Amsterdam

Sigh, this post is so late. I blame having actual work to do...it's seriously cutting into my slacking off time.

I visited Amsterdam during the last weekend in November with Adrienn, Shane, Lindsey and Travis. We took the night train there, which is a 12 hour ride...wow, I'm finally guarenteed a long sleep!

The most exciting part of this trip was that I got to see my good friend Jeff Kadler. He's a friend from high school back in Calgary, and is currently living with his girlfriend Dorien in a small town an hour outside of Amsterdam. Jeff's been gone since last March (travelling in Thailand, Austrailia, etc, then over to Holland) so it was really cool to see him again.




Jeff and me at the Heineken Factory!















We arrived saturday morning, and found our hostel pretty easily. It was a nice place, very chillaxed. The one sketchy part was the "luggage room" which looked more like the garbage pit from Star Wars (ep 4). I couldn't see the bottom of it, there was just a layer of old bags and clothes, lol.

After a failed attempt to meet up with Jeff (they missed the train they were planning on), he met up with us at the hostel, and we had a joyous reunion, hooray!!

The group of us headed over to the Nemo, a science museum that looks like a boat out on the water. I had heard good things about it, and I was sure not dissapointed, the place was filled with lote of cool hands-on exhibits. One sweet one was a machine that showed you how you would look older, younger, as a guy, etc. There was also this complex ball sorting machine that I never did figure out...there was always a big line at that one so I never got a chance to try it, boo. Other cool things: water generator station, logic puzzles, chem area, etc. There was also a big demo of chain reactions that was like something Wile E. Coyote would use to catch roadrunner....it was awesome.




Dorine, Traivs, Adrienn, and Lindsey walking on the streets through Amsterdam












Travis, Jeff, me, Dorien, Lindsey and Shane in front of the main train station













Funky building....no idea what it is, don't really care










A Botel! Everybody thought this was funny, I just flashed back to being a kid, and having my dad tell me that the motel we were staying at was called a botel because it was near the water. He was just making it up, but I thought it was so cool that they actually had a special word for it. Ah memories...









Adreinn and Dorien walking to the Nemo...bit of a height difference, lol

















Who's ready for some science?!?!?!?













Alright, this is probably the creepiest thing I have ever seen, and no relavence to any display

















Shane being a scientist










After the science museum we were all hungry, so we went for some food/drinks at a coffeeshop. It was a pretty cool place, and we decided to try sampling some of the local specialty, which was fun.

Afterwards we went back to the hostel and played some cards while we pre-drank for the night. We met up with a friend of Jeff and Dorien's who was from Ireland, and hung out with him for the rest of the night.

We all headed over to the red light district, where were actually were surrounded by red lights (I just thought that was the name). We wanted to check out one of the infamous sex shows, but they were all so expensive that we decided it wasn't worth it, just for the novelty. Instead we settled for walking around getting the vibe of the atmosphere. It amused me to see the strippers in the windows...they were either over-the-top desperate for attention, or looked ridiculously bored.

We ended up hanging out at the hostel bar where Jeff's friend was staying (I just can't remember his name for the life of me, I should have written this sooner...), which was pretty cool. The night was wrapped up by a game of chess against Shane back at the hostel (late night chess, hardcore), which I won (woo-hoo!).




Shane trying to tear into a package of crackers












Deep in thought planning strategy for asshole












Where else could you find a Porno Supermarket?












Awesome discovery: crushed up waffle cone bits covered in syrup ...mmmmm














Me kicking Shane's ass at late night chess












The next morning we were presented with a good yet non-standard hostel breakfast: hard boiled eggs, toast and jam. After being nourished, we headed over to the Heineken factory...they don't actually make beer there anymore, but you can take a tour of the factory. Jeff and Dorien opted out (due to cost/lazyness) so we met up with them after.




Adrienn being scary. The sign is for some sort of torture sex show... sketchy...













Nice pic walking to the Heineken factory












Alright, so the "factory" is totally just a museum-type thing designed to entertain those with short attention spans, and who are really only there for the beer. They had activities, shows, semi-rides (in one you pretended you were a beer bottle going through production!), places where you could e-mail pics and videos to your friends (we sent a bunch to all the suckers stuck at work the next day), old commercials, quizes, etc. And a few displays on the actual beer-making/botteling process.

