April 20, 2010
Nymphenburg Castle was our destination today. The weather wasn't as nice but we heard it was worth the trip anyways. By the time we got there though (which took us a little longer than we thought it would) the sun was out. We didn't want to pay to go inside the actual castle or the museums so we did some more wandering around the beautiful grounds and ended up on a park bench by a pond and in the sun. We sat, ate, talked and even napped a little. It was a great outing. We headed back in to the city and went to the tourist area to get our souvenirs. I normally just got a shot glass from each country and maybe one other thing for a friend if I find something I think someone will like. But we're in Munich. Pretty much the beer capital of the world. This meant we needed something bigger. What better than a beer stein? They are kind of heavy and definitely not cheap, but oh so cool looking. It was hard spending that money when I know I have so little of it, but Hilary rationalized it that we didn't have to pay for hostels so it's okay to splurge a little. Good enough for me. :) Now the trick will be to make sure it doesn't break in the next two months.
After we got our fill of spending too much money, it was back to Steph's to drop everything off and then we were heading to Spring Festival!! I had no idea this was going on when we planned Munich, but it started the 16th and was going on for two weeks. Great timing. Spring Festival is essentially a mini-Oktoberfest. It is more for the locals as it isn't advertised as heavily but it still has everything Oktoberfest does. There was a carnival with games, rides and food. I love carnivals! They just make me so happy. Love rides, love games, love food. Plus there are always happy little kids running around jacked up on sugar, it's so cute. The best part about this carnival though was that there were two major beer tents. Steph took us to the one that had better beer and we settled down for the night. Another couchsurfer had messaged Steph about staying with her but since we were already there she said she couldn't. Instead he got a hostel but met up with us around 8 at the beer tent. His name was Zach from Reno. Really cool guy and had done a lot of traveling by himself and had a lot a head of him. He was pretty much just going to random cities on the fly until his money ran out. He said he wasn't even sure he was going to Munich when he got to the train station. He had an idea of a couple different places than just chose Munich last minute. I love it. If I had a choice of how to travel that would be it. He also only had a one way ticket to Europe. I'm pretty I would have been in love with him if he wasn't 19. Such a youngin, haha.
Spring Festival was definitely a success. The night has some good stories to go along with it but in order to not completely freak out and worry my family I'm going to skip most of these stories. All I have to say is Oktoberfest has got to be a ridiculously good time. My new life goal is to make it there within the next three years. Getting a group of friends together for such an out of the world party would be nothing short of epic. I'm thinking 2012 is a realistic goal. I'm now officially recruiting friends who want to go with me. Let me know!! :)
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Englischer Gardens
April 19, 2010
Our first task of the day was to find a city map. Life is a lot easier as a tourist in a new city with one. Steph didn't have one at her place but said we could get it at City Hall. Her directions on how to find it: Left, Left, cross the big street, walk a little ways and you can't miss it. Ha, alright, she didn't know who she was talking to. We got the first set of directions down, but once we got to "you can't miss it" well, we did, I think. The first building we thought would be it turned out to be a church. The second turned out to be a major shopping center. We only found it because it was noon and we heard bells going off. When we turned the corner there was a huge crowd gathered, I told Hilary I thought something famous was happening so we stuck around to see what the big deal was. Turned out to be the Glockenspiel going off. I won't lie, I had no idea what this was until I saw it happening. Turns out it is pretty famous and we just happened upon it, sweet.
Once the crowd cleared we saw a tourist center and headed there to find our map. Being the 'frugal' girls that we are, we wanted a free standard map. The tourist center wanted us to pay. Hilary talked the lady's head off enough about finding a free map that she ended up just giving it to us. Awesome. Apparently being annoying American tourists does have its benefits. At this point we set off to find the Englischer Gardens which is supposed to be one of the biggest parks in Europe and really beautiful. We stopped by the Hofbrauhaus on the way since it is also a major draw of Munich. It was a cool place with live music and lots of beer, but Steph told us that it isn't the best beer around, it just became really famous for some unknown reason. Other than that it was apparently the site of the first gathering of Hitler. Not so sure that is something to brag about though...
The Englischer Gardens were beautiful and huge. We got lucky and it was a gorgeous sunny day so there were a lot of people out enjoying it. We walked about a fourth of it and then read an information sign that there was a beer garden in the park -- obviously our next destination. We found it pretty easily as the Germans to not mess around with their beer gardens. Huge. There were brezels, sausage and lots of other food I didn't recognize along with lots and lots of beer. Turns out Germans don't mess around with the size of their beers either. Liters and liters and liters, everywhere. It was a magical site. I've never seen so much beer in one condensed outside area so early in the afternoon. I love Germany. Who cares if I can't speak the language if my life depended on it, I won't have to. Everyone understands beer, haha.
When we got our fill, we headed out to find a big lake in the middle of the park. One the way Hilary who has a tendency to find random things on the ground -- apparently she looks down when she walks -- found a liter glass in the bushes. It was filthy but she took it anyway as a free souvenir. After she washed it, it looks pretty nice except for the logo on it being scratched off a little.
The lake was really nice. There were dogs and ducks everywhere. I've decided I like ducks. They make funny noises, are highly unproductive with their lives, but are able to live in water, land and air. Pretty cool animals if you ask me. Plus when they dive for food in the water and stick their butts out you can't help but laugh every time - well, I can't at least. It was also funny seeing the dogs chase the ducks around. I don't know how they stand it, I'd get pretty pissed if dogs were constantly chasing me off of my land. But it seemed like a big game. Every time the dogs would walk away the ducks would run back on to the land and waddle around until the dogs chased them back in to the water.
The park was huge and we could have kept walking through it all day, but decided to wander around and gander at the city more instead. We checked out some random famous sites the map told us about and then walked through their major shopping district and eventually headed back to Steph's to make her dinner. She just started her job a month ago after graduating and had a major presentation on Thursday that was stressing her and everyone else out work. Because of that she'd be working 10+ hour days the poor girl. Thankfully she still let us stay with her so we wanted to have dinner ready for her when she got home. We went to the store - always an experience on what is what when there isn't anyone with you to translate. Pesto pasta with chicken and a stir fry of potatoes, onions, pepper, lemon and other seasonings were what we settled on. And a bottle of wine of course. It's pretty quick and easy to make no matter what people have in their kitchens. Steph ended up getting home a half hour or so after she thought she would so the hot dinner on the table ended up being a slightly cooled dinner but it was still really good and provided left overs for the next day and a half.
Our first task of the day was to find a city map. Life is a lot easier as a tourist in a new city with one. Steph didn't have one at her place but said we could get it at City Hall. Her directions on how to find it: Left, Left, cross the big street, walk a little ways and you can't miss it. Ha, alright, she didn't know who she was talking to. We got the first set of directions down, but once we got to "you can't miss it" well, we did, I think. The first building we thought would be it turned out to be a church. The second turned out to be a major shopping center. We only found it because it was noon and we heard bells going off. When we turned the corner there was a huge crowd gathered, I told Hilary I thought something famous was happening so we stuck around to see what the big deal was. Turned out to be the Glockenspiel going off. I won't lie, I had no idea what this was until I saw it happening. Turns out it is pretty famous and we just happened upon it, sweet.
Once the crowd cleared we saw a tourist center and headed there to find our map. Being the 'frugal' girls that we are, we wanted a free standard map. The tourist center wanted us to pay. Hilary talked the lady's head off enough about finding a free map that she ended up just giving it to us. Awesome. Apparently being annoying American tourists does have its benefits. At this point we set off to find the Englischer Gardens which is supposed to be one of the biggest parks in Europe and really beautiful. We stopped by the Hofbrauhaus on the way since it is also a major draw of Munich. It was a cool place with live music and lots of beer, but Steph told us that it isn't the best beer around, it just became really famous for some unknown reason. Other than that it was apparently the site of the first gathering of Hitler. Not so sure that is something to brag about though...
The Englischer Gardens were beautiful and huge. We got lucky and it was a gorgeous sunny day so there were a lot of people out enjoying it. We walked about a fourth of it and then read an information sign that there was a beer garden in the park -- obviously our next destination. We found it pretty easily as the Germans to not mess around with their beer gardens. Huge. There were brezels, sausage and lots of other food I didn't recognize along with lots and lots of beer. Turns out Germans don't mess around with the size of their beers either. Liters and liters and liters, everywhere. It was a magical site. I've never seen so much beer in one condensed outside area so early in the afternoon. I love Germany. Who cares if I can't speak the language if my life depended on it, I won't have to. Everyone understands beer, haha.
When we got our fill, we headed out to find a big lake in the middle of the park. One the way Hilary who has a tendency to find random things on the ground -- apparently she looks down when she walks -- found a liter glass in the bushes. It was filthy but she took it anyway as a free souvenir. After she washed it, it looks pretty nice except for the logo on it being scratched off a little.
The lake was really nice. There were dogs and ducks everywhere. I've decided I like ducks. They make funny noises, are highly unproductive with their lives, but are able to live in water, land and air. Pretty cool animals if you ask me. Plus when they dive for food in the water and stick their butts out you can't help but laugh every time - well, I can't at least. It was also funny seeing the dogs chase the ducks around. I don't know how they stand it, I'd get pretty pissed if dogs were constantly chasing me off of my land. But it seemed like a big game. Every time the dogs would walk away the ducks would run back on to the land and waddle around until the dogs chased them back in to the water.
The park was huge and we could have kept walking through it all day, but decided to wander around and gander at the city more instead. We checked out some random famous sites the map told us about and then walked through their major shopping district and eventually headed back to Steph's to make her dinner. She just started her job a month ago after graduating and had a major presentation on Thursday that was stressing her and everyone else out work. Because of that she'd be working 10+ hour days the poor girl. Thankfully she still let us stay with her so we wanted to have dinner ready for her when she got home. We went to the store - always an experience on what is what when there isn't anyone with you to translate. Pesto pasta with chicken and a stir fry of potatoes, onions, pepper, lemon and other seasonings were what we settled on. And a bottle of wine of course. It's pretty quick and easy to make no matter what people have in their kitchens. Steph ended up getting home a half hour or so after she thought she would so the hot dinner on the table ended up being a slightly cooled dinner but it was still really good and provided left overs for the next day and a half.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Munich!
April 18, 2010
"I think I'm still a little drunk." First words spoken by Hilary this morning, haha. Renzo was pretty hung over as well and me in true form felt fine. I do really enjoy my ability drink like a pro and not get hangovers. I'm sure my parents are really proud of me at the moment. :)
Our train was leaving at 12:10 for Munich so we dragged ourselves out of bed around 10:30/11, cleaned, packed and headed out. We usually take goodbye pictures with our host, but we had an entire photo shoot with him the night before so we figured we'd had the picture thing handled. Being sober is not a requirement thankfully. I think we left on a pretty good not and hopefully we changed Renzo's mind about all Americans... I'll be waiting for the reference he leaves us on CouchSurfing to see.
During the train ride when the conductor lady came up to us we gave her our passes and she informed us they didn't work. The pass we are using is only for Benelux, Germany and Switzerland. We thought this would be find until she told us that our train has one stop in Austria which isn't covered in our pass, so we'd have to pay. Great. Turns out it was only about 5 euros per person since it was only one stop which wasn't to bad. I had some Swiss franks left over so I wanted to pay in those. She did the conversation and charged us 16 franks. Turns out that was a crappy conversion rate, which the guy sitting next to us told us. This sparked a conversation with him and it turns out he is a professor of science who just got back from a trip to the states. He was really nice and helped Hilary with some German grammar. I love talking to random people and hearing about their lives and the country they are from.
We met up with our new host, Steph, pretty easily and headed back to her place. She's super talkative and really energetic which I love. Her place is pretty accessible from the station -- as almost everything is in Europe. I'm a little lost on how to get to her place easily, but hopefully we'll be able to figure it out quickly. She took us to a local cafe and had delicious hamburgers which I haven't had in a long time. It was especially nice because we'd be traveling all day so my food consisted of bread and potato chips. Meat was needed.
While at dinner one of her friends met up with us and then we all went out for drinks. The bar we were at had a big group of older and really drunk people at it who kept playing 80's music. Highly entertaining but a little hard to talk with all of the distracting action. Steph filled us in on a lot of history and information of Germany and where all the good places in town are. We left the bar pretty early since we didn't get much sleep last night and it turns out Steph didn't really sleep either as she was celebrating a friend's birthday. While we were standing outside the bartender was outside as well. He came up to me and handed me some flowers saying they were especially for me, haha. I think he was a little drunk and the flowers were fake but still pretty entertaining.
The rest of the night is full of planning on what we are doing the next two days. Steph has to work so she can't meet up with us until after that. Looks like it's going ot be another fun filled day of getting lost in a new city!
"I think I'm still a little drunk." First words spoken by Hilary this morning, haha. Renzo was pretty hung over as well and me in true form felt fine. I do really enjoy my ability drink like a pro and not get hangovers. I'm sure my parents are really proud of me at the moment. :)
Our train was leaving at 12:10 for Munich so we dragged ourselves out of bed around 10:30/11, cleaned, packed and headed out. We usually take goodbye pictures with our host, but we had an entire photo shoot with him the night before so we figured we'd had the picture thing handled. Being sober is not a requirement thankfully. I think we left on a pretty good not and hopefully we changed Renzo's mind about all Americans... I'll be waiting for the reference he leaves us on CouchSurfing to see.
During the train ride when the conductor lady came up to us we gave her our passes and she informed us they didn't work. The pass we are using is only for Benelux, Germany and Switzerland. We thought this would be find until she told us that our train has one stop in Austria which isn't covered in our pass, so we'd have to pay. Great. Turns out it was only about 5 euros per person since it was only one stop which wasn't to bad. I had some Swiss franks left over so I wanted to pay in those. She did the conversation and charged us 16 franks. Turns out that was a crappy conversion rate, which the guy sitting next to us told us. This sparked a conversation with him and it turns out he is a professor of science who just got back from a trip to the states. He was really nice and helped Hilary with some German grammar. I love talking to random people and hearing about their lives and the country they are from.
We met up with our new host, Steph, pretty easily and headed back to her place. She's super talkative and really energetic which I love. Her place is pretty accessible from the station -- as almost everything is in Europe. I'm a little lost on how to get to her place easily, but hopefully we'll be able to figure it out quickly. She took us to a local cafe and had delicious hamburgers which I haven't had in a long time. It was especially nice because we'd be traveling all day so my food consisted of bread and potato chips. Meat was needed.
While at dinner one of her friends met up with us and then we all went out for drinks. The bar we were at had a big group of older and really drunk people at it who kept playing 80's music. Highly entertaining but a little hard to talk with all of the distracting action. Steph filled us in on a lot of history and information of Germany and where all the good places in town are. We left the bar pretty early since we didn't get much sleep last night and it turns out Steph didn't really sleep either as she was celebrating a friend's birthday. While we were standing outside the bartender was outside as well. He came up to me and handed me some flowers saying they were especially for me, haha. I think he was a little drunk and the flowers were fake but still pretty entertaining.
The rest of the night is full of planning on what we are doing the next two days. Steph has to work so she can't meet up with us until after that. Looks like it's going ot be another fun filled day of getting lost in a new city!
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Rugby Game
April 17, 2010
I woke up to Renzo walking into the living room saying "bad news girls..." Turns out the volcano that exploded in Iceland was affecting travelers all throughout Europe. Almost the entire continent plus some has shut down their airports as the ash spreads south and east of Iceland. Everyone is afraid the ash will cause airplanes to malfunction and crash - not good. Because of this, the train stations were filling up quickly with people needed to get from one country to the next. With the Eurail passes and Hilary and I have we don't have reserved seats unless we want to pay extra for them. This means we pretty much just get on a train and hope that there are open seats. So far we've only had one problem with this and that was only for an hour or two on our way from Amsterdam to Switzerland. But with everyone having to take trains we started to worry that there wouldn't be any open trains for a few days.
We got ready faster than usual and headed to the train station to figure out the first train out we could get. After waiting in line for about a half hour we were actually easily able to reserve seats for the noon train on Sunday for only 5 franks each. Franks around almost equivalent to dollars so that was actually a lot easier than expected. It was a really good thing we did it though. I'm currently sitting on that train and it is easily going to be packed with people. There are a couple random seats open here and there but for the most part everything is reserved.
After we got our seats Renzo took us on a walking tour of the city. Lucerne has an old and new city and the old city is the main tourist attraction. It is pretty small and we were able to easily walk it in a couple hours. There are some cool older bridges and one cool garden area but other than that Lucerne wasn't anything wildly spectacular. Lucerne is supposed to be the tourist capital but I don't quite understand why. Bern and Interlaken were a lot pretty I thought. No problem though. We were off to a rugby game which I was really excited for.
Renzo is hurt so he can't currently play but he still goes and supports his team of course. I know little to nothing about rugby so I was hoping he would be able to sit with us and explain it but his couch asked him to be line ref so we were left along to figure out the sport. It was pretty fun being able to sit on the edge of the field right at eye level watching the game and drinking beer along with all the other fans. The game was pretty stop and go and there were times when I asked some random guys what was going on but I think I followed it for the most part. Renzo's team lost sadly but the beauty of rugby is that there is always lots of beer no matter what the outcome of the game. The opposing team actually brought their own crates full of bottled beer and passed them out as soon as the game was over, haha. Everyone likes to describe this as 'their drinking team has a rugby problem.'
Everyone headed back to Gracie Kelly for some sand whiches and beer. We were there for a few minutes when the entire opposing team walked in. I was told that rugby is a gentleman's sport and the home team almost always invites the other team out for food and drinks afterwards. I thought that was really cool. All the guys were big and exactly what you would think rugby players would look like but they were also really nice. Renzo said you can always trust a rugby player. I don't know if I'd go that far, but I can see why he'd say that.
It was our last night in Switzerland so Renzo made us raclette again and invited a couple CS friends and his rugby friend David over for dinner after the bar. I love that we went to a bar and the had dinner. It was a lot of fun. We danced, ate and drank. David was still pulling moves, only this time they were on me instead of Hilary. I guess he found out she had a boyfriend and moved on. I don't know what he thought was going to happen after I'd watched him hit on my friend two nights before, but it was entertaining nonetheless and he was a fun guy to talk and dance with so no real harm done.
We were all hanging out after diner when one of the CS guys, Toby, said there was a private party of sorts going on at a place he used to co-own. We headed there and it ended up being a really cool, really big flat almost which was full of games, TVs, poker tables, a bar and lots of really nice people. It is a private club that some guy decided he wanted to start. No real profit is made from it I guess, but it is just a sweet place for a bunch of friends to hang out. The idea is actually really cool. We spent the night talking, playing Wii and drinking way to much. We found this alligator game where you have to push the teeth down one by one and every time the alligator bit you, you had to take a drink. Let's just say the alligator didn't like me so much and the jager liked me even less. All in all it was a lot of fun and we have the pictures and video to prove it. It was a great goodbye to Switzerland.
I woke up to Renzo walking into the living room saying "bad news girls..." Turns out the volcano that exploded in Iceland was affecting travelers all throughout Europe. Almost the entire continent plus some has shut down their airports as the ash spreads south and east of Iceland. Everyone is afraid the ash will cause airplanes to malfunction and crash - not good. Because of this, the train stations were filling up quickly with people needed to get from one country to the next. With the Eurail passes and Hilary and I have we don't have reserved seats unless we want to pay extra for them. This means we pretty much just get on a train and hope that there are open seats. So far we've only had one problem with this and that was only for an hour or two on our way from Amsterdam to Switzerland. But with everyone having to take trains we started to worry that there wouldn't be any open trains for a few days.
