Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Day 3: St. Goar to Munich

Imagine being in Germany for your first night then at 5am you are woken up by an air raid siren. I didn’t know if it was some sort of wake up call or if something was happening but needless to say after the almost a minute of full on siren (and several more off in the distance)….I went back to sleep.


After getting up for the second time we all assembled for breakfast and then we had a stop at the beer stein store next door. The store had all sorts of steins and the owner himself also designed and made them. He explained a lot of history behind them and also showed us a few of the collectibles ones. I ended up buying a couple of steins for myself. After the store, we got a little bit of time to take some pictures of a castle on the hill and some of the valley and then we drove off through the Rhine Valley. During our drive out we found out the source of the sirens at night. It turns out a ship had capsized in the flooded river so they were sounding the alarm went it start going over.


After a scenic drive through the Rhine Velley we arrived in Munich. After getting to our hotel and taking a shower we headed out to the old part of Germany for a walking tour. We got into town and walked for a bit to near the Marienplatz where we met up with our tour guide. Our tour guide started taking and it was in perfect English…a very familiar accent…turns out he was a fellow Canadian who had moved to Europe 5 years ago from Vancouver to be a tour guide.



The guided tour was really good and we got to see some really interesting building as well as learn some really interesting facts about Germany pre and post both World Wars. I was really fascinated by some of the buildings which had the textures painted on after they were rebuilt after the war because Germany did not have enough money to rebuild them to the way they were after they were destroyed during the war.


After the walking tour, it was time to drink massive amounts of beer at the beer hall Hofbrauhaus. The beer house was awesome. A server just walked around with five 1L steins in each hand and just asked who wanted beer and then he put them down the table. The beer was probably the best beer I’ve ever had. Our tour guide Joe said the only ingredients were hops, barley and water so it was the purest beer you could have (and he promised if we only drank beer we would not have a hangover). The beer was really smooth, crisp and it went down pretty easy.


For food, most of us ordered the pork knuckle which was pretty much a giant piece of meat on a bone with a piece of fried fat on top (crisp) served with two german style dumplings. The pork knuckle was really heavy and filling so I’m sure it did a great job soaking up all the beer. By the end of the night I ended up drinking 2 steins which was probably equivalent to about 6 beers. I chugged the last 1/3 of the second beer which turned out to be a really bad idea.


After the beer hall, most of us got on the coach and made our way back to the hotel where my roommate proceeded to pass out after having about 4 steins.

Tomorrow we will be heading to Innsbruck, Austria.

- Kyle

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Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Day 2: Amsterdam to St.Goar

Today, we got a free morning to see some sites and walk around town. It was a little rainy but not too bad…mainly just a light drizzle. After getting dropped off in the town centre we decided to walk over to the Anne Frank house museum as a group. The Anne Frank house was a pretty surreal experience. I don’t think I said even two words to anyone while I was in there. Most people have read the story but to actually see where they lived and understand how they were able to hide for so long in the house is really amazing. Going through the house really made me appreciate the freedom that I have even to do something as simple as riding a bike. After we finished at the museum, three of us decided to walk down to the Van Gough museum. It was a pretty good walk and it was fun to see all of the different architecture and how compact the city is. The Van Gogh museum was really big and it was hard to try and see everything while trying to keep track of time. After the museum we went for some poffertjes. We went to a place that our tour manager recommended and the poffertjes were amazing. They look really small pancakes which they then put on some butter and then dump some icing sugar on.


After finishing up our snack, we now had about 30 minutes to try and get to the other side of town. We starting walking in the general direction but after a few minutes we managed to flag down a taxi. The taxi was an Audi A8 which was pretty really nice but not what I’d expect to be a taxi. The driver was really nice and spoke extremely god English. He was able to get us to our meet location just in time for us to get on the tour bus.


From Amsterdam we drove over to the Rhine Valley where we'd be staying in St. Goar. After arriving in St. Goar after about a 6 hour drive, we got into our hotel and right away there was chaos. There were four flights of stairs to go up to get to our room and there were no elevators. The stairs were packed with a lots of the people trying to get their packed heavy suitcases up the stairs. It was pretty comical sight…but after a while with people helping out, we all managed to get their suitcases to their rooms. After getting settled in our rooms and having a quick shower, we had dinner and then we went for some wine tasting. The wine tasting was held in wine cellar built in the 17th century and the current owner was gave us some different wines to taste from different harvest periods. I’m not a really big fan of wine but his wine was actually really good. I tried some ice wine and I was blown away so I ended up buying a bottle to take home. As a gift they let us keep the shot glasses that we tasted the wine from.


After the wine tasting we all went down to the hotel bar for a few drinks. I went for some German beer which was really good while most people were trying to see how many Feigling shots they could do. I think they said the next day they had about 4 boxes of 50…


- Kyle

Monday, January 10, 2011

Eurotrip 2011!

