate treat

To add yet another country to my book this day was dedicated to Salzburg, Austria. The birthplace of the arrogant, yet talented, prodigy Mozart, and the filming location of the American sensation, the sound of music which even had its own irritating tour (meh).

The musical master

The horrendous beginning of a horrendous tour, we did not take part.

Salzburg, despite being one of the biggest cities in Austria, has a really small feeling to it. Before we knew it, we had already navigated across the city into the main old town area. This section of town was jam packed like any other European town, with the two houses of Mozart (which we declined to tour, I mean... they're just houses... houses that cost about 20E each just to walk inside of), along with some interesting old churches, and many fusion resteraunts.

Being a fuision-based country, these resteraunts were really Austria's clame to fame in the eatery department. Generally they would serve Austrian food, Indian food and something else (perhaps italian, or even American). They were really awesome. We ended up stopping at one that seemed pretty nice, and coincidentally ended up being a place that Rick Steeves recommended (his picture was shown about five hundred times throughout the building). There we feasted on goulash complemented with a giant bread and egg dumpling.

Fusionriffic

A hearty Austrian meal

Followed by a hearty austrian desert

Along the streets, there were also egg shops. Yes, that's right, a whole shop dedicated to these oval shaped bird embryo cages. They were, of course, painted various colors and had all of the chicken goo drained out of them. These had all sorts of designs including themed ones for holidays/sports/events.

Want a dozen? How about seven hundred dozen?

Speaking of eggs, it was indeed Easter after all. As fitting for the big day of fluffy bunnies and chocolate, big churches were ornately decorated for easter, with flowers all over the alters. Some of these were quite magnificant, mainly being pure white on the inside for the walls, but having extravagent art in between.

I can see the light

and the ceiling

Once again, we were caught in a bit of a time constraint, so we tornadoed through the majoirty of the city. We did get a chance to get a few good looks at the castles on the large hillsides oft the city, and walked up a great ways, the houses in the area were large, fancy and beautiful. It was quite the eye candy.

Poseidon's fountain

What would a european town be without a castle or two

As the clock struck 5, the fairytale ball had ended, the spell was unwoven and we were wisked back onto a train to Münich. Having still a bit of daylight, we decided to take this time to explore around the old town. But first, "woh sind die biergartens bitte?".

Aquiring the mandatory information we needed, we set out into the city to get one last look around as it was our last day here. We took a tram, which was free with our hotel, to the other side of town, and then walked the entire way back, snapping photos all the way. Along the way, we stopped at these recommended places... and... well they weren't beirgartens at all! Just overpriced cafes, what a let down. So we kept going, searching frantically for a nice place to sit and have a half a liter of bitter. We finally settled at... well.. a kababery.

Kababeries are kind of like European fast food, except that they serve a lot of more interesting meals, such as falafel (yum), or meat peeled off a rotisserie (gyro style). Not only did we settle for this meal department, but the restaurant ended up being just across the street from where we began, our hotel next to the main train station. Fortunately, like all places that serve food, we were able to grab some beer and at least sit outside and enjoy the night, listening to the clatter of glasses clicking together, "prost!" and the passerbys.

A liter heavier, we made the long journey back across the street, and promptly collapsed...tomorrow... "ich bein ein berlinner"!

Culture Shock

2009-04-17T01:22:00.002-05:00

Now, just to give an idea of cultural differences, the difference between being in Germany and Italy is similar to night vs day, sun vs moon, dogs vs cats.....

In Italy, the drivers are everywhere, aggressive, and angry, revving up in a similar fashion to a SCSU student with a big truck. In Germany, the drivers are few, friendly and will gladly wave a pedestrian on in front of them.

When crossing a road in Rome, people will literally throw themselves into traffic to get across. In Munich everyone waits patiently for the green walking man to pop his head out even if there are NO CARS IN SIGHT. Seriously, i've seen packs of about 30-40 Germans do this, they're just that courteous.

As long as we're talking about road traffic, let me go into bi-wheeled transportation. Across florence and rome, there are a hoard of motorcyclists who try to go as fast as possible (they'll even navigate through pedestrians). Berlin and Munich have no motorbikes, but instead of a great many cyclers. If there isn't a specific bicycle lane, they'll bike in the streets and it's quite possible that they're more numerous than the cars.

One last transport difference is trains. Whenever we had to go somewhere in Italy, we had to reserve our seats, paying about 16E or so (despite our possession of eurorail passes =/). Whereas in Germany, you can still reserve your seat, but you don't have to (the reservers obviously get priority on their specific seat, but playing musical chairs sure beats the extra cost).

As far as the mannerism the Italians were much more frequently loath and disliking of tourists, or at least english speaking ones. Like all things, there were of course exceptions to this rule, and there were several friendly encounters. I even acknowledge the fact that my statistical data pool is quite small, but it still seemed to be much more common than anywhere else we had been. Even our futile attempts to interact with them in their own language were generally responded with scorn, and as soon as they recognized our poor accent, they only spoke to us in english. The Germans were all delighted to have us try and speak their language and were all quite friendly as a whole. We even had no problem occasionally hailing a random passerby for directional information, they seem more than happy to be helpful!

Even in our hotel room, the differences were even more apparent, especially to a food crazy individual such as myself. A hotel italian breakfast consists of... well... I'll let you see for yourself:

Toast... in a bag. yum..........

The hearty German breakfast on the other hand.....

Yes, that is salmon on my plate. SMOKED salmon. It's also a buffet. A tall mans dream.

April 11th- Crazy Konigs, is there really a btter kind?