We got ready faster than usual and headed to the train station to figure out the first train out we could get. After waiting in line for about a half hour we were actually easily able to reserve seats for the noon train on Sunday for only 5 franks each. Franks around almost equivalent to dollars so that was actually a lot easier than expected. It was a really good thing we did it though. I'm currently sitting on that train and it is easily going to be packed with people. There are a couple random seats open here and there but for the most part everything is reserved.
After we got our seats Renzo took us on a walking tour of the city. Lucerne has an old and new city and the old city is the main tourist attraction. It is pretty small and we were able to easily walk it in a couple hours. There are some cool older bridges and one cool garden area but other than that Lucerne wasn't anything wildly spectacular. Lucerne is supposed to be the tourist capital but I don't quite understand why. Bern and Interlaken were a lot pretty I thought. No problem though. We were off to a rugby game which I was really excited for.
Renzo is hurt so he can't currently play but he still goes and supports his team of course. I know little to nothing about rugby so I was hoping he would be able to sit with us and explain it but his couch asked him to be line ref so we were left along to figure out the sport. It was pretty fun being able to sit on the edge of the field right at eye level watching the game and drinking beer along with all the other fans. The game was pretty stop and go and there were times when I asked some random guys what was going on but I think I followed it for the most part. Renzo's team lost sadly but the beauty of rugby is that there is always lots of beer no matter what the outcome of the game. The opposing team actually brought their own crates full of bottled beer and passed them out as soon as the game was over, haha. Everyone likes to describe this as 'their drinking team has a rugby problem.'
Everyone headed back to Gracie Kelly for some sand whiches and beer. We were there for a few minutes when the entire opposing team walked in. I was told that rugby is a gentleman's sport and the home team almost always invites the other team out for food and drinks afterwards. I thought that was really cool. All the guys were big and exactly what you would think rugby players would look like but they were also really nice. Renzo said you can always trust a rugby player. I don't know if I'd go that far, but I can see why he'd say that.
It was our last night in Switzerland so Renzo made us raclette again and invited a couple CS friends and his rugby friend David over for dinner after the bar. I love that we went to a bar and the had dinner. It was a lot of fun. We danced, ate and drank. David was still pulling moves, only this time they were on me instead of Hilary. I guess he found out she had a boyfriend and moved on. I don't know what he thought was going to happen after I'd watched him hit on my friend two nights before, but it was entertaining nonetheless and he was a fun guy to talk and dance with so no real harm done.
We were all hanging out after diner when one of the CS guys, Toby, said there was a private party of sorts going on at a place he used to co-own. We headed there and it ended up being a really cool, really big flat almost which was full of games, TVs, poker tables, a bar and lots of really nice people. It is a private club that some guy decided he wanted to start. No real profit is made from it I guess, but it is just a sweet place for a bunch of friends to hang out. The idea is actually really cool. We spent the night talking, playing Wii and drinking way to much. We found this alligator game where you have to push the teeth down one by one and every time the alligator bit you, you had to take a drink. Let's just say the alligator didn't like me so much and the jager liked me even less. All in all it was a lot of fun and we have the pictures and video to prove it. It was a great goodbye to Switzerland.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Museum & CS BBQ
April 16, 2010
Renzo told us about a big transportation museum that is supposed to be really cool. It was Friday but he had taken the day off so we all went to the museum together. Hilary and I are still pretty museumed out from London, but this was supposed to be really interactive, not just walking around a reading. It wasn't cheap at 23 franks but I think it was worth it. We were there for the whole day and pretty much just acted like kids while we were there. There is a ton of things to play with and you can pretend you are driving a plane or train or anything else that moves. There were scooters, bikes, video game-like things, simulations, life size models, etc etc. There was even a planetarium which had a presentation about the Zodiac. It was kind of interesting but with it being so dark and laying in comfy seats I was falling in and out of sleep the whole time. Renzo made fun of me for it. Apparently space isn't my thing.
After the museum we headed back to Renzo's place to get ready for a couchsurfing BBQ he was having. He's pretty involved in the CS community and a lot of them hang out together. We happened to come on the weekend he was hosting his first BBQ with all of them - awesome. The night was really fun. Everyone we met was really nice, as always. I've really come to expect nothing less from this community. We were the only ones there officially couchsurfing on someone's couch, but it was a pretty big international group. There were people from Germany, Scandinavia, Australia, Estonia, etc... That's the great thing about Europe, it's so easy to get from country to country so people can move around for a year or two or so. The longer I am here for the more I want to live somewhere in Europe. People were telling us about how they were in this country or that country last weekend and such. Traveling is just so easy here.
It was one of the CS'ers going away party as she was headed back to Scandinavia after being in Switzerland for a few years. The party was full of good people, good food (chocolate cake even!), alcohol of course, a little wrestling, lots of pictures and even random drunk neighbors who let me drink way to much of their delicious alcohol. When it started we were introduced as "the Americans" by the end of it I think most of the people there looked at us a lot differently - hopefully.
A good party is always helpful in getting closer with people. Renzo had expressed some angst toward American CSers and even told us that we were probably the last Americans he would host. Apparently he'd had some bad experiences with people from California. But by the end of the party we had gone from 'Americans' to 'Girls.' I think that's a successful step up. It's been an unplanned mission of ours to change the way a lot of Europeans view American CSers. Surprise surprise we have a not-so-good reputation. It is really sad how poorly most of the world does view us. I know it's a stereotype and everyone here has been amazingly nice and generous but we heard from just about everyone that Americans in general are not very well liked. And we keep hearing story after story why and more and more I get it. At least being educated on why the rest of the world sees us the way they do allows me to make sure I don't make the same mistakes.
At this point we were planning on leaving for Germany the next day. A few of the people were trying to talk us in to staying longer and Renzo's rugby team had a game that I really wanted to see so we drunkenly decided around midnight to stay a day later. It was a great decision.
Renzo told us about a big transportation museum that is supposed to be really cool. It was Friday but he had taken the day off so we all went to the museum together. Hilary and I are still pretty museumed out from London, but this was supposed to be really interactive, not just walking around a reading. It wasn't cheap at 23 franks but I think it was worth it. We were there for the whole day and pretty much just acted like kids while we were there. There is a ton of things to play with and you can pretend you are driving a plane or train or anything else that moves. There were scooters, bikes, video game-like things, simulations, life size models, etc etc. There was even a planetarium which had a presentation about the Zodiac. It was kind of interesting but with it being so dark and laying in comfy seats I was falling in and out of sleep the whole time. Renzo made fun of me for it. Apparently space isn't my thing.
After the museum we headed back to Renzo's place to get ready for a couchsurfing BBQ he was having. He's pretty involved in the CS community and a lot of them hang out together. We happened to come on the weekend he was hosting his first BBQ with all of them - awesome. The night was really fun. Everyone we met was really nice, as always. I've really come to expect nothing less from this community. We were the only ones there officially couchsurfing on someone's couch, but it was a pretty big international group. There were people from Germany, Scandinavia, Australia, Estonia, etc... That's the great thing about Europe, it's so easy to get from country to country so people can move around for a year or two or so. The longer I am here for the more I want to live somewhere in Europe. People were telling us about how they were in this country or that country last weekend and such. Traveling is just so easy here.
It was one of the CS'ers going away party as she was headed back to Scandinavia after being in Switzerland for a few years. The party was full of good people, good food (chocolate cake even!), alcohol of course, a little wrestling, lots of pictures and even random drunk neighbors who let me drink way to much of their delicious alcohol. When it started we were introduced as "the Americans" by the end of it I think most of the people there looked at us a lot differently - hopefully.
A good party is always helpful in getting closer with people. Renzo had expressed some angst toward American CSers and even told us that we were probably the last Americans he would host. Apparently he'd had some bad experiences with people from California. But by the end of the party we had gone from 'Americans' to 'Girls.' I think that's a successful step up. It's been an unplanned mission of ours to change the way a lot of Europeans view American CSers. Surprise surprise we have a not-so-good reputation. It is really sad how poorly most of the world does view us. I know it's a stereotype and everyone here has been amazingly nice and generous but we heard from just about everyone that Americans in general are not very well liked. And we keep hearing story after story why and more and more I get it. At least being educated on why the rest of the world sees us the way they do allows me to make sure I don't make the same mistakes.
At this point we were planning on leaving for Germany the next day. A few of the people were trying to talk us in to staying longer and Renzo's rugby team had a game that I really wanted to see so we drunkenly decided around midnight to stay a day later. It was a great decision.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Lucerne
April 15, 2010
Hilary really wanted to go to Ballenberg which is an outdoor museum that shows original buildings and the way of life of people in Switzerland during the 1800s. It was on our way to Interlaken and she was really excited about it so I went with the flow. It was a little expensive but we didn't end up canyoning or going to Jungfrau so luckily I didn't spend as much money as I thought I was going to in Switzerland. The museum was different and there were a couple interesting things about it, but I could have d0ne without in the end. Oh well, you win some you lose some.
We then took a train to Lucerne from Interlaken in the morning and met our new host, Renzo. The meet up was pretty easy and we headed back to his place which was less than a 10 minute walk away from the train stations. Everything is so close in Europe, especially Switzerland. Lucerne is supposed to be one of the bigger cities in Switzerland but it's population is still only 80,000.
Renzo is a rugby player for the local team and to say he is rugby obsessed is an understatement. I walked in wearing my Springboks jacket I got in South Africa and he immediately told me to take it off. Apparently he is not a fan of their team - whoops. Nothing like starting off a CS stay with upsetting your host, haha. Once we put all our stuff down and figured out where we were sleeping we noticed Renzo had a half done puzzle on the floor. Children at heart Hilary and I ran over to it and started working away. The puzzle was started over four months ago and Renzo had given up after about a month so from there on out he had left it for couchsurfers to work on. He didn't expect it to get done anytime soon, but he wasn't expecting Hilary to show up. I thought I liked puzzles, but she was determined to finish it. Whenever we were at Renzo's place the next day and a half she was working away on it. I joined in from time to time but would usually get distracted with something else and leave her to do most of it. Damn my ADD. It also doesn't help that I'm blind and had to put on my glasses to actually see the puzzle pieces. Anyways, by the end of day two we had finished the puzzle. Yay for random accomplishments.
Renzo made us dinner and then had to leave for Russian class. He is moving to New Zealand to live and work for a few years but first is stopping in Scandinavia for a few months, then to Russia for a few months and is making his way south to New Zealand. He is taking Russian classes for his stay in Russia since they don't really speak much English or any of the other languages he speaks -- everyone here really does speak multiple languages. The stereotype Americans have for only knowing English is extremely legit. It feels like I have yet to meet a European who didn't know at least 3 languages.
We hung out working on the puzzle then went out to meet up with Renzo after his Russian class to go for a beer at his favorite pub. The name if it was Gracie Kelly (pronounced Grace). It was an Irish bar which had a realy cool vibe to it. It was Thursday which is their live music night. It is more of an open jam session where anyone who wants to play just comes and sits around a table and they all play together. It was really fun to listen to. We met up with one of Renzo's 'rugby mates' who's mom also happened to work at the bar. His name was David, and he was interesting to say the least. He was a huge flirt and always had a smile on and a wink for any girl who looked at him. Hilary struck his eye though and it was pretty entertaining to watch her squirm all night trying to figure out how to get him to lay off. "I have a boyfriend" didn't enter her mind as a solution though for some reason. Either way, I liked being on the other end of the situation and getting to watch it all happen.
Everything is really expensive in Switzerland including the beer at $9 a pint so we only had one beer and then headed out. David had come from Rugby practice so he had his ball with him and the boys started to throw it around outside of the bar. Hilary and I wanted to join in so we had a half hour lesson on how to throw a rugby ball. I picked up on it a little faster than Hilary did, apparently I'm a natural rugby thrower, haha. It was really fun throwing it around in the alley way though. Somehow I never learned to throw an American football growing. It's weird knowing how to throw a rugby ball and not a football. I'll have to get someone to teach me how to do that when I get back and see what I'm better at. I'm thinking it's going to be rugby though. Underhand seems easy than overhand.
Hilary really wanted to go to Ballenberg which is an outdoor museum that shows original buildings and the way of life of people in Switzerland during the 1800s. It was on our way to Interlaken and she was really excited about it so I went with the flow. It was a little expensive but we didn't end up canyoning or going to Jungfrau so luckily I didn't spend as much money as I thought I was going to in Switzerland. The museum was different and there were a couple interesting things about it, but I could have d0ne without in the end. Oh well, you win some you lose some.
We then took a train to Lucerne from Interlaken in the morning and met our new host, Renzo. The meet up was pretty easy and we headed back to his place which was less than a 10 minute walk away from the train stations. Everything is so close in Europe, especially Switzerland. Lucerne is supposed to be one of the bigger cities in Switzerland but it's population is still only 80,000.
Renzo is a rugby player for the local team and to say he is rugby obsessed is an understatement. I walked in wearing my Springboks jacket I got in South Africa and he immediately told me to take it off. Apparently he is not a fan of their team - whoops. Nothing like starting off a CS stay with upsetting your host, haha. Once we put all our stuff down and figured out where we were sleeping we noticed Renzo had a half done puzzle on the floor. Children at heart Hilary and I ran over to it and started working away. The puzzle was started over four months ago and Renzo had given up after about a month so from there on out he had left it for couchsurfers to work on. He didn't expect it to get done anytime soon, but he wasn't expecting Hilary to show up. I thought I liked puzzles, but she was determined to finish it. Whenever we were at Renzo's place the next day and a half she was working away on it. I joined in from time to time but would usually get distracted with something else and leave her to do most of it. Damn my ADD. It also doesn't help that I'm blind and had to put on my glasses to actually see the puzzle pieces. Anyways, by the end of day two we had finished the puzzle. Yay for random accomplishments.
Renzo made us dinner and then had to leave for Russian class. He is moving to New Zealand to live and work for a few years but first is stopping in Scandinavia for a few months, then to Russia for a few months and is making his way south to New Zealand. He is taking Russian classes for his stay in Russia since they don't really speak much English or any of the other languages he speaks -- everyone here really does speak multiple languages. The stereotype Americans have for only knowing English is extremely legit. It feels like I have yet to meet a European who didn't know at least 3 languages.
We hung out working on the puzzle then went out to meet up with Renzo after his Russian class to go for a beer at his favorite pub. The name if it was Gracie Kelly (pronounced Grace). It was an Irish bar which had a realy cool vibe to it. It was Thursday which is their live music night. It is more of an open jam session where anyone who wants to play just comes and sits around a table and they all play together. It was really fun to listen to. We met up with one of Renzo's 'rugby mates' who's mom also happened to work at the bar. His name was David, and he was interesting to say the least. He was a huge flirt and always had a smile on and a wink for any girl who looked at him. Hilary struck his eye though and it was pretty entertaining to watch her squirm all night trying to figure out how to get him to lay off. "I have a boyfriend" didn't enter her mind as a solution though for some reason. Either way, I liked being on the other end of the situation and getting to watch it all happen.
Everything is really expensive in Switzerland including the beer at $9 a pint so we only had one beer and then headed out. David had come from Rugby practice so he had his ball with him and the boys started to throw it around outside of the bar. Hilary and I wanted to join in so we had a half hour lesson on how to throw a rugby ball. I picked up on it a little faster than Hilary did, apparently I'm a natural rugby thrower, haha. It was really fun throwing it around in the alley way though. Somehow I never learned to throw an American football growing. It's weird knowing how to throw a rugby ball and not a football. I'll have to get someone to teach me how to do that when I get back and see what I'm better at. I'm thinking it's going to be rugby though. Underhand seems easy than overhand.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Lauterbrunnen Waterfalls
April 14, 2010
When we got up this morning the weather wasn't good enough to go up to Jungfrau, sad. Thank goodness for Simon. He suggested a town close by which is known for it's amazing natural waterfalls and great views, Lauterbrunnen. We were sold and headed on our way. We took a pretty cheap train and started hiking in the valley. It wasn't steep, thankfully. I don't think our legs could have taken another day of straight up hiking. The waterfalls we saw were beautiful. I love waterfalls so I was in heaven.
We walked all the way across the valley which was completely surrounded by the Swiss Alps. What a surreal feeling. I felt so small every time I looked up and saw such gigantic and gorgeous mountains all around us. When we got to the end of the city there was a tram that took us up to the top of some of the mountains. We stopped at 5361 feet up. The mountains were even more beautiful and the town was even more dead. It was a great, quiet walk albeit very, very cold. We walked through the ton and then took the train down. It was around 5pm by this time so we waited for the 5:30pm train back to Interlocken and grabbed dinner on the way. Simon has to go to Czech tonight around 7pm for his job so we have the place to ourselves.
We made an big, yummy dinner, did some laundry, watched a movie, contacted more CS people and skyped people from back home. There isn't any sort of night life here and I have a feeling we are going to have a long couple of nights ahead of us between staying with a Rugby player at our next city and then being in Munich for it's mini-Oktoberfest for Saturday through Monday. I'm excited!
I know these posts have been short but there is only so much you can say about how beautiful a place is. And since all we've really been doing the past three days is enjoying amazing hikes there isn't all the much to say. I'm sure this'll change in upcoming posts though.
When we got up this morning the weather wasn't good enough to go up to Jungfrau, sad. Thank goodness for Simon. He suggested a town close by which is known for it's amazing natural waterfalls and great views, Lauterbrunnen. We were sold and headed on our way. We took a pretty cheap train and started hiking in the valley. It wasn't steep, thankfully. I don't think our legs could have taken another day of straight up hiking. The waterfalls we saw were beautiful. I love waterfalls so I was in heaven.
We walked all the way across the valley which was completely surrounded by the Swiss Alps. What a surreal feeling. I felt so small every time I looked up and saw such gigantic and gorgeous mountains all around us. When we got to the end of the city there was a tram that took us up to the top of some of the mountains. We stopped at 5361 feet up. The mountains were even more beautiful and the town was even more dead. It was a great, quiet walk albeit very, very cold. We walked through the ton and then took the train down. It was around 5pm by this time so we waited for the 5:30pm train back to Interlocken and grabbed dinner on the way. Simon has to go to Czech tonight around 7pm for his job so we have the place to ourselves.
We made an big, yummy dinner, did some laundry, watched a movie, contacted more CS people and skyped people from back home. There isn't any sort of night life here and I have a feeling we are going to have a long couple of nights ahead of us between staying with a Rugby player at our next city and then being in Munich for it's mini-Oktoberfest for Saturday through Monday. I'm excited!
I know these posts have been short but there is only so much you can say about how beautiful a place is. And since all we've really been doing the past three days is enjoying amazing hikes there isn't all the much to say. I'm sure this'll change in upcoming posts though.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Harder Klum
April 13, 2010
Since canyoning was out of the question and we woke up today with clouds cover the top of Jungfrau Simon recommended a local mountain to climb to the top of for some great views. Off we went to find the top of Harder Klum. Simon described the hike as an 'easy 2 hour hike.' Hilary and I disagree with this description. It was about a 2 hour hike, but easy it wasn't. I'm pretty sure we are just both extremely out of shape, but I was hurting about half way up. Turns out drinking, eating badly and lack of exercise doesn't prepare one for hiking in Switzerland very well -- who would have guessed.
The top was worth it though. The views of the highest peaks of the Swiss Alps were gorgeous. I could go on and on about this, but I'll be posting pictures to facebook soon so I'll let you look at them and understand for yourself. The top was completely empty though. A huge benefit of traveling when we are is that it is right in between the winter and summer busy season so there are hardly any tourists around. I love it.