Day 0: Calgary to London

The next set of entries will barely be cycling related but I don’t want to start another blog so I will blog about my 2 weeks adventure to Europe. I chose to go to Europe because I felt I needed to experience a few different cultures and possibly have a sneak peek of the cycling for my next adventure here. My tour was going to do 8 countries in about 12 days so it was going to be very busy days.

My flight to London was a 9 hour flight from London so I was trying to think of how I going to pass the time on the plane. After got my seat, I saw someone I though I recognized trying to get to his seat, turns out he was going to be sitting with me for the flight. After a few minutes he turns to me and we both sorta recognized each other and it turned out we went to the same high school 10 years ago. We had a really good chat for a few hours and it really made the time go by fast as we caught up a little bit about life, politics and real estate. He is going to school in Amsterdam and was just on his way back so it was pretty crazy to actually know the person sitting next to you on a random flight by yourself.

After landing in UK, I took the “Tube” (London Underground) from the airport to Russell Square where my hotel was located. Right away I noticed that the public transportation system was much better than anything we have back in Calgary. The map of the transit system pretty looked like spaghetti and I was a little confused trying to figure out where I was but once the train started going, I figured it out and was able to locate where I needed to get off.

I arrived at Russell Square and after walking around a bit, I was able to get my bearings and find my hotel. I didn’t have much time to walk around after I got to my hotel so I just went for a walk to try and locate the tour meet up point which was at the basement of the Royal National Hotel. After asking a few questions, I went to see if I could find a store to sell me a SIM card for my phone.

I found the phones stores but none of them were able to sell me a roaming SIM card so I just went to a Starbucks to grab a coffee. After grabbing my coffee, I went back to the meeting place to meet up with the rest of the tour group. I thought it was going to be a fairly small group, but it turns out it was sold out and we had a full group of 50 people on the tour. I met up with another Canadian, an American and a few Aussies right away. After the briefing we all decided to go out to a local pub for a pint and a bite to eat. The dinner was pretty good and much better then the standard pub fare that we usually get back home. The beer was pretty good but to be honest I was expecting a little better. After dinner we headed back to the hotel as we had to wake up quite early to board the coach the next day.

Day 1: London to Amsterdam

The first thing I did when I woke up was obviously take a shower which was much easier said then done. This was when I noticed that everything in Europe is much smaller and more compact then anything that we have back in Canada. I literally had to stand sideways in the shower the entire time and was bumping into everything as I tried to wash up. I almost fell on my face trying to get out of the tub as the sides were super high.

After boarding the coach we left London in the dark so I wasn’t able to see any major sites except for the Tower Bridge. The plan for the day was to drive to the port and take the ferry over to France and then drive through Belgium to Amsterdam. As we got on the ferry we got to see the White Cliffs of Dover was are cliffs of sheer white. They stretched as far as the eye could see along the coastline but it was really cool to see from the top of the ferry.


I slept part of the way on the drive from France but there really wasn’t much to see. When we arrived in Amsterdam I was really amazed how flat it was. There wasn’t a single hill in site. After the bus stopped at the hotel for us to put away our luggage, we had some dinner then we were onto our first excursion. We took the coach back to the center of town and the first thing that they told us was to watch out for bikes.


There were thousands of bikes! 99% of the bikes were the infamous Dutch bike which is a single speed bike with coaster brakes. Because the twn is so flat, gears aren’t needed and so I’m sure this really helps control the pace on the bike paths. The bikes racks were filled with almost identical bikes and they were literally fighting for space amd some racks just had bikes toppling over each other. There was even a bike “parkade” which probably held thousands of bikes, it was crazy.


The group then got together for a river cruise through the canals with an open bar. On the ride we got a taste for the typical Dutch music (techno?!) and probably the best Heineken that I’ve ever had in my entire life. I guess maybe it was because we were much closer to the brewery (Heineken is brewed in Amsterdam). After the river cruise we walked over to the infamous Red Light District. I wasn’t able to get any photos because it is apparently run by a private security firm and if you’re caught taking photos they will take your camera and smash it on the ground.

After doing a quick tour of the Red Light District, most of us decided to go check out a "cultural show". All I can say is...you have to go to Amsterdam. It was pretty unbelievable what I went to go see but it was a little more culture then I was expecting.


After the show we went to go check out a coffeshop. We went into one of the famous Bulldog Cafes and was pretty much what you'd expect from a palce where it's legal to smoke to marijuana. A couple people bought Space Cakes but most of the others went downstairs to smoke a few joints. I left after about 10 minutes and decided to head down to a bar where the rest of the group was hanging out. After about hour we prety much got kicked out of the bar as they were closing up so we all went back to the hotel. Tomorrow are supposed to get about half a day o free time to walk around the city before heading off to Germany.

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