There is a bar halfway through the museum, where we got the first of our 3 free beers (was also got a free gift: a Heineken glass, pretty good value for 10 euro). It was cool how the place was set up actually, how there is a beer break partway through and then you are ready for more mind-taxing displays (lol).

There is another bar at the very end where you can cash in your last 2 beer tickets . Except, the girl pouring the beer wasn't taking our tickets, nor keeping track of who had gotten drinks already. The result: we all had lots of beenrand got drunkish. Another bonus was that Jeff and Dorien were able to come through the exit and get free beer too.



Us and one of the Heineken tour guides who wanted to be in the pic too, hehe












Having our first beer at the Heineken factory.












Shane and Adrienn playing foosball (dunno what this had to do with Heineken exactly). I stopped playing to take a picture, leaving my bars open and Lindsey and I still almost beered them









Some strante Heineken dj/vj booth (Travis got really excited with he saw this)....we never really did figure out how it was supposed to work.












Shane playing the Heineken drums (Evan is probably jelouse)














Working our way through lots of glasses of Heineken













Drink, drink drink....Shane looks giant compared to us, haha.










After the tour,we walked around a bit and it was time to say bye to Jeff and Dorien because they were catching a train back home. The rest of us hit up a grocery store for dinner (supplies for dinner that is) and went back to the hostel to eat. Mmm for sandwiches...and giant containers of yogurt, lol. By then it was time for Lindsey and Travis to head off to the train (they didn't take monday as a holiday) so we said bye to them.

Shane, Adrienn and I didn't know what to do with our evening, so we decided to go over to Vondel park and see what was around there. We had a pretty nice time walking around, and checked out a couple fun places. We got a bit lost though (I blame the lake), so coming home was an adventure...it seemed like we had somehow ended up in a different dimension or something. It was funny because we ended up just magically realizing we were right near our hostel, I love it when that happens. We spent some time chilling in the hostel common area and playing cards, then headed off to bed.




Nice sandwich lunch in the common room.













Vondel park...what a pretty place.











The next day we checked out of our hostel (it was cool becasue they didn't care that we were late) and walked around looking in all the tourist shops. I bought a bunch of things including gifts and a new toque (mine was too boring)! I refrained from buying wooden clogs, haha, they looked pretty uncomfortable. Next we went to the Van Gogh museum which was really cool. His art is awesome because there is just so much going on, you can look at it forever.

After the museum we had time to send a few quick postcards and then go to the train station. The ride back home was awesome, I slept almost the whole was and felt so well rested. I got off the train in Zurich (I was going straight to work) to discover that Adrienn and Shane were still on the train...they had missed getting off in Baden somehow, oops. At least it wasn't too far to go back.

I'm so glad that I got a chance to see Jeff, since we were both in Europe. Can't wait until Christmas so I can see everyone else back home!

Dinner Party

Last night Adrienn and I have Holgar and Antonio to Kehl for dinner. We wanted to repay them for making us dinner a few months back, and since we don't see them very much anymore (sigh, we lost Ed, the KSB party center) it was nice to see them.

We made lasagnea, which I have never made before but have discovered is not very hard to make at all. We also made ceaser salad, and made the dressing ourselves (I made the croutons!)...though, we may have been a bit too gung-ho with the garlic, lol.

Everything tasted really yummy, and it was a fun evening. Antionio brough over some wine (and some wine glasses, since we don't have any, lol) and Holgar brough ameratto, which we drank with apple juice and is really tasty. We ended up spending a bunch of the evening playing with Google Earth and seeing where each other lived back home. Antonio also wowed us with his guitar skillz, yay. Fun times, here's some pics:




Adrienn getting ready to serve food with Antonio and Holgar












Antonio, Holgar ane me ready to eat! Mmm...











"Holgar, you're town does not exist!"

"Yes it does, you must have spelled it wrong!"

Berlin - "You Made Your Choice"

Went to Berlin last weekend with a pretty big crowd of praktikants: Vance, Lindsey, Tommy, Travis, Richard, Henry, Bernard, George, Olivier, Kevin, Nate and Ben (dude from Austrailia). The origin of the trip was that Nate, Kevin and Ben were going to be there on the way to Greece, so the rest of us decided to join in on the cheap EasyJet flights to Berlin. It was a weekend of invented terms (pincing, sploofing, getting clawed) and nicknames...I'll let you figure our who is who (post a comment with your guess and I'll tell you if you're right). Extra points if you figure it out before reading the post:

Art Destroyer
Tripod
Pseudo-Aussi
Delay
T double G
DJ Jagermeister
Homosexual
Dirty Pear Eater
Separatist
Ampelfrau
Soberdude
TGV/First-to-Sploof
Drunken-Squinter

(A bunch of the names were just made up by me, since everybody didn't have one)

Group pic at our Hostel

back row: Olivier, Henry, Travis, George, Tommy, Bernard
middle row: me, Lindsey
front row: Richard, Ben, Nate, Kevin, Vance






Before I go any further I should explain the quote in the title of this post. A few days before leaving, Vance sent out an e-mail to everyone about what train to catch to the airport. In addition to the helpful train information, he gave us some "friendly advice":

"Everybody rember even though we are going to Germany we still need chf to get to the airport and come home from the airport. So none of this only bring euros BS people seem to love. Also get euros tonight or tommorow. No wandering Berlin looking for a bank machine. I already know one of you is going to fail to do this and I already know I'm gonna get frusterated by you.

Also no one bring bags to check. We're only there for like 2 days, you shouldn't need to check anything. We're not waiting.

This trip will operate on the "You made your choice" concept. So if you don't have money, miss the plane, forget your passport: you made your choice, the group isn't going to stop for you"

So for the entire trip pretty much anytime somebody ended up in an unfortunate situation, somebody would pipe up with "you made your choice". The other result of the e-mail was that Vance got constant harassment for the weekend...oh well, he made his choice ;)

************************************************************

Annnyways...we all woke up super early (espeically Ben, lol) and went to Basil to catch our flight to Berlin. After a lengthy passport check (at least we got stamps!) we caught the train to our hostel (A&O Berlin Hostel, Zoo location). It was a pretty nice place...clean, good location, but had certain drawbacks like non-free sheets, non-free breakfast, no drinking/eating in the rooms...but we managed to make it work out.

We quickly dropped off our bags and split off into some smaller groups, making plans to meet back at the hostel at 7:30. I went with Vance, Lindsey, Travis, Richard and George to the Pergamon Museum, which is located on Museum Island . On our way there we found some cool markets, where they were selling old war/communism stuff, amoung other things. I bought a Berlin sticker and a travel chess set...I'm sure it will provide some quality compact entertainment. We also had some bratwurst...nice classic German snack, though, they need to work on their bun design.



Richard and George checking out some communist merchandise at the fair










I won't lie, I had no idea what the museum we were going to was even about, but I trusted the judgement of the others. After some sketchy age-related entering, I was suprised to walk into a room with a huge reconstruction of a greek temple. After I got over my initial confustion, I spend a good amout of time listening to the audiotour (which was included with entrance, woot!) and finding out about the carvings all along the walls, which were mostly of the war between the Gods and the Titans (ah, memories of reading the Theogony in GRST 209). I'll take a moment here to say how much I love Greek mythology, so I really enjoyed this room. However, after listening to and reading everything I could I realized that none of the others were around anymore. I wondered where they had gone, and then discovered that I had only explored part of 1 of the 3 wings at the museum....sigh, that's what I get for being uninformed. I had a chance to see the rest of the Greek wing and the Babylonian wing, which satisfied me, so I was happy. Bought some nice postcards too (this trip was all about souvineers, I don't have enough from other trips).


Model of the Pergamon Alter. The frieze continues along the entire perimeter, and depicts the battle between the Greek Gods and the Titans.











Reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate













Sarcophagus depicting the story of Medea











After the museum we went to the nearby Berlin Catherdral, which is probably the coolest looking thing in Berlin (though it's a tough competition). We paied to get inside, and then walked up to the top and admired the view of Berlin. There were some displays of he cathedral architcture, which included scale models that you could go inside, it was sweet.

Vance, me, George, Travis, Lindsey and Richard in front of the Berlin Cathedral. We got somebody else to take the pic, and they didn't get the whole building in, so I had to employ my mad photoshop skillz to add it in. Unfortunatly I was lazy and didn't spend too long on it, so the result is only sorta-nice.















Ceiling of the Berlin Cathedral.....cept this is inside the model!!! (do you really think my flash would reach that far?)