We got back from the hike just in time to run to the grocery store and get dinner. Everything in Interlaken closes around 6:30, included the grocery stores. Life of a small town. Simon ran into several people he knew and we followed him around like lost little puppies. I get this feeling a lot with our hosts. It isn't their fault, we just never know what we are doing or where we are going so we just follow, follow, follow. Dinner was great -- and much cheaper. We were exhausted from the hike and wanted to get up early to hopefully get good weather and make it up to Jungfrau.
Since canyoning was out of the question and we woke up today with clouds cover the top of Jungfrau Simon recommended a local mountain to climb to the top of for some great views. Off we went to find the top of Harder Klum. Simon described the hike as an 'easy 2 hour hike.' Hilary and I disagree with this description. It was about a 2 hour hike, but easy it wasn't. I'm pretty sure we are just both extremely out of shape, but I was hurting about half way up. Turns out drinking, eating badly and lack of exercise doesn't prepare one for hiking in Switzerland very well -- who would have guessed.
The top was worth it though. The views of the highest peaks of the Swiss Alps were gorgeous. I could go on and on about this, but I'll be posting pictures to facebook soon so I'll let you look at them and understand for yourself. The top was completely empty though. A huge benefit of traveling when we are is that it is right in between the winter and summer busy season so there are hardly any tourists around. I love it.
We got back from the hike just in time to run to the grocery store and get dinner. Everything in Interlaken closes around 6:30, included the grocery stores. Life of a small town. Simon ran into several people he knew and we followed him around like lost little puppies. I get this feeling a lot with our hosts. It isn't their fault, we just never know what we are doing or where we are going so we just follow, follow, follow. Dinner was great -- and much cheaper. We were exhausted from the hike and wanted to get up early to hopefully get good weather and make it up to Jungfrau.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Hello Interlaken
April 12, 2010
We slept in until 10:45 this morning and took our times getting ready, packing and just hanging out with Roman. Our train to Interlaken wasn't until 2pm so it was a really nice and relaxed morning. Switzerland is the first country we are moving around a lot in. We only stayed a couple nights in Bern, now we are headed to Interlaken for a couple nights and then our last couple of nights will be in Lucerne. It'll be nice to see different parts of the country but I'm sad we couldn't spend more time with Roman and his friend.
Roman was nice enough to walk us to the station and waited until our train came - love him! Everything came on time, trains are great like that, we took one last picture with Roman and now we are currently on the most scenic train ride ever on our way to Interlaken. The mountains and lakes are gorgeous here
We got to Interlaken and our new host Simon picked us up from the train station around 3 and we walked about 10 minutes back to his place. Interlaken is a very small, mostly tourist town. You can walk the whole thing from end to end in about 30 minutes. Simon is in the tourist industry and know just about everyone around here. He was also a great resource for knowing what to do in the area. Ideally we wanted to go Canyoning and then to the top of Jungfrau which is the highest mountain in Switzerland. Once we got here we found out canyoning doesn't start until May 1st and the top of Jungfrau is really expensive to get up to so you only want to go on a perfectly clear day. More to come on that...
Simon was super welcoming. He is from Australia and was exactly how I pictured Australians to be: really laid back. His favorite phrase is "Fuck it." All in all I think he's hilarious and love his way of looking at the world; he makes me want to move to Australia even more. If most Australians are like him, I'm sold. We weren't at his place for more than 20 minutes before he was already telling us about a hike we should go on. Within another 10 we were on our way up to Heimwehfluh. It was only a half hourish hike and when we got to the top we discovered a playground. It was obviously for kids, but there was hardly anyone there so Hilary and I decided to call upon our inner child. We ran in the giant gerbil wheel, played on the merry-go-round, rocked the teeter-totter, swung on the mini zip line and screamed our way down the very long slide. So much fun! Once we got our fill of childish behavior we found a tower to climb and on top were breathtaking views. Interlaken has already lived up to its reputation.
By the time we got back it was dinnertime. We headed to a local Thai place that was "delicious and cheap" by Simon's definition. Delicious, yes. Cheap, no. Well, maybe it was cheap to Simon but to us it was our most expensive meal here coming to a little over $20 each. Switzerland is a really expensive country and this was a major taste of that. I'm not complaining to much since we have hardly spent any other money in Switzerland than goodness; and Simon is a great conversationalist. The stories he has are hilarious, he's lived a very engaging life. He actually knew Hugh Jackman at University and met up with him at one point in London. Awesome.
We slept in until 10:45 this morning and took our times getting ready, packing and just hanging out with Roman. Our train to Interlaken wasn't until 2pm so it was a really nice and relaxed morning. Switzerland is the first country we are moving around a lot in. We only stayed a couple nights in Bern, now we are headed to Interlaken for a couple nights and then our last couple of nights will be in Lucerne. It'll be nice to see different parts of the country but I'm sad we couldn't spend more time with Roman and his friend.
Roman was nice enough to walk us to the station and waited until our train came - love him! Everything came on time, trains are great like that, we took one last picture with Roman and now we are currently on the most scenic train ride ever on our way to Interlaken. The mountains and lakes are gorgeous here
We got to Interlaken and our new host Simon picked us up from the train station around 3 and we walked about 10 minutes back to his place. Interlaken is a very small, mostly tourist town. You can walk the whole thing from end to end in about 30 minutes. Simon is in the tourist industry and know just about everyone around here. He was also a great resource for knowing what to do in the area. Ideally we wanted to go Canyoning and then to the top of Jungfrau which is the highest mountain in Switzerland. Once we got here we found out canyoning doesn't start until May 1st and the top of Jungfrau is really expensive to get up to so you only want to go on a perfectly clear day. More to come on that...
Simon was super welcoming. He is from Australia and was exactly how I pictured Australians to be: really laid back. His favorite phrase is "Fuck it." All in all I think he's hilarious and love his way of looking at the world; he makes me want to move to Australia even more. If most Australians are like him, I'm sold. We weren't at his place for more than 20 minutes before he was already telling us about a hike we should go on. Within another 10 we were on our way up to Heimwehfluh. It was only a half hourish hike and when we got to the top we discovered a playground. It was obviously for kids, but there was hardly anyone there so Hilary and I decided to call upon our inner child. We ran in the giant gerbil wheel, played on the merry-go-round, rocked the teeter-totter, swung on the mini zip line and screamed our way down the very long slide. So much fun! Once we got our fill of childish behavior we found a tower to climb and on top were breathtaking views. Interlaken has already lived up to its reputation.
By the time we got back it was dinnertime. We headed to a local Thai place that was "delicious and cheap" by Simon's definition. Delicious, yes. Cheap, no. Well, maybe it was cheap to Simon but to us it was our most expensive meal here coming to a little over $20 each. Switzerland is a really expensive country and this was a major taste of that. I'm not complaining to much since we have hardly spent any other money in Switzerland than goodness; and Simon is a great conversationalist. The stories he has are hilarious, he's lived a very engaging life. He actually knew Hugh Jackman at University and met up with him at one point in London. Awesome.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Brunch & Bears
April 11, 2010
Today was probably the most relaxing day we've had so far. It has also been one of the best. Our host, Roman had a Sunday brunch planned today with a bunch of his friends and invited us along. We got there around 10:30 and probably started eating around 11. We got done at 2. Amazing. I love the way Europeans eat. There were probably around 16 people there if not more. Everyone we met and talked to were super nice and extremely welcoming. Roman has some great friends. Again, I can't imagine this trip without CouchSurfing. Today was yet another unique and memorable experience I never would have had if it weren't for CS.
Brunch was a typical Swiss meal. And absolutely delicious. I realize that I describe everything I eat on this trip as delicious for the most part, but it all is! There was rosti (Swiss hash browns), Swiss bread, jam, sausage, bacon, a huge spread of real Swiss cheeses, yogurt and a bunch of different beverages. This may not sound like much but I went back for 3 servings and there was still food left over. It was a huge amount. The best part is that it was eaten over such a long time and great conversation that I never felt overly full, just perfectly satisfied.
They speak Swiss German here which is a specific dialect of German. It isn't quite as harsh as German. I can't understand any of it though. There are some words that have really close spelling or pronunciation as English, but the people here talk way to fast to pick up on much. When I'm reading it though I can usually pick up on a few words here and there. Anyways, throughout the meal it was funny because everyone kept switching between Swiss German and English. They all knew English really well, but could obviously speak faster in their own language so it was a lot of back and forth and people translating what others were saying. I didn't mind in the least. It was fun listening to them and trying to figure out what they were saying by their facial expressions, hand movements, others' reaction to them or picking up a familiar word or two.
Brunch got over around 2ish and we decided to go for a walk around the countryside. Some people left but a good group of us stayed for the walk. The girl's (Ruth) place we were at was out in the countryside and it was extremely picturesque. Some of the photos I took looked like they could go postcards. There were rolling hills covered in bright green grass and white roads all with cute little houses all across the landscape and to top it off the Alps were hanging out in the background. Absolutely the most gorgeous hour and half walk of my life. The whole thing seemed out of a pleasantville movie. Who really has 3 hour bunches with their friends and then goes on a Sunday stroll with the Alps as your scenery. Apparently the Swiss do. This is the first country we've been to that I could actually see myself staying at for an extended period of time. It's all so serene and beautiful. This is the type of lifestyle I would love to have for awhile.
After our walk one of the guys at the brunch offered to drive us back to the city so we wouldn't have to bus back. He dropped us at the rose gardens they have here and then walked down to Bern's major attraction the bear park. Bern got it's name because the people who founded the city killed a bear for food and Bern is close to the German word for bear. There is a way better version of the story that Roman told us but this essentially sums it up. Because the city name has to do with bears, they have a tourist draw with two adult and two baby brown bears in a small park right outside the center of the city. When we got there the mom and babies were sleeping but the dad was up and about walking around for a bit. It is always cool to see such massive animals up close, but at the same time I can't help feeling sorry for them being confined so such a small area.
By this point it was getting close to 5 and we were all getting hungry so we stopped by the grocery store Mingros to pick up ingredients for a traditional Swiss dinner called Raclette. It is a type of cheese that is melted and put over potatoes normally. You can also add other ingredients such as bacon to it and then seasoning on top. They use a funny heating thing to melt the cheese with the bacon and then they dump the cheese over a small potato. You only use one piece of cheese at a time so the cheese is always hot. It was really good. Roman's roommate, Patricia, joined us for dinner again and the four of us had another great time eating... I'm starting to realize that a huge part of this trip has to do with food, haha. Hilary and I also each grabbed three bars of chocolate at the grocery store. Roman said that the chocolate is so good here everyone just buys it from the grocery store because it is still super tasty and way cheaper - my perfect combination!
The rest of the night is going to be pretty uneventful. We are on a very small amount of sleep since I went to bed at 5 last night so we'll probably just watch a movie, message some CouchSurfers in our upcoming countries and start to pack up our stuff to move on to Interlaken tomorrow.
Today was probably the most relaxing day we've had so far. It has also been one of the best. Our host, Roman had a Sunday brunch planned today with a bunch of his friends and invited us along. We got there around 10:30 and probably started eating around 11. We got done at 2. Amazing. I love the way Europeans eat. There were probably around 16 people there if not more. Everyone we met and talked to were super nice and extremely welcoming. Roman has some great friends. Again, I can't imagine this trip without CouchSurfing. Today was yet another unique and memorable experience I never would have had if it weren't for CS.
Brunch was a typical Swiss meal. And absolutely delicious. I realize that I describe everything I eat on this trip as delicious for the most part, but it all is! There was rosti (Swiss hash browns), Swiss bread, jam, sausage, bacon, a huge spread of real Swiss cheeses, yogurt and a bunch of different beverages. This may not sound like much but I went back for 3 servings and there was still food left over. It was a huge amount. The best part is that it was eaten over such a long time and great conversation that I never felt overly full, just perfectly satisfied.
They speak Swiss German here which is a specific dialect of German. It isn't quite as harsh as German. I can't understand any of it though. There are some words that have really close spelling or pronunciation as English, but the people here talk way to fast to pick up on much. When I'm reading it though I can usually pick up on a few words here and there. Anyways, throughout the meal it was funny because everyone kept switching between Swiss German and English. They all knew English really well, but could obviously speak faster in their own language so it was a lot of back and forth and people translating what others were saying. I didn't mind in the least. It was fun listening to them and trying to figure out what they were saying by their facial expressions, hand movements, others' reaction to them or picking up a familiar word or two.
Brunch got over around 2ish and we decided to go for a walk around the countryside. Some people left but a good group of us stayed for the walk. The girl's (Ruth) place we were at was out in the countryside and it was extremely picturesque. Some of the photos I took looked like they could go postcards. There were rolling hills covered in bright green grass and white roads all with cute little houses all across the landscape and to top it off the Alps were hanging out in the background. Absolutely the most gorgeous hour and half walk of my life. The whole thing seemed out of a pleasantville movie. Who really has 3 hour bunches with their friends and then goes on a Sunday stroll with the Alps as your scenery. Apparently the Swiss do. This is the first country we've been to that I could actually see myself staying at for an extended period of time. It's all so serene and beautiful. This is the type of lifestyle I would love to have for awhile.
After our walk one of the guys at the brunch offered to drive us back to the city so we wouldn't have to bus back. He dropped us at the rose gardens they have here and then walked down to Bern's major attraction the bear park. Bern got it's name because the people who founded the city killed a bear for food and Bern is close to the German word for bear. There is a way better version of the story that Roman told us but this essentially sums it up. Because the city name has to do with bears, they have a tourist draw with two adult and two baby brown bears in a small park right outside the center of the city. When we got there the mom and babies were sleeping but the dad was up and about walking around for a bit. It is always cool to see such massive animals up close, but at the same time I can't help feeling sorry for them being confined so such a small area.
By this point it was getting close to 5 and we were all getting hungry so we stopped by the grocery store Mingros to pick up ingredients for a traditional Swiss dinner called Raclette. It is a type of cheese that is melted and put over potatoes normally. You can also add other ingredients such as bacon to it and then seasoning on top. They use a funny heating thing to melt the cheese with the bacon and then they dump the cheese over a small potato. You only use one piece of cheese at a time so the cheese is always hot. It was really good. Roman's roommate, Patricia, joined us for dinner again and the four of us had another great time eating... I'm starting to realize that a huge part of this trip has to do with food, haha. Hilary and I also each grabbed three bars of chocolate at the grocery store. Roman said that the chocolate is so good here everyone just buys it from the grocery store because it is still super tasty and way cheaper - my perfect combination!
The rest of the night is going to be pretty uneventful. We are on a very small amount of sleep since I went to bed at 5 last night so we'll probably just watch a movie, message some CouchSurfers in our upcoming countries and start to pack up our stuff to move on to Interlaken tomorrow.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Night Out in Bern
April 10, 2010
We said goodbye to Hans - still a weird CS experience, I'm hoping they will be better from here on out - and headed to the train station around 9:30. Our train was at 10:34 and we were early for it again! We wanted to get good seats so we got on right we in stopped and sat down in a four seater. We had to push and fight for a seat only to find out about 5 minutes later that our seats we reserved. For long international trains people can reserve seats to make sure they get one for an extra 8 euros. Of course we didn't want to spend this money so we opted not to when we got our tickets. This resulted in us having to stand in the cafe area with our bags until spots opened up about 2 hours in to the trip.
When we had to get up to move, a guy sitting across from us got up as well. I had noticed him before because he had a US army bag with him. We got to talking and I made a new friend on the train. We talked to entire train ride and he was really fun to get to know. His name is Jake and he's from Michigan originally. He's super tall at 6'7" and is on a 2 week leave from a one year tour in Iraq as an information analyst. He was actually stationed at Fort Lewis for training, random. I heard some interesting stories from Iraq but we mostly talked about happier topics. We parted ways at Frankfurt, it was his last stop before flying back to Iraq tomorrow.
At last we are on our connection train to Bern, Switzerland and should be getting in around 7pm where our new CS host, Roman, will hopefully be waiting for us!
Finding Roman was the easiest meet up we've had yet. There are "meeting" points in most train stations and he was waiting right under it when we got there. It was great. Roman was really nice and welcoming. He's a super easy guy to talk to and the sort of person you instantly like when you meet him. We stopped by the grocery store - Migros - to pick up dinner then headed back to his place which was about a 10 minute walk from the train station. He lives right by the university in an apartment with 3 other people. Two of his roommates were out of town at the time. This actually turned out to be beneficial for us because we got to sleep in one of his roommate's bed instead of on the couch. We have yet to actually sleep on a couch yet - which is sort of ironic since we are CouchSurfing.
Roman and his roommate Patricia made us dinner and the four of us sat down at the table and talked for a couple hours. It was really fun getting to know them. Patricia went to her boyfriend's after dinner but before she left she offered up her hair dryer for me to use. Amazing! I think I've talked about this before but having a hair dryer is a really weird luxury I didn't think I'd miss. Realistically, it probably doesn't make that big of a difference but I just feel so much better when I get to use one.
After dinner Roman took us out to meet up with some of his friends. The first bar we went to was really cool. Someone took an old high school that isn't in use anymore and turned the gymnasium into a bar. There were a ton of people there but because it was so huge and the ceilings were so high it didn't seem that bad. All of Roman's friends were really nice. It was pretty much a group of guys with one girl other than us - perfect for me. :) We had some drinks, then decided to move on to a wine bar that would be a little more chill and easier to talk. Plus we would get to see more than one scene in Bern. The wine bar was a lot of fun and I was able to get to know a couple of Roman's friends, Martin & Patrick, pretty well. They were both really nice guys and interesting to talk to. Martin was pretty sarcastic so we got a long really well, haha. Patrick was just pretty drunk so he was hilarious as well.
We hung out at the bar until they kicked us out around 3 in the morning then headed to our last stop of the night which was a Mexican bar that is the place to go once everything else has closed. We weren't there for that much longer before they started closing as well. Martin kept trying to get me another drink but since we are poor travelers and I didn't want to make everyone buy me a drink I kept declining. Instead I grabbed a bottle of salsa and said I was fine with that. The girl said she'd pay me 1 Frank to drink it all -- I'm poor, but not that desperate yet. When we left the bar Martin ran up to me and said he'd gotten me a souvenir to remember the night. He then pulled the salsa bottle out from is pocket, haha. Super random. No idea what I'd do with the salsa bottle traveling for the next 10 weeks but I just laughed and said thanks.
By the time I got to bed it was around 5am. A long but very fun night. I wish bars in the states were open as late as they are in Europe. It's so much fun not being the only one that stays up all hours of the night. Europeans are definitely more my kind. Poor Hilary was about ready to fall asleep by the time we got to the last bar, haha. It is pretty hard adjusting sleep schedules so often though. We get up anytime between 7am - 11am and are in bed anywhere between 1am - 5am. My lifestyle in the states was pretty random so I'm used to it, but Hilary actually had a job and school she had to get up for consistently.
Tomorrow morning we get to have a traditional Swiss brunch with a different group of Roman's friends which I'm super excited for. Yay more food!
We said goodbye to Hans - still a weird CS experience, I'm hoping they will be better from here on out - and headed to the train station around 9:30. Our train was at 10:34 and we were early for it again! We wanted to get good seats so we got on right we in stopped and sat down in a four seater. We had to push and fight for a seat only to find out about 5 minutes later that our seats we reserved. For long international trains people can reserve seats to make sure they get one for an extra 8 euros. Of course we didn't want to spend this money so we opted not to when we got our tickets. This resulted in us having to stand in the cafe area with our bags until spots opened up about 2 hours in to the trip.
When we had to get up to move, a guy sitting across from us got up as well. I had noticed him before because he had a US army bag with him. We got to talking and I made a new friend on the train. We talked to entire train ride and he was really fun to get to know. His name is Jake and he's from Michigan originally. He's super tall at 6'7" and is on a 2 week leave from a one year tour in Iraq as an information analyst. He was actually stationed at Fort Lewis for training, random. I heard some interesting stories from Iraq but we mostly talked about happier topics. We parted ways at Frankfurt, it was his last stop before flying back to Iraq tomorrow.