2009-04-15T01:56:00.006-05:00

Both eyes open and active, I vaulted out of my bed in anticipation of what the day might bring. What was so fantastic about this particular day? Well, it was in fact, April 11th 2009: national Jesse and Ted explore the fairy tale castle of Neuschwanstein day! Hooray!

After a massive German breakfast, we set out onto the train to Füssen, the city which had become a tourist city due to the architectural excursions of the old bavarian ruler, Crazy King Ludwig!

Why was this man crazy? Well, he was just bored, and rich! Rather than spend all his time fopping about at the latest balls and keeping up on the latest regal trends, he would dedicate a great deal of his time to building fancy castles. Three fancy castles in fact. "Well, that's a tiny bit crazy.. but he's a king right? Big deal". It was a big deal, he ended up spending ALL of the royal funds, much to the distaste of his "chums". His court-fellows were so irritated by this, that he was decreed insane. Then one day he was found dead, a great "mystery" of the times.

Upon arriving in Füssen, we had a quick snack in a Nordsee. Nordsee (north.. sea) is a lovely german fast foodish chain. The menu is quite different. Rather than stacks of bovine flank smothered in grease, it offered a variety of seafood sandwiches, which were quite cheap. Om nom nom.

Delicious... AND neutrinos

Rather than take the bus like most of our fellow tourism robots, we instead had the PAINFUL task of moving our legs back and fourth for about 20 minutes. yikes. At last, around the bend we saw the elegant towers and a too cool view of the castle.

there she be lads, booty and treasure for the taking..

Alas, the tours were full, so we had to wait. What's a good time filler? Why, beer in a biergarten of course! Just common sense, simple common sense. We also took some time to check out Ludwigs main home, the much smaller manor just across the ravine. It was quite nice, with a rather elaborate courtyard.

I guess it's OK for a place to live... i mean really though, you can see why he had to build some more castles.. right?

After murdering enough of our spare time, we were at last able to ascend to Ludwig's unfinished (since he died and all) masterpiece. Speaking of which, only a week or so later after his death, the place was already open to the public for tours.

BAM

Since a great many tourists come to this attraction, there were tours of many different languages. We of course, took english as our German isn't astounding enough to comprehend everything being spoken. What do you know? We're with a bunch of other americans! That's cool right? Wrong...

I've never been more ashamed of my nationality. Our touring companions were absolutely wretched. After the tour guide told everyone not to take pictures, a young couple snapped away, thinking they were tricky and secret, as the camera noises were quite obvious in the silence... oh wait.. there wasn't any! Part of the time, rather than hearing interesting tidbits about the castle, I instead had to catch the latest news about TV shows, from our blubbery land mates. "Please don't touch anything".. as the the obese couple trails their hands along the ornately painted walls (each one a priceless masterpiece, i have no doubt), and the oh SO TIRED person (it's a slight hike of about 15 min to the castle) leans on Kind Ludwig's ancient bookcase. At least the tour guide wry warning each time we had to hike a measly amount of stairs, a secret jab at our panting countrymen. What a depressing day to be a member of the USA.

The tour itself was still quite impressive, despite the castle being unfinished. Every room was a literal artistic masterpiece. I could have stood in each one for hours, in awe of the time and construction it took. His bedroom alone took 14 carpenters 4 years to complete. I only wish I had pictures to go alone with it, but unlike our Bush loving friends we actually obliged and respected the rules.

Da courtyard.

On the train ride home, we sat across a thai couple who had also toured the castle. They were a couple of doctors on vacation, who were very very friendly and suggested a tram ride that showed a great many of the cool sites in munich. One Sawatdee later we arrived back at the hotel, internetless once again.

I don't know if I've expressed my frustration on the topic, but I'm in the mood for a mind dump. We've had absolutely horrible fortune in the way of the wifi (weefee in french, hehe). Switzerland was really the only time we've had a reliable connection. Otherwise, it's been nonexistent throughout the hotel and city. Or it costed about 2 euro an hour, for an abysmally slow connection where I could upload one image about every 15 minutes. Now, we finally had wifi in the hotel in Munich, and even that stopped working. I tried desperately to troubleshoot the issue, but unfortunately the problem was clearly on their end. When I tried to bring this up to the clerk, he looked at me really confused ( a common tech support occurrence) and gave me the impression nothing could be done. Sigh. Ted had some important college application work to do as well, so he set out into the night to find a place to connect, which was in vain as nothing was open.

So, after another wireless night, we passed out. Gutnacht.

April 9th-10 Florence und Train to München.... "arrrr me eye!"

2009-04-15T01:37:00.011-05:00

Ahhh, at last, an escape from the big city. We finally rode the train out of the capitol city of the ancient Roman empire to the central city of Italy's other division of an artistic age, Florence.

Upon arrival we had a rapid journey into our short-term place of living. Once again we had managed to find a place much earlier that was quite close to the train station, we had no idea how much we would be praising this decision throughout the day to come.

After depositing our luggage (the room was prepped and ready to go this time) we set out to explore all of the masterpieces of stone & metal that are scattered around the city. We had already had a plan not to enter the gigantic, famous museums so well known throughout Florence, but rather to explore the city itself (due to the horrendously long lines that would follow). As we made our way though the city we were greeted by the throng of tourists, street musicians and human statues that we had seen a great deal of throughout Rome. However, the art we saw was much different than what we had seen before. Rather than ancient ruins, there were statues (mostly replicas, to prevent impurities that were so prevalent in the industrial age) lining the roads. Of course, we were able to bear witness to some fantastic sculptures, by whom share names with our favorite mutant turtle fighting force (even if you hate them, are there really any other ones to compare?). Many of these were various greek and roman mythology tales that I was pleased to bask in their majesty.

