As you may have noticed most of the blog posts are not posted on the same days that they are written. The below post was actually wiitten on the 10th, but because we don't actually have internet access on the trains we are forced to wait until we get accomodations with wifi before we send them out. I shouldn't matter because most of you probably aren't reading them as tehy come off the press anyway. So don't worry if you don't hear from us (you know who I'm talking to), we are fine and dandy and having  a great time. Happy Mother's Day!

Without further adieu...

Guten Tag Everyone!

We are currently on a train (again) bound for Paris…France. Of course it is a beautiful azure blue day; which always seems to be the case when we are travelling, not so much when we are sedentary.

We just spent a wonderfully relaxing 2 days in Konstanz Germany.  It’s right on the border of Switzerland, so yesterday we took a stroll, in the rain, to visit our Swiss neighbors. We stumbled upon this huge, old farm which today is mainly used for tourism and as a wildlife management area. We got caught in the rain for a while here, but there was plenty to take in, and not having a set schedule means not being in a hurry.

After touring this little corner of Switzerland, we nonchalantly meandered our way back over the border to Germany. We continued to take in the sights of Konstanz all the while looking for a place that sold pencils for an art project for Liz. Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful at finding a bleistift, but we did find a genuine Swiss chocolatier, which made Liz’s day all the same. After all that trekking, we found an Irish pub to have dinner (conveniently right under where we were staying) and pass the time talking to some foreign locals.

We then awoke this morning to a stupendous complimentary breakfast, made our accommodations for Paris, and went down to the water to feed some birds (which is becoming one of my favorite past-times) before our train departed. Now we are on route, going through some picturesque mountainous countryside. If everything goes according to plan we should be getting in to Paris around 6 o’clock tonight. Where I will send out this blog and begin our tour of gay Paris.

Au revoir pour le moment…A bientot.

K    

P.S. By now we've actually been in Paris for a few days...we'll update Paris when we organize what we've done thus far...stayed tuned.

Well, here we are on a train again. Seems to be the only time that I have time to just sit and think about what we are doing instead of doing it. We just left Munich this time, and are travelling to Konstanz, Germany; along the border of Switzerland. Thus far we have been couch surfing through Germany, tonight we are actually getting a room, so it will be nice not worrying about anyone else’s schedule. I short stay along the shores of Lake Konstanz to decompress and take it all in. Then we are back on the road to Paris, where hopefully we can scrounge up some sleeping arrangements for about a week. Then we are planning on spending some time to be determined in Libourne, a small town outside of Bordeaux; which is basically a commune of potters. But more on that in later posts…

Munich was supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! We stayed with Stefanie and her roommates Rosayna, Sara, and Gregor for the last four days. They were great…very accommodating. It kinda feels weird staying with strangers for extended periods of time without reciprocity. After a while one starts feeling like a mooch. Hopefully someday we can return the favor to all these wonderful people that we meet and stay with; or at least pay it forward.

Munich is such a splendid city, with so much history everywhere you look. As a rule, I generally enjoy more relaxed rural towns over big cities, but Munich, I feel, was an exception to this rule. We did so much in what seemed like over a week, but as it stands was only 4 days…Ach du lieber! Here’s a quick rundown of some of the places we saw, and things that we did:

-Marianplatz - The historic city center where the royal palace is situated along with dozens of museums, churches, fountains, and beer halls & gardens; not to mention the hundreds of shops, boutiques, restaurants, and huge Viktualienmarket. We spent quite a bit of time all turned around in this part of town. In fact, we found ourselves getting lost in most places in Munich. I was strange…when we thought we were going south, we were actually heading north, and vice versa. In no other town, yet, have we had this issue. If Munich’s this tough with a map, then Delhi’s going to be quite challenging.

-Church of St. Peter – This is located in the center of Marianplatz. We climbed and climbed (lost count of how many stairs) and were well rewarded for our efforts with a panoramic view of the entire city. We could even see the Alps in the far distance.

-English Gardens – This was just a massive park which would take days to walk completely. But in the center of the gardens is a Chinese pagoda surrounded by a huge biergarten. This is where we got our first beer in Munich. With hundreds of fellow beer aficionados and pretzels bigger than your head, it was truly a German experience. (Side note: I have had a beer every day that I have been in Germany…just one Mom;))

-Hofbrauhaus – While we are on the subject of beer. We also went to the world famous Hofbrauhaus for a liter of beer (each) and various sausages served with kraut. Can we get any more German?

-Surf break – On the south end of the English Gardens was what the local called ‘surf break’, which is where a stream, whether planned or not, makes a perfect wave for local surfers (yeah…in Munich) to hang ten and rip a curl.

-BMW Welt – It’s a showroom filled with the latest and greatest of what BMW has to offer. From cars, to motorcycles, to bikes, it is truly inspiring for anyone who appreciates German engineering. Even the building was a feat of engineering, plus it was right next to the old Olympic grounds and village. Taking all that in was a good way to spend a rainy day.