At last we are on our connection train to Bern, Switzerland and should be getting in around 7pm where our new CS host, Roman, will hopefully be waiting for us!
Finding Roman was the easiest meet up we've had yet. There are "meeting" points in most train stations and he was waiting right under it when we got there. It was great. Roman was really nice and welcoming. He's a super easy guy to talk to and the sort of person you instantly like when you meet him. We stopped by the grocery store - Migros - to pick up dinner then headed back to his place which was about a 10 minute walk from the train station. He lives right by the university in an apartment with 3 other people. Two of his roommates were out of town at the time. This actually turned out to be beneficial for us because we got to sleep in one of his roommate's bed instead of on the couch. We have yet to actually sleep on a couch yet - which is sort of ironic since we are CouchSurfing.
Roman and his roommate Patricia made us dinner and the four of us sat down at the table and talked for a couple hours. It was really fun getting to know them. Patricia went to her boyfriend's after dinner but before she left she offered up her hair dryer for me to use. Amazing! I think I've talked about this before but having a hair dryer is a really weird luxury I didn't think I'd miss. Realistically, it probably doesn't make that big of a difference but I just feel so much better when I get to use one.
After dinner Roman took us out to meet up with some of his friends. The first bar we went to was really cool. Someone took an old high school that isn't in use anymore and turned the gymnasium into a bar. There were a ton of people there but because it was so huge and the ceilings were so high it didn't seem that bad. All of Roman's friends were really nice. It was pretty much a group of guys with one girl other than us - perfect for me. :) We had some drinks, then decided to move on to a wine bar that would be a little more chill and easier to talk. Plus we would get to see more than one scene in Bern. The wine bar was a lot of fun and I was able to get to know a couple of Roman's friends, Martin & Patrick, pretty well. They were both really nice guys and interesting to talk to. Martin was pretty sarcastic so we got a long really well, haha. Patrick was just pretty drunk so he was hilarious as well.
We hung out at the bar until they kicked us out around 3 in the morning then headed to our last stop of the night which was a Mexican bar that is the place to go once everything else has closed. We weren't there for that much longer before they started closing as well. Martin kept trying to get me another drink but since we are poor travelers and I didn't want to make everyone buy me a drink I kept declining. Instead I grabbed a bottle of salsa and said I was fine with that. The girl said she'd pay me 1 Frank to drink it all -- I'm poor, but not that desperate yet. When we left the bar Martin ran up to me and said he'd gotten me a souvenir to remember the night. He then pulled the salsa bottle out from is pocket, haha. Super random. No idea what I'd do with the salsa bottle traveling for the next 10 weeks but I just laughed and said thanks.
By the time I got to bed it was around 5am. A long but very fun night. I wish bars in the states were open as late as they are in Europe. It's so much fun not being the only one that stays up all hours of the night. Europeans are definitely more my kind. Poor Hilary was about ready to fall asleep by the time we got to the last bar, haha. It is pretty hard adjusting sleep schedules so often though. We get up anytime between 7am - 11am and are in bed anywhere between 1am - 5am. My lifestyle in the states was pretty random so I'm used to it, but Hilary actually had a job and school she had to get up for consistently.
Tomorrow morning we get to have a traditional Swiss brunch with a different group of Roman's friends which I'm super excited for. Yay more food!
Friday, April 9, 2010
When in Amsterdam...
April 9, 2010
We got up and to the train station in time to catch a 9:15 train to Alkmaar - we are getting way better at being on time to things. The train ride there was pretty short and we were at the market around 10. The day was gorgeous which was really lucky of us since it was supposed to rain all day and we'd had 2 previously really nice days outside. The weather in Holland usually isn't this good so apparently we brought the sunshine with us, yay!
When we got to the market it was lined with people. Alkmaar is a big tourist destination because it is apparently one of four places that still have original cheese markets from the 1500s. There were people dressed up in original dutch outfits, wooden shoes included. At the center of the market there were rows and rows of cheese that was being weighed, loaded into carts, and then taken away to be shipped off around the world. You'll have to look at my pictures on facebook to get an idea of how everything worked. There is no way I could accurately describe it here. It was a lot of fun to watch though. During the market there were people selling cheese for 10 euros in cute little bags. We had no idea what type of cheese was in the bag or how much but Hilary and I decided cheese from an original market was worth 10 euros. We split the bag and found out that they actually gave us a lot of really good cheese. our plan is to just buy baguettes from here on out and we can eat our baguettes and cheese for at least one meal a day for a couple weeks. I'm excited for the tasty cheapness!
After the cheese market we walked along a bunch of vendors lining the streets. Other than the bags we bought, the cheese market doesn't sell the cheese. The whole thing is put on as a show for tourists. The vendors sell lots of cheese though, lots of delicious cheese. Hilary and I went from booth to booth trying all of the cheese. It was a very filling lunch, haha. I honestly have never tasted so many cheese in my life. I was surprised in everything that I tried there were only 2 that I didn't like. They of course were the last two I tried though which left a bad taste in my mouth.
Once we got our cheese fill we headed out to just wander the the town. We're getting really good at just wandering places, getting lost and then trying to figure out how to get back. It's a lot of fun to get lost in a random town. I enjoy getting outside the center and seeing the parts of the town that locals hang out in. We found a cafe eventually and got some bitterballens and beer, a local favorite. Essentially bitterballens are just meat and some potatoe-like substance rolled into a ball and friend. Yum. We had Amstel with it since that is the local beer that is everywhere. Tip: bad beer is still bad in it's original country.
It was around 2pm by this time so we decided to head back to Amsterdam and see the Red Light District during the day. First we stopped by the I AMsterdam sign again to see if we could get better pictures. This trip was much more successful. It took a long time but we got the shots we wanted finally. We also ran into a woman we had seen at the Sex Museum the day before. She had asked us to take a picture of her on a big statue of a fake penis and then she returned the favor for us. It was great running into her again and taking pictures of each other once again. We were there to help each other out. Turns out she is from the air force and stationed in Germany. Very cool.
Next stop was the District. We walked around for awhile and it essentially looked the same during the day just without all the lights and drunk/high people. There were still women in some of the windows. I'm not sure if they have a system of where and when they put the girls, but these girls would be equivalent to new hires at the bottom of the totem pole I'm guessing. Maybe the newbies have to do early hours? Or maybe it is cheaper to rent out those booths in the daytime? Who knows, but I don't feel like they get as much business when the sun is out and people's minds aren't completely clouded.
Alright, here comes the part where I probably shouldn't be writing about these things on a blog that my family is reading. But we're in Amsterdam and everything is legal here. We are young and should be able to take advantage of the things this country allows, legally. So we did. Nothing dangerous or stupid. Although we went into an energy shop cause Hilary wanted to try some pills and the lady there was pushing us really hard on taking mushrooms. Now I've seen people on mushrooms and I don't know if I just caught them on a bad trip or what, but I've never had to urge to do them after seeing the things they did. We passed on the mushrooms and the pills they offered were slightly expensive and as much as it would be fun to experiment I'm not about to shell out the money for something I don't know the side effects of. All I was trying to do was have a brownie while there. When in Amsterdam...
We found a coffee shop here. Just for your knowledge: the energy shops sell mushrooms and pills, the coffee shops sell week, and the cafe's sell actual coffee. You have to be aware of the sign outside and make sure you are walking in to the right establishment. I saw a couple people walk into a coffee shop that wanted cafe's and they were a little surprised, ha. Anyways, we found a shop that had reasonable prices and got our brownies. They were for later in the night so we put them away and went off to find food.
At the pub we stopped at for food there was an Englishman sitting next to us probably in his late 40s. He struck up a convo with us and ended up talking to mainly Hilary for about an hour. I wasn't too interested in him and Hilary was sitting directly next to him so she got stuck with having to humor him. I don't think he was homeless or anything but there was definitely something off about him. He wasn't dangerous or anything like that. I think he was just more lonely and got excited that two girls who spoke english were talking to him. I couldn't even tell you what he talked about most of the conversation as he either didn't make sense or I tuned him out. But he ended in trying to get us to go smoke with him saying, "Smoking isn't fun alone. I know a place across the street we can get a room upstairs. We'll just hang out and from there I'm not saying anything else would happen..." Uhh, ha, pass, thanks creepy dude. We got up and left pretty quickly after that.
The beauty of the Red Light District is you can walk up and down the same streets and not realize they are the same because there are so many people and things that change. Hilary and I did this for a while much like we did the night before. It's amazing how much time you can waste just laughing at and enjoying the people around you. Eventually we stumbled upon an I AMsterdam sign. We had no idea there were two of them. This definitely wasn't the same one we had taken pictures at during the day. No one had every told us there were two signs. We hung out at the sign for awhile and ate our brownies. Poor Hilary did not enjoy the taste of it at all and looked like she was going to get sick. But she sucked it up and ate the whole thing. As we were hanging out at the I AMsterdam sign eating brownies we also got the pleasure of seeing at least 10 men relieve themselves. There were these urinals right in front of the sign that resembled outhouses but instead didnt have walls but just four areas to pee, one on each side (it was a square) and then walls that protected either side of the person. But their entire backside was revealed to everyone so you literally could just sit there and watch people pee. I'm not quite sure how I feel about this invention but I will say boys have do have it way easier in this area and that is a prime example of why.
Our next stop will probably not surprise most of my close friends but I was surprised Hilary did this with me. As I said before we had a very "why not, we're in Amsterdam" mentality here so we decided to get tickets to a live sex show. Yep. People on stage having sex. Us in the audience. Sweet. I was expected to walk in to this place and see a bunch of gross old men standing around tables smoking and drinking staring at the naked girls on stage. Not at all what it was. Turned out to be sort of a mini-theater. It actually reminded me of what a small high school auditorium would look like if you went to see one of their plays.
We sat down in a rown next to a couple and a couple minutes later the music started and out came a couple. It gets pretty graphic from here so if you want to know details shoot me an email or I'll tell you about it when I get back. It was an enlightening experience though, that's for sure. I'm just glad I didn't have to sit next to a guy who decided he wanted to get off from the show. Numerous times the bouncer guy had to come and shine lights on guys and tell them to put it away. It was awkward knowing that most of the guys around you were attempting to masturbate in the same room as you. That was weirder than the actual live sex going on in front of me to be honest. There were a lot of girls that came to the show though so we weren't out of place at all at least. During the show the brownies kicked in and Hilary said she was feeling pretty good. I could feel it a little but I think I have a natural tolerance or something cause it never hit me that hard
The show was on a rotating schedule so different people would come out and do different acts. There were individual shows and couple shows. The individual shows were pretty comical and included audience participation where they did some pretty disgusting things. I can't imagine doing the stuff random people out of the audience had to do onstage - good lord. The couples were pretty much just straight sex. It was really choreographed though and most of the people seemed almost bored. It's weird how Amsterdam almost seems to take the fun out of sex. Between the shows and the prostitutes the whole town is on sex overdrive that most of them probably don't even enjoy it anymore. I really wish I knew someone in the industry I could ask to see if they still enjoy sex outside of performing. I also think it's amazing that the guys could stay hard when they are performing for about 10-15 minutes every hour over the entire night. They've got to be on some pill or something...
Anyways, enough of the sex talk. :) After the show we headed back to Hans' place to attempt to get some sleep before our train in the morning to Switzerland.
We got up and to the train station in time to catch a 9:15 train to Alkmaar - we are getting way better at being on time to things. The train ride there was pretty short and we were at the market around 10. The day was gorgeous which was really lucky of us since it was supposed to rain all day and we'd had 2 previously really nice days outside. The weather in Holland usually isn't this good so apparently we brought the sunshine with us, yay!
When we got to the market it was lined with people. Alkmaar is a big tourist destination because it is apparently one of four places that still have original cheese markets from the 1500s. There were people dressed up in original dutch outfits, wooden shoes included. At the center of the market there were rows and rows of cheese that was being weighed, loaded into carts, and then taken away to be shipped off around the world. You'll have to look at my pictures on facebook to get an idea of how everything worked. There is no way I could accurately describe it here. It was a lot of fun to watch though. During the market there were people selling cheese for 10 euros in cute little bags. We had no idea what type of cheese was in the bag or how much but Hilary and I decided cheese from an original market was worth 10 euros. We split the bag and found out that they actually gave us a lot of really good cheese. our plan is to just buy baguettes from here on out and we can eat our baguettes and cheese for at least one meal a day for a couple weeks. I'm excited for the tasty cheapness!
After the cheese market we walked along a bunch of vendors lining the streets. Other than the bags we bought, the cheese market doesn't sell the cheese. The whole thing is put on as a show for tourists. The vendors sell lots of cheese though, lots of delicious cheese. Hilary and I went from booth to booth trying all of the cheese. It was a very filling lunch, haha. I honestly have never tasted so many cheese in my life. I was surprised in everything that I tried there were only 2 that I didn't like. They of course were the last two I tried though which left a bad taste in my mouth.
Once we got our cheese fill we headed out to just wander the the town. We're getting really good at just wandering places, getting lost and then trying to figure out how to get back. It's a lot of fun to get lost in a random town. I enjoy getting outside the center and seeing the parts of the town that locals hang out in. We found a cafe eventually and got some bitterballens and beer, a local favorite. Essentially bitterballens are just meat and some potatoe-like substance rolled into a ball and friend. Yum. We had Amstel with it since that is the local beer that is everywhere. Tip: bad beer is still bad in it's original country.
It was around 2pm by this time so we decided to head back to Amsterdam and see the Red Light District during the day. First we stopped by the I AMsterdam sign again to see if we could get better pictures. This trip was much more successful. It took a long time but we got the shots we wanted finally. We also ran into a woman we had seen at the Sex Museum the day before. She had asked us to take a picture of her on a big statue of a fake penis and then she returned the favor for us. It was great running into her again and taking pictures of each other once again. We were there to help each other out. Turns out she is from the air force and stationed in Germany. Very cool.
Next stop was the District. We walked around for awhile and it essentially looked the same during the day just without all the lights and drunk/high people. There were still women in some of the windows. I'm not sure if they have a system of where and when they put the girls, but these girls would be equivalent to new hires at the bottom of the totem pole I'm guessing. Maybe the newbies have to do early hours? Or maybe it is cheaper to rent out those booths in the daytime? Who knows, but I don't feel like they get as much business when the sun is out and people's minds aren't completely clouded.
Alright, here comes the part where I probably shouldn't be writing about these things on a blog that my family is reading. But we're in Amsterdam and everything is legal here. We are young and should be able to take advantage of the things this country allows, legally. So we did. Nothing dangerous or stupid. Although we went into an energy shop cause Hilary wanted to try some pills and the lady there was pushing us really hard on taking mushrooms. Now I've seen people on mushrooms and I don't know if I just caught them on a bad trip or what, but I've never had to urge to do them after seeing the things they did. We passed on the mushrooms and the pills they offered were slightly expensive and as much as it would be fun to experiment I'm not about to shell out the money for something I don't know the side effects of. All I was trying to do was have a brownie while there. When in Amsterdam...
We found a coffee shop here. Just for your knowledge: the energy shops sell mushrooms and pills, the coffee shops sell week, and the cafe's sell actual coffee. You have to be aware of the sign outside and make sure you are walking in to the right establishment. I saw a couple people walk into a coffee shop that wanted cafe's and they were a little surprised, ha. Anyways, we found a shop that had reasonable prices and got our brownies. They were for later in the night so we put them away and went off to find food.
At the pub we stopped at for food there was an Englishman sitting next to us probably in his late 40s. He struck up a convo with us and ended up talking to mainly Hilary for about an hour. I wasn't too interested in him and Hilary was sitting directly next to him so she got stuck with having to humor him. I don't think he was homeless or anything but there was definitely something off about him. He wasn't dangerous or anything like that. I think he was just more lonely and got excited that two girls who spoke english were talking to him. I couldn't even tell you what he talked about most of the conversation as he either didn't make sense or I tuned him out. But he ended in trying to get us to go smoke with him saying, "Smoking isn't fun alone. I know a place across the street we can get a room upstairs. We'll just hang out and from there I'm not saying anything else would happen..." Uhh, ha, pass, thanks creepy dude. We got up and left pretty quickly after that.
The beauty of the Red Light District is you can walk up and down the same streets and not realize they are the same because there are so many people and things that change. Hilary and I did this for a while much like we did the night before. It's amazing how much time you can waste just laughing at and enjoying the people around you. Eventually we stumbled upon an I AMsterdam sign. We had no idea there were two of them. This definitely wasn't the same one we had taken pictures at during the day. No one had every told us there were two signs. We hung out at the sign for awhile and ate our brownies. Poor Hilary did not enjoy the taste of it at all and looked like she was going to get sick. But she sucked it up and ate the whole thing. As we were hanging out at the I AMsterdam sign eating brownies we also got the pleasure of seeing at least 10 men relieve themselves. There were these urinals right in front of the sign that resembled outhouses but instead didnt have walls but just four areas to pee, one on each side (it was a square) and then walls that protected either side of the person. But their entire backside was revealed to everyone so you literally could just sit there and watch people pee. I'm not quite sure how I feel about this invention but I will say boys have do have it way easier in this area and that is a prime example of why.
Our next stop will probably not surprise most of my close friends but I was surprised Hilary did this with me. As I said before we had a very "why not, we're in Amsterdam" mentality here so we decided to get tickets to a live sex show. Yep. People on stage having sex. Us in the audience. Sweet. I was expected to walk in to this place and see a bunch of gross old men standing around tables smoking and drinking staring at the naked girls on stage. Not at all what it was. Turned out to be sort of a mini-theater. It actually reminded me of what a small high school auditorium would look like if you went to see one of their plays.
We sat down in a rown next to a couple and a couple minutes later the music started and out came a couple. It gets pretty graphic from here so if you want to know details shoot me an email or I'll tell you about it when I get back. It was an enlightening experience though, that's for sure. I'm just glad I didn't have to sit next to a guy who decided he wanted to get off from the show. Numerous times the bouncer guy had to come and shine lights on guys and tell them to put it away. It was awkward knowing that most of the guys around you were attempting to masturbate in the same room as you. That was weirder than the actual live sex going on in front of me to be honest. There were a lot of girls that came to the show though so we weren't out of place at all at least. During the show the brownies kicked in and Hilary said she was feeling pretty good. I could feel it a little but I think I have a natural tolerance or something cause it never hit me that hard
The show was on a rotating schedule so different people would come out and do different acts. There were individual shows and couple shows. The individual shows were pretty comical and included audience participation where they did some pretty disgusting things. I can't imagine doing the stuff random people out of the audience had to do onstage - good lord. The couples were pretty much just straight sex. It was really choreographed though and most of the people seemed almost bored. It's weird how Amsterdam almost seems to take the fun out of sex. Between the shows and the prostitutes the whole town is on sex overdrive that most of them probably don't even enjoy it anymore. I really wish I knew someone in the industry I could ask to see if they still enjoy sex outside of performing. I also think it's amazing that the guys could stay hard when they are performing for about 10-15 minutes every hour over the entire night. They've got to be on some pill or something...
Anyways, enough of the sex talk. :) After the show we headed back to Hans' place to attempt to get some sleep before our train in the morning to Switzerland.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Keukenhof Tulips
April 8, 2010
After sleeping for a few hours, showering finally and having a quick cereal bar breakfast we met Carol at a metro station. From there we took the metro, got on a train which we didn't pay for and then on a bus where the bus driver called us dumb a few times for not purchasing a ticket before hand. Eventually we arrived at Keukenhof. The day was pretty gloomy with a couple sprinkles of rain at first so all the flowers were closed up; but about an hour in the sun came out and it ended up being a beautiful day the rest of the time there. The flowers were gorgeous and Carol and her friend Nicole (plus her boyfriend) were hilarious company to be with. Carol is studying theatre so she is very outgoing and animated. Nicole is an artist/actor and also promotes at the comedy club.
