Eurotrip Day 21 - Officially Broke Camera and Disney Castle with Rob
Another day I was really looking forward had come. Going to see that beautiful Neuschwanstein castle has always been on my mind since Ryan (Mike Chun's friend) had told me about it and showed me pictures of it. Yesterday, we had already signed up for a group that would pay for a group ticket pass for the day to go to Fussen and back. I was really excited, and it was really easy to tell as I was the earliest to wake in the room and ran into the shower.
I sneaked around the room all morning to make sure I didn't wake anyone else. Even while opening the locker to my backpack, I tried to keep the noise level down and move really slow to make sure I didn't make anything fall. But that idea and theory all went to hell when I picked up my jacket and saw my camera slip out of the pocket and smacked right onto the floor. OH SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT. It was over. A few pieces broke off and flew in several directions. The little door that concealed the CF card was slightly broken and couldn't close. Was my camera finally dead after this? I instantly found that it could still turn on. Next, I had to check if it could take pictures correctly without being fuzzy or anything. It would suck if the lens was knocked out of place because of the impact. That was fine. The final thing was to test how it took pictures with flash, no flash and in different settings. Everything seemed to be fine on the picture taking side. Thank goodness for such a durable camera. The only thing I had to do now was mend the broken piece. Funny thing was that I didn't have any tape on me, so I decided to patch up the camera like how I would patch up a person, with a band-aid.
The noise caused by the camera startled a few people and woke them. Hopefully I didn't make them really grumpy X( . It wasn't the best way to start the day, but it could have been worse if I knew my camera was dead. It was also alright because I had just unloaded all my pictures onto CDs, so we had all the backups that we needed. But my excitement couldn't be fully killed because of this. Steve still had his camera, so everything would have still been fine.
We headed down to the front desk to wait for the other people on the list to show up and walk together to the train station. One of the was an older lady, I don't remember her name though. The other was Rob Jensen, another person I had noticed in our tour group yesterday. It felt awkward to be travelling with some strangers and Rob seemed kind of freaky. He was tall and wore some "cool" shades that made him look too proud of himself.
There was no information on the walls or at the ticket purchasing machines on which ticket to purchase to go to Fussen. Seeing that we didn't understand German, or even the English because we didn't know what to by, we decided to wait inline like everyone else. By the time we got to the ticketing window, Rob found out that he didn't have to buy a ticket and could use his eurail pass for his train ride. That was good for him, but meant that we had the split the cost of the group ticket between 3 people instead of 4 people. It isn't that much, but we couldn't really complain. If I were in Rob's position, we would have done the same thing.
The train to Fussen, compared to the other ones we had taken so far, was very old style and had very little facilities and looked very worn down overall. It was by no means uncomfortable to sit it, it just wasn't as nice as the other ones. Our lady friend sat with Rob and us and talked for a bit before we dozed off on the train. Once in a while, I opened my eyes to the sound of a person (always the same person) opening the door to the train car and walking across the car to the other door only to later come back in the opposite direction doing the same thing. Rob, Steve and I introduced ourselves and started talking a little bit. We talked about Canada and Rob talked about New Zealand, where he was from. Rob was traveling around Europe for quite some time already and had a 90 day eurail pass to go with it. The two hour ride didn't seem very long, thanks to our conversations with Steve and Rob. It was nice to have a friend around to know more about as we traveled.
In actual fact, 1 train wasn't enough to get close to the castles. Once we got there, we had to take a 15 minutes bus ride. Here is where I felt really bad. Our lady companion had ran off to the first bus that appeared and paid 3 Euros to take the bus when she didn't have to. All you had to do was show the bus driver your train ticket and they would have let you on for free. I didn't know if I wanted to tell her, even if it was a few euros, it could be misinterpreted for tricking her.
The bus stopped at the foot of the mountain where the two castles were. There were two ways to get up to the Neuschwanstein (aka Disney Castle): Pay and take a horse driven carriage or use your own legs to walk up. I think the choice was obvious for us. Before we headed up the 15 minute climb/walk up the hill, we stopped by the ticketing office to purchase tour tickets of the castle itself. For reason that tourists are not permitted to freely roam around the castle, see and photograph anything you liked, we had to purchase a ticket for a designated tour. Steve and I purchased the tickets (no student discount this time) but Rob didn't. Rob said he just wanted to stay outside, as there wasn't really anything that he wanted to see inside. He grabbed a red bull before heading up with us.
We talkedto Rob a bit more while we walked up the hill and stopping occasionally to dodge any horse manure that was just left on the road. With each opening in the tress above us that gave us the opportunity see the castle, we grabbed our cameras to take a quick snap shot, thinking we could never get another good shot like this from the BOTTOM (so stupid).
The trip up wasn't that tiring at all. There was no rush to get to the castle as our tour would start in about 1 hour, a long time from now. We did take a hell lot of pictures once we got to the front. We probably took pictures of every square inch of the front and the surrounding area. The great thing about our pictures this time was that Rob was able to help us take a few. Beside taking pictures, Rob also took short video clips with his DV camera describing the castle as the Disney Castle.
We waited around the gathering area for around 20 minutes before we got fed up and walked down the hill a bit to have some lunch before actually going on the tour. I am guessing that it was pretty obvious as to what we ate for lunch, that's right, Bratwurst zemmel. It was not until I bought a drink from the concession stand that I realized the extra money I was paying extra as a deposit for the drink. As advertised, the drink was 1.50 euros; but when it came time to pay, I was asked to pay 2 euros. Then, I realized that I was actually paying for a recycling deposit and that I would get back the 50 cents when I returned the bottle for recyling. Anyway, I had to note this because I had never been asked to pay for a drink deposit.
Rob had agreed to meet us outside the castle after we had finished our tour of the castle so we could explore more later. Steve and I walked back to the gathering area to wait for our tour group number to be called. It was around a 10 minute wait before we were called and a group of around 25 people went through the gates to join the tour guide.
One thing I noticed was that although this was a castle, it wasn't the type of castle to show off a large collection of gold or precious stones; It had more of a story. The only exception to this was the throne room where the floor, wall and ceiling were beautifully decorated with paintings and patterns. King Ludwig II's bedroom was nothing too spectacular. The bed was actually setup against the wall and the room was actually quite small for a king. No pictures were allowed, but i still sneaked a few non-flash pictures. They didn't turn out well, but I atleast got the form of the really unique sink and tap that was in the bedroom/chamber. The tap was made in the shape of a swan (Schwan) and the water came out of its mouth and into a removable metal bowl.
The Neuschwanstein castle is actually an incomplete castle. This was definitely surprising news as it definitely looked finished from the outside. King Ludwig II passed away during the construction of the castle and after that, there was little to no motivation to complete the castle. Only 12-14 rooms were complete and decorated. The rest are left rather untouched. As such, the tour itself wasn't actually that long but it was really nice to see the work down on the rooms that were completed. The hallways were more or less undecorated but provided a nice view of the outside.
Here are some examples of the rooms we visited:
Too bad I couldn't get pictures of the inside. But those links provide some good information about these rooms. To be perfectly honest, not even I can remember how each room was but these bring back some memories.
We were eventually led to the kitchen and then out to the gift shop at the end of the tour. I spent a good amount of time there looking for something good to buy. But there really wasn't too much other than the postcards that I wanted to get. I eventually ended up buying nothing and left to go look for Steve. Instead of finding Steve, I found Rob outside instead. Steve was staying behind to checking things out, what he was checking out, I have no idea.
Once we have met up with Steve, we walked around the back of the castle following a small crowd toward Mary's Bridge, a small bridge 300-400 meters away from the castle and built on top of a huge cliff with running water under. There weren't too many people on the bridge, but with every step on the bridge, I got the slight fear that it might collapse. It sort of wobbled a bit when some people walked onto the bridge. The view from the bridge was wonderful and it was obvious that some of the pictures of the Neuschwanstein have been taken from this angel before. i didn't hesitate to take a bunch of photos before just standing there peacefully looking around the castle and sucking in the fresh air.
Moments later, we noticed some poeple hiking up the path past the bridge to hight ground. THey were standing by a small thin tree taking pictures. It seemed like a better view. Since we really didn't have anything else to do, Rob, Steve and I decided that we go through the hiking path to try to get to higher grounds to see what we could see. We walked along the path until we trail seemed to get thinner and less smooth. There were more hills and roots sticking out that could have definitely tripped someone. Eventually, we were walking on barely a trail and had gone to a huge hill down in the opposite direction from the castle. Rob and Steve seemed to think we were going somewhere, but I kind already thought that we were totally off.
We went down the hill full of leaves to find a creek that separated ourselves and a car road. Rob suggested that we walk across the creek and walk with the road. Steve and Rob walked around to find safe areas with lots of rocks that would allow them to safely cross the creek but none were found. I distinctly remember Steve even suggesting that we take our shoes off and just walk across in the water. Wow.... what an idea. Good thing we didn't take it.
it was quite obvious that we were lost and had gone the wrong way so went headed back up the hill and back along the trail, or what seemed to be a trail, back to the main trail. After getting back to the main trail, it was then we realized that we had just totally missed the curve on the trail to lead further up the hill. Stupid us. Anyway, it was still an adventure not worth missing out.
With in 10 minutes, we had reached the end of the trail which led to the small little cliff the gave another great view of the castle. We sat there for only 2 minutes when we heard some voices from an even higher point on the mountain. We all noticed people climbing down slowly and carefully. Steve and I decided to try to climb up even higher to get a nicer view and some more pictures. We took baby steps to climb up the mountain until we reached our limit and sat there again for around 5-10 minutes. Rob had waited at the bottom not wanting to climb up in fear that he might break his equipment; an understandable explanation.
