Mr. National’s Travel Blog

Ok, so I haven’t updated this in a while, and someone asked how my pool game went, so I figured I’d do an update of the last week and a half…

I did play pool against Theresa, but thankfully, after having to reschedule it for a couple days later, the competativeness wore off and we were able to have a nice fun game instead of me getting into the super competative mode. I was able to do fine with my B game with each of us winning a couple games. Thankfully, no feelings of emasculation followed.

Then on the weekend I decided to take a quick jaunt down to the Triburg which is situated in the middle of the Black Forest. For the most part, the only thing Triburg is really known for is having Germany’s highest waterfalls. I’ve always wanted to check out that Black Forest and Triburg ended up being a nice starting point.

I arrive around 7:00am on Saturday, which in the middle of October, isn’t really a very good idea. It must have been like 20 degrees outside. Even the glass on the phone booths were iced over. I walked around for a while hoping to find a place where I could warm up, but nothing was open, so I figured if I was going to freeze my ass off, I might as well do it hiking around the Black Forest. I didn’t realize that I’d have to do a 4km hike through the town just to get to the entrance. The good part was that since it was so early, there was no cashier there, so I got in free. Plus no one else was there, so I got a good 3 and a half hours of hiking in before I saw another person.

After that I headed for Triburg’s Black Forest museum and checked out all their cookoo clocks. Before heading out I stopped by a cafe and had some Black Forest cake. Apparently it was the oldest cafe in Triburg, and was owned by the son of the apprentice to the creator of the Black Forest cake. Plus it was still made with the same recipe as the original in 1915. So after coffee and cake, I headed back to the train station and headed north.

I ended up in Frankfurt for a little while. After wandering around for a while, I found myself at the Goethe House. I’m a fairly big fan of Goethe. I like Faust, and one of my favorite poems is Der Erlkonig. Anyways, I got to spend about an hour there before returning to the train station to head back to Luneburg. Before I did, I checked out the art gallery and got to see one of my favorite paintings, Der Nachtmahr by Fusseli. Keri thinks its very creepy, but I love it. I’ve been spending the last week trying to find a poster of it to hang above my bed. No luck so far.

Other than that, not much else going on. I had planned on spending this weekend in Copenhagen, but I’ve had issues sleeping recently, and don’t really have the energy. I’m thinking I’ll hit up the flea market tomorrow and then head out for Luneburg’s „Club Night“. Lots of bands in lots of bars throughout the city and all admission is free. At least I chose a decent weekend to stay in town…

Also, I’m currently working on uploading my pics, so I’ll be updating the last couple posts with links to them. It takes a while, so I’ll probably finish tomorrow.

Wow.  I was totally stunned.  It’s funny how one word can do that.  I bumped into Theresa waiting for the bus.  Literally.  I guess I bumped into her walking and didn’t notice.  Too busy listening to my music I guess.  Anyways, ever since my Lubeck post, she has told me that she would kick my ass in pool, but we never made plans to play.  So I asked her about it today and she told me anytime.  That she would “emasculate me”.  Wow.  Sorry, I still get chills thinking about it.  What a word.  Annihilate, obliterate, destroy, kick my ass, all of those I would’ve just laughed off, but that one took my breath away.  One word took a simple game of pool with bragging rights off the table and put my manhood directly in question.  Amazing.  In a situation where I wouldn’t think twice, I’m suddenly questioning whether I should practice a little before we play.  I usually play better after having several drinks.  Now I’m wondering if I should start drinking a little earlier, or could I drink a little too much before hand and cross the plane of playing well into the not so well zone.  The worry is heightened by the fact that I’ve never seen her play, and she says she’s pretty good.  Normally it wouldn’t matter, but now this one word has got me worrying….

I guess I’ll know tomorrow.

So after a week of food poisoning, I jumped at the chance of getting out of town this weekend.  Keri and I chose on Hameln, the home to the story of the Pied Piper.  We’ve always liked the story, so we assumed it would be interesting.  For any of you that haven’t heard of the story….