We pretty much just spent the day wandering around a huge park of tulips and other gorgeous flowers. The place is 70 acres in total and one of the most colorful places I've ever seen. While we were there we also climbed up a traditional windmill which was pretty cool. We stayed until around 2pm and then our stomachs took over and told us it was time for food. Everything inside the area was way over priced and didn't look all that good. Hilary and I being the cheapos we are didn't get any food except for sharing a small order of puffertjes which are miniature dutch pancakes that were really good. They sort of tasted like mini round pieces of french toast. Highly recommended, I'm hoping to have more before we leave.
Carol and company wanted to go to a small town close by to get food but Hilary and I decided to head back to Amsterdam to see the city during the day, especially since it is so beautiful today. We are currently on the bus back to the train to take us into the city. We are getting better and better at transportation systems and finding our way around so hopefully our luck will remain and we'll be able to get back to Amsterdam in a semi-timely fashion.
We got back to Amsterdam around 3:30 and headed out to find the I AMsterdam sign. It was sunny out so we wanted to get some tourist pictures in. On the way there we stopped to get some food at a bakery and then to Febo. We found some sort of fried meat thing and put in our 1.40 in change and pulled it out of it's little vending machine shelf. Having no idea how it would taste we decided to split one. Really glad that we did - it wasn't the worst thing I've ever tasted but I probably wouldn't get one again on purpose.
When we made it to the sign I was surprised at how many people there were at the letters taking pictures. I figured there would be some sort of line or something for people taking pictures but it was a complete free-for-all. I had always seen pictures of people alone with the sign and now I'm in awe of how they got those. Hilary and I literally waited around for an hour at least and didn't end up getting any good pictures in. We people watched though and that ended up being a lot of fun. The most interesting was a group of 6 guys who thought they were in a boy band doing a photo shoot that was there the entire time. It was pretty entertaining watching all of their various poses.
Once we got bored with watching people take photos with the sign we headed back to Hans' place for dinner, stopping by the grocery store on the way. We're really trying to cut down on our food costs. Dinner was a success and we headed out again to the Red Light District. Our first stop was the Sex Museum. This is literally a museum full of sex themed items from a ton of different cultures and time periods. There were multiple videos throughout and manicans that came to life and didn't things like pretend to ejaculate on you (at least I'm hoping that was water...) and have sex with each other. The last room was the S&M room. Beyond interesting to say the least. Most of the pictures made me cringe with pain. I get S&M to a point, but the intensive piercing and pulling and other ways of inflicting pain doesn't really register with me. To each their own I guess...
It was now on to the heart of the Red Light District. Not knowing what to expect, it didn't disappoint. There were people and lights everywhere. I could smell and taste weed everywhere I went and there were people on alcohol and drugs all over. I knew there would be women in the windows but it is a really interesting sight to see just rows and rows of girls standing in their underwear trying to get men to come in and have sex with them for around 40 euros (I found out the price from our random military friend on the train I'll be talking about later).
There were girls of all shapes and colors: young, old, skinny, fat, short, tall, glasses, tattoos, girls dressed up as nurses, etc... Most of them were at the window dancing to music that was inside their room. Some of them would be smoking or talking/texting on their phone or talking to each other. Every once in a while the girls would even tap on the windows as men walked by that they thought would be interested. For the most part these women were really attractive and as Hilary put it "Some of them look really nice. I feel like if they had clothes on I could have a conversation with them!" I don't know what I was expecting but they were surprisingly normal looking.
The red light district is in the middle of a bunch of really pretty canals and streets; a pretty contradictory background to a place known for it's sex and drugs. We had a really good time walking around and taking it all in. After we had our fill of the District we headed back to Hans'. It was another early morning to go to Alkmaar and see a traditional cheese market. Hilary is really into cheese so she was super excited about this day trip and I was excited to get out of the main city and explore a smaller town. Amsterdam is nice but there isn't much to do during the night except a bunch of museums neither Hilary nor I were interested in paying to go see.
After sleeping for a few hours, showering finally and having a quick cereal bar breakfast we met Carol at a metro station. From there we took the metro, got on a train which we didn't pay for and then on a bus where the bus driver called us dumb a few times for not purchasing a ticket before hand. Eventually we arrived at Keukenhof. The day was pretty gloomy with a couple sprinkles of rain at first so all the flowers were closed up; but about an hour in the sun came out and it ended up being a beautiful day the rest of the time there. The flowers were gorgeous and Carol and her friend Nicole (plus her boyfriend) were hilarious company to be with. Carol is studying theatre so she is very outgoing and animated. Nicole is an artist/actor and also promotes at the comedy club.
We pretty much just spent the day wandering around a huge park of tulips and other gorgeous flowers. The place is 70 acres in total and one of the most colorful places I've ever seen. While we were there we also climbed up a traditional windmill which was pretty cool. We stayed until around 2pm and then our stomachs took over and told us it was time for food. Everything inside the area was way over priced and didn't look all that good. Hilary and I being the cheapos we are didn't get any food except for sharing a small order of puffertjes which are miniature dutch pancakes that were really good. They sort of tasted like mini round pieces of french toast. Highly recommended, I'm hoping to have more before we leave.
Carol and company wanted to go to a small town close by to get food but Hilary and I decided to head back to Amsterdam to see the city during the day, especially since it is so beautiful today. We are currently on the bus back to the train to take us into the city. We are getting better and better at transportation systems and finding our way around so hopefully our luck will remain and we'll be able to get back to Amsterdam in a semi-timely fashion.
We got back to Amsterdam around 3:30 and headed out to find the I AMsterdam sign. It was sunny out so we wanted to get some tourist pictures in. On the way there we stopped to get some food at a bakery and then to Febo. We found some sort of fried meat thing and put in our 1.40 in change and pulled it out of it's little vending machine shelf. Having no idea how it would taste we decided to split one. Really glad that we did - it wasn't the worst thing I've ever tasted but I probably wouldn't get one again on purpose.
When we made it to the sign I was surprised at how many people there were at the letters taking pictures. I figured there would be some sort of line or something for people taking pictures but it was a complete free-for-all. I had always seen pictures of people alone with the sign and now I'm in awe of how they got those. Hilary and I literally waited around for an hour at least and didn't end up getting any good pictures in. We people watched though and that ended up being a lot of fun. The most interesting was a group of 6 guys who thought they were in a boy band doing a photo shoot that was there the entire time. It was pretty entertaining watching all of their various poses.
Once we got bored with watching people take photos with the sign we headed back to Hans' place for dinner, stopping by the grocery store on the way. We're really trying to cut down on our food costs. Dinner was a success and we headed out again to the Red Light District. Our first stop was the Sex Museum. This is literally a museum full of sex themed items from a ton of different cultures and time periods. There were multiple videos throughout and manicans that came to life and didn't things like pretend to ejaculate on you (at least I'm hoping that was water...) and have sex with each other. The last room was the S&M room. Beyond interesting to say the least. Most of the pictures made me cringe with pain. I get S&M to a point, but the intensive piercing and pulling and other ways of inflicting pain doesn't really register with me. To each their own I guess...
It was now on to the heart of the Red Light District. Not knowing what to expect, it didn't disappoint. There were people and lights everywhere. I could smell and taste weed everywhere I went and there were people on alcohol and drugs all over. I knew there would be women in the windows but it is a really interesting sight to see just rows and rows of girls standing in their underwear trying to get men to come in and have sex with them for around 40 euros (I found out the price from our random military friend on the train I'll be talking about later).
There were girls of all shapes and colors: young, old, skinny, fat, short, tall, glasses, tattoos, girls dressed up as nurses, etc... Most of them were at the window dancing to music that was inside their room. Some of them would be smoking or talking/texting on their phone or talking to each other. Every once in a while the girls would even tap on the windows as men walked by that they thought would be interested. For the most part these women were really attractive and as Hilary put it "Some of them look really nice. I feel like if they had clothes on I could have a conversation with them!" I don't know what I was expecting but they were surprisingly normal looking.
The red light district is in the middle of a bunch of really pretty canals and streets; a pretty contradictory background to a place known for it's sex and drugs. We had a really good time walking around and taking it all in. After we had our fill of the District we headed back to Hans'. It was another early morning to go to Alkmaar and see a traditional cheese market. Hilary is really into cheese so she was super excited about this day trip and I was excited to get out of the main city and explore a smaller town. Amsterdam is nice but there isn't much to do during the night except a bunch of museums neither Hilary nor I were interested in paying to go see.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Wandering and a Show
April 7, 2010
We found another CS host, Hans, who messaged me yesterday saying he could host us and he was much closer to the center of Amsterdam so we decided to switch hosts and stay with him the rest of the time. Arthur was great but it was a lot easier transportation wise this way. He understood and drove us to to ferry around 9:15. We had gotten up at 8 and made him breakfast. This was my meal responsibility. Breakfasts I can do! :) Apparently, Arthur had never had breakfast at his new place he was currently in so that was a fun present to give him. He also doesn't have other people cook for him either so I was glad we could do that for him.
After taking a ferry, metro, getting lost again and having a 20 minutes long conversation with a random man on the street who stopped to tell us to watch out for the bikes and basically that Dutch women are whores and bad people we made it to Hans' place! He was home, thankfully, and let us in. Immediately he told us to put our things down and offered us tea. It was perfect. We hung out with him for awhile and planned out our stay here. Hans had to get to work at 3 and we headed out to explore the city around 1:30.
Hans told us about free boat rides along the canal so we headed out to find those. They were right behind the Boom Chicago comedy club apparently and that is all we knew. We got a couple maps and some google directions and eventually found our way there only getting lost once. We're getting better! The lady who is a promoter for the club said the boats weren't currently in operation there gave us a discount on the show and a free drink for that evening. We ended up talking to Carol (the club promoter) for awhile and found out she was actually a CouchSurfing host in Amsterdam. I loved that the first person we talk to here was on CS!
She told us she was going to a huge tulip farm about a half hour outside of Amsterdam and invited us along to check then out. It sounded like a lot of fun and the Netherlands is known for their flowers/tulips so we figured, why not? After talking with her for awhile we said we'd be back for the show and headed off to find Anne Frank's House.
The line wasn't too bad to get in the Anne Frank's House and it was even a little cheaper than we thought it was going to be - score! The house was really cool to walk through and read about. We were able to walk in the actual house and rooms where everyone lived and slept. It was a lot bigger than you would think but at the same time was pretty small for the amount of people that lived there. The rooms were really skinny and I didn't quite understand how they got two beds in some of them but I'm sure things were smaller back then. I haven't read the book since middle school but there were a lot of quotes in each room which was cool to read. There were also videos playing of people who knew Anne and had survived the war. I had heard from a couple people that this place wasn't worth the money but I disagree, it was completely worth it. I am really interested in WWII though, so I guess it depends on individual's interests.
We went back to Boom Chicago to buy the tickets then off to find food. Carol told us about a Dutch form of fast food called Febo. I hadn't heard of this yet but it is pretty much just food in vending machines, but they are hot and can be used as a mini-meal. I have no idea how good the food is - I haven't heard good things - but I'm sure we'll try it at some point while we are here. In the mean time we found a cheap italian place since those seem to give the most food for the least amount of money.
After dinner we wandered around for awhile before the comedy club and stumbled upon a mini-market where we bought some food and drinks for cheap. Hilary is starting to get sick so she wanted to stock up on her vitamin C. I just wanted something to snack on while we were hear instead of buying something from a restaurant every time we got hungry. Way too much money! The guy at the store was really nice and ended up filling up Hilary's water bottle.
We headed back to the comedy club for the show and ran into Carol again. She introduced us to her friends and realized we had never really introduced each other. When we told her our names she responded with, "That's easy. Hilary Clinton and Laura Bush - the first ladies." Ha. Hilary gets Hilary Clinton a lot while traveling but I have definitely never heard Laura Bush for me. I guess that's a good way for people to remember our names though. just sucks I have to be a Bush.
The show was pretty good, not amazing but it was entertaining. It reminded me a lot of Jet City Improv for those of you that have seen it but it was better, longer and I got a free drink. After the show got out we did a quick scan for Carol to get more information about the tulip place we were joining her for in the morning but we didn't see her so we just decided to head out and message her via couchsurfing. Our next stop was a place that was suggested to us called Roosie's. It was a coffee shop we got a couple of spacecakes at and then headed home from there. The spacecakes were a little disappointing but it was alright cause we need sleep anyway. Since Hilary is getting sick and we have an early morning we figured it was better to call it a night tonight and go out the next couple.
Our host this time around, Hans, is nice enough but doesn't seem over enthused to have us like our previous hosts have been. He's sort of just acting like it is any other night. He told us that he has hosted over 400 people in the past 3 years so I think the thrill of it has left him and now he just goes on living his life no matter who is staying at his place. Tonight when we came home he ended up just turning on the TV and watching it in Dutch for a few hours. We were sleeping in the room he was watching TV in so we just sort of hung out on the computer and reading until he went to bed so we could go to bed. It hasn't been a negative experience at all, just sort of a neutral one. He's a little older in his late 30's as well so that might be the issue. He probably isn't very interested in hanging out with a couple of early 20 year old girls. Oh well, we found Carol and friends to hang out with.
We found another CS host, Hans, who messaged me yesterday saying he could host us and he was much closer to the center of Amsterdam so we decided to switch hosts and stay with him the rest of the time. Arthur was great but it was a lot easier transportation wise this way. He understood and drove us to to ferry around 9:15. We had gotten up at 8 and made him breakfast. This was my meal responsibility. Breakfasts I can do! :) Apparently, Arthur had never had breakfast at his new place he was currently in so that was a fun present to give him. He also doesn't have other people cook for him either so I was glad we could do that for him.
After taking a ferry, metro, getting lost again and having a 20 minutes long conversation with a random man on the street who stopped to tell us to watch out for the bikes and basically that Dutch women are whores and bad people we made it to Hans' place! He was home, thankfully, and let us in. Immediately he told us to put our things down and offered us tea. It was perfect. We hung out with him for awhile and planned out our stay here. Hans had to get to work at 3 and we headed out to explore the city around 1:30.
Hans told us about free boat rides along the canal so we headed out to find those. They were right behind the Boom Chicago comedy club apparently and that is all we knew. We got a couple maps and some google directions and eventually found our way there only getting lost once. We're getting better! The lady who is a promoter for the club said the boats weren't currently in operation there gave us a discount on the show and a free drink for that evening. We ended up talking to Carol (the club promoter) for awhile and found out she was actually a CouchSurfing host in Amsterdam. I loved that the first person we talk to here was on CS!
She told us she was going to a huge tulip farm about a half hour outside of Amsterdam and invited us along to check then out. It sounded like a lot of fun and the Netherlands is known for their flowers/tulips so we figured, why not? After talking with her for awhile we said we'd be back for the show and headed off to find Anne Frank's House.
The line wasn't too bad to get in the Anne Frank's House and it was even a little cheaper than we thought it was going to be - score! The house was really cool to walk through and read about. We were able to walk in the actual house and rooms where everyone lived and slept. It was a lot bigger than you would think but at the same time was pretty small for the amount of people that lived there. The rooms were really skinny and I didn't quite understand how they got two beds in some of them but I'm sure things were smaller back then. I haven't read the book since middle school but there were a lot of quotes in each room which was cool to read. There were also videos playing of people who knew Anne and had survived the war. I had heard from a couple people that this place wasn't worth the money but I disagree, it was completely worth it. I am really interested in WWII though, so I guess it depends on individual's interests.
We went back to Boom Chicago to buy the tickets then off to find food. Carol told us about a Dutch form of fast food called Febo. I hadn't heard of this yet but it is pretty much just food in vending machines, but they are hot and can be used as a mini-meal. I have no idea how good the food is - I haven't heard good things - but I'm sure we'll try it at some point while we are here. In the mean time we found a cheap italian place since those seem to give the most food for the least amount of money.
After dinner we wandered around for awhile before the comedy club and stumbled upon a mini-market where we bought some food and drinks for cheap. Hilary is starting to get sick so she wanted to stock up on her vitamin C. I just wanted something to snack on while we were hear instead of buying something from a restaurant every time we got hungry. Way too much money! The guy at the store was really nice and ended up filling up Hilary's water bottle.
We headed back to the comedy club for the show and ran into Carol again. She introduced us to her friends and realized we had never really introduced each other. When we told her our names she responded with, "That's easy. Hilary Clinton and Laura Bush - the first ladies." Ha. Hilary gets Hilary Clinton a lot while traveling but I have definitely never heard Laura Bush for me. I guess that's a good way for people to remember our names though. just sucks I have to be a Bush.
The show was pretty good, not amazing but it was entertaining. It reminded me a lot of Jet City Improv for those of you that have seen it but it was better, longer and I got a free drink. After the show got out we did a quick scan for Carol to get more information about the tulip place we were joining her for in the morning but we didn't see her so we just decided to head out and message her via couchsurfing. Our next stop was a place that was suggested to us called Roosie's. It was a coffee shop we got a couple of spacecakes at and then headed home from there. The spacecakes were a little disappointing but it was alright cause we need sleep anyway. Since Hilary is getting sick and we have an early morning we figured it was better to call it a night tonight and go out the next couple.
Our host this time around, Hans, is nice enough but doesn't seem over enthused to have us like our previous hosts have been. He's sort of just acting like it is any other night. He told us that he has hosted over 400 people in the past 3 years so I think the thrill of it has left him and now he just goes on living his life no matter who is staying at his place. Tonight when we came home he ended up just turning on the TV and watching it in Dutch for a few hours. We were sleeping in the room he was watching TV in so we just sort of hung out on the computer and reading until he went to bed so we could go to bed. It hasn't been a negative experience at all, just sort of a neutral one. He's a little older in his late 30's as well so that might be the issue. He probably isn't very interested in hanging out with a couple of early 20 year old girls. Oh well, we found Carol and friends to hang out with.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Onto Amsterdam
April 6, 2010
Today was our travel day so we decided to sleep in and take our time. The train to Amsterdam left every hour and we didn't have to be there until 8pm to meet our next host. I ended up sleeping in until a little before 11 and Hilary woke up around 11:30. We got ready, packed up and headed out of the house around 2. It was a very slow morning. At this point we realized we were running a little low on time so we started to hurry along. We dropped Estelle's keys off with her at her work and said goodbye. :( Then headed to the station to get our tickets validated. After this we had about 40 minutes until the train came and Hilary wanted to go run an errand to get a friend a present. Since time was short I stayed at the station to watch the bags and she ran to get the present. While waiting I got one last waffle and some cash for Amsterdam. Hilary came back pretty quickly and we went to the platform.
At this point we were about to get on a semi-long train and hadn't had a great breakfast so Hilary ran back upstairs to get some fries for us to have on the train. Well the train was arriving at 15:22 and Hilary ran down the stairs with fries in hand at 15:20:30. Talk about close timing, she was making me really nervous. This train wasn't as full as the Bruges one so Hilary and I got a section of four seats together so we could sprawl out.
