Posting from Deutschland

Hey everyone (except for my parents)

I thought it would be about time for a new post, as I know it's been a while. My trip from Prague to Cologne was rather uneventful, but comfortable. Germany's high-speed InterCity Express train lines (ICE) are by far the nicest trains I have been in so far. They definately beat the French's equivilant, the TGV. Once you board, you are greeted with a comfortable modern interior. The train is carpet floored, and the walls are decorated with nice wood panneling, and everything is lit with those little halogen lamps. Anyone who has ever been on an airplane or greyhound will know the dirty little phone booth sized bathrooms. Well, you won't find them on the ICE. You see a huge, round portion of the wall marked WC (Water Closet - this is used all over Europe), with a little button on the side. When you press it, the whole section slides to the side on tracks, revealing a huge bathroom, equally nicely decorated as the train. Classy! And the whole train is so soundproof, you hardly realise the train has left the station. Pretty cool.

In Cologne I was greeted by my mother and Denise. Not only was it nice to see my family again, but it was great to be picked up at the train station. One of those things that you develop doing a two month train trip is that you really start to hate the end of a train ride. You have to get up and put your bag on, leave your comforatble seat, and orient yourself in a completely foreign town. You have find a map, get directions, figure out subway/bus prices and routes in a foreign language, wander aimlessly for a while... Doing this every four days becomes kind of a pain. It was great to be greeted at the track, let to a car (ahhhh, car. That's nice...), and effortlessly be chaufeured to your destination.

The area in which the Pajonks live (For those that don't know them, they are some friends of ours in Germany. They own that nice summer house right next to our old resort.) is beautiful. It is exactly what the stereotypical images of Germany would have you believe. Little brick houses (many bearing the brown cross beam pattern on the outside) on a hillside overlooking a small town, a BMW in every driveway, narrow windy roads through thick forest, and a patchwork of little farm fields. And the beauty of it is, due to the population density of Germany, you can have this, yet still be in a large city within 20 minutes.

When I got there, they fed me barbeque food untill I couldn't stand comfortably, and I had access to their keg :-) The first day we just kind of relaxed and hung out, since the rest of my family was very jet lagged. In the evening I used this little luxury of free anytime PC access to get reaquainted with an old friend called Counter Strike, and just endlessly browsing the web.

The next morning, Denise took me and Marcel to a little graduation barbeque for her school class. My brother and I were supposed to pretend we didn't speal German, so that we could make all of Denise's friends try to talk to us in English. That backfired though, becasue they just didn't talk to us at all! I gave up on that plan and told them I spoke German, and suddenly they were all talking to us. Very nice people.

Later that day we headed off to do some Cologne sight seeing. It's great to do this kind of thing when you don't have to pay for yourself. It was pretty cool. We went to the Cologne Dome, which is another shockingly huge and amazing cathedral. We checked out the interior, payed the few euros to climb to the top, and checked out the treasure room. The view was quite impressive, though unfortunately, the war has left Cologne not looking so impressive. It's just a bunch of modern buildings. However, you still get a good view, and from the top you see a little authentic corner, which is called Altstadt (oldtown), and is a small neighborhood that survived the bombings.

After the treasuer room (shiny) we went over to Altstadt and took a little walk through it. It is a beautiful riverfront area lined with patio restaurants. Apparantly it is flooded with people on the weekends, but we caught it on a Monday (or was it Tuesday?). After our walk, we headed to a Restaurant called Früh (early) and had the most stereotypical German food. Bratwurst, sour kraut, potatoes, etc, etc. There we met Marcel (not my brother), whom I hadn't seen in probably over five years. The food was good, and so was the beer (Kölsch).

The next day, we went to the Haribo factory. I'm sure some of you will know what I'm talking about. Haribo is the company that makes "German Gummybears," as I always call them when I get others to try them. Just for the record, they are the wold's greatest gummy products. They had them available in bulk, so we could just scoop together huge mix bags. They also sold the final packaged ones at very low prices. We bought a 4kg crate for €7.00! After that, we quickly checked out a castle. It was not the world's greatest castle, but it was pretty cool anyways. After 500 years of wars and such, it had been burned down, torn down, renovated, reconstructed, demolished, and built from scratch so many times, it was hardly in it's original form. It was in a great hilltop location with a view, though! That evening we caught the ICE to Stuttgart, where we will be staying with some close friends of my parents for the next three weeks.

Aside from eating lots and drinking beer and champagne, we have taken a nice walk in another old town area. This had to be one of the most beautiful and stereotypical little town areas I had ever seen. I wish I could have taken pictures, but aside from getting robbed on my last travel day, I managed to forget my extra batteries and my charger for my camera at the hostel in Prague!!! I am in the process of finding one on eBay, but for the moment, my camera is a useless, expensive hunk of plastic, glass and, silicon.

Our plans for the next three weeks are coming together. We are going to get some gokart action in there. Also, the people we want to visit the most (really good friends, close relations, etc.) will probably resuly in an overnight visit, and I'm sure they can show us a good time in their home neighborhood.