<3s for greek folklore. We also were able to view another basilica. The architecture of this one was also quite different from what it was in Rome. The buildings took to more of an renaissance style, which was pretty stunning to look at.

quite ornate if do say so myself... I think Ted wants a house just like it

We also perused through the street of gold, which was an overpass filled with a variety of different gold smiths selling their wares. This is where people (tourists) purchase souvenirs if they are either very wealthy, or have some sort of mistress they wish to gain favor with.

Unlike Rome, Florence actually cares about not ripping off stupid tourists. Natural selection imo.

Eventually we had explored most of the city, and we decided to try scaling up to a park to get a nice view of the city, before traveling on a train over to Sienna. Then, something flew into Ted's eye.

When I say something flew into Ted's eye I mean our day was already over, and we didn't even know it. For some reason the item, be it bug or plant particle, could not be dislodged even as Ted zealously tried to get it free. We still scaled to the top, and I took a couple pictures, but then we went back down and traveled back to our room to see if ted could dislodge the item.

"Everything looks the same distance away Jesse".
(Ted) - (depth perception) = sad Ted.

Back in our room, even after trying for hours, he still was unable to get it out. Foolishly, we decided we would try to go to Sienna regardless, and we took the next train there, hoping it would somehow get out on the way while Ted slept. When we arrived, it was still there, irritating as ever, so we ended up walking around confused and unsure of our plans for a while, and then headed back. After that we stayed in our hotel for the rest of the night. We went to bed shortly afterwards as Ted was hoping his eye would be better in the morning.

The next morning, it was not. Rather than magically healing over the night by sleep or the patron saint of hurt eyes as sometimes things do, it had grown more swollen and had even begun to pustulate slightly. Upon realizing this was not a mere eye obstruction that would go away over time, we dashed off to the local pharmacy, to see what could be done. They gave us some eyepatches (yar.) and some liquid to clean out the eye. For some reason, they didn't believe in eye drops, so we were essentially sol on the easy application department. We returned to our temporary dwelling once more. After several awkward attempts, we managed to get some of the cleansing liquid into Ted's eye and patched it up. Then we had to rush out to our train to Munich as we had reserved and bought tickets and had reserved room already, which we were unable to unreserve. We had no place to stay in florence unless we wanted to spend over 150 euro a night.

avast and beware mateys, I be captain Eddhab, scourge of the twin swiss lakes and master of the Florence motes.

After a brief ride to Bologna, we had to wait about 50 minutes or so for the next train to München. To prevent my body from literally devouring itself, jogged over to a local pizzarea, and ordered a "fungi & wurst" pizza roll. Apparently in Bologna, wurst = boloney, blech. Despite my distaste for hot dog like meats, I snarfed it down to temporarily sustain the ever twirling black hole inside of me.

I had officially burned bridges with my stomach after consuming this.

At last, once again on the train. Fortunately, the only other people inside of our compartment were two German girls, who were really nice. Unfortunately, this only lasted about an hour, then a family of Italians came on, with two irritating little ruffians. One of them just slept (praise be, what luck!), while the other just screamed and kicked for almost the entire train ride (unlucked). I would have wanted to strangle him, if it wasn't for the complete lack of discipline of the parents, which turned my strangulation dreams to them. I'm sorry, but "no no no no.." doesn't exactly fit right in a little troll's brain. Despite our hopes of them leaving early, they were there for the entire duration of our journey. For a little while, I talked to the only German girl left (the family had reserved 3 seats, so the other one, her sister, had to get kicked into another compartment). I found out that she was only 17 but was already TRI LINGUAL. Her english was pretty much flawless, and she spoke italian which allowed her to communicate with the family as well. Dang.

After a 7.5 hour train ride, and a complete read through of "Dune Messiah" we finally made our way into Munich. Germany at last! We had a hotel reserved right outside of the train station so it was as easy as can be. Free wifi? Really? "of course!" most excellent.

After dropping depositing our baggage, we made our way to the local artze (doctor) which happened to be open despite how late our arrival was. The local doctor in turn directed us to eye specialist doctors at the local university hospital. Once there, and after some awkward attempts at communication, and some more waiting Ted was finally able to get some attention for his eye. It turns out the object had already fallen out, most likely in the eyepatch during the day, but the eye was still highly irritated. After giving him some antibiotics and cleanser for the eye, we were good to go. At last, time to explore Munich!

Crap. 10:00 PM already? Er.... I suppose explore was too strong of a word at this point. So we "ventured" across a couple streets to a local chinese restaurant (the only one open), and feasted upon chicken and beef curry, giving us much needed sustenance as we had hardly eaten all day. Naturally, a delicious cold brew was also consumed with a meal, as it only seemed fitting and would be blasphemous without one.

Vaticaning- Peter Rabbit (april 8th)

2009-04-12T16:54:00.008-05:00

I'm one to pride myself on an internal clock. Usually every single day I can get myself to wake up at about 7-8:30 every single day no problem. Even in europe I haven't been having any issues, it's been great.This morning was an enigma, I slept for over 12 hours, daaang.

Finally departing our room at about 2pm , we headed on over through the labyrinth of rome and finally stumbled on my 5th country, The Vatican. Along the way we ran into a really fantastic pizza joint, crowded with natives. We took this as a sign that the food must be delicious , and it was. On the way we also noticed the COMPLETE LACK OF RAIN despite the 80% chance. grrr. Oh well, at least we finished most stuff yesterday and now we didn't have to buy a chinsy umbrella. Wait, what am I even complaining about? No rain is awesome!

Due to our much needed slothfulness (deadly sin!) we missed the big cheese (da pope) himself having his Wednesday morning speech to tell his herd how to live their everyday lives. It would have been an interesting experience, but at least we weren't tired and crabby.

