Einbahnstraße

Germany is intense. Not entirely sure how else to express it! Diversity, richness of emotion, happy people, hungry people, haunted people... And way too much football propaganda for anyone's good.

I spent my first week in Germany in the lovely Cologne, chilling out, exploring the views and wandering the streets, but mostly exploring the pubs and sleeping in late...


I've noticed that the Germans speak German much more clearly than the Dutch speak Dutch, and for both this reason and the fact that, as far as I can see so far, Dutch and German are so incredibly close as to be almost dialects of each other, I've actually been able to understand some few basic conversations and signs in German. That's not to say that I can speak a word of course...
However, this pseudo-ability only seems to come in when it's completely unhelpful, as I found out while wandering through Cologne on one of my first days there. I had my maps, carefully torn from the local yellow pages, and from time to time I would pull them out to try to get my bearings. At one stage I paused beneath a street sign and, after a brief glance at the name on the sign, set about trying to position myself on my map. After about 5 minutes of frustrated searching, my abovementioned party-trick came into effect, and I discovered to my relief that 'Einbahnstrasse' directly translates into 'one-way street'...

Probably would have helped if I'd actually noticed the arrow effect on the sign.





After partying up Cologne for a week, with a brief day-trip to Essen, I hitched a ride (you can hitch a ride to almost anywhere on the internet over here) 3 hours south to Karlsruhe, where I'm staying for another week with Max before we go to Nurnberg (or was that Nurburg...) to Rock im Park music festival this weekend. (Tool! Metallica! et al!)



Karlsruhe is also a nice place; where Cologne is quite large (~1 million) and studenty with a big touristy section of town, Karlsruhe is quite small (~250,000) and studenty with no touristy bits that I've seen so far, which of course is nice for a change.


It has rained every single day except one since I left Holland; apparently summer is coming but it doesn't seem that way from this vantage point! Funny thing is, despite the rain and the fact that I've had a slight cold since about 3 days after I landed in Amsterdam, I really couldn't complain about a thing - no wonder travel is so addictive! I think there's really nothing in this life that beats the freedom of travelling by yourself around the big wide world... I guess that feeling doesn't last forever, but for now may I heartily reccomend it to anyone considering such a thing!





Well, besides exploring Karlsruhe, eating way too many cheap döner kebabs and drinking way too much cheap German beer, I've also been escorted to the towns of Heidlberg and (by the time you read this) Mannheim, with my tourist device almost always at the ready.
One other point of notice is some of the architecture in the more peripheral parts of Karlsruhe... Think Richard Scarry's Bavarian-dressed animals. Think yodelling. Think whitewashed beer-houses with green window flappy bits and uneven rooves. If you have no idea of what I'm talking about, you just have to come see for yourself, because I forgot my tourist device that night. Sorry.





So provided I can get said tourist-device a bit cleaner (someone mucked my lens) over the next few days, my following post should have some... interesting shots of aforementioned music festival.

Ciao for now!

Party People

Round 4...



Hello again! Well, my last week and a half in Holland was going to be a slowly progressing movement from hostel to hostel, slowly wending and winding through the various smaller towns and regions that I wanted to visit. But in that inevitable way of things and suchlike, what I ended up doing was staying happily fixed in Utrecht and branching out on daytrips to the abovementioned small towns and regions, for the belowmentioned reasons.

1. Free cheese.
   
2. Good people!
   
3. Free cheese.
   
4. Holland has a chronic (relative to NZ) lack of backpacker hostels (i.e. precisely zero in most places south of Rotterdam), and I have a particularly well-nursed dislike for hotels now after living out of them for almost a year... I'm also a cheapo backpacker.
   
5. And hey, Utrecht is one cozy, gezellig town!
   
6. Free cheese.
   

So let me see... After our critical pub crawl I felt it was time to again do a little more exploring of some new regions of Holland. My next stop was a visit to the country's political capital, Den Haag (The Hague if you're not a try-hard like myself), to take a wander through the MC Escher museum and of course check out the beautiful architecture, fountains, and girls that seem to exist in this country in more abundance than cheese. Later went to Scheveningen (there's a tongue twister in Dutch that involves a sheep sleeping somewhere on Scheveningen... I forget the precise words though) beach for a tour with my newly appointed tourist guide that I'd previously picked up on a park bench somewhere in Leiden. (hi Marion!)