Like the previous group, Steve and I slowly climbed down the rocky moutain to meet up with Rob again. We made our way back down the hill, past the bridge and past the castle to head back down. Steve and I stopped at a small gift shop to pick up some nice post cards of the castle. I took a few minutes to write a postcard to Christine and had it sent off. With the post card sent, there wasn't much left to do at Fussen. Since we still had to meet up with the lady a few hours later in the afternoon, we had no choice but to check out the Hohenschwangau castle, a smaller castle not too far from the Neuschwanstein.
Scaffolding! That is all we saw at the Hohenschwangau. There wasn't a huge hike up any hill to get to the castle, if you could call it a castle. It looked more like a classical royal estate rather than a castle, or at least the castles that we come to expect. I guess we could have gone in but that would have been a waste of time. We spent the next 15 minutes walking around the open area in of the Hohenschwangau until large rain droplets starting falling from the sky. This was only the start.
Umbrellas quickly opened and we made our way back to the tour office where a lot of people were already waiting. A bunch of kids were gathered outside playing Mario kart DS. We walked into the office to get a little warmer and also had to convenience of purchasing a postage stamp for the post card. Nice. We figured out that we had just missed the bus back to the train station after overhearing some guests talking to the customer service agent at the tour office. Oh well, guess will just have to sit around and chat.
The train was basically waiting for us at the station when we arrived. Finding a seat was no problem this time and we were able to all sit together. The ride home wasn't so fun though. A drunk guy, probably the same one from the previous train ride, was walking around the train talking to random people. He would occasionally stop and talk to Rob too and Rob was so good at handling him. He would ask him questions and say things to him in a very polite voice. But eventually, it came to the point where Rob would pretend to sleep and ignore him.
By the time we had got back, our stomachs were starting to growl and feel empty. We didn't go very far since we already did a lot of walking for the day. We stopped by a franchised restaurant, and had some turkey schnitzel and Steve had Cordon Bleu. The Schnitzel we great. I was expecting the crappy schitzels that we go in Carleton University's residence cafeteria. I guess the meal wasn't too expensive, around 12-14 euros. Hey, it was good, can't complain.
It was Rob's last day in Munich so we went out together to try to find a bar to sit down and just drink away. He was actually leaving tonight, whereas Steve and I were leaving the next morning. One of Rob's goals was to go and drink at the Lowenbrau brewery to drink some of their beer. We weren't 100% sure where it was but knew that it was close the the train station. We wandered around in some general direction until we found a crowd of people wearing an odd attire that I had seen on the Simpsons character Uter. These were the actual traditional Munich clothing.
There was a party going on at the brewery and all the men were dressed up. Not a single one was not in a Traditional Munich attire. The women were in old style dresses that were really long and tight around the chest area. Rob asked one of the people to find out what was going on and if he could get a beer. He came back and said that it was kind of like a private party and everyone had to wear their Munich clothing. We had no choice but to leave.
Rob wasn't all too happy about that. We eventually went to a bar but they didn't server the beer that Rob wanted. They did however have Augustiner, Munich's #1 beer, but Rob wasn't interested in that. He liked Lowenbrau that much. We sat down at a table with two other German men who were talking. They introduced themselves to us three and we did the same. One was fat and had a very stereotypical mustache while the other man had curly short hair and was thinner and taller.
We sat there talking for a whole 2.5 hours. Steve and I had 1 litre of the regular Augustiner beer and another 0.5 litre of a more yeasty Augstiner beer. All good, but I was slightly tipsy by the time we left. Rob had left in the middle of all the conversation because he had to get picked up by a friend to leave Munich. Rob left his money on the table. By the time it came to pay for the bill, we looked to find that the money was gone from the table. Someone had stolen Rob's money from right off the table and we didn't even notice. Soooo stupid. But it wasn't too bad, the beer was 3 euros anyway.
Not much else from here. Steve and I slowly made our way back to Wombats to sleep so we could get ready for the next trip tomorrow, to Berlin.
Labels: eurotrip
Eurotrip day 20 - Beer gardens everywhere
We got the yelled at in the morning again by the conductor. He gave the same spew from the previous night. "You paid for 2 beds in a 6 bed couchette room." I don't understand why he was such an ass about it. It wasn't like there was someone else that turned away because of us. But I was still slightly scared that he would make us pay some fine for doing that. We were in Munich. A Southern city in the old Bavaria area.
This was the weirdest feeling when we packed out stuff and moved the beds back to their original position. I actualy had a lot of trouble putting back the middle bed, it just wouldn't snap back into position. Steve tried to help but it didn't really budge. Anyway, the weird feeling. The first time, we had stepped into a city that where the spoken and written language were new to us. There was no way that we could understand anything written on the signs.
It was 6:30 am and there was literally nothing open. Not only were the food stands closed at this time, everything out at the main street were also closed. Nothing open and no one to ask any questions about the location of the hostel. We walked around the entire station once with our heavy backpacks before deciding to drop them off at the pay storage. These pay lockers are large and were really made for the back packer in mind. There were a ton of them. Probably around 200 lockers were available.
With our backpacks safe at the train station lockers, headed out on a journey to find our hostel. All we had was the name of the hostel and the street name it was on. Wombat's, a high profile hostel in Munich that had a great price. The street it was on? Couldn't find it. No idea where it was and we had no way of getting any map because everything was closed. Sucked. Hehe, if Roger were here, he would have freaked out and become disappointed for not being very organized and prepared. Yup, we still missed Roger's company.
Who cares if we were lost right? We were here to explore. YAY!!! Where did we first go? Just some direction that was random and that we though was right. The streets were quiet and cold. Cars were rare at this time of day and the only noise came from the train station or the local public transportation. It seemed really boring and dead. I was really hoping that all of Munich was not like this. We had signed up to stay for 2 nights and thats it, best not to waste it on a boring city.
Rick Steve's had nothing to say about Munich. Not because there wasn't anything to do in Munich, it was mainly because the book didn't cover that area. It did, however, cover other smaller areas in Bavaria like the really nice Neuschwanstein castle in Fussen, south of Munich. Anyway, so on one hand, we had no information and no expectation of Munich and the things to do. The only things that i could think of for Germany were german sausages and beer. But there didn't seem to be any indication of these at all.
We wandered off really far in one direction (no sure if it was north, east, south or west) and just kept going until we hit a large street. There wasn't much so we turned around and started heading back. On the way back though, Steve suggested that we stop for a quick breakfast. I wasn't really into eating and spending money on food this early. I was on a budget and I planned to stick to it. Anyway, Steve went into this small coffee and bakery shop and bought a croissant with a coffee. I refused to get anything saying that nothing interested me. Steve felt bad and I think even a little pissed off. He stopped at the shop so that we would eat together rather than having me watch him eat. But knowing how nice Steve is, he offered me some of his food. What a great friend.
Our slow stroll back to the train station had given the shops at the train station enough time to open up but not ready to serve. Luckily, there were finally people the ask for directions to the hostel. So where was the hostel? within 1 block of the train station. It was soooooooo freakin close and we missed the street. Man were we blind. We quickly got our bags and walked over to Wombat's. You could tell from the front of Wombat's that this was going to be a good hostel. And we were right. We waited in line to check-in and was quickly served. We were on the 4th floor in a pretty big room with a total of 6 beds. When we arrived, the room was totally empty. We were wondering at first if it was a co-ed room or not.
Steve and I did the traditional routine, Rock Paper Scissors was used to determine who got to choose first. I lost AGAIN! Steve of course took the bottom bunk while I took the top. The beds were really really nice and the room was super clean and had a lot of space to move around the put stuff. The washroom was also comparable to a motel washroom. The only bad part was that, in the morning, the sun was blinding. I guess we were facing the east. Once we had put the bed sheets on and settled in, we walked back downstairs to look around the hostel.
By the time we got downstairs, there was a small group gathering around the front desk. They weren't there to check-in though and they didn't have any backpacks on. After asking one of the people, we found out that there was a free tour being given which started at 11:15am. There was still time left to wander and grab some supplies for the day pack. Steve and I took the elevator back up again. This time, we were surprised to find out that we were indeed staying in a co-ed room. But that wasn't a good thing this time, compared to Rome if you know what I mean.
The other 4 beds were occupied by girls, that were, umm... fat or bitchy. Well, 3 of them atleast. All of them american. Not saying that american women are bitchy and just can't stop talking and complaining, but they seemed to be those spoiled girls that got everthing from daddy. The other girl was also not interesting as she was really a GEEKY girl. Sure, some girls are geeky but cute and still look nice. This was different. Large glasses, slightly greasy hair, no interesting hair style and clothing style really represented a geek that didn't really care at all. They were sometimes fun to talk to. But most of the time, the converstations would eventually lead back to the girls talking about themselves. Summary, they weren't people I would be interested in.
But anyway, we went back downstairs to wait with the group for the
New Munich free tour. Hmm it was 11:20 and the tour guide hadn't arrived. Our tour guide was late but it didn't matter. The guide spoke english, but not English english. He was Irish born and came to Munich for one year and decided to stay and work as a tour guide that gets paid by tip. Anyway, he was a great tour guide. The first place that he took us was the Marienplatz where we could see the old Glockenspiel.