The central stage

Instead we quickly entered the primary theater of the catholic church, Saint Peter's Basilica. When I think of most big churches, I consider them quite lavish, this one was almost kingly (go figure, since the vatican is the only current absolute monarchy in the world).

There were lots of statues of popes, but this one was quite unique. Death peering out under the sheetlike stone with an hourglass showing the inevitability of demise? Whatever. It looks pretty neat.

Post snapping some photos of the journey, we ventured into the deep dark catacombs of the place.... OK well they were pretty nice and well lit. The tombs contained the bodies of all (or maybe just most? I didn't count them) the previous popes, including the apostle, Peter himself. No photos were allowed, but the other tourists just kept snapping away anyways. I'm surprised none of them were kicked out. Security was quite lax.

Afterwards we had another glorious line wait to get into the cupola. Once inside we climbed up over 500 stairs to the peak. At first the stairs were natural but once we were closer and closer to the top, the walkway became much more twisted and narrow. Especially since quite a few individuals were going at quite the slow pace, snapping photos all along the way and turning a finely beating heart into a series of fatty clogged arteries.

Like all things, it's always difficult to get to the top, but once you're there you are rewarded. Of course, it wasn't wads of cash, but we got a pretty nice view of the city and the country inside it. We even got to peep into the depths of the Vatican, so we could see what kind of mischief they were up to behind those closed walls.

Well.. there's a building... and a couple people walking around..

at least there's good ice cream....ish food

After the long journey down, aided by gravity, we decided to go find some eats once again. Due to our last horrifying experience the night before, we decided to beseech the scholarly words of Ted's travel europe guide. It brought us twisting and turning down a series of windy roads until we finally reached our destination "Da Lucia". We were seated and served pretty quickly, and managed to finally get ourselves our first taste of Italian wine. I'm not much of a wine guy, but it wasn't bad at all all things considered. The restaurant also had it's own violin player, giving us a lovely tune with no thought of personal gain. Just kidding, he was a random street performer who wanted to be paid without even asking anyone if they wanted it , ohh rome. The pasta was good, but once again quite small, especially compared to my usual half a box per sitting. How do these people survive here? Maybe they snack a lot.

wino!

Roma- tourist hades (April 7th)

2009-04-12T16:21:00.008-05:00

Ahhh, Roma! I awoke at about 8:00 AM and spent a few hours in the outside of the compartment in looking at the view. There wasn't much of one, but it was more breezy and light than the top bunk in which I was somehow forced into by shotgun rules. I suggested coin flip, but who wants that when they've already won with with a boastful proclamation? To avoid travel buddy hostility, I accepted my uncomfortable fate. I suppose this is my destiny for shot-gunning so many car rides.

After the conductor came by with our passports/rail passes (whew, we found out later they do this every time), we were good to go. We left the train station and managed to find our way rather painlessly to the place of our stay, Hotel Rex. Once there, we were informed that our room wouldn't be ready until much much later: 3:00. This is quite unfortunate as we hadn't even had the time to get a shower in, since there wasn't one on the night train. In the mean time, we decided to check some stuff on the wifi (2E/Hour), like Ted's credit card status.

Since yesterday, Ted has been moneyless due to some shenanigans in the french credit card system. They probably went on strike. As a result, I have become the temporary soul benefactor of this trip.

After a series of errands in the world wide web, we had a stroke of luck where our room was ready much earlier than stated (10am!). The room we received was very very nice. A huge bedroom area with a gigantic bathroom (complete with a "bidet" to clean that lovely area in which food leaves the human digestive system). After an hour or so of waiting, at last we were finally able to set out! Hooray!

two toilets? no.. just a bidet

One of the first things I noticed when we came into the city, was that you had to literally hurl yourself into traffic or else no one would stop for you. Even then, the motorcyclists navigated through the pedestrians to get through as fast as humanly possible. The streets were literally flooded with people (Ted compared it to Paris). There were also food stands everywhere, for delicious panini (grilled sandwiches) that were cheap as can be. I was a big fan. I could probably eat these for five meals a day. Of course, what's a big city without tourist trap stands, with "authentic" folexes, purses, and belts.

Old rome the place to be in one during the reign of one of the coolest/greatest empires of all time. Colosseum... go! Of course, instead of viewing plays of war where men battle with nets & tridents against exotic beasts, it was just a bunch of tourists like us wielding cameras instead of swords... so many in fact, that we were forced to wait in a line for an excruciating amount of time.

At last.. the coliseum.. in 45 min..

Upon exiting this ancient theatre of blood, sweat and tears we happened to run into a couple of Ted's friends who also happened to be touring in Europe. The four of us explored the rest of the ruins in the area but then we soon parted ways since our brisk pace was far too much for them to keep up with.

Rome is now ruined, but it still has cool ruins

As we found it was going to be raining tomorrow, we decided to do a grand blitz of Rome. This involved us dashing throughout the city in a whirlwind being sure to see every important fountain, ruin, monument and statue. This was probably one of the most tiring days for me, but I suppose all trips have one of those.

The "pantheon", now only home to 1 god since he sucks at keeping friends.

A miscreant we encountered at the famous fountain..This guy is a prick, he wanted his picture taken with us, and then wanted 5 euro. I laughed and gave him 1, even though he didn't deserve the gravel we walked on. What is he supposed to be anyways? Note: Rome is full of cheats.