In 1284, Hameln was infested with rats.  A man dressed in pied, claiming to be a rat catcher, offered to get rid of the rats for a price.  After the Pied Piper used his musical pipe to lead the rats into the Weser River, the towns people refused to pay him.  The man returned to the town later, on St. John’s Day, while all the adults were in church, lured all the children of the town into a cave, never to be seen from again.

Anyways, we arrived around 1pm, and headed to the old town. After checking out the Rat-Catcher fountain on the outshirts, we followed the rat trail to several of the major Pied Piper sights.  While there was a lot of Pied Piper sights, the city was a lot less Disney-like with the connection than what I expected.  Unfortunately, it was also a much busier and consumer oriented that I thought as well.  Sights were seperated by lines of well known shops likePeek Cloppenburg, H&M, etc.  I imagined it being like Luneburg, but with Pied Piper stuff.  Didn’t exactly turn out that way.  At least we were able to find a Mexican Restaurant.  Didn’t know how much I’d miss Mexican food until I didn’t have access to any.  After dinner, we headed back to Hannover to catch our train to Luneburg.

Since we had some time before our train, we headed to Miles, a bar just a couple blocks away from the Hauptbahnhof.   After Keri’s 3 glasses of wine, and my 4 Beck’s, we headed back to the station.  Unfortuantely for us, we just missed the train.  Our student passes give us unlimited train access in Lower Saxony, but it only applies to certain trains, and of course I forgot my Eurail pass.  The next train wasn’t until 6:40, the next morning.  So, we weighed the choice of spending 30 Euros each on ICE train tickets back, or just spending that money on drinks and drinking until our free train left.  We opted for the drinking.  We walked for 30 minutes til we found a bar that was open til the early morning.  Because of Keri’s smoking, and Germany’s smoking ban, we sat outside for several hours throwing back drinks.  After freezing our ass off for those several hours, thewaitress finally decided to tell us that she could smoke inside.  Thanks for waiting 3 hours to tell us.  Anyways, we threw back several more and headed for the station around 3:30am.  We ended up finding the train station in about 5 minutes, so we had walked for an unnecessary 25 minutes before.  I found it discouraging that we walked for a half an hour to end up 5 minutes away from the starting location.

Anyways, despite our best efforts, we couldn’t stay awake any longer, so we decided to hop on the next ICE train, and hope we didn’t get caught without a ticket.  We just had to stay awake until 4:30.  At 3:50 we were both asleep on the stairs going up to the platform. At 4:27 I woke up in a panic woke up Keri, and ran up to the platform, just to stand there for 30 minutes before we realized that it was Sunday morning, and the trains we looked at weren’t running on Sundays.  So, despite our best efforts to illegally train hop, we had to wait for our original 6:40 train.

We found a nice quiet place near the back of the station to fall asleep.  I had the problem of occasionally waking up thinking we overslept.  One time I awoke to a guy standing over me asking if I wanted change.  He was obviously drunk.  Actually, I don’t know if it was just that.  I’m growing my beard out, and I was wearing a crappy hat and jacket, so maybe I did look homeless.  Anyways, he noticed my reply was in English and asked me where I was from.  If I was awake, I would have realized I should have said Idaho or something boring like that, but I responded with Las Vegas.  The guy was from California, so apparently that gave him the ok to talk me to death for about 15 minutes.  All I kept hearing was “I run Basketball up in dis villiage, dawg!”  “Ya feel me?”, and shit like that.  I guess when he first got to Germany he didn’t have any money, so he gives change away now to people he thinks need it.  Then he told me that if I knew one name in Hannover, it should be Jumping John Asbury.  Yeah, filed that one away for later use.  I’m sure I’ll need that again.

Anyways, that traumatized me to the point that I couldn’t fall asleep after that.  Just watched the minute hand slowly tick away until 6:40.  We got back to Luneburg ok and spent the rest of the day sleeping.  That’s the one good thing about Sundays in Luneburg, you can rest all day without any guilt, cause nothing is open or going on.

Wow, got out of there in time. 

Hungary: 3 dead, 30 hurt in train crash

 BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — At least three people have died and 30 injured in a collision between two passengers trains near Budapest, Hungary.