Marienplatz is a very popular and old location of Munich. It had huge statue in the middle and on one side, a large clock tower and building called the Glockenspiel. Actually, I think the clock is called Glockenspiel. Our tour guide met up with another colleague of his at Marienplatz and they did a really good historical background review of the Glockenspiel and what the meaning of it was. At exactly 12pm, the Glockenspiel would start moving and a small show was done on the tower. These of course weren't life performances. They were really old flat cardbaord like figures that travelled on a circular path like in those classic clocks. Anyway, the performance re-enacted an old jousting competition. It was interesting to see this, thought wasn't exciting. It also started late as the person that had to start it daily manually was also late. Yes, everyday, an old man had to go up to the Glockenspiel and manually start it. I wonder why they didn't automate it.
Anyway, after the clock struck twelve, our tour guide led us to an empty eara very close to the Marienplatz and asked us to sit down on the stairs for a history lesson. Though I forgot a lot of what was mentioned, I did remember the description of the Munich symbol, a monk with book on his left hand. Munich was originally a place with a Monastery way way back. I actual fact, Munich means Monks.
Before a promise of lunch, our tour guide lead us to the Frauenkirche (Church of our Lady) to talk about the history of the church and the people that were buried outside of it. There were two special things to take away from this visit. First, our current pope (Pope Benedict XVI) was once an archbishop of Munich and served in this very particular church. The second fact is that the church is one of the very rare structures that was not totally destroyed during World War II. Of course there was the story about the deal between the original builders of the Frauenkirche and the Devil. The deal was that the Devil would help in building the but in return, the church must be built without windows. Sure, the church was built, and it also had windows. But the Devil was tricked, for from a certain spot at the entrance, the church would seem windowless because the pillars would block all the windows when perceived from that position. The church was then consecrated and the Devil could no longer return. Not sure if this is true or not :)
Funny thing. after this, our tour group continued to move on. But for some reason, I couldn't find Steve. He went missing. I didn't see him come out, but I did see him go in. I started looking for him all around the church, around the park and even back at the shopping street that we first came from. I was so worried. How could our group have lost Steve or Steve lose the group? It would be horrible to have been split with him because we had no map or anything for Munich. The only real place we would have known to get to was the hostel. I could feel myself panicking and running around frantically looking for the stupid dude in red.
I left the group for around 5 minutes so I could find Steve. I was about to give up when I saw Steve walking all calmly around the little park like area infront of the Frauenkirche. Ooooh I wanted to hit him for getting me so worried. Anyway, after venting out a little frustration, we hurried up to get back with our group, that wasn't too far away. They were heading towards the famous out door garden and market.
At this market, there were essentially two things to get, Lunch and BOOZE. We were given 20 minutes to find something to eat and then head out. Our guide not only recommended that we have the Bratwurst Zemmel (German Sausage with Bun) and the famous Augustiner in Germany. I was being a cheap ass and didn't go for the beer, atleast no for the time being. I did however have a Bratwurst Zemmel. t was 3-4 Euros or something and it was soooooooo good. It was juicey and the bun was large enough to match the size of the sausage. I wish I had another one but that would have been maybe too much.
Funny little thing to not about the market was the bright coloured pole in the middle of the market. It used to be a symbol of something, but now, it s more a symbol of homosexuality. Really really weird. The other stores in the market primarily sold cheeses and meets. Some fresh fruits were also available, but they really seemed expensive. Not surprisngly, there were some fast food joints around too. The Pizza Hut and coffee shops that were around were quite packed. Definitely not something I was interested in, unless they were serving a cheap beverage of some sort
Now that Lunch was over, we continued our free tour towards the Hofbrauhaus, the renowned anf famous beer hall and garden. Our tour group stopped hear to listen to the wonderful history and stories from our tour guide. First things first, the beer hall is very old ans traditional. It was full of wooden benches and tables, like the ones that you see at beaches in Canada. We stood outside listening before we even stepped inside. The major highlight of this part of the tour was the story.
Back in the day, Munichens would come to the Hofbrauhaus to just drink, drink and drink. There was a lot of singing and dancing on tables. The popularity of the Hofbrauhaus was nuts and crazy to the point that it was over crowded. Customers would not be able to find a seat normally when they arrived. The people already sitting down did NOT want to give up their spots too. So what did they have to do to keep their seat? That's right, keep drinking more. But there is always something wrong with drinking too much booze in a short period of time but expect to stay long. Their bladders were starting to really fill up from all the alcohol they were drinking to preserve their seats. Now, the Drinker is stuck in a huge dilemma at this point. On one hand, they really want to keep their seat, but conversely, they really have to go pee before they explode. But in order to go pee, they would have to get off their seat to go to the washroom, which would obviously be taken the second he left for the washroom. So what could they do about this? This is disgusting by the way, and this is a warning. The Munichens would unzip (well not unzip, but you know what I mean) their pants right there in their seat and pissed onto a pole built into the table. The idea was that they would piss onto this pole to minimize the amount of splash from the action. Anyway, disgusting.
Unfortunately, with everyone doing this in the Hofbrauhaus, conditions were bound to get worse. Eventually, people would start throwing up in the beer hall and become really sick because of the lack of sanitation. It got to the point where they had to get rid of all the customers in the hall and cleaned all the crap off the floor and wash them out onto the street. The Street would then carry this urine, vomit and other disgusting substances away. This probably just made things worse. Not only causing the streets to smell bad, but probably spreading bad germs and diseases around.
With that story finished, we finally got to step into the Hofbrauhaus all excited to see what Munich drinking culture was like. There were watitresses that came around carrying several tall glasses of beer to customers and a huge number of benches. Most of the people were drinking beer and some of them were eating lunch or some food. Our tour guide explained that several changes were made the policies at Hofbrauhaus. Customers were now allowed to eat food in the beer hall and also bring their own food to eat rather than having to be forced to eat from their menu. I think this is a great idea, but we will probably never see this in Canada.
Once inside the beer garden, we got another story telling about Oktoberfest. The world famous festival that of course is held around the October time frame (actually closer to late September) in Munich. Each year, there are more and more poeple coming to attend the festival. Though the history of the festival was more of an agriculture type of festival to celebrate the marriage of King Ludwig I, it eventually really evolved more of a food and beerfest. Giant tents would be setup in the meadows where there is a lot of open space. A lot of fun things are available for peopel thing to play. But really, the main attraction is the beer tent. Under this tent are probably thousands of people all drinking at wooden benches that were identical to those in the Hofbrauhaus.
Anyway, a very interseting tradition and habit was developed because of these beer tents. Because of the large number of people in the tents during Oktoberfest, the heat from everyone's breath and body rose up to the top of the tent. This hot air would condense into water on contact with the cold tent ceiling. Eventually, enough water was developed by the condensation that a drop of water would fall back onto the ground. Now, there is a pretty good chance that the drop would fall into your mug of beer. So what did people do? When they aren't drinking from their mug, they place their hand over the top of the mug to cover the mug from any drops of water. Is it really water? Probably not. They believe that it is more of a mixture between water and human sweat. You can see this type of habit being done in the Hofbrauhaus and in most bars.
Our next few stops were the old museum, town hall and Theater. To get here, we walked past a street that was literally littered with very expensive cars. Sure, Germany has a lot of BMWs and Benz's, but we were seeing even more expensive carfs a like ferraris. Once again, when we got to the Theater, we were asked to sit on the stairs to listen to another great story. This time, it was about the burning of the Theater house. Some time back, way before the war, a huge fire engulfed the Theater house. The wanted to put out the fire, but there wasn't enough water to do it. So instead of using water, the Munichens requested that all the kegs of beer from the Hofbrauhaus be brought to the Theater house so they could douse the flames. They formed a huge line of men to pass kegs from one person to the next in theline. But, there was a problem with this approach. Each person in the line wanted a sip of the beer before it was dumped into the fire. And by the time the keg had made it to the Theater, it was basicallyh emptye and useless. The Theater was burnt down.
From here, we pasted through the outside of an old museum which we didn't go into. If we had to go inside, it wouldn't have been a free tour anymore. Our tour guide brought us to several windows where we could catch a small teaser of the paintings and art inside. We say a long hall with paintings on both sides. Thank goodness it didn't look that interesting, or else I would have regretted it.
At the end of the museum was free exhibit that showed the history of berlin during World War II. It was a black and white film and was shocking. To see 90% of Munich destroyed was something that I couldn't have imagined. Movies in general didn't seem to portray German cities too well at times, leaving far too many buildings left standing. The film looped every 5 minutes. We stayed for a whole 10 minutes to make sure that we got everything before we moved on to the final part of the tour.
I can't fully remember if we ended up in front of town hall. We did walk up some steps to sit in the front entrance of a old building that could have resembled a court house. Anyway, it was here that we talked two things: the memorial for battles in World War II symbolized by a line beside the town hall, and the origins of Oktoberfest.
The line was drawn on the pavement to show the battle lines that were held by the allied during World War II. As you can imagine, a lot of people would have died around this area and so they had set a memorial here for them. There was also a sign posted on the side of the road for the public to read. I personally didn't read it, but it described the line and its significance. Our tour guide also let us know to NEVER do any Nazi hand signal of any sort. I think everyone in the group knew exactly what he meant, except for Steve. Steve didn't actually know what it was and started asking me what the signal was. Maybe he was trying to scare us, but our guide told us to not do the Nazi salute thingy as it would land you at least a night in jail. Germans don't like to be reminded of the war.
And the origins of Oktoberfest is from the time of King Ludwig I. When he got married, he wanted to celebrate with the rest of Bavaria and organized a huge festival to celebrate the wedding. It was supposed to be more of a harvest and cultural festival with dancing and less alcohol. But as time passed, the whole point basically changed and eventually turned into a great drinking fest, which Oktoberfest is now notoriously known for. Each year, the number of attendees increases significantly. Last year, they had maybe 2 million people in Munich during Oktoberfest. This year, they were expecting 3-4 million people. Gotta love the beer :).