So, we decided to stop at a dine in restaurant. I ordered some Salmon pasta, which wasn't bad, but the portion was dreadfully small. The service was horrible, I think they marked us as "north american scum" (or cheapskates, cause I didn't want any wine.. learn to serve beer please). We asked for the bill several times, which they pretended to acknowledge, and then proceeded to serve everyone else while we waited an endless amount of time. Finally, we got our bill, but it was added with an additional 15% tip that was completely unmentioned in the menu. To top it off, the pretentious french/italian guy behind Ted kept making arrogant faces at me, lovely.

Eventually we managed to make our way back to the apartment, once again by donning my navigator helmet. At last, I am able to lie down for some sweet sweet sleep..

Atwixt two lakes, Zurich and an overnight train to rome (April 6th)

2009-04-10T18:04:00.010-05:00

Oh man... I AM getting used to this... another approximately eight hours of sleep accompanied by another delicious buffet breakfast. Unfortunate, that this would be the last time, at least here in Switzerland.

God bless our Swiss room

Post face stuffing, we once again beseeched the wisdom of the B&B guru, Ursula, and said our farewells. I snapped a quick picture of her after asking permission, swearing to promote her establishment in the states. If anyone else is feeling adventurous, try it, you'll like it. Rugenpark Hotel!

Ursula ... what a nice lady

Alas, her wise words were wasted on our young ears. We took a train to the other side of town like she said, and then even walked towards the lake she suggested. Or so we thought. Along the way, we managed to see a variety of duck wildlife, along with the works of aspiring young artists dying to be known (graffiti).

aspiring artists... actually most European graffiti is pretty awful (just words that look absolutely wretched) at least these guys put some style into it

Ducks along the way... Duck... duck.... grey duck!

About forty minutes later, we were back again at the Train station we had originally departed to get to the other side of town. Crap. Wrong way. Well, at least the train was back again... so onboard we went... and finally found what we were looking for. The beautiful Brienzersee, a lovely gigantic lake up in the alps. Only having the time to snap a few shots, we fast-walked back to the station, and went twards Luzern. This train was GREAT. There endless good views, going up and down through the alps, and we feasted our eyes on as much as we could.

Birenzersee in all of it's splendor...

After three hours of mountains, sheep, and alpine villages, our train finally came to a stop. Zurich! The capitol of the land of the Swiss Franc, Swiss plug, Swiss army knife, Swiss cheese, Swiss Fondu... you get it. Woo! I sure wish they'd just join the EU, or become a fake member, somehow and make us not have to trifle with power adapters, and their annoying currency. I can only IMAGINE what my parents and the rest of the previous generation had to deal with traveling country to country: francs, deuchmarks, lyra... etc.

I whole heartedly disagree.

Such talk of currencies brings back a painful memory, once AGAIN we needed change so we could store our luggage, only this time, i took the key out before even placing out luggage. Translation: I am an idiot and lost 8 franc, and had to put the key back in, put money back in, then put the luggage in then close it, and THEN take the key... ARSgkklfdsfjh. And this was after being forced to use a third party exchange machine (which robs you; fees).

At any rate, we finally submerged ourselves into city of Zurich. Tramping down the main street, our cameras and English jabber caught the eyes of quite the sketchy old man, walking the opposite direction. Due to his strange appearance, he caught my eye and I noticed as soon as he walked passed us, he flipped a 180 and started approaching us. Instantly I whipped my hands into my pockets, notified Ted and we veered into a less crowded plaza. Lovely, but at least we didn't get robbed.

Zurich has lanes... for bikes... every cyclers dream

At this point we decided to check around the town for various old buildings, churches and took some quick looks. We also decided to walk down the lake area, where the majority of the people of the city were hanging out on this lovely day (20 degrees celsius). Most were swigging beers, and at times, even the smells of reefer could be picked out of the air. I have to admit, it made me want to sit around on the lake and drink a beer in public. where else can we do that normally =(?

Afterwards, we decided to head back, as it was already starting to get fairly late, and we had a night train to catch.. OK it wasn't really that late. We were just a little bored, hungry, and ornery. Finally catching a some eats, we decided we could set up some other connecting trains before finally heading to our Gleis (terminal).

Upon arriving we stumbled upon a giant protest, apparently against Genoside in India, dealing with carpet bombs. Whatever it was, it made me want to look it up. Fortunately it wasn't blocking our train and after a slight mixup (the carts were incorrectly numbered) we were able to get inside just before the police officers started gathering around them (hopefully to just hang out and be neutral? XD ).

out of the protest....

...and onto the train

Now I am sitting on the night train, typing up the excursions of the day. The compartment itself isn't bad at all (it's small, but cozy?), although I don't have any power for my machine, which is running on practically red (they won't let me chage it on here, whee). I am kind of concerned that they took both our passport and our EUrail pass (I feel raped) but hopefully we'll see them again soon in the morning. So pretty quick here i'll just collapse...in a heap....zzz.. OK, not yet but yeah, that's that.

The Roof Of Europe: Finally one I can't hit my head on

2009-04-07T03:27:00.002-05:00

mmmm, I could really really get used to lazily waking up after 8 hours of sleep.. it's pretty wunderbar. Free breakfast too? Niiiiicee... and all the while having a splendid view of a nice swiss yard, and many alpine peaks.

Mountains are splendiferous. I quite enjoyed the Rocky Mountains in Alaska, and I wasn't about to let the Swiss Alps cajole me to let them out of my grasp. And so, like any true self proclaimed mountaineer, we decided to reach for the stars, or maybe just settle for some clouds.