We got comfortable and pulled out our fries to eat the deliciousness. Then I saw the conductor coming down the aisle to check tickets. This reminded me that we hadn't filled out the dates on our Eurail pass yet so I got that out. Well as I was filling it out the conductor walks up to me and says "To late." Uhh, what? Turns out Hilary and I were both dumb enough to not read our Eurail tickets and know that we were supposed to fill everything out first else our tickets aren't valid and we have to pay for the train ride. Luckily, we pulled off our dumb girl routine of not knowing what we were doing and hopefully the conductor can enlighten us and let us off the hook. It worked pretty well this time and the conductor filled things in for us and didn't make us pay (probably cause we looked so clueless) but he didn't seem very happy about it.
Other than that the trip went really smoothly and the weather was gorgeous outside so we had some great views of the countryside. We pulled in to Amsterdam on time and headed out to the ferry lines to meet up with our host oh the north side of the water a little outside of the city. We found the ferry easy enough and ended up at the meeting spot an hour earlier than we thought so we went to a cafe, had some drinks and then went back to meet our host at 8.
Our host was Arthur who answered a last minute add for us when we were having troubles finding a place. He was awesome and picked us up with a car to drive to his house which was about a 15-20 minutes drive. We dropped our stuff of at his place then headed to the grocery store to buy dinner. Hilary was in charge since we wanted to make dinner for Arthur and me in the kitchen and/or with food and any sort of responsibility or know how is laughable. We decided to make chicken, vegetables and rice. Once we got back to the apartment we started on the meal. Hilary told me what to do and I did it and then watched her actually do the real cooking. It was great. I enjoy cooking when I'm going ordered around in the kitchen. Makes me feel useful, ha. The dinner was so-so. There weren't too many spices to work with but all in all in the cheap good food so I have no complaints. Next came the dessert. Oh my goodness. Amazing ice cream. I don't even know why it was so good other than assuming it was made with real cream, but the closest I've had to this is gelato in Italy and that is saying something.
Arthur was great to talk to. He has a lot of opinions and isn't afraid to express them which is refreshing. We talked a lot about Holland and the police and justice system. No one really respects the police over here according to Arthur which is sort of a problem. The system doesn't seem like the best but I guess everyone has their complaints with every system. Arthur also said there isn't a death penalty here and a lot of people get off with fairly short prison sentences. It was unbelievable how easy going the justice system seemed here.
We also found out that Arthur didn't have a very good view of American couchsurfers. He'd had two bad experiences in the past and no good ones so we were a little sad to hear that. We're hoping we were able to change his minds about American CSers through our experience. I asked him if we had and he said "Yes, very much. You girls are funny." Hopefully that's a good thing! :)
Today was our travel day so we decided to sleep in and take our time. The train to Amsterdam left every hour and we didn't have to be there until 8pm to meet our next host. I ended up sleeping in until a little before 11 and Hilary woke up around 11:30. We got ready, packed up and headed out of the house around 2. It was a very slow morning. At this point we realized we were running a little low on time so we started to hurry along. We dropped Estelle's keys off with her at her work and said goodbye. :( Then headed to the station to get our tickets validated. After this we had about 40 minutes until the train came and Hilary wanted to go run an errand to get a friend a present. Since time was short I stayed at the station to watch the bags and she ran to get the present. While waiting I got one last waffle and some cash for Amsterdam. Hilary came back pretty quickly and we went to the platform.
At this point we were about to get on a semi-long train and hadn't had a great breakfast so Hilary ran back upstairs to get some fries for us to have on the train. Well the train was arriving at 15:22 and Hilary ran down the stairs with fries in hand at 15:20:30. Talk about close timing, she was making me really nervous. This train wasn't as full as the Bruges one so Hilary and I got a section of four seats together so we could sprawl out.
We got comfortable and pulled out our fries to eat the deliciousness. Then I saw the conductor coming down the aisle to check tickets. This reminded me that we hadn't filled out the dates on our Eurail pass yet so I got that out. Well as I was filling it out the conductor walks up to me and says "To late." Uhh, what? Turns out Hilary and I were both dumb enough to not read our Eurail tickets and know that we were supposed to fill everything out first else our tickets aren't valid and we have to pay for the train ride. Luckily, we pulled off our dumb girl routine of not knowing what we were doing and hopefully the conductor can enlighten us and let us off the hook. It worked pretty well this time and the conductor filled things in for us and didn't make us pay (probably cause we looked so clueless) but he didn't seem very happy about it.
Other than that the trip went really smoothly and the weather was gorgeous outside so we had some great views of the countryside. We pulled in to Amsterdam on time and headed out to the ferry lines to meet up with our host oh the north side of the water a little outside of the city. We found the ferry easy enough and ended up at the meeting spot an hour earlier than we thought so we went to a cafe, had some drinks and then went back to meet our host at 8.
Our host was Arthur who answered a last minute add for us when we were having troubles finding a place. He was awesome and picked us up with a car to drive to his house which was about a 15-20 minutes drive. We dropped our stuff of at his place then headed to the grocery store to buy dinner. Hilary was in charge since we wanted to make dinner for Arthur and me in the kitchen and/or with food and any sort of responsibility or know how is laughable. We decided to make chicken, vegetables and rice. Once we got back to the apartment we started on the meal. Hilary told me what to do and I did it and then watched her actually do the real cooking. It was great. I enjoy cooking when I'm going ordered around in the kitchen. Makes me feel useful, ha. The dinner was so-so. There weren't too many spices to work with but all in all in the cheap good food so I have no complaints. Next came the dessert. Oh my goodness. Amazing ice cream. I don't even know why it was so good other than assuming it was made with real cream, but the closest I've had to this is gelato in Italy and that is saying something.
Arthur was great to talk to. He has a lot of opinions and isn't afraid to express them which is refreshing. We talked a lot about Holland and the police and justice system. No one really respects the police over here according to Arthur which is sort of a problem. The system doesn't seem like the best but I guess everyone has their complaints with every system. Arthur also said there isn't a death penalty here and a lot of people get off with fairly short prison sentences. It was unbelievable how easy going the justice system seemed here.
We also found out that Arthur didn't have a very good view of American couchsurfers. He'd had two bad experiences in the past and no good ones so we were a little sad to hear that. We're hoping we were able to change his minds about American CSers through our experience. I asked him if we had and he said "Yes, very much. You girls are funny." Hopefully that's a good thing! :)
Monday, April 5, 2010
Bruges
April 5, 2010
Somehow Hilary and I were actually able to get up and catch the train to Bruges today on time. Quite impressive for us. The plan was to grab some waffles on our way to the station and each them on the train ride over. However, Easter is a huge holiday in Holland and they get a 4 day weekend so everything was closed since it was Easter Monday. I had some bread and cheese left over from a few days before so I ate that to hold me over during the hour train ride. Waiting for the train we got a little confused since we couldn't read the signs and weren't sure what everything meant. But after a little waiting around, looking clueless and attempting to ask people things in French we got on the right train.
Hilary crashed on the train ride as she does on most public transportation vehicles so I spent the hour eating and listening to a ton of foreign languages. It was actually really entertaining to hear what people were saying and trying to figure out the meaning behind the words by the tone of their voice and their expressions and hand gestures. At some points when I'd lose focus it was like white noise all around me. When you can't understand anything, you tend to hear everything. Instead of focusing in on one conversation or two like usually, I could literally unfocus my ears and hear everyone talking at once. It was an unusual experience and really made me realize different Europe is and how big language barriers are.
The cities we were passing by on the train were really beautiful to watch as well. They were all old cities made up of brick houses and stores. All the buildings in Europe seem to be between 3 and 5 floors and they line the streets touching wall to wall. The only differences are in the roofs and the color they are painted. It leaves a really cool feeling of being enclosed within these brick buildings while you are walking down the street. I feel so engulfed that I can't look at anything else other than the beautful old buildings around me. It's funny though because all of the buildings are somehow able to look the same but very different from each other at the same time. It's quite an accomplishment.
We got in to Bruges easily enough and set out to find the belfry tower which was the meeting point where Hilary and I were going to meet up with Hannah, Lila, David and Stella. They all got lucky and were able to drive in David's car. At noon we all met up and started to explore the town. The belfry was the first todo as you can climb the stairs to the top to see a great view of the city and countryside. The tower is 366 steps to the top with three view/resting points on the way up. The steps were super steep as are all of the staircases here. Apparently there used to be a tax based on how wide buildings were so everyone built them skinny and tall which led to steep and windy staircases. The tower is definitely the worst I've experienced though. I thought I was going to fall straight down at times all there was to hold on to was a rope attached to the inner wall. Having to pass people was literally a game of skill to make sure no one fell.
The top has some great views and we were lucky enough to be there on a pretty nice day. It was a little overcast but not awful and the sun was sporadically out during the day. While we were there we started to notice a bunch of quotes that were written on the wood parts of the wall from the movie "In Bruges" which we had watched the night before. It was really fun reading through them and actually knowing what they were talking about. Hilary and I also added our own quote to the wall and put our names on the wood. The way down was a little easier than the way up but I had to stare and each stair to make sure I didn't slip and fall all the way down. When we got down Hilary's leg started to spaz out for some reason. It was shaking on its own. We assumed it was from too much use on it since all we have been doing is walking since we got here and we just did all the stairs, but he is actually active and gets regular exercise so I feel like it would be my body freaking out if anything, not hers.
Outside of the befry there was a man playing some instruments that I had never heard before. He was really good though and fun to watch. Hannah got a video of him and the rest hung around to listen for awhile. Eventually we then made our way out and just started walking around. David and I ended up talking for most of the day which was a lot of fun. He was really interesting to listen to and we got along really well. At one point it was almost a problem as we were caught up in talking while everyone else wanted to get food. Apparently we were walking around for awhile looking for food and people were getting pretty annoyed and ancy and I was a little oblivious to it all. Oh well, it was a lot of fun talking to him and we all got food eventually.
While we were there we went in to a couple churches. It was the same old, same old. I've already expressed a little about my views on churches in an earlier post so I'll skip over that. At the first church I did a quick walk through and then sat down on the chairs waiting for everyone else to take pictures and whatnot. As I was sitting there was a little girl that went up to light a candle in one of the areas of the church and then there was a elderly lady in front of me who was kneeling and praying. I imagined what in their lives led them to the points they were currently at and how much things have changed for the lady praying and will change for the little girl. Pretty much I just compared made up personalities of two complete strangers and then tried to figure out the profound meaning of it. Very bizarre of me. I blame the churches. :)
At the second church I was waiting for the crew on a bench in the back of the church. This was the first church where all the stations of the cross pictures were lined up and they had noticed them. None of the girls were Christian so they were asking David about the stations. Once I saw him start to explain all of them one-by-one I slipped into a mini coma and got some sleep in. I remember having to memorize those stations starting in early elementary school and it was an annual event at Catholic school to go around in the church and recite them. I think it was actually an exam we were give at one point. Not the best or most exciting of memories so I decided sleep was better than thinking about that. Or perhaps thinking about that put me to sleep...
After this church the girls were interested since David had explained the stations. They started asking me a bunch of questions and eventually we ended up in a pretty lengthy conversation about religion. We had a couple girls raised Jewish, I was raised Catholic and the rest didn't have a religion. It was a really good conversation and made me realize how much I didn't know and/or remember about Christianity. I guess I haven't really practiced it since leaving my catholic school in 8th grade, and even then I only learned what I was supposed to learn for our exams on religion and then I forgot it like I do most subjects. Religion was never really something I believed in or felt like I belonged to when I was growing up, it was more just another subject in school that I used rote memorization to pass. Some of the questions were pretty basic and I couldn't answer them confidently. Whoops.
The next and final stop of the afternoon was at a really pretty park area in Bruges. We all had a mini photo shoot in the park and hung out for awhile then headed back to Brussels. Hilary and I set off to find a the train station and ended up getting lost again. By the time we made it to the station we were 4 minutes late for the train we were hoping to catch. Instead we had to wait a half hour until the next one came. We waited upstairs until about 10 minutes before the train time and then headed to the platform (once I woke Hilary up from her nap). Apparently the train had been there for awhile and when we got on the get seats they were all take up. We did not expect this to happen. We ended up having to sit on some stairs unti the first stop where people got off. The train back and walk to Estelle's was pretty easy. We are starting to get the hang of directions and getting around, finally.
We stopped by a mini-mart that was open - it was Easter Monday so not many things were open - and bought 4 pizzas for dinner. Everyone that was in Bruges plus Estelle was eating dinner at Estelle's so we needed a lot of food. When we got to Estelle's she was playing cards with 3 of her friends. It was a great surprise! We got to meet her friends who were all really nice and fun to be around and then the CS people came over so it turned in to a mini party. We pretty much just ate pizza, drank beer and talked all night. It was great. I also tried a traditional French drink but I don't remember what it was called.
Once everyone left Estelle ended up being pretty drunk since she had been drinking since 7ish that night so Hilary and I had a few good laughs at her - she's super cute! - and then headed to bed.
Somehow Hilary and I were actually able to get up and catch the train to Bruges today on time. Quite impressive for us. The plan was to grab some waffles on our way to the station and each them on the train ride over. However, Easter is a huge holiday in Holland and they get a 4 day weekend so everything was closed since it was Easter Monday. I had some bread and cheese left over from a few days before so I ate that to hold me over during the hour train ride. Waiting for the train we got a little confused since we couldn't read the signs and weren't sure what everything meant. But after a little waiting around, looking clueless and attempting to ask people things in French we got on the right train.
Hilary crashed on the train ride as she does on most public transportation vehicles so I spent the hour eating and listening to a ton of foreign languages. It was actually really entertaining to hear what people were saying and trying to figure out the meaning behind the words by the tone of their voice and their expressions and hand gestures. At some points when I'd lose focus it was like white noise all around me. When you can't understand anything, you tend to hear everything. Instead of focusing in on one conversation or two like usually, I could literally unfocus my ears and hear everyone talking at once. It was an unusual experience and really made me realize different Europe is and how big language barriers are.
The cities we were passing by on the train were really beautiful to watch as well. They were all old cities made up of brick houses and stores. All the buildings in Europe seem to be between 3 and 5 floors and they line the streets touching wall to wall. The only differences are in the roofs and the color they are painted. It leaves a really cool feeling of being enclosed within these brick buildings while you are walking down the street. I feel so engulfed that I can't look at anything else other than the beautful old buildings around me. It's funny though because all of the buildings are somehow able to look the same but very different from each other at the same time. It's quite an accomplishment.
We got in to Bruges easily enough and set out to find the belfry tower which was the meeting point where Hilary and I were going to meet up with Hannah, Lila, David and Stella. They all got lucky and were able to drive in David's car. At noon we all met up and started to explore the town. The belfry was the first todo as you can climb the stairs to the top to see a great view of the city and countryside. The tower is 366 steps to the top with three view/resting points on the way up. The steps were super steep as are all of the staircases here. Apparently there used to be a tax based on how wide buildings were so everyone built them skinny and tall which led to steep and windy staircases. The tower is definitely the worst I've experienced though. I thought I was going to fall straight down at times all there was to hold on to was a rope attached to the inner wall. Having to pass people was literally a game of skill to make sure no one fell.
The top has some great views and we were lucky enough to be there on a pretty nice day. It was a little overcast but not awful and the sun was sporadically out during the day. While we were there we started to notice a bunch of quotes that were written on the wood parts of the wall from the movie "In Bruges" which we had watched the night before. It was really fun reading through them and actually knowing what they were talking about. Hilary and I also added our own quote to the wall and put our names on the wood. The way down was a little easier than the way up but I had to stare and each stair to make sure I didn't slip and fall all the way down. When we got down Hilary's leg started to spaz out for some reason. It was shaking on its own. We assumed it was from too much use on it since all we have been doing is walking since we got here and we just did all the stairs, but he is actually active and gets regular exercise so I feel like it would be my body freaking out if anything, not hers.
Outside of the befry there was a man playing some instruments that I had never heard before. He was really good though and fun to watch. Hannah got a video of him and the rest hung around to listen for awhile. Eventually we then made our way out and just started walking around. David and I ended up talking for most of the day which was a lot of fun. He was really interesting to listen to and we got along really well. At one point it was almost a problem as we were caught up in talking while everyone else wanted to get food. Apparently we were walking around for awhile looking for food and people were getting pretty annoyed and ancy and I was a little oblivious to it all. Oh well, it was a lot of fun talking to him and we all got food eventually.
While we were there we went in to a couple churches. It was the same old, same old. I've already expressed a little about my views on churches in an earlier post so I'll skip over that. At the first church I did a quick walk through and then sat down on the chairs waiting for everyone else to take pictures and whatnot. As I was sitting there was a little girl that went up to light a candle in one of the areas of the church and then there was a elderly lady in front of me who was kneeling and praying. I imagined what in their lives led them to the points they were currently at and how much things have changed for the lady praying and will change for the little girl. Pretty much I just compared made up personalities of two complete strangers and then tried to figure out the profound meaning of it. Very bizarre of me. I blame the churches. :)
At the second church I was waiting for the crew on a bench in the back of the church. This was the first church where all the stations of the cross pictures were lined up and they had noticed them. None of the girls were Christian so they were asking David about the stations. Once I saw him start to explain all of them one-by-one I slipped into a mini coma and got some sleep in. I remember having to memorize those stations starting in early elementary school and it was an annual event at Catholic school to go around in the church and recite them. I think it was actually an exam we were give at one point. Not the best or most exciting of memories so I decided sleep was better than thinking about that. Or perhaps thinking about that put me to sleep...
After this church the girls were interested since David had explained the stations. They started asking me a bunch of questions and eventually we ended up in a pretty lengthy conversation about religion. We had a couple girls raised Jewish, I was raised Catholic and the rest didn't have a religion. It was a really good conversation and made me realize how much I didn't know and/or remember about Christianity. I guess I haven't really practiced it since leaving my catholic school in 8th grade, and even then I only learned what I was supposed to learn for our exams on religion and then I forgot it like I do most subjects. Religion was never really something I believed in or felt like I belonged to when I was growing up, it was more just another subject in school that I used rote memorization to pass. Some of the questions were pretty basic and I couldn't answer them confidently. Whoops.
The next and final stop of the afternoon was at a really pretty park area in Bruges. We all had a mini photo shoot in the park and hung out for awhile then headed back to Brussels. Hilary and I set off to find a the train station and ended up getting lost again. By the time we made it to the station we were 4 minutes late for the train we were hoping to catch. Instead we had to wait a half hour until the next one came. We waited upstairs until about 10 minutes before the train time and then headed to the platform (once I woke Hilary up from her nap). Apparently the train had been there for awhile and when we got on the get seats they were all take up. We did not expect this to happen. We ended up having to sit on some stairs unti the first stop where people got off. The train back and walk to Estelle's was pretty easy. We are starting to get the hang of directions and getting around, finally.
We stopped by a mini-mart that was open - it was Easter Monday so not many things were open - and bought 4 pizzas for dinner. Everyone that was in Bruges plus Estelle was eating dinner at Estelle's so we needed a lot of food. When we got to Estelle's she was playing cards with 3 of her friends. It was a great surprise! We got to meet her friends who were all really nice and fun to be around and then the CS people came over so it turned in to a mini party. We pretty much just ate pizza, drank beer and talked all night. It was great. I also tried a traditional French drink but I don't remember what it was called.
Once everyone left Estelle ended up being pretty drunk since she had been drinking since 7ish that night so Hilary and I had a few good laughs at her - she's super cute! - and then headed to bed.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Easter Sunday, Beer & Chocolate
April 4, 2010
We had a really chill day today. It was Easter Sunday and Easter is a huge holiday here, they get 4 days off. It is sort of equivalent to the US Thanksgiving. We got up and going around 11am -- I got to use a hair dryer since we are staying with a girl for the first time. It was amazing. I never thought I would enjoy something as simple as hair dryer. We then met up with the other CSers we've been hanging out with here and set out to the local flea market. I don't have the money or the room to buy anything while I'm here but it was still cool to look around and get the vibe for how they do things in Brussels. While we were there we stopped in to a little cafe and got breakfast. I had an omelette which is the closest thing I've had to an American breakfast since I've been here. Even though the waffles here are delicious, I miss my hardy eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns and toast. I have a feeling one of the first things I'll do when I get back to the states is go to a greasy diner and order breakfast food.
