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.

Auschwitz

Hey everyone,

This is a quick update. I went to the Auschwitz Concentration Camp today. I don't really know what to think of the place.

It seems like it is both shocking and underwhelming at the same time. Shocking because obviously everyone knows what went on there. To see the size of the place, and the living conditions, and to hear the number of people that passed through there is quite amazing, but I was expecting more of a shock.

The thing is, when you are there, it is really hard to picture it all. When someone tells you that 1.5 million people died here, that numebr is so large, you can't really picture that many dead people. There's a word I'm looking for for that case, when something is so large, you can't really picture it in any relevant ways. When you are there, you just see a bunch of buildings.

I really find that the movies are much more impressive/though evoking/powerful. You actually see the acts taking place and you actually see the quality of life. When you go into a real life gas chamber you are expecting something stunning, somehow. All it really is is a big, square, concrete room like a million basements I've seen before, except with two little holes in the top.

Anyways, I have to go, people want onto this PC. 50 members of a church choir just showed up at this hostel, and it's packed now.

Later.

Poland and pics

Hey all.

My quick last minute excursion to Poland has been quite cool. The town is quite pretty, with tons of cool architecture and stuff. Considering how much WWII shit went on here, it is amazing it escaped almost completely untouched.

I went on a bike tour here today, which was really great. The tour guide was American, so he was really easy to understand. He took us all over the tourist areas, but then also to remote areas, which were the real highlight, since we would have found the touristy stuff ourselves.

The most interesting was the Jewish ghettos. I'm sure many of you are familiar with the early 90's Steven Spielberg film Schindler's List. It is a movie about Mr. Schindler, a factory operator during the second World War. His employees were all Jewish slave labourers. However, when he discovered from his highup friends in the SS what was to be done with the Jews, he did everything he could to save them (if you were on the "list" you were safe). Anyways, many parts of the film were done here in Krakow.

The ghetto is where Jewish people were relocated to until the decision for the "Final Solution" was made. When the tram passed through here, a German soldier would board, to make sure no one passed food through the Windows. The walls around the area were built to resemble Orthodox Jewish gravestones, as a sadistic hint of what was to come. During the course of the war, over 250 000 Jews passed through the ghettos, with just over 1000 survivors. On the day of "liquidation," the Jews clever enough to realise what was going on hid. They hid everywhere they could. In pianos, cellers, floor boards, walls, everywhere. The Germans knew this, though, and after waiting about 15 hours to make the Jews think they had left, they went through the neighborhood killing anyone they found. Within the 1.5 city blocks we covered today, over 4000 people were executed. I am going to Auschwitz/Birkenau tomorrow. I'm not sure whether or not I should be excited about that or not...

Oh, and in an amazing stroke of luck, the Schindler Factory, the one used during the war, was open today. It is only open one week of the year! I got to sign the guestbook on the same desk the list was written! That was cool.

Otherwise, the day was cool. I found a switch blade! Finally! Unfortunately, in my haste (I was really excited), I never really checked it out. It has a little rust I will have to clean, and the flashlight doesn't work. Oh well, it switches! Combined with my other knife (not the star thing, that's my other other knife), I have perfected the art of quick drawing two large knives from my pocket, and having them both snap open in a moment. Let's see fake cops try to "inspect" my passport now! Hah!

Anyways, enjoy some Pics. To the Schoenhardts out there, see you soon, then you cna check out all of my shots. It will take a while though...

Later.

My lovely knives. The open one is a switch blade! After all my long searching, illegal weaponry is mine!



The area near my hostel here in Poland. Thought it would make a good desktop.



One of the large towers in the Krakow town center, the most beautiful and largest medieval town center in existance.



Kick ass church. I veered off of the bicycle tour to take this. Couldn't resist...



Main two towers in the main square. The left on is the trumpet watch tower. Legend has it, that during an attack several hundred years ago, a watchman was struck down by an arrow to the throat during the playing of his warning song. So now, every hour on the hour, a man comes to the window and plays a tune, which cuts off abruptly in the middle of a note.



The castle in Ceske Krumlov.



The menu in the medieval restaurant. They serve mead, and traditional medievel food. I had a dasiy soup! The food was delicious though.



This town rocks (still Krumlov, if you're wondering)



This is a Krumlov town diagram, to give you an idea of the layout. You can rent cheap inner tubes and do laps around the main loop in the river.



The medieval doors to out hostel.



Town again. I have so many shots like this!



The following pics were taken in a celler tour. Really, all this modern art was jsut filler, since a network of empty underground cellers would have been too boring to charge admission for. Cool stuff. And the pics really turned out, I though. Just wait till get back, and you see the full sized 5 megapixel ones. You can zoom WAY in.









Guess where...

Grammer and 1337 lesson from Czech Republic

jutta said...

"Awsome pictures thank you. You were sarcastic about the colloseum were you ? I wasn't sure but Marcel thought so???????? What the heck does 1337 pwened mean?????"

Why so many question marks???????

Some of those sentances aren't even questions!

I don't think anyone got the 1337 thing except maybe Tawnie. That's the idea.

1337 = LEET = elite = the elite of the internet. That's internet speak, usually only used sarcastically, never seriously, since it's usually little 12 year old kids that use it and think they are so amazing.

"pwned" comes from a common typo from "owned" (see you keyboard, you will understand). Owned is internet speak again. Marcels "pwned" Tawnie with his argument winning comment: "yeah, well, I have a car and you don't."