For those who may be thinking we burst out into the back yard, picks in one hand, ropes in the other.. you'll be sadly mistaken. Instead, we took a series of trains, to the city of Sulwald. From there, we played leapfrog up the mountains on a series of lifts, until arriving in the Alpine town of Mürren.

ho hum... just a view in Mürren

This city really is a literal translation of a town in the Alps. Resting on the mountainside, we were greeted by torrents snow along with a throng of downhill Skiiers from all over the place. Fortunately, the sun was on our side this day (sort of, we were warned of intense sunburn, but once again our wonderful landlady at the B&B pulled through, and gave us a bottle for free to borrow) and we quickly threw our jackets into the backpack, for it was too hot! We made our way slowly through, enjoying all sorts of views in this car-less village.

Now, if anyone wants to be appreciated as an amateur photographer, just take a bunch of pictures in the Alps and show them to your friends. Practically every shot on this trip was desktop worthy, or perfect on a facebook/blog especially if you somewhat enjoy writing about your exploits and wanting them to be seen.... *cough*.

Eventually we made our way to another tram which lead us to be packed into another slew of skiers, making us feel yet again out of place. I felt a little bit of regret not trying out any skiing during my time here, but my visions of myself hurdling down the mountain and dashing my brains on some rocks slammed those feelings back down. Still wish I tried it though.

altitude...rising... skiers... everywhere..

Finally, we made it. It was more through our credit cards than our blood sweat and tears, but it was still a good feeling. Schilthorn, part of the highest area in europe (not the highest, but there it was cloudy there all day... pass). Even at the peak, the weather was warm, or in Minnesotan: an inferno (8 degrees celsius)! We lucked out! After taking a photo album of pictures, we decided some delicious fare would be a good option, as we hadn't even eaten since breaking fast, and it was already the afternoon.

kickin it back at the top..nothing like harassing randoms to take your pictures for you

Where can one eat on the top of the mountain? Why, the rotating restaurant on top of course! But, why oh why are there 007 pictures everywhere? Apparently, this was a filming spot for one of the latest James Bond movies, so the restaurant, and the gift shop below was packed with secret agent periphonelia. The soup I had was great though, and of course, I consumed beer. I asked for some water as well, but once again I foolishly didn't mention tap water, and was given another bottle. So, I continuously have to pay for my water, thus I can no longer gloat about my free drinks due to my distaste for soda.

goulash und bier

Eventually, we took the lift back down to Mürren, and then decided to go on a bit of a hike through the mountainous paths. They were coated in snow, but since I'm such a badass, I trekked through in my well aired running shoes regardless of the consequences (cold + smelly feet). It was about an hour long ordeal, that ended in another small town, called Grütschalp. From there, since it was already late, we then went all the way back to Interlaken.

woefully unprepared

I thought I came to escape this stuff...

A spiffy alpine waterfall

I was craving something spicy, so we ended up feating on a bunch of korean/japanese food after searching around for a place to eat. We also decided to have desert at another swiss restaurant... which wasn't really a swiss restaurant. The owner was boisterous, and continuously rang a gigantic bell whilst merrily prancing about in his cow polka-dotted pants. It was there we ate the most swiss food of all, chocolate fondu! Ok ok.. it's not really swiss, but it was pretty good with swiss chocolate...

Despite doing things throughout the entire day, I was given a few hours respite at the end to catch up with blogging, and catch a bit more sleep to finally snuff my constant jet lag induced lethargy. Fin.

No pics yet, but tonight hopefully! XD
Edit: hot pix are up xoxoxo

Swiss Cheese (April 4th)

2009-04-05T17:21:00.003-05:00

Holy catfish on a stick (St. Catfish tastes better)! Woke up a little hung over slightly. I don't know how? lightweight? Hopefully it was the Belgian beer that was that awesome. We woke up at 7:30 Am, to make a train at about 8:30 to Bern. No problem, right? Should be fine.. unless one spends the next 20-30 minutes debating whether or not to take the next train, and be vagrants by sleeping in later.

NO! We must press on! Otherwise, we've blown the day (or so the voice tells me). Quickly devouring a banana for sustenance (idiot) we set out on a mad sprint with our baggage to catch the train.

There are those stories in hollywood, where the person runs with all their matched luggage to catch the train/plane/dumb broad/dude and of course makes it. Well, those guys are con artists, it's not even real for them, they don't feel the agony of running on zero sleep, a sick throat and constantly swallowing the banana (chagrin.) that keeps wanting to come up my throat and say "hello!" every block or so.

Naturally, like any absolutely unique masterpiece of film, we made it with seconds to spare. The conductor was blowing the whistle and the doors were closing as we jumped on. My original plan was to write all about things on the train, but instead I decided that just letting myself die would be a better idea.

Of course, that didn't happen either. Instead I collapsed in a heap for the majority of the train ride like a hobo.... and awoke in Bern, city of Bears! Roar.

Luggage is heavy. Did we really want to carry it? Nein! Nyet! No! We packed it up into a luggage locker in the station.... and realized we had no Swiss Francs (convert to euros, PLEASE). The conversion machine is down? Gee, great. Luckily, the local pretzel (Bretzel König!) stand worker was more than willing to give me change after I payed her in Euros for a sunflower seed pretzel (it's good). Unluckily, she just gave me change back in MORE Euros, after looking confused at me with my poor german & hand motions and then grabbed a hidden tin box filled with Euros and was painstakingly converting the cost. Francless still, we turned around and managed to find a machine in the catacombs of the train station. It gave us some funky looking dollar bills... that we STILL COULDN'T USE. The machine took change! Once again our pretzel lady had to deal with us ..."OHHH... CHANGE!" and we at last, were able to enter the heart of the city unencumbered.

Following the wisdom of the tour guide, we set out onto the main street of bern. What a lovely street! There's no cars, just people walking around... "wait a minute.. what's these tracks that look like railways in the middle..." so there were rail cars that we could avoid. We saw one coming... and then nimbly moved out of the way of its path.... and then we nearly lost Ted. The BUS barreled towards us moving out of the rail line boundaries, unheeding our fear stricken eyes. If he hadn't moved one foot over, he might have been dead. True story. Soon we were looking back and forth franticly as we made our way down the street to make sure we wouldn't be in the warpath of these harbingers of doom.