The weather here today was extremely sporadic and ADD. We were at the flea market for less than a half hour and within that time period it was sunny, raining, hailing, windy and back to sunny again -- all in different stages. It got so bad at one point we all had to run underneath cafe awnings to take cover. Once it was safe to walk again we headed into the city center to show the other girls around. Hilary and I had already done the sight-seeing so we were up for a day of leisurely walking and more beer and waffles. Plus we were going to get chocolate today as well!
The Manneken Pis was the first attraction we stopped by so we took some more pictures. It was sunny this time and we had more friendly faces to pose with. Right next to the Manneken Pis was a chocolate shop called Neuhas that Estelle said was the best chocolate place to go to. It was pretty expensive but completely worth it. I got about 5 pieces of chocolate to try and ate it later in the night. Oh my god. The best chocolate ever. My mouth is watering again just thinking about it. It took us awhile to all get chocolate since there were 6 of us and we didn't speak the language nor know what we wanted but we made it out chocolate in hand eventually.
Sophie had heard Hilary and I talk about the Beer Planet the last couple of days so she wanted us to take her back there. On our way we passed by a bar called Arms of Brussels. I'm not sure if I mentioned this in a previous post but all over London there were bars called [Insert First Word] Arms. I have no idea why this was so popular but I saw several a day. Once I pointed it out to Hilary it became a game of ours to see how many we could find. She noticed the one in Brussels. Apparently people get really unoriginal about naming pubs in Europe.
At the Beer Planet the other girls were just as impressed as we were so that was exciting. We all got some more beers and Estelle was kind enough to buy a big bottle of one of our favorites for dinner. One of the things I love about her is that she loves beer and is enthusiastic about showing us the good ones and all of the good pubs around here. Without her our beer experience here would not have been up to par. She said she's part of a "Save the Planet. Drink Beer, Not Water" group on facebook. I thought this was great and really want a shirt with this phrase on it now.
After Beer Planet it was on to search for a waffle stand. The new girls, Hannah and Lila hadn't tried them yet and we all wanted more. I don't know how, but the one I had today tasted even more amazing than yesterdays. I think it was fresher. We saw the lady make them right in front of us. Joyous. Once all of the chocolate was removed from our faces and hands we headed to a pub that was known for having gigantic glasses filled with 3 liters of beer. It is sort of the same concept of a boot but more in the shape of a chalice. When we got to the pub we sat down and when we tried to order just one chalice from the waiter he got rude with Estelle and told her we all had to order something. She didn't like the way he talked to her and we were all confused why he was so upset. The place wasn't full so all of us ordering one 3 liter beer shouldn't have been a big deal. None of us wanted our own beer and at that point we didn't want to give him our service anyway so we just got up at left.
We ended up going over to another place called the Cheese Cake Cafe and got beers there. Hannah and Lila were tired from being out late the night before so they went back to Kevin's to nap. We hung out for awhile then walked around the city a bit more on our way back to Estelle's for dinner. We had stopped by the grocery store during the day and wanted to make dinner at her place tonight instead of going out again. Sophie was going to a concert at 7 -- this was the whole point of her being in Brussels -- so she needed to go back to Kevin's as well to get her ticket and change. I went back with her to Kevin's and Hilary and Estelle went back to Estelle's place to start dinner.
Sophie, Hannah and Lila all came back with me for dinner and the 6 of us had a really great meal. We are all going to Bruges tomorrow (minus Sophie, she's going back to Germany :( ... ) so we decided to watch In Bruges, a movie with Colin Farrell about Bruges, after dinner. The movie was really good and got us excited about the city. I also ate all of my chocolate during the movie so I was a happy girl.
The other girls have all left so now it's just Hilary and I at Estelle's. We have having another calm night in as we don't want to be super tired for Bruges tomorrow. Hilary attempted sewing tonight. Favorite quote from her during the process... "Dude, I think I'm actually sewing!" Love it.
All in all today was pretty calm and uneventful but I had a lot of fun with great people and great beer. CouchSurfing is amazing and I cannot stress enough how much I love it and the people I've met through it. Half of my experiences so far wouldn't have been possible without this wonderful community. I encourage everyone to look in to it if you are planning on doing any type of traveling in the future. I have yet to meet one person I didn't like through this community and am really excited for all of the future CSers we get to meet in the future!!
We had a really chill day today. It was Easter Sunday and Easter is a huge holiday here, they get 4 days off. It is sort of equivalent to the US Thanksgiving. We got up and going around 11am -- I got to use a hair dryer since we are staying with a girl for the first time. It was amazing. I never thought I would enjoy something as simple as hair dryer. We then met up with the other CSers we've been hanging out with here and set out to the local flea market. I don't have the money or the room to buy anything while I'm here but it was still cool to look around and get the vibe for how they do things in Brussels. While we were there we stopped in to a little cafe and got breakfast. I had an omelette which is the closest thing I've had to an American breakfast since I've been here. Even though the waffles here are delicious, I miss my hardy eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns and toast. I have a feeling one of the first things I'll do when I get back to the states is go to a greasy diner and order breakfast food.
The weather here today was extremely sporadic and ADD. We were at the flea market for less than a half hour and within that time period it was sunny, raining, hailing, windy and back to sunny again -- all in different stages. It got so bad at one point we all had to run underneath cafe awnings to take cover. Once it was safe to walk again we headed into the city center to show the other girls around. Hilary and I had already done the sight-seeing so we were up for a day of leisurely walking and more beer and waffles. Plus we were going to get chocolate today as well!
The Manneken Pis was the first attraction we stopped by so we took some more pictures. It was sunny this time and we had more friendly faces to pose with. Right next to the Manneken Pis was a chocolate shop called Neuhas that Estelle said was the best chocolate place to go to. It was pretty expensive but completely worth it. I got about 5 pieces of chocolate to try and ate it later in the night. Oh my god. The best chocolate ever. My mouth is watering again just thinking about it. It took us awhile to all get chocolate since there were 6 of us and we didn't speak the language nor know what we wanted but we made it out chocolate in hand eventually.
Sophie had heard Hilary and I talk about the Beer Planet the last couple of days so she wanted us to take her back there. On our way we passed by a bar called Arms of Brussels. I'm not sure if I mentioned this in a previous post but all over London there were bars called [Insert First Word] Arms. I have no idea why this was so popular but I saw several a day. Once I pointed it out to Hilary it became a game of ours to see how many we could find. She noticed the one in Brussels. Apparently people get really unoriginal about naming pubs in Europe.
At the Beer Planet the other girls were just as impressed as we were so that was exciting. We all got some more beers and Estelle was kind enough to buy a big bottle of one of our favorites for dinner. One of the things I love about her is that she loves beer and is enthusiastic about showing us the good ones and all of the good pubs around here. Without her our beer experience here would not have been up to par. She said she's part of a "Save the Planet. Drink Beer, Not Water" group on facebook. I thought this was great and really want a shirt with this phrase on it now.
After Beer Planet it was on to search for a waffle stand. The new girls, Hannah and Lila hadn't tried them yet and we all wanted more. I don't know how, but the one I had today tasted even more amazing than yesterdays. I think it was fresher. We saw the lady make them right in front of us. Joyous. Once all of the chocolate was removed from our faces and hands we headed to a pub that was known for having gigantic glasses filled with 3 liters of beer. It is sort of the same concept of a boot but more in the shape of a chalice. When we got to the pub we sat down and when we tried to order just one chalice from the waiter he got rude with Estelle and told her we all had to order something. She didn't like the way he talked to her and we were all confused why he was so upset. The place wasn't full so all of us ordering one 3 liter beer shouldn't have been a big deal. None of us wanted our own beer and at that point we didn't want to give him our service anyway so we just got up at left.
We ended up going over to another place called the Cheese Cake Cafe and got beers there. Hannah and Lila were tired from being out late the night before so they went back to Kevin's to nap. We hung out for awhile then walked around the city a bit more on our way back to Estelle's for dinner. We had stopped by the grocery store during the day and wanted to make dinner at her place tonight instead of going out again. Sophie was going to a concert at 7 -- this was the whole point of her being in Brussels -- so she needed to go back to Kevin's as well to get her ticket and change. I went back with her to Kevin's and Hilary and Estelle went back to Estelle's place to start dinner.
Sophie, Hannah and Lila all came back with me for dinner and the 6 of us had a really great meal. We are all going to Bruges tomorrow (minus Sophie, she's going back to Germany :( ... ) so we decided to watch In Bruges, a movie with Colin Farrell about Bruges, after dinner. The movie was really good and got us excited about the city. I also ate all of my chocolate during the movie so I was a happy girl.
The other girls have all left so now it's just Hilary and I at Estelle's. We have having another calm night in as we don't want to be super tired for Bruges tomorrow. Hilary attempted sewing tonight. Favorite quote from her during the process... "Dude, I think I'm actually sewing!" Love it.
All in all today was pretty calm and uneventful but I had a lot of fun with great people and great beer. CouchSurfing is amazing and I cannot stress enough how much I love it and the people I've met through it. Half of my experiences so far wouldn't have been possible without this wonderful community. I encourage everyone to look in to it if you are planning on doing any type of traveling in the future. I have yet to meet one person I didn't like through this community and am really excited for all of the future CSers we get to meet in the future!!
Saturday, April 3, 2010
CouchSurfing Success and More Beer
April 3, 2010
Even though we were up so late the night before, we wanted to get a good start on the day today. We had a lot of plans in store so Hilary, Sophie and I were up and out of the house by 10am. Our first stop was waffles for breakfast. We went to a street vendor because they are cheap and somehow more delicious than restaurants. I got a waffle with chocolate sauce, strawberries and whipped cream. Best. Breakfast. Ever. Sorry Hans. :)
Next stop was the Cantillon Brewery, which is known for its Lambic beers. Brussels is obviously known for its beer world-wide so we wanted to check out a brewery while we were here. After getting lost a few times we eventually found our way there. The tour was pretty simple, 8 rooms of information and equipment. They gave you a booklet and you took yourself through the tour and then got to taste two of their beers at the end. Lambic beer is really interesting because it is beer made with fruit. I've never had lambic before Brussels but I really like it. It is definitely a chick beer and I can't have too much of it before it becomes to sweet but it's really enjoyable. The fermentation process at this brewery is 3 years. The more normal time is around a couple of months. They use real fruit in their beer and the fermentation process is similar to wine. They also don't add any extra sugar or preservatives which most breweries do so the end result is a dry, sour beer which is different than most sweet lambic beers sold. There is no right or wrong way for this, it is just more an original and updated model.
After the brewery we were headed to the Old Oak Pub to meet up with our next CS host, Estelle and our current CS host and his new two American CS guests for the Manchester United vs. Cheslea. It was a lot of fun and ended up being a big party which included everyone listed above plus Sophie, Kevin's brother and a bunch of their friends. All in all there was probably about 12-15 people in our group. It was so amazing having all of these international people hanging out together. When I think of CouchSurfing the experience I had today is exactly what I pictured. Something like today probably never would have happened without CS and it has been one of my best days so far just because of all the people I got to meet and conversations I was able to take part in with them.
After the game (Chelsea won, sorry Kevin) as we were walking out of the pub we met a guy from Boston who was quite talkative. He was in the army and is now a civil servant for some part of our government. He's been in Brussels for 6 years and is moving back to the states this November. The guy was really nice but not the brightest. At one people we told him we were from Seattle and he responded with "Oh, Seattle, Oregon." Uh - really? Haha. He made a couple other common mistakes and eventually turned to his buddy, took a drink and with real confusion in his voice said, "Dude, am I drunk?!" He was also with his best friend who was the exact opposite of talkative and a very attractive guy from Norway -- talked with him for awhile and got the low down on Norway since we will be there a little more than 2 months. The guy from Boston was really nice and told us to meet up with him tonight and he's buy all of us shots of tequila. I sort of wish we'd taken him up on that, ha.
we went back to Kevin's to pack up our stuff and brought it over to Estelle's place. Estelle is great by the way. It is the first girl we have stayed with and I'm really excited to get to know her. She's super nice and inviting just like everyone else we have met. Plus she loves beer so we pretty much planned the rest of the day around food and beer.
The first place Estelle took us was to a pub called Meoder Lamibic (Meoder = Mother). It was a really cool local bar and they served malted barley seeds with our beers. Never had these before but they were highly addicting. After the bar it was off to find frits (fries). Apparently french fries were originally from Belgium, not France. Why they are called french fries, I have no idea. Estelle didn't seem to know the answer to this either so eventually I'll have to get around to Wikipedia-ing that to figure it out. The frits were so yummy. The best fries I've ever had and they have a bunch of different sauces to choose from, all just as delicious as the next. The best part about these is there were tiny pieces that were pretty much just fried at the bottom and they tasted exactly like potato chips. I was amazed. Obviously this is exactly what potato chips are, but the bottom of fries don't usually take like them! It was great.
Once we devoured a couple orders of these we headed to a local tapas place Estelle frequents for cheap beer and food. On our way there we passed by the biggest courthouse in the world. This building was gigantic. Never would have expected the biggest courthouse in the world to reside in Brussels but you learn something new everyday. The tapas place was good but really smoky and it took forever to get waited on. By the end of the meal we had pretty much spent the whole day drinking and eating on less than 4.5 hours of sleep so we decided to go home and get some sleep.
Even though we were up so late the night before, we wanted to get a good start on the day today. We had a lot of plans in store so Hilary, Sophie and I were up and out of the house by 10am. Our first stop was waffles for breakfast. We went to a street vendor because they are cheap and somehow more delicious than restaurants. I got a waffle with chocolate sauce, strawberries and whipped cream. Best. Breakfast. Ever. Sorry Hans. :)
Next stop was the Cantillon Brewery, which is known for its Lambic beers. Brussels is obviously known for its beer world-wide so we wanted to check out a brewery while we were here. After getting lost a few times we eventually found our way there. The tour was pretty simple, 8 rooms of information and equipment. They gave you a booklet and you took yourself through the tour and then got to taste two of their beers at the end. Lambic beer is really interesting because it is beer made with fruit. I've never had lambic before Brussels but I really like it. It is definitely a chick beer and I can't have too much of it before it becomes to sweet but it's really enjoyable. The fermentation process at this brewery is 3 years. The more normal time is around a couple of months. They use real fruit in their beer and the fermentation process is similar to wine. They also don't add any extra sugar or preservatives which most breweries do so the end result is a dry, sour beer which is different than most sweet lambic beers sold. There is no right or wrong way for this, it is just more an original and updated model.
After the brewery we were headed to the Old Oak Pub to meet up with our next CS host, Estelle and our current CS host and his new two American CS guests for the Manchester United vs. Cheslea. It was a lot of fun and ended up being a big party which included everyone listed above plus Sophie, Kevin's brother and a bunch of their friends. All in all there was probably about 12-15 people in our group. It was so amazing having all of these international people hanging out together. When I think of CouchSurfing the experience I had today is exactly what I pictured. Something like today probably never would have happened without CS and it has been one of my best days so far just because of all the people I got to meet and conversations I was able to take part in with them.
After the game (Chelsea won, sorry Kevin) as we were walking out of the pub we met a guy from Boston who was quite talkative. He was in the army and is now a civil servant for some part of our government. He's been in Brussels for 6 years and is moving back to the states this November. The guy was really nice but not the brightest. At one people we told him we were from Seattle and he responded with "Oh, Seattle, Oregon." Uh - really? Haha. He made a couple other common mistakes and eventually turned to his buddy, took a drink and with real confusion in his voice said, "Dude, am I drunk?!" He was also with his best friend who was the exact opposite of talkative and a very attractive guy from Norway -- talked with him for awhile and got the low down on Norway since we will be there a little more than 2 months. The guy from Boston was really nice and told us to meet up with him tonight and he's buy all of us shots of tequila. I sort of wish we'd taken him up on that, ha.
we went back to Kevin's to pack up our stuff and brought it over to Estelle's place. Estelle is great by the way. It is the first girl we have stayed with and I'm really excited to get to know her. She's super nice and inviting just like everyone else we have met. Plus she loves beer so we pretty much planned the rest of the day around food and beer.
The first place Estelle took us was to a pub called Meoder Lamibic (Meoder = Mother). It was a really cool local bar and they served malted barley seeds with our beers. Never had these before but they were highly addicting. After the bar it was off to find frits (fries). Apparently french fries were originally from Belgium, not France. Why they are called french fries, I have no idea. Estelle didn't seem to know the answer to this either so eventually I'll have to get around to Wikipedia-ing that to figure it out. The frits were so yummy. The best fries I've ever had and they have a bunch of different sauces to choose from, all just as delicious as the next. The best part about these is there were tiny pieces that were pretty much just fried at the bottom and they tasted exactly like potato chips. I was amazed. Obviously this is exactly what potato chips are, but the bottom of fries don't usually take like them! It was great.
Once we devoured a couple orders of these we headed to a local tapas place Estelle frequents for cheap beer and food. On our way there we passed by the biggest courthouse in the world. This building was gigantic. Never would have expected the biggest courthouse in the world to reside in Brussels but you learn something new everyday. The tapas place was good but really smoky and it took forever to get waited on. By the end of the meal we had pretty much spent the whole day drinking and eating on less than 4.5 hours of sleep so we decided to go home and get some sleep.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Dancing on Tabletops
April 2, 2010 Continued
It was almost around eleven by the time Hilary got off Skype and we were ready to leave for the party. Since it was so late and after a lot of debating and figuring out our different tactics we decided not to go to the Easter party and instead wait for our host Kevin to get home with a new CSer who was staying with us that night. The new girl was Sophie and I love her. She's originally from China, but studied and works in Germany and is in Brussels for a concert on Sunday night. She speaks German, Chinese and English fluently.
Kevin has another CS friend, David, who was hosting people so we all decided to meet up at a bar. Or so we were told. This bar ended up being a pretty packed club called La Corbeau which had people dancing all over the place including on the tables when we walked in. After some looking around and a lot of pushing we found Kevin's friends. David was there with two girls who were from a small country near Russia which I did not catch/understand the name of and another girl who lives in Germany by is originally from Poland, Katinka. The connections made through cS are amazing.
The night pretty much consisted of drinking and dancing all night long. Eventually we all ended up dancing on the table tops. Kevin's friend David was a sweet dancer and at one people we sang a duet of Barbie Girl, it was fantastic. Not sure I ever saw myself dancing on tables in my lifetime but it was a great night and I had a blast. I think we got to the club around midnight and left around 4am. Hilary and I are obviously not used to these nights out since bars in the states close at 2am and they usually tell you to leave around 1:45. At around 3am things were starting to slow down and it was really hot and smoky in the bar so Hilary and I decided to step outside for some fresh air. We were sitting on the side walk when I few Croatian guys saw us from a street away and decided to come over. Only one of them spoke a little English so he attempted to talk to us. They all spoke French which Hilary understood but she wanted them to go away so she pretended like she didn't. Essentially the conversation consisted of them asking us if we were on vacation. We said yes. They asked us if we were English. We said we were from America. They asked us if we could see our passports. We said no. They asked us if we were lesbians. We said no. Then the guy proceeded to tell me how beautiful I was. Ha. It was probably the most random conversation I've had. Eventually Katinka came out and saved us from the guys. We went back in to the club and when the guys tried to follow us in the bouncer came over to ask us if we wanted them in. We told him we didn't so he kicked them out. I didn't know bouncers were that nice but this guy was great.
