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

A much needed picture post - rememeber to check our flickr site for more of our pictures taken in the last week!

In Delft:

In Nuremberg:

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.

It has been a few days since I last updated you guys on my where-abouts and up-to-no-good doings.  Let’s start with what I am doing now, and work backwards.

At the moment I am on a train to Venlo from Delft where we spent yesterday walking around looking at the world famous Delft pottery. Delft itself is an interesting little town, with kind of an old-world meets new-world vibe going for it. The central market, and surrounding blocks, is probably as it has been for the past 1000 years, with new restaurants and stores lining the alleys. The new parts come in when you explore near the university, where modern stores and theaters have taken over fairly recently.



We went and visited one of the Delft pottery studios and showrooms. It was truly amazing to see what the resident artists can do with their ceramic canvases.  Then we walked around for a while longer, caught up on our journals and preparations for travelling in front of our quaint little Jorplace hostel along a canal in the middle of the “old world”.  Since I have a head cold (starting yesterday), we turned in at a respectable 11:00. I have awakened refreshed and ready for our next adventure.

But before I get to that, let me go back to the days prior. On Sunday (29th) we took a train from   Amsterdam to Haarlem, rented a couple of bicycles and rode to Keukenhof gardens for spectacular displays of floral perfection. Even if you’re not that in to flowers, this will make you a believer in all things beauty. I took enough pictures of flowers to last me a life time.  I’ve attached some below. We could only stay a couple hours as we had to get back before the bike shop closed in order to get my passport back. It was quite a pleasant day…and I am glad that I got to experience it.

The next day was “Queens Day”, a national holiday celebrating the old Queen’s birthday or some junk like that. Basically, everyone has the day off, and has the opportunity to sell anything on the streets. It’s like Amsterdam turned into a huge flea market. And the people…there must have been 2.5 million people just walking around the streets, most of them drunk. The canals were packed with boats of drunken dancers shaking there groove thing to the cacophony of the competing techno music coming from every corner. And everyone was wearing bright orange! If I didn’t burn out my retinas at the flower gardens the day before, I definitely did fateful Queen’s day. Every sort of debauchery was being done, and it was a trip being along for the ride. Since this blog is supposedly kid friendly, I won’t go into all the details of our Queen’s day extravaganza. If you have any questions, we will be glad to fill you in when we see you.

So, now we are on the train to Nurenburg, Germany, with transfers at Venlo and Dusseldorf. We are going to have our first couch-surfing experience of the trip in Nurenburg. It should be interesting. We will post when we do something fun again.

 1 week down 19ish to go!

P.S. Here to a speedy recovery to Josie and her recent appendectomy. Hope that you are doing well.:)

PS2 sorry Thomas we did not stay with your parents...I'm sure they are relieved.

P.P.S. Hi Freya!

P.P.P.S. If anyone wants to Skype send us your Skype contact.