After the last cramming of information, which by no means was bad, the tour was over. Even though the tour is advertised as free, it isn't always free as you think. There is no fixed cost to the people that join the tour. But it is very nice to leave some tip to the tour guide. And you know what? The guide got quite a lot of tip from everyone. I would think he would make more than me too. I gave him 4 Euros and I think Steve even gave 10 Euros because he didn't have anything smaller. We should have just combined. Oh well.
We didn't have any destination now. I told Steve that I wanted to go back to the churches to check them out in detail, say a few prayers and also climb the towers if possible. Steve didn't mind too much so we headed back by tracing some of our steps. There weren't many places to go actually. We went to St. Peter's Church right beside the beer garden. I went inside to say my prayers and also take a look at each of the small chapels lined on the side. Each had a painting or a statue. The quality of the paintings were not spectacular but was enough to put a smile on my face.
There was also tower at St. Peter's church to climb. We got our student discount and started climbing up again. Towers were obviously not new to us. We had our good look of Munich from the tower for about 15-20 minutes and headed back down. On the way down, a small group of adults were laughing as they came up. As they came up, one of the men farted so loud that it was sooo obvious. This made the trip down a hard to bear for about 20 seconds. Ewww.
Once again, we had no plans as to go anywhere after we left the tower. We decided to take the subway to the old Olympic stadiums and also check out any construction they were doing for the world cup in Germany. The trip there was pretty simple even with the extra detours that they had in certain platforms because of construction. Anyway, the olympic park was very very big actually. Huge stadiums and sports facilities were built on this very hilly park that was noticeably well kept and maintained. One of the first things we saw was the renovation of the soccer/football stadium. Scaffolding was setup all around the outer rim of the stadium. Across the highway overpass were the other attractions.
Stages were being setup for the World Cup and flags, signs and posters were placed in many places. We could smell chlorine the closer we walked up close to the olympic pool. Gates were setup at the track stadium and people were actually paying to go in for tours or something. It was way too expensive to us and we didn't think we could really learn much from here. We did pass by one of the roller coaster simulators and for some reason was really compelled to try it out even though they were available in Canada. Itw as 2-4 euros for the ride and it was worth our little 10 minute ride. We did a space roller coaster trip and was generally fun. On our way out, we passed by a huge pond that was really calm. Not too far from there was the science and technology museum and the BMW museum. We didn't actually walk up to the BMW museum, be we could tell that the cars there were really cool and fancy.
With not much else to do we headed back towards the highway overpass to take some pictures before leaving. We also took pictures with the BMW tower that was far away but had a unique design to it. From here, we took the train back to the main train terminal station.
It was around 5pm at this time and a little too early for anything fun. Steve and I agreed that we should check out the bar and to our surprise, found out that it was happy hour and beers were cheaper. We redeemed our coupon for 1 free pint of beer during happy hour. An though the beer was cheap, it tasted better than the beer in Canada. I guess you can't really compare beers like that. Anyway, we really didn't have anything else for the rest of the day so we hung around the bar for a bit until we realized that we needed to do laundry and update any blogs and look at emails.
While I was waiting for laundry, Steve ran off to the local internet cafe to go on the internet. It was soo close. Within 5 minutes away from the hostel. Once I had placed our clothing in the dryer, I ran off to the internet cafe, but I wanted to do two things this time. My #1 priority was to unload all my pictures that we had accumulated since rome until now onto the CDs that I brought. Second was to write up anything that I missed on the trip before I forgot.
I went to the large basement of the internet cafe and asked around to see if there were any computers that allowed me to burn my movies. One of the employees directed me to the back where there were several computers set up, monitored by a single person. It was quite crazy. I had to pay 3 euros for each CD that I burned, even if the CDs were my own, sooooo stupid. Anyway, I really had no choice and didn't want to look around some more. I handed over the cash and proceeded to a machine. Just as I inserted my CF card into their card reader, windows and its anti virus said that I couldn't proceed because there was a virus on my card. Whoa!!! What the heck? I didn't believe it. There was no way that my flash card could have gotten a virus. Turns out that I got a virus from the computers in Rome. Thank goodness the person there was able to help me fix the problem. I was so scared that my files would be lost.
After all the anxiety had left me, I finished up any blog posts that I needed to do for Venice and then headed back to the hostel with Steve. Steve is always so nice to wait for me and I really appreciate it. We thought there was going to be some cheap food at the bar, but everything was quite expensive and didn't seem very interesting. But the more I think about it, it seemed more like an excuse for us to go out and try some more German Sausages. We walked to a local convenient store where they had a variety of sausages on display at 2.50 euros per sausage with bun. We each got two of different kinds and were really satisfied. The only thing that was left was to get some more beer in us and we would be good to go.
Before we started drinking, we passed by the front desk to sign up for a group train ticket to go to Fussen to visit the Neuschwanstein castle the next day. Steve and I had promised each other that we would both drink a Steing (1 litre) of beer tonight to celebrate our arrival in Munich and Germany. 1 Stein was 4.65 or 4.85 euros or something like that; Don't blame me, blame the alcohol ^_^. The only thing I remember was that the bar had run out of the large Stein glasses and had to compromise by giving us two pints of beer instead. Seeing that each pint is 500 mL, it was perfectly find with us.
One of the girls from our room came down as well to join us. She was talking sooooooo much, that it started getting annoying. As evening started to set in, she seemed to get more drunk and I even got the feeling that she was coming on to me or something EWWWWW. I played it safe by keeping my distance as the party started. The festivities continued on that night with some music, games and musical chairs. The winner got some special drink on the house. It was fun to watch these half drunk people play and almost stumbling off the short stools. Our girl roommate participated and won at the end. She seemed quite rowdy afterwards and ran off talking to some other people. I watched a few people play some pool. There was an opportunity for us to play but the table was not the official size. Steve, I felt, would have really wanted to play it just to get some joy out of beating someone.
Though we could have stayed up really late to play and drink, we thought it would be better to get some shut eye so that we could enjoy our trip tomorrow. The room was warm and had nothing to complain about. This hostel was indeed one of the best ones.
Labels: eurotrip
Eurotrip Day 19 - Pigeon Attack and Cheap Gondola ride
The day starts early, mainly because it was kind of cold in the hostel and the other two girls in the room were moving about. No, they weren't that good looking, but one of them starting talking to Steve while we were packing our things back into our backpacks. The girls spoke spanish, wow, what a world. We introduced ourselves and so did they.
Within 30 minutes, we had vacated the room and placed our bags in the main lobby storage, which was basically under the huge dresser. We weren't planning on staying another day in Venice as we were already strapped for time and had already reserved a night train to Munich which passed through Austria. This did cause a problem since we didn't have Austria as one of the countries we were crossing on our Eurail pass. This meant that we had to pay a little extra (around 50 euros) to pass through. An unexptected cost, but better than making a huge loop through switzerland again.
Before we left, the hostel receptionist handed us some breakfast vouchers for the small little cafe just outside the main door. This was a nice freebie despite the fact that Venice had the most expensive Hostel. Our break fast consisted of a coffee and our selection of a pastry, which turned out to be really good. Though coffee is not my thing, it was still something good enough to start the day.
The daytime is so different in Venice. There is more noise and people running around the street and selling things. No matter where you are, there are small stores setup right in the middle of the street, mostly selling fresh fruit and vegetables. The fish market was also full of people and stores. Food definitely wasn't cheap here in Venice. Fruit especially was expensive compared to the seafood. Coconuts were also very popular amongst the vendors. Vendors would place sliced pieces of coconut on a fountain like shelf to keep the coconuts moist and fresh.
I had never actually tried one of these before. We had a lot of opportunities in Rome, Pisa and Florence to have them but it didn't appeal to us then. They weren't much, 1 euro for 2 pieces. We both took a piece and took a bite. Dissapointing. Then again, I was expecting to taste something like coconut milk. Also, the more I ate, the more my mouth and throat itched. Not that this reaction is unique to coconuts, some fruits do that to me as well. Steve wasn't too pleased as well. I remember him saying that it wasn't what he was hoping for.
Knowing that we would travel a lot during the day, we purchased a day pass for the public boat transit for 11 Euros, which is still quite expensive. Our first destination was St. Mark's Square. A place I hadn't really heard of nor really knew. In fact, I let Steve do the main planning for Venice. While sitting on the boat, we passed by a lot of beautiful churches. I think the fact that they are right beside the water also enhances the beauty of the churches.
The river(s) in Venice are connected to a much larger body of water the resembled the lake in Zurich. It was not surprising the see regular motor boats on the water, but to see a small man powered gondola on the wavy waters was kind of scary. You can literally see the boat moving up and down, left and right because of the waves. The gondola did not seem the least bit safe. What if it had flipped? It would be hard to get that to any shore.
As we passed by St Mark's Square, we could see the large number of people walking around the area. I also noticed a lot of birds hanging around the area, I thought they were just there for a bit and would leave. The pigeons in Canada like to move around and never really stay in one area for a long time. Here? Total opposite.
Once we had docked at the boat station, I could sense some excitement building in Steve, though I didn't know why. In fact, I had no idea why this area was so popular until later. We did take some pictures at a familiar and famous location around the St. Mark's Square region. It was like a back alley, but it was more like a back river. Small boats would navigate through this narrow alley. Getting a picture here with just ourselves was luck as there were so many tourists at this one spot.
The most evil thought crossed my mind as we walked to the open area on the left of St. Marks Square. What would I have done? I would have brought Christine here blind folded and just throw some of the corn seeds at here. But then, that would be so mean and she would probably break up with me and kill me. So the thought of it was good enough.