So I'm not sure if it is because I'm in a different country, because guys here don't really know how to speak English if guys are more willing to make a fool of themselves here or if American's are just way to obsessed with trying to get laid compared to Europeans; but Europeans know how to hit on a girl way better than American men. They way they come up to you is just so endearing it is hard not to smile and at least have a small conversation with them. One of the best ones so far happened at the club when a man came up to me, touched my shoulder than blew a kiss with his mouth, grabbed his heart and told me I was beautiful. They don't take themselves seriously here and it is way easier to flirt and have fun.
Anyways, after a full night of dancing away we headed back to Kevin's around 4am with me, Hilary, Sophie and Katinka in tow. Katinka hadn't coordinated with her CS host very well and ended up having to stay the night with us because she couldn't get in to her place. By the time we all got home after an interesting car ride and in to bed it was probably a little after 5am. Loved it.
It was almost around eleven by the time Hilary got off Skype and we were ready to leave for the party. Since it was so late and after a lot of debating and figuring out our different tactics we decided not to go to the Easter party and instead wait for our host Kevin to get home with a new CSer who was staying with us that night. The new girl was Sophie and I love her. She's originally from China, but studied and works in Germany and is in Brussels for a concert on Sunday night. She speaks German, Chinese and English fluently.
Kevin has another CS friend, David, who was hosting people so we all decided to meet up at a bar. Or so we were told. This bar ended up being a pretty packed club called La Corbeau which had people dancing all over the place including on the tables when we walked in. After some looking around and a lot of pushing we found Kevin's friends. David was there with two girls who were from a small country near Russia which I did not catch/understand the name of and another girl who lives in Germany by is originally from Poland, Katinka. The connections made through cS are amazing.
The night pretty much consisted of drinking and dancing all night long. Eventually we all ended up dancing on the table tops. Kevin's friend David was a sweet dancer and at one people we sang a duet of Barbie Girl, it was fantastic. Not sure I ever saw myself dancing on tables in my lifetime but it was a great night and I had a blast. I think we got to the club around midnight and left around 4am. Hilary and I are obviously not used to these nights out since bars in the states close at 2am and they usually tell you to leave around 1:45. At around 3am things were starting to slow down and it was really hot and smoky in the bar so Hilary and I decided to step outside for some fresh air. We were sitting on the side walk when I few Croatian guys saw us from a street away and decided to come over. Only one of them spoke a little English so he attempted to talk to us. They all spoke French which Hilary understood but she wanted them to go away so she pretended like she didn't. Essentially the conversation consisted of them asking us if we were on vacation. We said yes. They asked us if we were English. We said we were from America. They asked us if we could see our passports. We said no. They asked us if we were lesbians. We said no. Then the guy proceeded to tell me how beautiful I was. Ha. It was probably the most random conversation I've had. Eventually Katinka came out and saved us from the guys. We went back in to the club and when the guys tried to follow us in the bouncer came over to ask us if we wanted them in. We told him we didn't so he kicked them out. I didn't know bouncers were that nice but this guy was great.
So I'm not sure if it is because I'm in a different country, because guys here don't really know how to speak English if guys are more willing to make a fool of themselves here or if American's are just way to obsessed with trying to get laid compared to Europeans; but Europeans know how to hit on a girl way better than American men. They way they come up to you is just so endearing it is hard not to smile and at least have a small conversation with them. One of the best ones so far happened at the club when a man came up to me, touched my shoulder than blew a kiss with his mouth, grabbed his heart and told me I was beautiful. They don't take themselves seriously here and it is way easier to flirt and have fun.
Anyways, after a full night of dancing away we headed back to Kevin's around 4am with me, Hilary, Sophie and Katinka in tow. Katinka hadn't coordinated with her CS host very well and ended up having to stay the night with us because she couldn't get in to her place. By the time we all got home after an interesting car ride and in to bed it was probably a little after 5am. Loved it.
Beer Planet!
April 2, 2010
Our plan was to get up at 9am to get a start on the day. Problem. I set my alarm for 9, but again had forgotten that Brussels is an hour ahead of London so my clock wasn't set correctly. Hilary's clock went off at 9 but she turned it off when I didn't get up. Mine went off at 10 (but I thought it was 9) and saw that she was still asleep so I didn't get up right away either. I finally got out of bed at what I thought was 10:15am and got on the computer to catch up on life at home. A few minutes in to it I looked down at Kevin's computer time and saw that it said 11:29am. Whoops. It was really late and Hilary was still asleep. Another morning wasted. Hilary got up, we showered and ended up leaving the place around 1pm. I've never been a morning person but I thought I'd be able to adjust pretty easily once I was here. Turns out constantly walking and staying up until 2am doesn't mix well with wanted to get up early to walk around a new city. Luckily, it stays light until 8:30pm here -- which we discovered while waiting for Kevin yesterday.
We left Kevin's place with the single intention of finding scrumptious Belgium Waffles to fill our stomachs with. About a block after leaving Kevin's place a couple of guys round the corner and one of them sees me and starts saying something in French. No idea what he is saying and it is obviously a question I shrug my shoulders and say "No". The other boys laugh and they walk away. Completely confused I ask Hilary what just happened and she said she isn't really sure but she picked up the work 'friend.' Love getting hit on less than 5 minutes into walking around Brussels alone, haha.
After taking the metro to the city center, buying a metro pass for the week, walking around the city center pretty aimlessly and seeing a McDonalds, Subway, and Pizza Hut (seriously, way to go American fast food for invading Europe) we found a place that smelled and looked like it could satisfy our craving. We both got the waffles with ice cream and hot chocolate sauce. It was everything a Belgium waffle should be and more. I cannot stress enough how delicious this things smell though. Open street vendors sell them all over the place so we are constantly smelling it as we walk around the city. There's a good chance my jeans are going to fit again by the time I leave this place between the waffles and the beer. But I am 100% okay with this happening. Completely worth it.
There was a shoe shop across the street that Hilary had been looking at the entire time we were eating, she's a big shoe girl, so we stopped in there after eating. It was called Sacha and prided itself on combining shoes and art. The shoes (and purses!) in there were really cool. There was a pair of purple boots and multicolored heels that I would totally get if I had the money and/or room to pack them. But I have neither so I just enviously gazed at them.
Our next goal was to find a city map. We had no idea where anything was and I was the one who was supposed to research this country and my researching skills and motivation were not up to par with Hilary's London accomplishment. I'm just not one who likes to plan a lot when I travel. I think it is more fun to go with the flow, enjoy the people and scenery and get lost a lot. :) It's the things that you don't plan for that usually end up being the more rewarding. Buuuut even with this view we figured it would be best to find a map and at least know where we were at any given moment.
While on our search we happened across our best discover yet. Beer Planet! Oh my god. This place was my heaven and a half. Yes, I added a half to heaven. The two men who were working there (I think they were the owners) were super nice and really helpful. It was really overwhelming so we asked for their recommendations and are excited to drink our hopefully tasty beers very soon. I also found the sweetest shot glass in the shape of a boot ever! Seriously, what is better than a tiny shot glass shaped boot? That's right, nothing. So country #2 is now added to my shot glass collection.
We spent a good amount of time at this shop and ended up getting pictures and the owner asked us if he could take our picture and put us up on their website. We happily obliged like giddy schoolgirls and posed for the owner. The website is www.beerplanet.eu no idea when it will go up on their website, but it is supposed to be under the "happy customer" section. Because happy customers we were! I'm pretty sure we're going to end up back at that shop again before we leave. They also had a free map of the city which they gave us that absolutely saved us from being completely lost tourists. Those guys are on my new favorite people list.
After we left with our new goodies we headed toward the Royal Palace to see what was around there. We happened by the St. Catherine Church and some pretty sweet park chairs. We were more interested in the chairs than the church sadly and asked a lady to take a picture of us in them. She was a little confused when we tried to explain we wanted pictures of us in the chairs and not in front of the church. It's the little things in life... :) There were also bottle caps in the dirt all around us that had been smashed in to the ground and looked really cool. Just another reminder that Europe is way better than the states cause they can drink outside and in front of churches.
We did go in to the church and it was pretty much what you would expect a big European church to look like. The one exception was that there wer paintings all around of different religious things. The signs were in Dutch and French so I couldn't look at them so I don't really know what they are except for the few things I could recognize from going to Catholic school for 9 years -- which was surprisingly little, ha, whoops. But the paintings themselves were surprising because they seemed really modern. They weren't ancient and detailed oriented like you see in most churches. It was cool to see something a little different. The other thing I noticed about the paintings is that a lot of them were faceless. There either wasn't a head painted where their should have been, or a head and no face, or a face but the person's hands were covering most of it. I'm not sure if the reasoning behind this was explained in the signs next to them, but it seemed weirdly negative to be in a church. It almost seemed as if it was making some statement about the faceless people behind the religion. Being able to read would have probably helped a lot. The last thing about this church was that there were donation centers set up around it. One was for the poor, one was for the restoration of the church and one was for the upkeep of the church. I thought it was interesting that you could choose which area you want to donate to.
After that we actually headed to the Royal Palace. We had driven past it the night before so we knew what it looked like but their was an entire square involved in it so we thought we'd check it out. Kevin told us that if the Belgium flag was raised at the top of the palace it meant the king was home. The flag was raised so that was cool. I don't know how often he is home or not, but I like to think he was specially their just for us. :) There wasn't much in this area so we headed to the Grand Place which is the major square of the city, especially for tourists.
Random note, but the parking meters here are exactly like the ones in Seattle. Very unexpected. Something I could actually operate! If I had a car or any need to pay for parking... sigh.
At the Grand Place we walked around and saw all the different sights, a market, a really cool clock on the side of a random building and a lot of tourists. At one point we made it in to a store called the Chocopolis. My oh my this place is a chocolate lovers dream -- my mom and Uncle Jack would looooove it! So much delicious chocolate. We were able to have a taste and it was so good I didn't want to eat anything the rest of the day just so that taste could linger longer, and I'm not even that big of a chocolate person. There are demonstrations on how they make the chocolate everyday but we had gotten their too late to see them. So we are going to hopefully go back tomorrow and buy some chocolate. They are 0.60 euros per piece which is around a $1 each. A little pricey but good enough that I want to get a few pieces.
Our next stop was the Manneken Pis, also known as the pissing boy. This is apparently a very famous statue in the city of a naked little boy pissing into a pond. Why this is so famous I have no idea, it just is. We made our way there not knowing what to expect but being more than a little surprised when we got there. I didn't even see it at first, Hilary had to get my attention as to where it was. I was expected some big statue but it the boy was in fact only about a foot tall on top of a 6 foot tall wall. There were a lot of tourists around so we figured this must be the right place. We were a little disappointed and confused at why this is such a big deal, but did the correct tourist thing and took a picture in front of it anyways. Apparently there are occasions where the city dresses it up in different outfits. If you are lucky enough to see it on one of these days it actually pisses beer instead of water. Probably the funniest thing I've ever heard. Gotta like a city that prides itself on pissing statues.
At this point it was around 7 so we decided to head back to Kevin's for dinner. We ate out a lot in London and spent way to much money in a city that doesn't even have that good of food so we are going to try to be a lot better about grocery shopping here. After stopping at the grocery store we went back to his place to enjoy our food and beer. Hilary also wanted to call her boyfriend Jon since she hadn't talked to him since our 3rd day here. Oh to have a boyfriend to check in on back home... I can only imagine that feeling. I won't lie. I don't mind not knowing what the feels like. ;) Haha. I'm sure none of you reading this are surprised by that though.
Anyways, she just got off the phone after an extended conversation which gave me time to write up this entire blog. We are now off to an Easter party another CouchSurfer we have been in contact with over here is hosting. It sounds like it is going to be a lot of fun so here's hoping it pans out that way. First step is trying to find it...
Our plan was to get up at 9am to get a start on the day. Problem. I set my alarm for 9, but again had forgotten that Brussels is an hour ahead of London so my clock wasn't set correctly. Hilary's clock went off at 9 but she turned it off when I didn't get up. Mine went off at 10 (but I thought it was 9) and saw that she was still asleep so I didn't get up right away either. I finally got out of bed at what I thought was 10:15am and got on the computer to catch up on life at home. A few minutes in to it I looked down at Kevin's computer time and saw that it said 11:29am. Whoops. It was really late and Hilary was still asleep. Another morning wasted. Hilary got up, we showered and ended up leaving the place around 1pm. I've never been a morning person but I thought I'd be able to adjust pretty easily once I was here. Turns out constantly walking and staying up until 2am doesn't mix well with wanted to get up early to walk around a new city. Luckily, it stays light until 8:30pm here -- which we discovered while waiting for Kevin yesterday.
We left Kevin's place with the single intention of finding scrumptious Belgium Waffles to fill our stomachs with. About a block after leaving Kevin's place a couple of guys round the corner and one of them sees me and starts saying something in French. No idea what he is saying and it is obviously a question I shrug my shoulders and say "No". The other boys laugh and they walk away. Completely confused I ask Hilary what just happened and she said she isn't really sure but she picked up the work 'friend.' Love getting hit on less than 5 minutes into walking around Brussels alone, haha.
After taking the metro to the city center, buying a metro pass for the week, walking around the city center pretty aimlessly and seeing a McDonalds, Subway, and Pizza Hut (seriously, way to go American fast food for invading Europe) we found a place that smelled and looked like it could satisfy our craving. We both got the waffles with ice cream and hot chocolate sauce. It was everything a Belgium waffle should be and more. I cannot stress enough how delicious this things smell though. Open street vendors sell them all over the place so we are constantly smelling it as we walk around the city. There's a good chance my jeans are going to fit again by the time I leave this place between the waffles and the beer. But I am 100% okay with this happening. Completely worth it.
There was a shoe shop across the street that Hilary had been looking at the entire time we were eating, she's a big shoe girl, so we stopped in there after eating. It was called Sacha and prided itself on combining shoes and art. The shoes (and purses!) in there were really cool. There was a pair of purple boots and multicolored heels that I would totally get if I had the money and/or room to pack them. But I have neither so I just enviously gazed at them.
Our next goal was to find a city map. We had no idea where anything was and I was the one who was supposed to research this country and my researching skills and motivation were not up to par with Hilary's London accomplishment. I'm just not one who likes to plan a lot when I travel. I think it is more fun to go with the flow, enjoy the people and scenery and get lost a lot. :) It's the things that you don't plan for that usually end up being the more rewarding. Buuuut even with this view we figured it would be best to find a map and at least know where we were at any given moment.
While on our search we happened across our best discover yet. Beer Planet! Oh my god. This place was my heaven and a half. Yes, I added a half to heaven. The two men who were working there (I think they were the owners) were super nice and really helpful. It was really overwhelming so we asked for their recommendations and are excited to drink our hopefully tasty beers very soon. I also found the sweetest shot glass in the shape of a boot ever! Seriously, what is better than a tiny shot glass shaped boot? That's right, nothing. So country #2 is now added to my shot glass collection.
We spent a good amount of time at this shop and ended up getting pictures and the owner asked us if he could take our picture and put us up on their website. We happily obliged like giddy schoolgirls and posed for the owner. The website is www.beerplanet.eu no idea when it will go up on their website, but it is supposed to be under the "happy customer" section. Because happy customers we were! I'm pretty sure we're going to end up back at that shop again before we leave. They also had a free map of the city which they gave us that absolutely saved us from being completely lost tourists. Those guys are on my new favorite people list.
After we left with our new goodies we headed toward the Royal Palace to see what was around there. We happened by the St. Catherine Church and some pretty sweet park chairs. We were more interested in the chairs than the church sadly and asked a lady to take a picture of us in them. She was a little confused when we tried to explain we wanted pictures of us in the chairs and not in front of the church. It's the little things in life... :) There were also bottle caps in the dirt all around us that had been smashed in to the ground and looked really cool. Just another reminder that Europe is way better than the states cause they can drink outside and in front of churches.
We did go in to the church and it was pretty much what you would expect a big European church to look like. The one exception was that there wer paintings all around of different religious things. The signs were in Dutch and French so I couldn't look at them so I don't really know what they are except for the few things I could recognize from going to Catholic school for 9 years -- which was surprisingly little, ha, whoops. But the paintings themselves were surprising because they seemed really modern. They weren't ancient and detailed oriented like you see in most churches. It was cool to see something a little different. The other thing I noticed about the paintings is that a lot of them were faceless. There either wasn't a head painted where their should have been, or a head and no face, or a face but the person's hands were covering most of it. I'm not sure if the reasoning behind this was explained in the signs next to them, but it seemed weirdly negative to be in a church. It almost seemed as if it was making some statement about the faceless people behind the religion. Being able to read would have probably helped a lot. The last thing about this church was that there were donation centers set up around it. One was for the poor, one was for the restoration of the church and one was for the upkeep of the church. I thought it was interesting that you could choose which area you want to donate to.
After that we actually headed to the Royal Palace. We had driven past it the night before so we knew what it looked like but their was an entire square involved in it so we thought we'd check it out. Kevin told us that if the Belgium flag was raised at the top of the palace it meant the king was home. The flag was raised so that was cool. I don't know how often he is home or not, but I like to think he was specially their just for us. :) There wasn't much in this area so we headed to the Grand Place which is the major square of the city, especially for tourists.
Random note, but the parking meters here are exactly like the ones in Seattle. Very unexpected. Something I could actually operate! If I had a car or any need to pay for parking... sigh.
At the Grand Place we walked around and saw all the different sights, a market, a really cool clock on the side of a random building and a lot of tourists. At one point we made it in to a store called the Chocopolis. My oh my this place is a chocolate lovers dream -- my mom and Uncle Jack would looooove it! So much delicious chocolate. We were able to have a taste and it was so good I didn't want to eat anything the rest of the day just so that taste could linger longer, and I'm not even that big of a chocolate person. There are demonstrations on how they make the chocolate everyday but we had gotten their too late to see them. So we are going to hopefully go back tomorrow and buy some chocolate. They are 0.60 euros per piece which is around a $1 each. A little pricey but good enough that I want to get a few pieces.
Our next stop was the Manneken Pis, also known as the pissing boy. This is apparently a very famous statue in the city of a naked little boy pissing into a pond. Why this is so famous I have no idea, it just is. We made our way there not knowing what to expect but being more than a little surprised when we got there. I didn't even see it at first, Hilary had to get my attention as to where it was. I was expected some big statue but it the boy was in fact only about a foot tall on top of a 6 foot tall wall. There were a lot of tourists around so we figured this must be the right place. We were a little disappointed and confused at why this is such a big deal, but did the correct tourist thing and took a picture in front of it anyways. Apparently there are occasions where the city dresses it up in different outfits. If you are lucky enough to see it on one of these days it actually pisses beer instead of water. Probably the funniest thing I've ever heard. Gotta like a city that prides itself on pissing statues.
At this point it was around 7 so we decided to head back to Kevin's for dinner. We ate out a lot in London and spent way to much money in a city that doesn't even have that good of food so we are going to try to be a lot better about grocery shopping here. After stopping at the grocery store we went back to his place to enjoy our food and beer. Hilary also wanted to call her boyfriend Jon since she hadn't talked to him since our 3rd day here. Oh to have a boyfriend to check in on back home... I can only imagine that feeling. I won't lie. I don't mind not knowing what the feels like. ;) Haha. I'm sure none of you reading this are surprised by that though.
Anyways, she just got off the phone after an extended conversation which gave me time to write up this entire blog. We are now off to an Easter party another CouchSurfer we have been in contact with over here is hosting. It sounds like it is going to be a lot of fun so here's hoping it pans out that way. First step is trying to find it...
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