---------- END LESSONS ----------

The Czech Republic is stunning. Any trip to Europe ever should include this place. Forget France and Italy (except San Gimignano). Sure, they're cool and everything, but it's mostly just big cities, expensive museums, smog, and engine noise. The Czech republic is where it's at. Beautiful country side, amazing towns (Just wait until I upload some pics. Can't do it here.), cheap, friendly, quite, and fun.

Seriously, I am in Ceske Krumlov right now, and I can't get over this town. The whole thing is a prefect little medieval town. Hilly, narrow, cobblestone pathways between rows of buildings decorated with brown stained wooden beams. A looping river through the middle of town, bordered by cliff faces with castles on top; amazing views of red roofs and clocktowers; massive labarynths of underground cellers filled with amazing and affordable attractions like cool sculpture displays or torture wax museums. Hell, they even have corn on the cob stands!

Every building here is authenic. The hostel I am staying in is too. The front door is two ancient, heavy, dark-stained oak doors, which leads into an indoor bar with brick walls, lit by lanterns (electric), and a floor made of huge old florboards. The restaurant bult in goes out into the courtyard, which spills out into the streets again through an amazing archway with an even more impressive door. The restaurant's indoor sections have traditional arched brick fireplaces (like pizza ovens) and big sections of the wall have missing plaster where you can see the brick behind.

And things are so cheap here. You know you've found a good hostel when at night it is packed with not only guests, but people from other hostels, and even (this is the big sign of "goodness") locals coming here to drink. A beer costs 23 crowns. That's $1.15 Cdn, and the beers are big. We do the thing where we buy a round for the whole table (ends up costing you like 8 dollars) and then everyone does the same. By the end of the night you've have 6 giant beers, are quite drunk, and it cost about the same as a beer back home!

Beer here is very good, by the way. Yesterday I was in Ceske Budjevice, pronounced Budweis. There is also a town here called Plzen, pronounced Pils. Guess what comes from these two places. I'll give you some hints. I consume lots of them, they are better than the ones the make/sell at home, and they are liquids. First person to post the answers in the comments section gets my packet of airline peanuts from the flight home!

Later.

*Victorious Trumpets*

Haha, finally, the long awaited, 47 picture long PHOTO BLOG, complete with captions!

Woohoo.

To quote someone very 'magnificent': "and there was much rejoicing"

And I spent a whole $0.01 US per picture to have these batch uploaded rather than spending hours doing them one by one. Because I love you all THAAAAAAAAT much. All combined, you are worth 47 cents to me.

Enjoy!

(They are in reverse chronological order)

"Chain Bridge" in Budapest



Part of a free castle that belongs to a museum complex



Again, the castle



One of the main bridges here in Budapest. Marked on one end by a cool statue. See next pic.



The statue...



Another statue, from the top of the hill (same hill as last pic, but much further up)



Another bridge. I like bridges. They're perdy



This is the statue area as seen from below (on the white bridge)



This is the museum complex that contains the caslte. Last pic of Budapest. Next is Bucarest, Romania.



Would you change your money here? I'd be afraid of what happens when I hand over the money...



A neat church in Bucarest



The view of the large admin building from the Boulevard made by demolishing city. See previous blog entry for more info.



Same place, but now on the public address balcony from the admin building. HUGE street, immagine it full of buildings then plowed down...



One of the halls inside. It's hard to get a sense of the size in a pic.



Admin building again.



A beautiful town between Sofia, Bulgaria and Bucarest, Romania. Easter europe is covered in beautiful countryside like this. Wish I wasn't on a night train.



This little church in Sofia is preserved, but has been built around.



This building is probably important. I don't know what it does, but maybe I will decorate my house this way some day. Then people will take pictures of it and post them online.



Still Sofia. I'm sure this statue means something. Looks very communist... Don't know if it symbolises revolution, or was actually built during communist rule.



Domes



Church



Now we are on IOS!!! I <3 IOS!!!



This is a bed tent. Wooden frame, canvas top, two beds, bring your own sheet, E5.00 per night. Good deal.



Far Out camping village. Yay!



Same place. Yay!



My village of tents. Mine is in back, hidden from prying eyes.



Now in Athens. The front building IS NOT the acropolis. The one in the background is. Good shot though. I got the idea from a post card. The stupid guy in the blue shirt just had to walk around teh corner though.



This IS the acropolis. Very "under construction"-ey



These are the Irish guys I met on the way to Athens, and now just re-met in Budapest! The world is SOOOOOOOO small. From the left, Sarah-jane, PASCAL!!!!!!, Caroline, Paul, Andy.



Some other monument we never went to, but saw from high up.



Acropolis



Cool hill, I have many pictures of it. It is the breast of Athens.



Acropolis Now. (who got it?)



Ruins



More of them. Down with buildings.



This is now Naples. It is NOT ugly like many may tell you. Take a look. I have many more nice shots. This is a church, by the way



Shopping alley with cool plants



A nice "piazza"



Old 'Suvious



I wanted to go in, but they wanted money.



Now in ROME. This buildign is not really important. Michaelangelo built it, but it's not really famous. I missed most famous things in Rome. I was too busy getting lost on my scooter.



Somewhat blurry shot (looked better on cam) of St Peters in the Vatican. Sorry for the low res of this pic. I let the "Windows XP publishing Wizard" upload these, and it resized them dumbly.



Outside of the Vatican. Popeish



Another random building. Someone said something about games, I dunno. I figured I'd take a picture because I though it looked pretty cool, and I don't think anyone's ever seen it before.



Some hall when the sun broke... I mean set.



The area around the Coloseum (That's what they called that bulding, now I remember).



It's late I'm tired, and that took a LONG time. Must get up in 4.5 hours for train goodness. Can you tell my tiredness from my somewhat out-of-character captions? BYE!

Later!