Anyway, the ground was overpopulated with pigeons. From the boat, it didn't seem like a lot, but I was totally wrong. There was probably 10 times more than i was expecting. One of the first things I saw was around 50-80 pigeons flying into and possible attacking 2 young girls. They screamed to the top of their lungs with their heads down. That's right, heads down. probably to prevent any bird poo from going into the mouth or even eyes. It was actually a scary site. The feeling of pecking on your skin is similar to getting pinched really quickly.
The smile on Steve's face was really noticeable now. He asked me if I wanted to try and I shook my head. What was Steve thinking? He walked over to the man sitting down in front of what looked like a small ice cream cart. He bought a small bag of corn seeds and came back. Man, he was brave. Steve asked me to take pictures and a video as much as possible. Just watching him was scary. Steve hadn't even opened the bag of seeds and the pigeons already knew that he had something. The pigeons were drawn to him. Some of them flying ontop of his shoulders or head just waiting.
I could hear the hesitation in Steve's voice as we told me to get ready. He quickly opened the bag and poured some out onto his left hand . At the instant, the pigeons went nuts. They all flew on top of him and perched all over his arm. The wings flapped in his face and the birds landed and stood on his head. It was a funny and scary sight. He poured out a bit more onto his hand a went on a little longer. This time, moving his arms around and spreading them out. I took a bunch of pictures and videos.
When Steve finished, he through the remainig seeds in his hand into the air and walked over to me. The bag was still half full. He suggested that I tried. I shook my head again and saying never. But beign the good friend Steve is, he convinced me to go. I was so scared. Never had I had so many bird fly at me. Sure it is fun to see it on other people and filiming, it was totally different if you were the victim. The only situation that prepared me for this was when our family was taking care of 3 chickens at home. They liked to peck food off of our hands.
I concealed the bag of seeds in my arms and walked towards the crowd of pigeons. With my legs still shaking and my heart rate increasing, I quickly revealed the bag without opening it. 2-3 birds flew on top of me. Steve screamed "Pour it in your hand fast". I did as he did, and at that moment, my fear of the birds left. The excitement of them just flying on my was overwhelming. All I could do was scream and laugh at the same time. I could feel the birds landing on my arms and adding more and more weight on them. At one time, I probably had around 5-7 birds on each arm. Their feet scratched my arm so much. All this time, Steve was filming me and it was awesome. By the end, I my hands were empty, my arm was slightly red from the scratches and I had stepped on the wing of a pigeon. I gotta say that this was one of the funnest things we did.
Even after me, there were still seeds in the bag. Steve went a second time so that I could take some more pictures. During this 10-15 minutes, we probably took soo many pictures and videos. It will be fun to look over the videos again one day. We had a lot of fun, but the seeds ran out before we could get the most out of the situation. But no matter what, it was always fun to see the birds attacking an unexpecting tourist.
We were about to step into the bascillica until we were stopped by the greeters at the front entrance. I thought they wanted us to remove all weapons (AKA our swiss knives), but I was wrong. We weren't allowed to have our bags or wastebags inside. The greeter pointed us to a small busy alley telling us that we had to drop off our stuff there before we could come back. It seemed weird and I was very suspicious at first. I really didn't want anything to get stolen. After 10 minutes or so, we finally stepped into the St. Mark's Basilica. It was very nice and also very high. Instead of being able to walk freely around the church, there was a designated path outlined by posts and ropes. You are not permitted to walk outside of the boundaries. It felt weird to be so restricted and not being able to stand still to take good and steady pictures.
Turns out that you could access other special places in the church, but for a fee of course. Did Steve and I go? No, not this time. There didn't seem to be much interesting that was worth our time and money. The style of art were mainly mosaics. The front of the altar was really nice though. Aside from the nice altar, there were many statues of saints close by being held up by several thin pillars. Steve instantly pointed out St Paul and St Peter. How did he know? From Steve's words "oh, St Peter is the one that is bald and St. Paul is the one with the sword." Though it makes sense in many cases, I challenged him on this topic for the next 5 minutes before we reached the chapel.
There were about 8 pews setup for people to sit or kneel at. At the front was a statue of Jesus and two tables of candles. I bought a candle as they were only 3 euros, something I could definitely afford. Steve was really nice to stay with me while I prayed for around 10 minutes. We left in silence. But knowing the both of us, silence would have broken the instant we stepped back outside.
Prior to entering the church, the St Mark's Tower had a huge line up in front of it. By the time we came out, the line had shrunk by a lot. Did I really have a choice to climb the tower? of course I did, but I wouldn't have given up the opportunity. But turns out, there was no climbing involved because an elevator was used. Steve and I managed to line up behind a family or small class of Jewish people. Weird I would say to see a Jewish person in a Catholic area, not that I have anything against them. These were the type of Jewish people that had long side burns. If their side burns got too long, they curled them and rapped them around their ear. On top of that, they usually wore a full hat or the
kippah.
As we reached the entrance of the tower, an employee at the tower requested that we check-in our backpacks and jackets. We got our number tags and then proceeded to the ticket purchase counter. Yup, great being a student. Even a 2 euro discount is very much appreciated. We didn't wait long until we got into the elevator and in less than 1 minute we were at the top. That's right, it wasn't that tall, but it was the tallest point in Venice. To be perfectly honest, Venice overall wouldn't be interesting without the river, churches and boats. When viewed from the tower, Venice looks like a large orange yellow carpet. Most of the houses (almost always an orange yellow colour) were built very very close to each other and they all looked very similar to each other. Despite the initial disappointment, with every minute I stared, the more I enjoyed the scenery.
After we descended back to the ground level and grabbed our bags, we went into an exploring mode again. What this actually means is that we don't have anything in particular we want to see, but just enjoy the scenary, the people and the air. But before we had really started looking around, Steve started up a very long conversation about confession, Stealing and P2P and downloading music. The whole debate/conversation/argument started when Steve wanted to learn more about confession asking what I had previously confessed. It was so interesting and fun to discuss this topic that we talked about it for probably 1 hour while walking around St. Marks Square and looking into the different shops. It was essentially a debate between Steve telling me that I should go to confession because I was stealing music. Sure I was downloading music and software in general, but for some reason, I didn't want to give into saying that i was stealing everything. I guess in a way it is stealing. You would be amazed at this converstation, it was like a married couple arguing while walking down the street. Steve would do his "oh you don't listen to me. You are going to hell for stealing. How come you don't confess it? Why do you think it isn't a sin? " and the list goes on. But was really an awesome conversation because I learned more about Steve, which was the most important part for me.
While arguing and debating, we passed by a lot of souvenir shops that we didn't even go in. I guess we were so focused on the conversation at the time that we kind of lost track of what we were looking at. But as the topic of sin and stealing faded away, we continued our way in the innder streets passing buy some fresh produce vendors, restaurants and churches. Yup, I went to many many churches already but I can never get tired of them. I even recall someone setting up a table in front of a church asking us to sign up for something that I don't remember. They spoke very good English, but still, there was no reason for me to sign anything. Hmmm actually, i think I did write some fake information down :). Probably wrote Steve's name but not his personal information.
While passing one fresh produce vendor, I noticed a weird fruit that looked like a canteloupe. Steve also stopped to take a look at some of the grapes or something. I have never seen this fruit before. The skin had the colour of a canteloup, but it had lines from the top to bottom like a basketball. The size was a little smaller than a north american canteloupe. My curiousity of this fruit made me pick it up to try to squeeze it. After 3 seconds or so in my hand, someone behind the shelves walked up and said something while pointing at my and gesturing me to put the fruit down. Obviously I didn't understand him, but Steve walked by to tell me after that I wasn't supposed to touch the food. Wow, I had not known this at all. In Canada, you could pick up the food if you want to see how it is. Here in Italy, the vendors are the only ones allowed to touch and also put in the bags. You only touch it after you have paid for it. Weird.
Our stomachs were starting to get empty by this time. We definitely needed food soon. Steve suggested that we start walking around looking for something to eat. But, we were so unsuccessful in finding anything. We passed by a lot of expensive restaurants and gelato shops. That didn't really help though. We did however pass by a sandwich shop, but for the money and value, it didn't seem like it was worth it. Steve was almost ready to buy one too. I hope Steve wasn't angry at me for not eating there. We continued to walk aimlessly in whatever direction the roads led us. Up and down stairs and across bridges we went until we ended up in a very Empty street that had 1 pizza restaurant. knowing us, we just default to pizza. We sat down and ordered. I can't remember what I orderd this time, but it was good and dthat was all that mattered to me.
We were eating out tin the open on a very sunny day. The parasoule was good enough to cover both of us so we wouldn't get sunburn. We tried to eat quickly so we wouldn't waste too much time. But there was something coming up that would eventually waste a lot of time. When we asked for the bill, I put in my share of the total but Steve didn't have enough cash on him. I didn't have any more cash on me as well so Steve was a little screwed. Steve asked if he could use his credit card to pay, but be wasn't allowed because his meal didn't wasn't about 12 euros. So what did Steve have to do? He had to leave me as hostage at the restaurant and look for some money. It was quite embarrasing :) I sat there at our table with the Rick Steve's book out reading the articles of Venice.
I waited for about 30 minutes before Steve came back. I felt really bad for Steve because he couldn't find an ATM that was close by. He went all around the area looking for it, and I still don't remember his story of going around St Marks Square again. I wasn't angry at Steve, it was just another funny thing to remember. No hard feelings and we even laughed about it.
