SeanTerrill.com » germany

Luxembourg

webmaster — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 16:33:45 +0000

Having been in Eastern Europe, it’s hard even to express just how comforting the rail system is within the Deutsche Bahn’s sphere of influence. I was planning on taking the night train from Munich to Paris, but it was fully booked, so I’m going to spend a few hours in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg instead. I should get into Paris early enough to take a walking tour, and without needing a reservation to boot. [I actually spent my last night on the Continent on a park bench in Luxembourg, getting eaten alive by mosquitoes.] Then it’s Brussels, and home. The past few days, essentially killing time, have made me homesick for the first time. So yes, I am looking forward to not living out of a backpack for, oh, the rest of my life.

Party City: The Tent, outside Munich

Luxembourg is a great place around which to walk.

It figures this would be the last thing I saw.

Krakow

webmaster — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 21:25:12 +0000

I spent an unplanned fourth night in Krakow last night, partly because I needed to use up my remaining zloty, but mostly just because the hostel here is so amazingly nice. It’s definitely way better than my apartment, and costs less to boot (something like $550 a month, including breakfast and dinner). Actually, it’s most like staying at a friend’s, albeit with better social opportunities. I’ve been hanging out with a couple of British girls, who just graduated and are starting their trip. It’s fun to compare their initial enthusiasm with my desire just to get the hell home.

Krakow is pretty neat on the whole. It’s overrun with tourists, but I guess pretty much anywhere is this time of year. It has the standard Eastern European city features: castle on a hill; river bend; city walls-cum-park, but is small and sort of quiet. Definitely a good place to relax, even if my knee and ankle haven’t quite gotten back to being 100% yet. I’m taking the night train to Poznan, then Berlin, where I’m staying in an H2G2-themed hostel. After that I only have two nights to plan before I fly home. I’m thinking about trying to catch either Bastille Day festivities, or the Tour de France, but who knows how it will pan out?

Krakow's mascot

Donya and Catherine

I imagine this is less funny in places that were actually conquered by the Nazis.

English is kitschy, but apparently not actually spoken much.

Auschwitz

This would be a great name for a bar.

Yes, it's a theme hostel.

If you visit Berlin, you HAVE to go to the Pergamon.

Munich

webmaster — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 21:34:09 +0000

I’m sitting in a camping-platz outside München, and I realized that this is the only place in Germany I’ve seen with no recycling bins – only trash cans. Instead of throw bottle into the trash like Americans would, though, people have lined them up neatly next to it. And that has me worried; even if the US were somehow to reform its environmental policy overnight, it takes a generation to instill that kind of thinking. I’m wondering if, like global worming and peak oil and those other minor little problems, it might not already be too late.

I feel Homer's pain...

...but that's why we're in Munich.

Crossdressers selling cheese

Surfing in the Englischer Garten

Berlin

webmaster — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 22:29:20 +0000

Berlin is a fantastically cool city. It’s the first place we’ve been so far where I could really see myself living. You have basically all of the last century of world histary within walking distance, plus a rocking night life every day of the week and a large immigrant population giving you good, affordable food and enough spoken English to be pretty comfortable for even someone with my miserable German. We intended to stay for two days, which turned into three, and I want to go back again. We found another free walking tour, provided by a company that also sponsored a pub crawl, and then yesterday we went to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, so our time was pretty full, but even just staying in the same place for three nights starts to feel relaxing after a while. Last night I went with two Canucks and an Aussie to a movie (Ocean’s 13 – don’t bother), but somehow that too was reenergizing, like a little touch of home. I think knowing that I’ll see my parents in a couple days is why I haven’t been homesick, but it is easy to miss the comforts of the States.

The Wall

Checkpoint Charlie...

...and the current US embassy

So much beer...

Party Time Berlin

Sachsenhausen

Potsdamer Platz

Rhineland

webmaster — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 03:15:57 +0000

German hostels, it turns out, are basically summer camps. The past two nights we’ve been surrounded by soccer teams and families on vacation, first in Mainz and then in Loreley. On the one hand, these places are basically hotels: clean linens, private bathrooms, furniture – reading lights on the beds, for gods’ sakes. On the other hand, they’re out in the middle of nowhere so that they can have sports fields, and there’s about zero chance of meeting fellow students/travelers/student-travelers. Now we’re on a train to Brussels, and I want to catch some sleep (it was, uncharacteristically, 45 minutes late), so just a brief update.

We camped in Strasbourg after missing the last train to Frankfurt, and it’s a an amazingly beautiful town. Then we spent two days on the slow boat down the Rhine, sipping wine and being mobbed by Japanese people with cameras, and had an enjoyable afternoon in Köln, trying every Kölsch we could find while ogling the inexplicably large number of stag- and hen-parties. Yuri just commented on how after two weeks in nigh-unaffordable Ireland and Switzerland, we’re now eating and drinking to excess, and it’s true, but I’ve already lost something like 2 kg, and it probably needed to happen. For now, though, it’s nap time.

Wine country

Above the Loreley

Cruising the Rhine

Party Time Köln