Inside the (actual) Berlin Cathedral















Ben, George, Kevin and Bernard doing some sightseeing (I wasn't with them, but thought it was a cool pic and wanted to include it)








We went back to the hostel, stopping on the way for dinner food and beer. The hostel said that we couldn't eat/drink in our rooms, but since we had the 10-person room all to ourselves we did anyways, oh the rebellion. We decided to go on a pub crawl that was reccomended by the hostel, which was cool because everyone came! It was a pretty big crowd, and a lot of fun. I decided that I wanted to bring my camera out (a rare and risky decision) which was met with enthusiastic agreement from everyone, lol. I managed to not lose or break it (despite some close calls), and ended up with some fun pictures.

The first place we went to was a smallish pub that was playing a sweet selection of house music...Travis and I had a long conversation debating the differences between house, trance, break beat, drum and bass, techno, etc...which I have never really understood. Click on the links in case you too are curious, and want to know what Wikipedia has to say about it.

Oops, went off on a tangent....the next bar we went to was also pretty cool. I met some people there and hung out with them for awhile. It all started because one of the guys was trying to pick me up, but I politely ignored his attempts. Random cool thing: he knew sign language and was showing me some signs. I showed him how I could sign Taps (still remember that from Girl Guides, wtf) and he was impressed.







Pre-party in our hostel room

















Olivier and Tommy ...interesting











George, Travis, me, and Vance...Vance was in his "jump into ever picture" mode














Richard, Vance and Lindsey












Olivier, George, Henry and Bernard walking to the second bar














Lindsey doing a pose and looking ridiculously short in the process, lol












The Kehl guys!!












Tommy and Kevin...I don't want to know












Tommy mauling Vance













Lindsey, Richard, me and Travis on the train to the next bar









Bar #3 was not so much a bar as a crazy underground tunnel. Lol, seriously, this place was huuuuge...and all decorated with black lights and glowing crazy art. The place was closed (don't know why...) so we were the only ones there, but it was still pretty fun. This was also the drunkest point in the evening for most people, so it was pretty entertaining. Yay for getting Henry and Bernard out drinking and having fun! Yay for getting Nate...out. Tommy was pretty game overed by the time we left this place, but he managed to pull himself back together and continue on...which resulted in hilarious singing displays, haha.

The last place we went to was a club, pretty standard but packed with people. Some people left pretty early, and I didn't stay that late either. This was driven mostly by starvation, lol, mmmmm, best bagel ever. Vance and Tommy both wanted to stay, which we figured was alright, since Vance is responsible and would make sure that Tommy got home alright. Little did we know that Vance would end up leaving Tommy on his own...tsk tsk tsk, very un-Vanceish.




Funky black light display














Cool pic of me and Henry posing












I'm in there somewhere...















Travis and Vance contemplating life in relation to black lights











Tommy being helped out of the 3rd bar, haha (he's not as bad as he looks)









The next morning we awoke to find out that everyone had made it home eventually, hooray. We decided to do a bus tour instead of the walking tour, since it allowed for longer sleeping. Boy was that a mistake...after trying a couple of differt busses (it was a hop on, hop off style tour) we realized that the tour guides sucked, an would switch randomly between English and German, usually providing more information in the German version. One girl sounded like she was fluent in neither English or German. We eventually gave up on the busses, and just saw sights on our own. This worked out fine since Vance is basically a tour guide with all his plans and random knowledge...if he ever stops freaking out about people slowing down the group, lol.





You made your choice Vance...

















Tommy managed to find his way to bed















The Sony Center...or weapon of mass destruction?
















Oww...

















Lindsey, Vance, Richard, George and Travis in front of the Kanada Botschaft (we saw that word everywhere, before figuring out that it ment Embassy)






At one point on the trip we saw a store called "Ampelmann". It was really cool, everything had a logo of a green guy walking or a red suy standing. I became oddly facinated with this logo, and only later discovered that it was the symbol from the pedestrian walk/don't walk signs from East Berlin! We discovered Ampelmann merchandise in lots of other tourist shops, and I ended up buying a t-shirt, it's so sweet! Lindsey got a shirt too (different kind).

We checked out Brandenburg Gate and then walked over the the Berlin parliment building (Reichstag). We had to wait in line for a bit here, but it was totally worth it because we got to go up into the glass space-ship-looking dome on top of the building. From here you can get a 360 view of the city, and George stepped up as tour guide and gave us a nice explination of all the sights (directly from the pamphlets we had all been handed at the door, lol).


The Berlin Reichstag. You can't see the cool glass dome from this angle, but there's a pic at the link that shows it well










George, Vance, me (with my new Ampelmann shirt!), Lindsey and Travis waiting in line at the Reichstag














Inside the Reichstag...or another doomsday device?