Along with knives and fondu the swiss sure like their clocks. We saw many along our way and each was quite unique. This is where I'd put in a picture of a cool looking clock, to accompany a really boring paragraph. However, once again, I'm unable to load a picture of any sort... so whoever is reading this should just draw one in paint and write "cool clock" next to it, and then upload it in a comment to save everyone else some work. Which reminds me, feel free to express your enjoyment/distaste in some way on here. It makes it kind of interesting for me, and who doesn't love attention?

Astronomically correct clock

At any rate... this street was packed with all sorts of shops, and if by all sorts, I mean they came out of every orifice of the city. There were even these "cellar" shops, that came out of the ground. Neato. Too bad that all the shops on this street were secretly some breed of predator, designed to feast on the most naïve of tourists by robbing them of their money in exchange for a little snack, or perhaps a shiny trinket. Long story short, this cool looking but deadly road was soon abandoned.
- Come into my underground lair...

At this point, we were dehydrated, hungry, and of course crabby from being dehydrated and hungry. We managed to find a cheap, yet delicious falafel place in one of the back alleys of the city along with a split level target like store with very very cheap groceries and drinks. +1 for team Weaver. Choosing the unbeaten path sure has its pros! Alas... it extracts a terrifying price for your new power..

We decided to visit the city's famous bear pit, which happened to be right across this bridge, that was next to another bridge. So we went across, and promptly got lost, wandering residential areas looking for this so called pit. Eventually, we figured that it must be some other bridge, or it was a myth to keep everyone laughing at us.
At least getting lost got us some nice views.

Naturally, the world isn't centered around one or two people, no matter how much they wish it would be; so we eventually found the pit. Guess what? It had bears in it! Well... 1 bear. For all of the work, I have to admit I was a little underwhelmed. I suppose they can't really just throw people in there anymore for a good show. Dang. I could sure think of a few....
Bern's bear... he looks lonely

After being confused for a while and walking around more, we finally decided to get back onto the train so we could make it to Interlaken, the alpine village outside of Bern where we would be spending the night.

Upon arriving, we managed to only be lost for a short period of time, and then located the place of our staying. We were greeted by an exceptionally nice lady who was more than willing to help us out with anything. She gave us a few recommendations for places to eat for the night, and set us up with our room. After depositing our junk safely behind locked doors, we set out to once again suppress the rage in our stomachs, but this time, in style!

We stepped (I ducked) into a nice authentic swiss restaurant in a less busy side of town, and promptly ordered some Swiss beer, along with a giant pot of fondu with mushrooms. After a few awkward attempts, our server was more than willing to snatch the poker from my hand and show us how eating fondu was really done. It was veeery tasty, but it was a LOT of food which catalyzed lethargy.
fondu for you! no... just for me

So, we went back to the B&B and went to bed. That's that. End Scene.

The Luxembourish Orgy (April 3rd)

2009-04-03T16:05:00.022-05:00

Well.... woke up at 11am today... still tired... but must be awake and do everything, at once! Although, it would have been nice to have some peanut butter for breakfast, but nooooo.

It was stolen from me... well.. stolen by the terrorist police (peanut butter is a gel? that explodes? Maybe they thought I'd pour it onto a food processing plant's conveyor belt) and apparently, peanut butter is "weird" and the jar I bought was probably about 15-20 Euro in the local French grocery (~23-30 dollars).

Day trip ideas...Decisions decisions... "more France... or Luxembourg?" Lux? isn't that the size of my backyard? Yes, yes it is. ok not quite, just 30x50 miles or so. Lux it is! So, once again we enjoyed the luxury of the lovely trains (with plugs! and tables for laptops. drink holders. bathrooms.vending machines. these things are VASTLY superior to planes). Stopped for about an hour in Metz, saw some scenery... got back on the train...

Several hours later, we arrived in the lovely city of..... Luxembourg city! These guys are more linguistic than babelfish, fluent in: German, french, English and luxembourgish (the bastard child of German and french). To be fair, they're quite friendly people.... the tour guide was more than helpful, it was most unfortunate that we were on quite the time constraint, decisions resulted to just hang in the city and bypass a great deal of rural sites, since we'd be rocking it throughout the trip anyways.

This city is an orgy, not the sweet sweet loving everywhere orgy, but a literal fraking (lul) melting pot orgy (USA don't got nothing, we so arrogant) German, french, luxembourgish, English, Arabic, Japanese + more were all heard down the streets of this business Country as i rocked my USA accent... Which reminds me, apparently NO ONE can tell the difference between a british accent and an american one, so people think I'm British, which is great (mind games!).

The city itself is quite interesting. In the middle is a giant ravine, or the "moat" as ted calls it. At the center of the gorge there is an additional "moat"; a man made stream... that I could walk over....so, no real defense there.