After a couple of happily chilled out days wandering around Utrecht, chatting with homeless people, drinking endless streams of beer and devouring cheese-toasties like they were about to go out of fashion (huh, chea, yeah right!) it was Saturday, and time to venture back into the depthless depths of Amsterdam for Project Mayhem: a techno party buried in the feral docklands across the canal behind Central Station; 4 music zones and one beer zone playing hard techno all night and into the morning, with the obligatory psychedelic light and laser shows, strange men in white suits tending to a thousand screaming computer monitors, double decker buses and belly dancers, gyrating mannekins and a screaming 18 foot tall robot, all housed within a single enormous boat-building warehouse.



Two of my more publicly viable photo's, the dudes that held the party also have some great ones, check out this panorama of the dancefloor.

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Well, seeing that I am now heartily sick from/of cheese, I feel it is time to move on (for now!)... So after hopping on a dodgy bus to Slovakia and parting with a little pocket-money, I successfully navigated my way to the odourless town of Cologne (Köln to some, Colon to yet others), Germany. I'm not sure how long it took us to cross the border, but suddenly the road-signs stopped making sense and the roads became a lot more pushy, so I figured I could add another flag to my blog, and write a little about the past week or so.



Here in Cologne I'm staying at a friends house (hi Birgit!) which makes a nice change from the 22 snoring people and the 44 hungry bedbugs that shared my previous accomodations with me! So far I've wandered through the university and checked out the massive church tower, as well as taking pause to check out the Salvidor Dali Museum... But now it's Friday evening again... time to take my leave from this computer!



Until next time... Tschüß!

In Bloem

Well, after an absolutely crazy week exploring Amsterdam, I woke up Friday morning and, more or less on a whim, travelled to Utrecht. After a half hour train ride, in which I only managed to spot 1 windmill, I found myself wandering through the confusingly large Utrecht Centraal Station, with my life on my back and not a single responsibility in the world.



So, my first day without booked accomodation, alone in a completely strange city, country, and continent. Made me happy to be alive! As luck would have it, Friday was a national holiday, Liberty day, and so was one of the few days of the year in which the Information Centre was closed! In the end though it was almost disappointingly easy to find a hostel, as the 3rd place I checked had a bed free. And as it turned out, 24/7 free food, including a whole fridge full of FREE CHEESE. 'Nuff said.

Joined forces with some of the great dudes from the hostel here on Friday night and went and checked out the "Bevrijding Festival". After some bad music on stage there was a semi-spectacular fireworks show... I say 'semi-' because I'm sure the fireworks would have been awesome if the crowd could have actually seen them through the trees that stood in the way! But everybody cheered and celebrated in animated Dutch fashion so it didn't really matter.



After a nice weekend partying and cafe-cruising I headed out Monday morning to a place called Keukenhof, famous for its tulip fields! Spot the tourist... Was a great day, choppsed up on the train to Leiden, caught a bus to Keukenhof, and hired myself a bike for the afternoon. Things are starting to warm up around here now, so it was a mighty pleasant afternoon in the sunshine. Finally made my way back to Leiden and stopped by a gigantic windmill to chat with a local student before heading back to Utrecht for some cheese.

Finally, here are the results of today's critical pub-crawl, as carried out by messrs Sam, Benedict, Riccardo and myself. Scores averaged over all four judges results, based upon the following criteria:

• Fizz
• Body
• Taste
• Head
• Temperature
• Foam Taste

Photos courtesy of Ben...

Beer 1: Dommelsch			46.6 / 100
Beer 2: Duvel (8.5%!)			60.0 / 100
Beer 3: Hoegaarden			61.25 / 100
Beer 4: Palm			71.25 / 100
Beer 5: Hertog Jan			41.25 / 100
Beer 6: Dommelsch round 2			52.5 / 100

Feel free to draw your own conclusions...
Tot snel!