From here on, we walked back to St. Mark's Square to take the boat aimlessly again, getting off where we wanted to. We would get off if we saw something intersting namely churches or a famous landmark. There was one particular church that we wanted to go to but had no idea how to get across the river. There weren't any boat stations near by for us to get off. Steve did however eventually find out that we had to take a cheap gondola ride to get across. It was 2 euros a person or something like that. We walked to the little docks waiting for someone to tell us to get onto the gondola. Just before we stepped in, we put our money into one of the gondola operator's hand. The gondola was stripped of all its nice decorations and was left with a bare boat internal but with a gondola shell.
The ride was weird at first and kind of scary. The gondola was quite shaky and moved up and down a lot because of the motor boats passing by. We took the opportunity to take some shots again of course while we were moving about on th water. Not 5 minutes had passed and we had already arrived at the other side of the river and exited the boat.
Steve and I walked quickly towards the church and up the stairs to get in. It wasn't particularily big and the center was a restricted area. We could, however, walk around the outer circle of the church and look at each of the small chapels. At the back of the church was a nice chapel that had 2 pews set up on two sides (a total of 4 pews). Told Steve that I would take some more time to pray so that he woudln't have to wait for me before leaving the church. It was nice and calm in there. The altar was very well decorated and the sun on the altar placed a divine atmosphere.
The sky was still very bright when I left. Well it should be, it was still very early in the afternoon. We didn't want to waste our time so we rushed back to the gondolas and crossed the river again so we could head towards the public boat transit. Our next destination? no where in particular. We got off several times to explore the old alley ways. As this was our final day in Italy, we didn't want to break the tradition of 1 Gelato per day. Though they Gelato wasn't as good as it was in Rome, we were very satisfied.
Our journey continued on the boats. This time, we sat on the boat watching the buildings and people pass by. Stupid us, after some time, we discovered that we had gone too far and were kind of lost. We got off the boat and tried to find the correct boat to take us back. We waited aroudn 10 minutes before anothe boat came by. Instead of trying to get lost again, we decided that we should get off the boat at the station taht was close to our hostel. This way, we could explore our area and see the seafood market again.
By mid to late afternoon, we didn't look at the Rick Steve's travel guide book anymore. We walked from street to street, from lots of people to almost no people. Eventually, it was only the two of us on an empty street beside the water. We walked and we talked and absorbed the nice weather. We eventually reached a huge open water area that had a really nice view of the sun in the background. I got a picture of Steve and I sitting together with our legs hanging over the ledge, looking out into the water.
Another 15 minutes past until we got got up and headed towards the main streets. We walked slowly, talking about Roger and how he would have like it here. Its weird, being with Roger for 2.5 weeks seemed like a very long time and it was different without him around. Then again, we did get to do some more funny shots of us being stupid.
it was still pretty early in the evening when we got back, so we took another boat to head east towards the mainland (only 10 minutes away on boat). The mainland was really different from venice. For the first time, I saw cars and trucks as well as a regular grocery store. We walked through the store looking for some food that we might have been interested in eating or maybe even some drinks for the long ride tonight. It was a waste of time as the only thing interesting was a whole chicken, and with fond memories of savagely eating a whole chicken not too long ago, this was definitely not my top choice. But no problem, I don't think Steve wanted to eat grocery food anyway.
With nothing left to see on the mainland, we decided to head back to the hostel and just look for soem food around there. Steve suggested that we try their local seafood, which was expensive but well worth the money. The fish served at the restaurants are bought fresh daily from the market. Of course this isn't as fresh as in Chinese/Cantonese cuisine where they kill the live fish on the spot, it was still something rare to see in Europe.
Competition is fierce here in Venice. Many restaurants served very similar foods all around the same price. Some of course were fancier with a nicer indoor atmosphere, but we weren't really willing to pay for that. Anyway, we could get nice and fancy restaurants here in Canada. The waiters at the restaurants would try to lure you into their restaurant. Well not lure, but stand at the entrance and tell you how good their food is and and immediately ask you how many people to seat. We would just ignore them until we made our decision. We walked around the busy district again looking for a relatively cheap restaurant that seemed to have a good reputation. Reputation at this point was based on the amount of customers currently sitting down eating. Cheap was anything under 15 euros for me, and Steve didn't really care.
We eventually sat down at a restaurant that was 2 minutes walk from our hostel. I ordered the monk fish while Steve ordered the seafood platter (which also had some monkfish). Why the monkfish? I saw someone else eating it beside us and it looked really juicy and good. there wasn't a lot of food onthe plate mind you, but it was really good. The fish is served without the skin and some small sides. The meat of the fish was parted to make it easy to cut off with a knife. Because the portion wasn't huge, I took my time to finish it. Steve was worried at the end of the meal that I didn't have enough food and offeref me some of his. He was right but i still refused.
After dinner, we grabbed our backpacks from teh hostel and took the boat back to the train station. There we waited for the train to arrive while finding out what to do in Munich when we arrived in the morning.
Last time when Roger was with us, we booked a 3 person bedroom on the train. This time, we booked a 6 person couchette because we were trying to save on some money. The beds are much closer together and weren't as comfortable. But turns out, after the train started, the only people in the room was Steve and me. We had the larger troom all to ourselves, bu I guess the conductor and ticket checker didn't like that. He came by to see the other 4 beds retracted and yelled at us for taking up more room than hat we paid for. Hey, if no one else is coming, don't waste the space !! We got to bed and slept not long after.
Labels: eurotrip
Eurotrip Day 18 - Steve Tang Dominican Republican Gigolo (Leaning Tower of Pisa), Florence and where the heck are the cars?
It was weird waking up so early again, especially without Roger around. Steve was still the same, taking his sweet ass time to get out of bed and making the funniest wake up noises. We woke up really really really early to start our very very busy day. It wasn't supposed to busy. Our original plan was to just take the train to Venice and just hang out there. But after we sent Roger off at the train station yesterday, we decided to make our trip a little more exciting by just going to different places that we originally had not planned.
Within 30 minutes, we were up and ready to leave the hostel. Steve and I rushed to the train station with our heavy packs just to make sure that we wouldn't miss a train. But to be honest, the chances that we would miss a train was slim as we normally got to the station atleast 30 minutes early to verify the platform that we needed to get on.
Our first stop, PISA!! That is right, we were heading in a weird direction back up north. From here on, the Rick Steve's book was of little use. The only reason why we decided to go to Pisa was to see the Leaning Tower. To be honest, I don't know if there was anything else there other than the tower. Hopefully the stop would be worth it. The trips were once again different without Roger around. I did the same, read my book, while Steve do his usual, sleep.
After 3 hours, we arrived at the Station in Pisa. Both of us had to get off really quickly because the train really didn't stop for long until it had to start going again. Steve and I were the weird looking ones as we came off the train. No one else was backpacking here, though I guess there were some tourists around. Anyway, we had no idea where to go to where the tower was. Tourist offices didn't seem to be open so Steve just asked a random person. According to Steve's translation, the tower wasn't far from the station. It was a walkable distance. But I think the thing we didn't consider was that we had to walk with our heavy backpacks. Especially for me, mine was already gaining some weight with some of the gifts that I had bought.
Though Roger wasn't here, I was sort of glad that we didn't have to worry about him complaining about too much walking. To me, even if the Tower tok 25 minutes to teach by walking, I would have gone for it because it was worth the trip. Steve and I talked and took a lot of pictures on the way to tower and before we knew it, we could see the tower on the horizon. Our pace picked up until it we were almost speed walking. I had always seen the leaning tower of Pisa in pictures on never in picture. Thank goodness I came because it was really nice.
The tower itself is of course leaning. The surrounding area was full was souvenir shops all selling the same thing, mini versions of the tower. The first thing that we did was obvious, PHOTOS. We took a lot before we discovered that people were doing funny things with pictures. Steve and I spent the next 20 minutes trying to do some funny poses. The final pose was inspired by the poster advertisement of Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo. We got a lot of laughs from just poses.
One thing I forgot to mention was that the Leaning Tower was not standing alone. Ride beside the tower was a really large church. It was much larger than the tower itself and looked very very nice. I wanted to go in to pray, but there was an entrance fee. No thanks. The price of going into the church was 5 Euros. I guess the city of Pisa knew that people would pay to go on the leaning tower no matter the price. And we were definitely suckers of the city as we dished out 10 euros to climb the tower. Which was much more than any other church or tower we climbed so far on the trip. The rationale behind the higher prices is sensible because only a maximum of 15-20 people can be on the tower at a time. I personally didn't think it would hurt to have 30 people on the tower. Of course, I am not civil engineer.
When you purchase your ticket to go up the Tower, you have to sign up for a time slot and also place your bags in a locker room. Once again, this makes a lot of sense. I couldn't imaging wearing my bag wakling up a leaning tower. I would topple over easier than the tower itself. Also, if everyone had a back pack, that would be equal to adding several more people. The only problem with our ticket was that our time slot was 1.5 hours away. We really didn't want to waste time on our trip, but it was for the best. The wait gave us a lot of time to find yet another place to eat Pizza and sit down and relax.
Lunch was accompanied by some live music. At first, I though the musicians were paid by the restaurant like in pubs and bars in Canada and US. But not really. As they played songs, one of the musicians would occasionally go around the crowd asking for tips or money. Steve was alway a nice guy here and tried to give them money. The funny thing was that steve had not organized the coins that he had so far during the trip and accidently threw in 1 pound, which of course is quite useless in Italy. Though the musicians didn't notice we had some good laughs about it later.
We didn't drop our bags off in the lockers before we went for lunch because we were afraid someone might steal our stuff. We would eventually find out that we couldn't even put our bags into the locker room because our bags were way too big to fit int he tiny lockers, STUPID US! The security guard told us that he would just look over the bags while we were on the tower. Though I still feared the someone would steal it, I couldn't do much about it now.