As for any leftover time, there are two PC's with broadband here, so I will not be bored. These next three weeks will give my a chance to design my projector! I plan on having the paper design done when I get back, so I can do any woodworking in my two weeks at home before I move out (!!!) and lose access to woodworking tools. Any time after that is spent in Counter Strike land. The PC's at this house are even good enough for HL2/CSS! Woohoo, Source!

As I'm sure you are probably aware, the posts will probably be a little less fequent at this point, and will probably be a tad less interesting (less random people, less partying, etc). All good things must come to an end.

For now, enjoy these pictures.

Later.

PS: On second though, no pics today. I'm having some troubles with the uploader. I will try to get them up tomorrow, along with some videos I took throughout the trip. Have QuickTime installed to view them.

Later.

Prague Prag Praha

EDIT: NEWS UPDATE

Hi guys. I'm adding this about 4 hours after the original posting of this update.

Our room in the hostel got robbed! When I went to the room a little while ago, everyone's bags were messed up. Clothes everywhere, pockets open, etc. They sliced into my daybad with my switchblade since it had locks. They stole my MP3 player, one of my camera batteries (wtf?), and my switchblade. Someone else had some cash, a camera, a memory card, and a cell phone stolen.

We have a suspect but we are not sure what to think. He showed up in the room this morning on his own (usually reception leads you to the room). He was last in the room when we all left. When we asked reception, the guy had checked in without a passport, which was in his main bag in a locker at the train station. It had to be a guest, since they re-locekd the door behind themselves. We would think it was this guy for sure, but you would think the guy would leave if he had stolen things. However, we found him hanging around here, and he didn't seem at all worried. If he doesn't show up to sleep in his bed tonight we will know for sure, but that also means he will be gone with our stuff. The no passport and bag at the train station is pretty suspicious though...

Oh well. Here I had thought I had made it through Europe crime free, and on the last day...

Oh well, resume post.

Many names for the same place.

Prague is a very nice town. I can see why people like it so much. I've already extended my stay by an extra day! My first day here was kind of crap, since it rained so I had no urge to go sightseeing. I found an internet cafe and video MSN'd my family for several hours. Unfortunately, when I got back to the hostel, it was too late and all the people had already gone out to party, so I was stuck by my self.

I "czech"ed (thank you) out a bar right here by the hostel. It's a really cool place. On first sight, it just seems like this tiny little place with a few tables and a simple bar. When you find the stair case in the back however, it gets more interesting. Go down one flight, and you are in a cave/celler thing with fooseball tables and slot machines. From there you can find several flights of stairs and some tunnels. Follow any of these to find further, deeper rooms. As you go deeper you will find more bars, and more entertainment. The place just seems to keep going! Every room have another stair case connecting to another celler. It is definately unique, and the prices are right. When you convert to Canadian dollars, a large beer costs about $1.50. Still, since I was by myself and I found no english speaking people, I left. I headed back to the room, read for a while, and try to go to sleep. Enter the Scottsmen...

Never has anyone entered a hostel so loudly. They all come barging in yelling and screaming. They played hockey, they jumped around, they laughed and made jokes... all at 2:00 AM. Not only did they wake up everyone in the dorm, but also the next dorm. This continued until 5:00 AM! It wasn't that bad though. At first I was a bit annoyed, but they really were funny, and I had nothing better to do. I decided the best policy would be to join them.

So the next day, I went out with them. If you've ever seen Robin Williams Live on Broadway, the part where he makes fun of how the Scotts talk is absolutely true. They usually slow down when they talk to you, but amongst each other, it's like a different language. We had an absolute riot. We went to this AMAZING live jazz club. Everyone left with a CD, becasue the band was just so great. If you ever see "Blues Wave" playing somewhere, go in! After that, we headed back to the cave bar, which was much more fun this time. Apparantly I rock at fooseball, though some of you back home may disagree.

When we got back to the hostel, we repeated the last night. We just talked shit and laughed till 5:00 AM, and got a lot of dirty looks this morning. We actually went around handing out earplugs to people, appologizing! During the course of the night, one by one, every other hostel guest in the building came in, asking us to please keep it down. We kept 15 people up from 2:00 to 5:00 AM. We justify this by saying it is Saturday night in Prague, you are supposed to act this way. I think the best part was when Absinth Amy came (we all had nicknames. Pappy Pascal. Gorgeous Gay Greg. Yummy Yasmin. etc, etc.). Absinth Amy is the most spaced out, blonde texan girl you have ever met. Think Louanne (sp?) from King of the Hill tims two!!! The things she said! I can't even think of examples, but we were in tears. She was the source of our entertainment all night long. We flat out laughed at how stupid she was, and she never realised it. This morning she was being all friendly to us. And it's not that she's trying to be our friend or something. She flat out doesn't realise we were laughing AT her, and NOT WITH her.

There is a white stripes concert tonight, but I don't think we can go. The tickets are too expensive. I don't even know why I mentioned that then. Oh well.

The town is nice too. Lots of towers and cool buildings. Unfortunately it was very overcast, so the pics aren't that nice. I will try to post some soon, but I have to go. People are waiting for the PC, and I've been on for a while.

Later.