Next we went to the Holocaust Memorial, which is really interesting (see pics). We walked amoungst the cement blocks, and I managed to "accidentally" walk into about 5 of Geroge's pics, mwah ha ha.





Holocaust Memorial at sunset














Peek-a-boo!














We still had some time before we had to meet everyone else, so Geroge took us on a walk through Berlin to Checkpoint Charlie. Along the way we stopped for coffee (mmm, caffine), kabobs (Vance froze up when ordering, hilarity ensued), and to check out a church where a band had just finshed playing (darn). We eventually got to the monument, where there was really not that much to see, but still cool. I wish we had time to go in the museum, but at least there were more tourist shops, lol.


Too bad this picture is so dark, I really should do some photoshop action...

Us in front of Checkpoint Charlie













Travis, Richard and Lindsey and a part of the Berlin Wall.















I can't remember what this is of, but the sky looks freaking awesome...nice work Richard.











Near our hostel was the Gedächtniskirche Church. It was destroyed in World War II, but they reconstructed a new tower out of the ruins, with windows made out of blue glass. It supposedly looks really cool inside, but it was closed the day we tried to see it (Sunday....wtf, are we back in Switzerland? It's a CHURCH!). It was dissapointing, but seeing it lit up at night was some consulation at least.


The old and new parts of the Gedächtniskirche Church at night

















Inside the Church (I got the pic from somebody at work, seeing what I missed out on)









We went back to the hostel to meet up with some of the others, and then went out to see some final sights before heading to the airport. We started at the Berlin Victory Column, which is made out of and decorated with cannons from enemies of various victories (thanks for the triva Vance!). It's arranged in the center of a traffic circle, very much the same as the Arc de Triomphe in Paris...complete with the Brandenburg Gate off in the distance as the Louvre would be. Apparently it was all planned to be modeled after Paris.

We walked down the street to Brandenburg Gate, and it looked beautiful all lit up. After several attempts to get a good group shot, we figured out the right combination of flash and night-mode and got an alright one...cept the camera tripod was slanted and I haven't gotten around to correcting it in photoshop yet. Another highlight here was that there was this crazy sign that looked just like a vertical bar of light, until you blinked quickly or shook your head...and you realized that there were actually words there! I can't really explain it that well, but I will say that we probably looked like a bunch of fools whipping our heads back and forth staring at a building across the street.




Bradenburg Gate at night. Bernard can take some wicked night shots with his tripod.










Henry, Lindsey, Travis, me, Richard, George, Vance, Olivier and Bernard in front of Bradenburg Gate (tripod was slanted, oops!)











Our last stop was checking out the Reichstag at night, and then we wet back to the hostel to collect our stuff. Bernard, Henry and George were staying for an extra day, and Nate, Kevin and Ben were off to Greece the next day, but the rest of us were flying out super early the next morning. We checked out the train times, and discovered that we could actually get an early enough train to the airport, but we would have to wake up aorun 4. Since we didn't have the hostel booked for that night anyways, we decided that it wasn't worth it, and we would just sleep at the airport.

We got to the airport around 1am, and scouted out places to sleep. Unfortunatly, other people had the same idea, and most of the couches in the resturant area were taken. Lindsey and Vance each got one though, and everyone else chose between tables, hard seats, and the floor (I opted for the floor, maximl spreading out room). We "slept" for a few hours...thank goodness for my ipod to lull me to sleep with music.

As a result of being already at the airport, we went for the starting check in time (which we usually never do), and I was actually the first person to check in! This was the highlight of my morning (it didn't have much competition). With EasyJet this means that you are in the first group to board, and since there is no assigned seating you get your first pick of seats. I scored a nice back window spot and had an awesome plane sleep that was better than my airport floor sleep.




First to check in! Boarding group A, boo-yah!










Alright, I realize that the trip description has gotten really borning, so I'll sum it up by saying that it was another day of going straight to work and feeling dirty, lol. Worth it though, since we got 2 days without having to take any vacations, and only paying for a hostel one night. Thanks to Richard, Vance and Bernard for sharing their pics with me!

Berlin is awesome, I should have gone for longer. You'll notice that I went all out on the Wikipedia links this time...so if you want any historical info on the stuff I saw (and monument pics) then check it out.

I'm going to Amsterdam in 2 weekends, and meeting up with Kadler there! I'm so excited!