Steve and I waited at the entrance of the tower until the entire time slot group had gathered up. When the guide gave us the signal to start climbing, I was in for a surprise. Though the tower from the inside doesn't seem very crooked walking on the stairs does throw you off a bit. For a bit, you are leaning in one direction and then the other half you are leaning the other direction. I had to use the wall the entire way up to make sure that i didn't fall over.
The top didn't feel weird at all. Pisa as viewed from the top of the tower is actually quite nice and very traditional. The city/town is surrounded half by mountains that were really beautiful. After a barrage of photos, an old lady introduced herself and pointed out that she was also from Canada. We chatted for a bit before we were forced to leave the tower to allow the next group up. No matter which direction you are going on the stairs, the slant of the tower does make the journey up and down very awkward, as if you were about to fall.
After leaving the tower, we grabbed our bags and started walking towards the train station again. There really wasn't anything to see or do in Pisa other than the Tower and maybe the big church. Most of the people in Pisa were probably in the Tower region as there really isn't anything else to see or do. Thank goodness we didn't stay, and thank goodness for Steve's suggestion to visit Pisa for a few hours rather than a whole day. Our next stop would be Firenze (Florence), another suggestion from Steve.
I never really imagined myself being able to travel to Florence or Pisa for that matter. But after a 3-4 hour ride, we were in a place that I had no clue about. The only thing I had heard about Florence was the nice architecture that they had in the churchs and also other buildings. Our book had nothing about Florence at all, nor did we actually know what to look for. We walked out of the train station totally lost. All we could do was start walking with our backpacks on and just look as we walk.
The main street was lined with a lot of stores open by the locals. Within 10 minutes of walking, we saw a huge structure in front of us. I think this was the
Cathedral. For a city of small houses aand buildings, this was a major highlight. The main problem with the Cathedral was that it was boxed in and surrounded by buildings that were built really close. To take a picture, you would have to walk to the corner of the street and put the camera close to the ground and point the camera up. And guess what? there was a tower at the Cathedral, however, this time, Steve and I didn't go up. There didn't seem to be anything too interesting about this one.
The entrance to the church seemed like the same as every other church we had passed by so far the trip, but this time, ti was different. Security greets you the second that you come in. There were several reasons for this. First, they had to prevent people from brining unwanted weapons or dangerous objects into the church. Second, they had to make sure that you were dressed correctly for the church. Of all the churchs I went to, this was the only one that gave people a plastic like bag. Only people that were wearing tank tops, sleeveless shirts or short shorts. I was very surprised that they did this. The people would agree to wear the white plastic sheet, which makes them stick out like a soar thumb.
Steve did his usual, do a quick browse of everything and helping me take pictures. To my surprise, for such a large Cathedral, there wasn't much to see. Art was definitely not a highlight of the Cathedral. The ceiling was nothing spectacular and the lack of any pews or chairs was unexpected. Usually churches would have atleast a few rows of pews, this time, there weren't any. Only two things really stood out, the stained glass and the altar area, both were very nice but couldn't compare to those in Rome. Even with the lack of art and things to see, there were so many tourists inside. I guess it's because of the large crowds that were inside that I lost sight of Steve after I finished looking around.
Walking from one corner to the next, to the center and then downstairs to the gift shop did not help in finding Steve at all. It was as if he just disappeared. Panic starting building in me. Maybe Steve went outside already. He does that sometimes after he is done looking at churches. I walked out the side door and didn't see Steve waiting anywhere outside. Now thinking that I was the one that actually walked out first, I sat down by the little small fence waiting to see if Steve came out. After around 5 minutes, the security told me to move a bit out of the way as I was sort of sitting in the path where people were walking. Maybe he thought I was a bum.
10 minutes passed and no Steve. Oh crap, I really hoped that we didn't get lost. This is probably the reason why Roger wanted things to be well organized so that we wouldn't lose each other. And the first day after Roger leaves, we lose each other. I walk aroudn the cathedral 2 times trying to find Steve in a street full of people. No luck. For a second time, I entered the Cathedral to double check. This time, the security stopped me at the entrance and searched my bag. He didn't find anything at the top other than some of my dirty clothing =).
A second scour of the inside was a failure. So instead of wasting my time on the inside again, I walked back outside and waited at the tower. About 10 minutes later, I saw Steve. What a guy, he was walking around the area but I can't blame him for exploring. We had our laughs about trying to find each other.
Florence really isn't a super busy city. There aren't as many things to see. But my guess is that the good things require a significant amount of travelling time to get to. Steve and I only had about 3 hours in the city and so didn't have much time to enjoy much. We walked by a few old museums that were closed and also a small church. Steve probably had enough of churches already and probably didn't find this one too interesting. There was a lot of scaffolding on the outside, but to me, it was still a place for me to visit regardless of how it looked. A priest was sitting close to the door when you walk in. The church was full of scaffolding and not much was to be seen even on the inside.
I gave a hello gesture to the priest and started walking around and then stopped for a prayer. As I was leaving, the priest signalled me to approach him. As I walked up, he opened his left hand to reveal a handful of coins of donation. At this point, I couldn't refuse even a small donation. I gave him 1 Euro (yes I am cheap). The priest asked me if I was japanese. Funny, I never ever thought that I looked like a Japanese person at all.
Most of Florence for Steve and I was more of a talking experience. As we walked we talked and talked. Thinking back to things at Ottawa and about Roger. It was surely different without Roger around. Our walking and talking would eventually bring us to a small market place that sold mainly clothing and other apparel. Most of it didn't even seem to be Italian style. You could see jeans for the Gangstas, scarves, gloves, hats, shoes, everything but Italian clothing. Even more funny was that there would be atleast 3-4 stores that sold identical merchandise, talk about competitive market.
By the time we figured that there was nothing else we could see, it was almost time to go back to the train. Our stomachs were empty. We figured that if we waited until we went to Venice to eat, it would be too late to eat dinner. There really wasn't much food around the train station. Sure, there were some fast food places inside of the station itself, but that would have costed more than we had budgetted. We eventually settled for mediocre Shawarma. Yes, we had middle eastern food for dinner. It was quite sad =).
Before we knew it, we were on the train again. We could see the sunset from the train. By the time we had reached Venice, it was all gone, leaving a dark blue and black sky, but we could still see things quite clearly. It was cold in Venice at night.
It wasn't until today that I had actually been in a city/town that is full of water. I didn't see a single road for cars. i didn't see cars or land vehicles for that matter. All I saw was water and boats. I was starting to think, how do people get around town in Venice? They surely have a transportation system like a bus, taxi or car right? Yes and no. No they dont have cars. Yes, they do have busses. But the busses are not your regular busses, they are boats instead. Yes that is right, a bus in Venice is just a boat.
Steve seemed to know all about this already and wasn't too surprised. Thank goodness that he spoke Spanish because I would have had no idea how to ask for a single use ticket to use to get around town. Anyway, we waited for our "bus" on a small dock that kept rocking up and down. After I had got on the bus/boat, I started thinking how nice and not nice Venice could be. Its nice in the fact that you travel by boat, you get the nice breeze from the water. But at the same time, I wouldn't want to be rushed to any emergency room on a boat. As we went from stop to stop, we passed by some Gondolas and a police boat. The Gondolas are as I had expected from many movies or pictures. The only thing different was that they weren't moving as slowly as they were in movies, and the person controlling the boat was not necessarily teh guys that sings.
Our stop was at in the center of the lively part of town. By the time we had arrived, it was around 9-10 pm already. There were lights on either side of the rivers and people were sittingdown, sipping wine and chatting away. One look at the price and menu of the Gelato shop showed just how expensive Venice was. Atleast in this area. Our first goal was to drop off our things at the hostel. But wait a minute, where was the hostel? We only had simple direction from the internet and none of us really understood how the streets were layed out.
We found ourselves walking through small and narrow areas which we thought wasn't right. But in fact, narrow streets are very normal in Venice due to the lack of space. We found ourselves at a t-section after walking 5 minutes. On the left, 1 restaurant was open and the rest was like a dark and shay alley. The right side was empty and dark, but you could see th water. According to our map to the hostel, the hostel was on the left of the t-section. We didn't see any sign nor was there any indication that there was a hostel around this area. We backtracked a bit and started looking on the other smaller streets to see if there was any sign about a hostel. Nothing. I was starting t get worried again. Never had we not been able to find a hostel before. If anything, the hostel should be very welcoming.
We stopped at a few places to ask about the hostel and they all said to go back to the T-section looking for an old type of bank like door. We didn't see anything. Eventually, we saw 2 people walk upt to this door that was at the T-section and open it. We walked up closer tothe door. We found our hostel. The sign was super tiney and it was not veryt visible. The door and the window to look inside was absolutely dark. It seemed like an abandoned house.
We followed the 2 people in and was greeted by the receptionist that walked out of the door on the second floor. Wow, talk about creepy service. Steve helped me pay for the hostel while I dropped our stuff off at the front entrance. The room was not prepared for use yet. Wow, for 32 Euros a night, how could they not have prepared it already?
Seeing that the night was not over yet, we did some exploration of Venice. With less than 24 hours to sight see, we had to take every opportunity to look around. Steve and I walkeda round the central area again taking in the fresh air and looking at the nice night lights of Venice. All the stores on the small streets were closed. The main streets were bright with the signs and lights from restaurants. We passed by sevearl open areas close to the river that were empty by now. But during the day, these places are full of people selling their seafood and produce.