Monday’s accident in the town of Monorierdo occurred when a local passenger train ran into the back of a long-distance InterCity train heading to Budapest from the eastern city of Debrecen.

National Rescue Service spokesman Pal Gyorfi says two women and one man died at the scene.

At least eight other passengers were seriously hurt, some with life-threatening injuries.

Gyorfi said rescue workers are still working in the wreckage and it’s possible that more casualties will be found.

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/10/06/hungary.train.crash.ap/index.html

So Friday was Germany’s Reunification Day, and I figured, “What better place to celebrate German reunification than…?” I finally came up with Croatia. I know. I really wanted to go to Berlin with Keri and Julian, but it was my last long weekend before Thankgiving, and that weekend is already reserved for Istanbul. Since I spent over $3000 for my 4 months of unlimited eurail passes, I figured I might as well make it worth it and visit a country I haven’t been to before. Somewhere, kind of far away. I initially wanted to go to Budapest, but Katie and Megan had mentioned wanting to go, so I chose Croatia. I figured it would be nice to see the Adriatic. So I took the Hannover train to Munich and then the night train. I really like the idea of going to sleep, and then waking up at your destination, several countries away. Plus it saves a night of hostel stays. Anyways, apparently I got on the wrong 23:45 train, because instead of waking up in Zagreb, I woke up in Budapest. Then the fun began…

With no hostel reservations, or even knowing a single one to ask for, I tried to find an internet cafe for some information. Unfortunately, in Hungary, they use the forint instead of the euro. I found several ATMs, but all of them were out of order or out of money. I figured it would be better to find an ATM rather than get screwed on exchange commission, so I ventured out of the train station to find one. After walking around for half an hour, and passing about 10 McDonald’s and Burger Kings (which really pissed me off), I finally found one and had the fun of finding my way to back the train station. I found the HostelPlus hostel and made my way through the metros and trams to find it, just off the Danube river. Upon arrival I met Anna, one of the owners. She was extremely nice and helpful. Since I hadn’t planned on visiting, I wasn’t sure what there was to see besides the castle and Parliment. She gave me a lot of suggestions, like Hero’s Square, Vajahunyad Castle, The Citadell, Fisherman’s Bastion, Andrassy utca, and the Chain Bridge.After taking in some of the sites, I headed back around 7:30 after walking for about 6 hours. Exhausted, I laid down to rest and listen to music and ended up falling asleep. 30 minutes later I awoke to “Gary!!!!”, “Gary!!!”, “Wake Up!!!”. Anna was yelling at me to wake up. It was time to go to see Stoned, a Hungarian Rolling Stones tribute band. Despite my best efforts to ignore her and sleep, she was able to get me up. Apparently I made a good enough impression for her to want to take me out to meet her friends, but not a good enough one for her to remember my real name. I guess it could have been Jerry and it just sounded like Gary. Hungarians pronounce their G’s and J’s differently. Who knows.

On Saturday, several of the USAC students chose to go to Lübeck and the Baltic Sea.  The trip was nice.  We got to see an aerial view of Lubeck from St. Peter’s Cathedral and checked out Mary’s Cathedral.  I’m really glad we did.  There was some pretty cool stuff inside .  We had to leave though because they were starting a service.  Outside we got to see the devil’s stone.  I made friends with him.  He was a lot friendlier than I would have expected.Legend says that the devil, thinking the town’s people were building a wine bar, and since he earned so many souls from people who hang out in them, he started to help build the church.  After he found out it was going to be a church, he picked up a boulder and was going to destroy the church with it, but the town’s people negotiated and made a deal with him that if he didn’t destroy the church, they would build a wine bar across the street (which still remains there).Anyways, after that we went to check out the Maripan cafe and museum.  Well, what we thought was the cafe.  After our delicious desserts, we realized that it wasn’t the right cafe and had to search all over again.  We finally found it, checked out the Niederegger museum, and had more desserts in the real cafe.Afterwards we took a sidetrip to the Baltic, which was really cool.  Katie, Megan, Jillian, and Star all went walking around in it.  I, having seen jellyfish in there, decided against it.  Luckily none of them were stung.  Unfortunately, because of the train schedule, we were only able to stay for an hour.

