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!