The Ravine in action, and me contemplating a swift death.. or just hanging out

<-- A cool church in the wall of the ravine

<-- The grand duke's lone guard, he must know really good ju-jitsu

Like other European cities I've seen so far, there were packed streets, huge sidewalks, big squares and old architecture aplenty. There was the Grand Duke's (the only one in the world, zomg) palace (The DUCAL Palace), which has a whole whopping 1 guard on each side, but the people love him, and so there's no worries. Once in a while a man gets hungry. For me it's a constant exercise of my stomach muscle and I demanded substance! So of course, Ted brought me to the most luxembourgish restaurant in the entire city! What a pal! Wait a minute......this looks like a ENCHILADA!!!... CHI-CHIs??!?! Well... ok I guess.. just this once ( Ted needed his Mexican fix) apparently Mexican food is the rarest thing ever here, and Tex-Mex is just an exquisite, decadent treat ( THE PLACE WAS PACKED. Over 50 people sitting outside). There isn't a single one in Nancy, and they're quite hard to find elsewhere in Europe. Which brings me to another interesting point, apparently there's a Tex-Mex place called "Indiana Tex-Mex Café" Indiana? Pardon moi? hahaha. A few hours after being in the Lux, it was time to depart, such is the life of the day trip. Upon arriving in Nancy, we headed back to Ted's to get ready for the long voyage ahead (15 days of just travel and hotels). On the way we managed to see a fair going on. So we decided to waltz through the masses and see what there was to offer. I'll tell you what it had to offer, a bunch of stoic french folk refusing to do anything other than stare at the pretty lights. There wasn't even LINES for the rides hardly. They just watched, and watched, and watched, and then ate a churro (they love those too, <3s for tex mex)

The french love dem churros

Even their wine has corks!

Several 40s (or 75cl "En Français") later, the bars seemed like quite the plan and we decided it would be fun to meet up with some more of Ted's buddies, in the highschool division (teaching highschool, not highschoolers, ew)... and it's only 12:30 right? We're good to go. OOps. Bars close at 1. Good Game. QQ. Instead, I just stood tired as can be for several more hours while everyone talked french talk.... but then we finally headed back and promptly collapsed at about 3, having to wake up at 7.....

Note: I can't upload images,the Swiss internet is not being friendly, at some point they'll be there, in all of their glory/shame.

April 1st.....and 2nd... !#&^& jetlag

2009-04-02T11:52:00.020-05:00

So, here I am. Sitting away several minutes prior to an overseas flight from MSP to Paris, France (Where else?). As a par for the course the flight itself requires its own plethora of waiting times. Thankfully, I spent the majority of the time quaffing Killian's Irish Red with my Dad, who stuck around until I had to go through the terrorism defense parameter. With luck, and swift blow to the back of the head, the flight should go by rather quickly... but I'll see in due time. In the mean while I'll curse the non-existent ($$$ filled) wifi and envelope myself in a few chapters of Dune Messiah...

At first I thought I'd have an entire row to myself. then AT THE LAST MINUTE someone else took my secondary spot... at least it was an interesting lady going to Saudi Arabia... apparently to hopefully start a combined effort to fight cancer... USA providing the knowledgeable manpower while black gold produces the revenue. Neat.

Yes! Nine hours of cramped legs annoying high school students later and I'm finally in Paris.
I even succeeded in navigating the airport and finding Ted. Finally I stepped forward into the outside (60 + Fahrenheit!) and was greeted with the sights and sounds of Paris after a short Train ride...

errrr.... and then I had a Milk shake. We had the HONOR of being able to have our first train layover in the lovely area of Disney Land Paris. Ted wanted to stay longer... but I wouldn't let him.

Ted... thinking we're spending the day here........

...and giving a last long look goodbye as I said no...

+1 train ride and +1 bus ride later..... In Teds current home of his residence, Nancy, at last! This was my first look into a French town and it was well... dense. The amount of people on the streets nearly rivaled the foot traffic of NYC.

There were several other similarities to the states such as the well fed homeless, hooch in one hand, and the other one open for handouts from an ignorant sot. Another thing was Ted's bathroom (apartment visited post drop off), which only held the slightest similarity to my own house, with the tiniest WC I've ever seen, only containing a toilet (apparently they're everywhere).
The Mighty Throne

To put it bluntly, st cloud is droll and all, but Nancy is a breathing organism of architectural expertise and merit. The ancient architecture is fantastic, and the French do have quite a bit of style.

<---Rentabikes and FLOWERS, in APRIL what a novel idea.

Despite the cool architecture I was greeted by the strange looks as I walked merrily down the streets (a poor choice..I found out later smiling is impolite..)gangly arms flailing, jumping off of random walls and pillars scattered about the city.

Fortunately, I received smiles and laughs (laughing with me, hopefully) when I gave my all at trying vainly to express orders or requests "En Français".

I also managed to learn some interesting things about the French, and strikes. They love them. If it was an organism, it would most certainly be kissed on both cheeks by every single passerby. Even Ted's school had faced the wrath of the mighty strike, as the doors were locked shut, and signs posted to convince students and teachers to commit themselves as well to the current "oppression".

<--- we're on STRIKE!

<--- Accompanied by

<--- Locked Strike chains

Post Nancy tour, I gratefully succumbed to collapsing onto soft objects upon returning to Ted's 200 year old apartment (they're all that old, or older). Shortly after, we were invited to partake in eating with a slew of Ted's friends, who all ended up being delightful people, hailing from our USofA as well as Mexico, Scotland and England.

I enjoyed one of the best pizzas ever. Peperoni has a new master... Chriso slices... mmmmmmm...I also used my water glass for wine, a gross sin. Also, there wasn't a good..errr ANY dark beer to be found... at least Stella is OK.

Well, this is the end of my first (and second) day 36+ hours of 2 or less hours of airplane sleep... and I'm going to pass out...

I lied

2008-10-31T15:04:00.004-05:00

1 more post, to narcissistically (it's not a word) show off my tattoo
Is it
(A) An octopus
(B) God
(C)A Story
(D)?????
(E)A cry for attention

Blog

2008-08-29T11:05:00.000-05:00

Bought a new router. my old one was broken. my roomates are cleaning it's sweet hooray. this will probably be the last time i ever blog.