-Dachau - Our last day in Munich we took a day trip out to Dachau, which I learned was Germany’s very first concentration camp, and the model for all the rest to follow throughout the war. I can say that I am glad that we did, because it was a truly sobering and humbling experience. I felt physically and mentally drained after walking around the grounds and the museum they have set up there. We took an audio tour, so not only did we get the history of Hitler’s rise to power, the daily routine and torture that prisoners had to endure, and the plight of those not fortunate enough to survive their time at Dachau; but we also were able to hear first-hand accounts of survivors of the camp while we were seeing the actual bunk houses that they were packed in, and the saw the videos of the corpses packed on the trains and piled in front of the ovens. One of the strangest things for me was seeing the trees which lined the main road in front of each of the bunk houses. In the videos from “liberation day”, the trees were only 10 feet tall…but as we walked down the boulevard the same trees towered 40 feet over us. To think that those same trees that were around through all the suffering and atrocities are still thriving today. For some reason, that just stuck with me. I urge anyone who gets a chance to absolutely experience Dachau, and revel in the darkness that humans can actually manifest and endure…and how it’s all situated just outside a quiet and conventional town in the middle of Bavaria.

So…yeah, that was Munich.

Prost!

K     

P.S. Check out the flickr site for a lot more photos...it takes way too long to upload photos to the blog.

Sorry we haven't been posting as much. We've been busy drinking beer.

Prost!

Guten tag!

We just finished up two days in Nürnberg, the place of Kevin’s birth.

When we were back in Delft, I sent out a Couchsurfing request only 2 days in advance and only to one person. I was more than surprised to hear back that we were welcome to stay with Mark, Chris and Felix – three awesome guys that are going to school at the University there. To give you an idea of how difficult it can be to get a couch to surf on, I spent 3+ weeks sending out 15 requests to people living in Amsterdam and still didn’t get any offers.  This was going to be our first time sleeping on someone’s couch, so we weren’t sure what to expect.

 Getting in by train, we were going to meet Mark at the Main Station, though we forgot to set a specific meeting point. Kevin and I were wandering aimlessly through the station, looking for anyone that looked at all like the pictures we saw on CS. He had given me his phone number, so we found a pay phone and tried to give him a call, though we couldn’t figure out how to call locally. We kept getting an error message, but couldn’t understand it because she spoke in German. While we were trying to figure this out, Mark found us! Our knight in shining armor.

That night they gave us a brief tour of the old city, with our main destination - ein biergarten. Here we had typical Franconian fare and a plethora of German beer. On a side note, it’s nearly impossible to find public restrooms in Europe. I unfortunately did not use the restroom before we left the beer garden that night, so after about 50 meters of walking, the urgency of my bladder under duress proclaimed itself quite loudly. After a couple blocks, we found ourselves in at a monument called “The Pillars of Human Rights” – Mark and Chris were explaining the importance of the site, but all I could think was “don’t pee your pants, don’t pee your pants…” What seemed like five miles later, we finally got back to the apartment and my agony was finally over. Moral of the story: Europe needs more public bathrooms.

The next day was an absolutely gorgeous tag. And for the majority of the day we explored the streets of  Nurnberg within the old city walls. Points of interest were the “Fountain of Married Life”, Saint Sebald’s Cathedral, Church of St. Elisabeth, Albrecht Dürer’s house, the executioner’s tower and bridge, and Kaiserburg Castle. We saw the coliseum where Hitler gave some addresses to the Socialist and Nazi parties…but it wasn’t as spectacular up close as it was at a distance.  It looked like a bunch of carnies had taken up residence on the area in front of the stadium.

Our night was more relaxing. Going to order Kebab’s at a local Turkish deli, with neither of us speaking either Turkish or German, was an interesting affair. We ended up ordering twice as much as what we could eat. Note to everybody: learn as many languages as you can…it will help you immeasurably at some point in your lives.:0  We then went and hung out with the guys again, at their place, until the wee hours of the morn.

This brings us to now, where we are currently on a train to Munich. It pays to be thrifty – we found out that you can share tickets with up to five people when traveling from Nürnberg to Munich. Instead of paying something like 30 Euro each, we only had to spend 6 Euro. The joys of budget travel.

Again, a huge thanks to Mark, Chris and Felix for sharing their home with us for two nights! It was great meeting you guys, and stay in touch!

Auf Wiedersehen

After spending the last 6 days in the Netherlands, I became accustomed to their rail system. Though not everything was labeled clearly, I still could figure out how to get around the country relatively easily. Then we hit Germany. Our scheduled trip was from Delft to Venlo, and then get a connection in Düsseldorf that would finally bring us to Nürnberg in a little less than eight hours later. Simple enough. I had all of the connecting trains written down, along with arrival and departure times; I’m more comfortable when I’m prepared and organized. Little did I know that on our train from Düsseldorf, most people were more prepared than I and already had reservations.

We had been sitting for maybe 30 seconds before we were asked to move from our initial seats. Let’s try again. Finding another set of seats that could house two 35+ pound day packs, 2 day packs, and two humans was a bit tricky, but we managed. Then we noticed a small black rectangle above each seat with two cities stated – the first being the scheduled arrival of the man or woman who reserved the seat and then their departing city. I then began the countdown of when we were getting kicked out. We were currently in Köln and had until Frankfurt until we got kicked with das boot*. We prepared by looking up how to say “I’m sorry” in German (“es tut mir leid”) and I did my best to not look nervous/anxious. Oh, I forgot to mention, our Eurail passes are for First Class, so we’re surrounded by fancy Germans wearing suits, cufflinks, and highly polished dress shoes while I sit in a ripped fleece, a dirty shirt, and muddy hiking shoes. I don’t fit in.

So long story short, we do indeed get kicked out of our seats one more time by a very nice businessman, but we also discovered the magic of unreserved seats. Remember those black rectangles I talked about earlier? As we walked further down the train, we stumbled upon two seats with blank rectangles. Unreserved seats! Wunderbar**!



*Kevin informed me that “boot” translates to “boat”, but you get it.

**Another great thing - they give out free chocolate bars in first class.