After that we headed back to Luneburg.  Katie was feeling adventurous, so she wanted to try this Spanish restaurant near Am Sande.   After an awesome meal, mine included a steak fillet, we headed over to Happy Billiards to finish off the night.  We played teams and thankfully, I was on my game.  I talked myself up a little, so I wanted to make sure I was good.  Won 5 out of 5 for team play, and ran the table on a game of Cut Throat.  Overall, it was a pretty good night.

This past weekend was pretty busy, so I’m dividing the posts again. Friday was a mandatory daytrip to the Salt Museum and Luneburg’s town hall for a traditional toast with the mayor. It is normally done with red wine, but it was only noon, so they decided to use orange juice instead. A little disappointing. After the mayor’s speech and toast, we took a tour of the town hall. It dates back several centuries with a collection of architectural styles. We were able to see the treasure room, banquet room, among several others and the torture instruments (including a pear of anguish). Very painful looking. They had weights that you had to wear around your neck for punishment too. The length and time was based on the crime. If a woman was flirting with a man who she wasn’t married to, it was 25 kg, 4 hours/day for 3 days. If you denied it, that is when they would bring out the torture instruments because you always tell the truth under intense pain. I wonder why anyone would take torture over wearing a weight around their neck?After that we saw the remaining parts of the town walls and headed to the Salt Museum. We learned all about the history and production of salt. Interesting, huh? Since we learned a lot about Lüneburg that day, I figured I’d use this post to give some info about Lüneburg, since no one that I’ve talked to know anything about it.

– Lüneburg is a city in the German state of Lower Saxony, 30 minutes south east of Hamburg.

– The city of Lüneburg is over 1,000 years old, with references back to 956 A.D.

– Lüneburg was a Hanseatic city, and made rich, due to a monopoly on salt production in the Middle Ages. The salt mines were closed in 1980 due to areas where the land is sinking.

– Lüneburg is now most relevant for its university, Leuphana Universitat. Over 80 countries are represented in the university.

– Lüneburg has the second most bars per mile and per resident in Europe, second to Madrid, Spain.

– Because Lüneburg was never destroyed in any war, due to skilful negotiation and bribing, many of the buildings date back to the 15^th and 16^th centuries. This is also why Lüneburg doesn’t have any of its treasures acquired during it’s history. It gave them all away to avoid attacks.

– Nazi war criminal, and SS commander, Heinrich Himmler committed suicide on Uelzenerstrasse in Lüneburg when faced with capture by the British Army. Like Hitler, he swallowed a cyanide capsule before interrogation. His body is buried in an unknown location in the Lüneburger Heide.

– Some of the famous residents are J.S Bach and Heinrich Heine. Bach attended school and sang in the choir in the Michaelkirche.

There is a lot more. I’ll probably do another post with more info….

Yes, you read that right. Oktoberfest was a little disappointing.

I got off the train at 7am and was immediately surrounded by drunk, lederhosen wearing Germans dragging cases of beer and singing drinking songs. So, to blend in, I grabbed a couple beers and followed the crowd to the Theresienwiese. I was told that no tents were allowed to serve alcohol until the keg was officially tapped, by the mayor, at the Schottenhamel tent, so I made my way there, behind just about 300 people. After 3 hours of drinking and singing, a door opened and everyone shoved. I was immediately crushed under the weight of the people behind us pushing as hard as possible. After 2 more hours of straight shoving, we were told it was full and needed to leave. Apparently, they opened up a different door than the main door, and let everyone in the back get in. Bastards!!! Plus at this point I had run out of beer and was desperate for another one.

After watching the parades, I made my way over to the Lowenbrau tent, just to be turned away because both the tent and biergarten were full. Every tent I tried, full. Even the Haufbrau tent, that serves people who are standing wouldn’t let anyone else in. How can I be at Oktoberfest and not have a fucking beer!!! I finally found a small biergarten run by Paulaner, so I was able to have a couple beers there.

