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

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)

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

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

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

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?

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!"

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.