We spent most of the night wandering around in the empty small streets and standing on a bridge watching gondolas and busses pass by. It was a very relaxing way to ending the night. Had I only wished that we would be able to see the Venice at night time a few more times.
I finished reading "Angels and Demons" before I washed up and went to bed. There were to other girls living in our room. Steve kept wondering if they were good looking or not. I think one of them was =). Better not get caught staring while they are sleeping.
Labels: eurotrip
Eurotrip Day 17 - Catacombs di Callisto and Why are we at the Vatican again?
Our final full day in Rome was upon us. Roger's last day in Europe before he returned home to start work at RIM. Waking up to the cold room was no longer a surprise. Somehow, I am the only one that feels cold when I sleep. Steve and Roger seem to never really use their blankets.
Today's schedule was really up in the air. The only thing that we had planned was to visit the Catacombs di Callisto. We had read about the place in the Rick Steve's book but we had no idea where it was. The tourist map that the hostel gave us did not have this location on the map at all. In fact, after a lot of searching, we found out that the catacombs were outside of the city itself and outside of the map. We would need to take the subway to a certain station on the south side and then take a bus. For most of the trip until now, we had not taken a single bus just for travelling around, with exception to the tour bus in London that is.
The bus ride there was quite confusing and a little scary as we really had no idea where we were. If we became lost, we would not know how to get back. All we could do was trust that there were other toursists on the bus going to the same place or the bus driver actually telling us to get off. The heat was building up and going crazy. I could literally feel the sweat just developing on my skin. So we sat there, waiting, waiting, looking, waiting. We would pass buy what seemed to be Rome's country side with houses covered in vines and walls looking really old. We would finally signal to get off when we noticed several signs for the catacombs.
Normally, a bus would drop you off onto a side walk. Well, not this time. The bus had dropped us off on the side of a the street just across from the entrance to the catacombs area. I guess you can't blame them because there wasn't any sidewalk anywhere at all. If anything, several other tour busses had actually parked on the side road, preventing the bus from dropping us off in a safer zone. But anyway, back to the catacombs. When you first walk in, you really don't think about the creepy and dark atmosphere that you would expect. What we first saw from the main entrance was a large garden and field of grass that looked pretty well kept. We had not actually entered the underground catacombs yet. Instead, we were standing right on top of it, but we didnt actually know that until later.
We went to purchase our tickets (student price w00t) and then found out that we couldn't walk in the catacombs ourselves. One could only enter the catacombs with a designated guide that is provided by the place. Not only that, each guide would only speak a specific language like English, Italian, Spanish, French, etc. So we had to wait for the English guide to come and start the tour. Luckily the guided tour was free, because I would have been outraged if it were otherwise. At first, I did find it weird that our guide was a priest, but after he told the English group the history of the catacombs, it made sense. My initial expectation of a catacombs was a dark and demonic place where zombies lived or something, which I got from playing too many video games. It turns out that this specific catacombs was a burial site for catholics during the persecutions back in teh first few centuries A.D.
Our guide would accidently switch his speaking language to Italian once in a while. He would give slight laugh and chuckle and then continue on. He told us the reason for a guided tour and not a self tour was to make it safer for the tourists. The catacombs are so large and so maze like that any person could get lost in it. The walking space between the walls was very small, maybe a maximum of 2.5 feet. We would see several single body graves, which have all been emptied out to prevent people from stealing and disturbing the bodies. Once in a while, we would see a really large grave hole. These were made for an entire family to rest in, which seems like a nice thing to do.
Because the Catholics were persecuted, they hid in places like the catacombs and had a lot of artwork painted or carved into the stone walls. Although the quality of the art is nothing compared to the ones from famous artists, it is still interesting to see how the artists faired in such horrible conditions. Saint Cecilia's original burial place was also in these catacombs I believe as well as some of the early Popes before they were buried in the Crypts of St. Peter's bascillica. Several areas of the catacombs were blocked off by a glass or fiber glass wall to trap some moisture in the room to preserve the Frescos and small items like candle cups and pots.
Catholics had a hard time getting resources during the times of persecution, so it was not surprising for them to recycle old roman stone slabs and reuse them to log down some information or prayers. Our guide showed one specific stone slab that had been taken off from an old Roman building. On one side was the well written Roman text while the otherside seemed to be a more crude carving of words. Before we knew it, we were outside of the catacombs. The tour was not short but wasn't too long. And I wasn't permitted to take any photos, so everything is just a memory to me. We picked up a few things from the gift shop before we left to take the bus back to the city. Of course this time, we had no problem getting back. Our only concern was food. And guess what we had? PIZZA again MMMMMM....
It was around 1pm when we had returned to the city and we really had nothing else to do. We had basiclaly visited all the highlights except for one place, the Vatican. Yes true, we had already visited the vatican yesterday, but yesterday, everything was rushed and we didn't get to see everything. For one, we didn't get to climb St. Peter's bascillica and I haven't attended mass in the Vatican yet. So after lunch, we took the subway to the Vatican and run towards the tower entrance. For some reason, the line up wasn't that long, which made it better for us. Tickets were cheap 5Euros each. You can even take the elevator if you want to. But knowing how cheap we were, there was no way we would throw away the opportunity to do a marathon up the tower.
The first feeling that came to me as we ran up the tower was St. Paul's Cathedral. The endless stairs up was crazy. We would yell and scream everytime we went up several stairs just to express how tired we were and how much more we could see ahead of us. I personally think that St. Peter's Bascillica is taller that St. Pauls cathedral. You would get to the end of a set of stair only to find another set of stairs that had an even narrower space for climbing. It would get so narrow at the very it that atleast one of my shoulders would have to touch a wall or post in order to keep moving. The climb, though crazy, was well worth it. The view was awesome. You could see a lot of the buildings inside to of the Vatican walls and also the gardens that were professionally done to show the symbol of the pope. We stayed at the top for quite some time just enjoying the breeze and taking photos.
Before we went all the way back down, we stopped at the gift shop halfway down the stairs to pick up some postcards and stamps to send to people. For those of you who don't know, the Vatican has its own postal service and system. This means that you don't purchase stamps for the Roman postal service but you pay for the Vatican stamps and service. And depending on where you purchase the postcard, you have to pay more or less for the stamp.
With still a lot of time to spare until attending mass at 5pm, Steve and Roger suggested that it was free time to allow ourselves to do whatever we wanted to and just make sure that we meet up again for mass. I went around trying to take the difficult shots, which were still very difficult to take because I had no tripod. As I waslked around the Bascillica, I noticed a certain section totall blocked off with a small opening that seemed to be guarded by a person in uniform (no not the swiss guard). Anyway, it turns out the had blocked out that section for confessions. Having not gone to confession in more than 1.5 years and thinking that I would have very little chance to have another confession in the Vatican in the short term I took the opporunity. At first, I was very excited, and until I was just a few people away from the front of the line I didn't feel nervous. Thinking about your sins is very difficult especially if you find it hard to say. I was still very embarrased when I had to confess my sins, but better out than in I guess.
Shortly after confession and performing my penance, I walked out trying to look for Roger and Steve. Steve was behind the walls waiting for me to finish confession. Then a few moments later, I noticed Roger coming out. I guess he went to confession too, that put a smile on my face. Mass was about to commence in the chapel at the back of the church. There were a lot of people. Mass was performed in Italian the whole time. Steve would have an idea of what they were saying while I just sat there watching and following everyone else not really knowing what to say.
The end of the mass seemed to be a good mark to an end to our visit to the Vatican. It was great and I would want to stay there until they kicked me out, however, we had to hurry as Roger was going to leave soon. Sigh. To save us time, we took the subway back to the hostel and quickly looked for a place to eat. We hadn't actually had a fancy meal other than in Switzerland, but to say farewell to Roger. For Roger, a fancy meal was the least we could do. We walked across several restaurants around the Termini station checking out each menu. We really had no idea what to expect and what was reasonable for this type of meal. In the end, we just picked a restaurant out of desperation since we were taking forever to just pick one. The menu was ok, but I honestly think there was more selection in wines than actual food.
Steve asked for a wine recommendation, but that didn't help. The waiter just asked us "What type do you like?". I thought to myself "that is why we are asking you, because we don't know what we like". Wine was quite expensive. We did get an entire bottle of wine for 14 euros I believe. I can't be exact but it was around there. The dinner was very relaxing and very lively as we just kept talking and talking. Roger kept telling us that we would have more fun after he was gone, but I honestly don't believe that. Roger added something to the trip that no one else could do. It was definitely memorable, too bad we won't have opportunities come to us that easily anymore.
I drank 2 glasses of wine. Roger had arond 2-3 glasses and Steve drank the rest. All I could say was that I hoped that Steve wouldn't go crazy on the drinking for the rest of the trip, which would be difficult knowing that we were hitting Germany. Steve basically drank more than half the wine bottle, but he was still alright. We still had a lot of time before Roger had to head for the train station so we took our time to talk and pay the bill. By the time we left the restaurant, the sky was starting to get very dark.
Roger quickly packed his stuff and checked out. Farewells were never fun even if you know that you will see the person again in a few weeks. It is just that we had been travelling together for some time, you really miss the change. But I must say, when Roger first came on the trip, he didn't seem very excited about it. As he said, it seemed more like a chore rather than relaxing. Fortunately, at the end, he seemed to have developed the smile that could only be shown if you had a good trip.
Since the airport was way outside of the city, Roger had to take the train to the airport the night before. There were no busses or early trains that went there in time to let him catch his flight so he left early. With Roger gone, I was left with Steve. It was going to be a different trip from now on, but I still look forward to it. We have lots to see, and definitely not enough time to do it in.
Labels: eurotrip