Unfortunately the rest of the day and night was more of the same, so I left Munich disappointed. Unable to see the tapping of the keg, going hours without a beer, unable to get into any tents, and I even left for my train almost sober! Unlike my first visit to Oktoberfest, the opening day was far too crowded. Maybe I’ll visit again the first weekend in October…

It’s been a while since my last post. I’m still without internet in my apartment, and I’ve been out on daytrips for the last couple days with limited time on the internet. It’s been a long weekend, so I decided to break this up into two posts.

I realized that because I’m auditing my first class, I don’t really need to show up for exams on Fridays, so this last Friday I decided to hit up Bremen. After the surprisingly quick train ride through Hamburg, I left the Hauptbahnhof to head towards the reason for my little excursion, the Beck’s Brewery.

I arrived a little early, so I signed up for the English speaking tour, paid my 7 Euro, and waited. For anyone who is worrying about what InBev’s take over of Anheiseur Busch is going to do, I wouldn’t worry. Granted, the AB tour is free, but the Beck’s tour is well worth the 7 Euros. After an in-depth look at the beer making process, a tour of the grounds, and the Beck’s museum, we enjoyed four glasses of Beck’s brew along with fresh baked pretzels to clear our palette before the next rounds.

After the equivalent of a liter of beer, I headed out towards the Altstadt. From what I’d seen up to this point, Bremen was a little undeserving of it’s nickname, which I can’t remember right now, but means “Good things come in small packages.” But, apparently they were referring to Bremen’s old city. Or it could be all the beer that changed my perception… From it’s ornate Rathaus, to Roland (the town’s protector), to the St. Peter’s Cathedral, Bremen’s Altstadt was unexpectedly beautiful and impressive. I also made my way around the square to check out Bremen’s town musicians. Curious, I checked out the story, and although it never mentions Bremen, it’s been credited as the city they were going to. Interesting.

Unfortunately, it was getting late. I didn’t expect the tour to go on for 2+ hours, so I headed back to the Hauptbahnhof to catch my train to Munich for the opening day of Oktoberfest.

I tried to get online this morning to do a little update, and apparently I’ve already used up my allotted monthly time and it’s only the 18^th.  So, unfortunately it is going to be a little more difficult to get my pictures uploaded for Hamburg and some new pics I took.  Damn ESPN.com.  I’m pretty sure that’s what took up most of my time.  Nothing is open on Sundays, so I sit there with minute by minute updates for several hours of my favorite games.  It really sucks.  I’m trying to stick with my budget, and I chose to try to stay in several nights a week to offset the crazy drunken nights.  Without the internet, that plan is going right out the window.  I supposed I could always do my homework…  Nah.

Yesterday was Wednesday, which means party night here.  The crowd at Malzer’s was about half the size of last week.  I think everyone just decided to go straight to one of the other bars.  So instead of wasting time there, we headed to Hausbar.  You really can’t beat 50 cent shots of Jaeger.  We watched the Bucharest vs. Bayern soccer and played foosball for a little while.  I actually helped win a game of foosball, instead of just relying on a really good teammate.  I’m proud of myself.  After 3 straight party fouls within seconds by Katherine, and the entire bar area smelling of Jaeger and Red Bull, we chose to move on. 

Karaoke at The Old Dubliner proved to be a great time again.  Songs chosen by our group included “Oops I Did It Again”, “Never Going To Let You Down”, “American Pie”, and “Lady Marmalade”.  Interestingly enough, the Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera songs were performed solely by guys.  Not quite sure what to make of that.  The only song I chose to sing along with happened when I went to the bathroom, so I was unfortunately unable to sing “American Pie”, but it turned out to be the 9 minute version, so I guess it was ok.  

Many Guinesses later and John’s awesome performance of “Lady Marmalade,” Theresa, John, and I left for home.  We thought about getting pizza at September, but apparently Theresa wasn’t drunk enough last time to make her think that it was good, so we went to a doner place instead before taking a taxi home.  I much prefer the taxi to walking.  I’m definitely going to have to do that more often.  Damn, just one more thing to budget for…

Anyways, I’ll try resizing my pics on my laptop, and then bringing them to the computer lab at school to get some pics uploaded…