Is he REALLY the head of the Kwiki mart?

We left Munich early Friday morning. The last night spent in the hostel we drank happy hour beers with our friend Peter from Athlone. We didn´t get a picture with him, he was headed out and we were headed to bed early.

We caught our train to Interlaken, Switzerland without hassle because our hostel was basically right across from the train station. We stocked up on food from the train station and prepared ourselves for a 7.5 hour journey through the Swiss Alps. It wasn´t really hard preparation, per say, but it was going to be our longest train journey yet.

We arrived in Interlaken around 4 p.m. greeted by the most breathtaking sights. It was hard to imagine the storm clouds in the distance were not actually storm clouds, but mountains. The peaks were so high it was hard to tell where the mountains ended and the sky began. We tried to take pictures along the way because we had no idea what we were about to see when we arrived in Interlaken, let alone on Saturday when we attempted to hike a few of them.

Our hostel was the best hostel we´ll ever stay in, Balmers Herberge. It had a games room with a free pool table, a large screen tv where you could rent movies and watch on the couches, a reading room, a huge bar/restaurant/night club that opened til 2 am a beer garden that over looked the alps, everything! We took adavantage of eveything there, including the two happy hours a day! We loved it so much that we booked another night. We checked out the prices of Bern and Lucerne and decided our budget couldn´t cope. Oh well, suppose we´ll have to suffer at Balmers!

We meet people there that felt like lifelong friends, however odd it was to say at the end of the night see ya, have a nice life! Mostly Aussies, a few Canadians, and two Americans. Troy and Sharnee from Western Australia, Jenoa Swan from the Gold Coast, Jordan from Toronto, Altaf and Oliver from New York. We were at the hostel for a weekend, as most people were, so we had a few nights with these great people to laugh and drink and learn more about the world. We exchanged emails and facebook info, so who knows, maybe there´ll be a few more happy hours in the future together! Here´s hoping.

Saturday: we hiked up to Mürren. We got a good night´s sleep, ate a good breakfast, filled up bottles of water, and put some sandwiches in our bags, I rented hiking boots, we had a good map in hand, and off we went. We got a train from Interlaken up to Lauterbrunnen. From there, we followed signs to Mürren. The first sign we saw said Mürren 2 hours and 40 minutes thatta way.

Dermot started hitch-hiking 50 metres up the hill as I was panting beside him thinking is it really this slanty the whole way up? He put his thumb down as we saw there were to be no more cars past this point and I drank half my water bottle. Up it is then.

It was hot, but clear. As strenuous as it was it was so rewarding to see the village below us get smaller and smaller and the mountains in the distance get closer and closer. There were two points on the trail that actually sloped and I screamed in excitement. Though it wasn´t upon reflection the highlight of the trail! Look at the pictures we posted. We took so many. They were wonderful little excuses to stop and take a breath and drink some of the Alpine water in our water bottles that our hostel ran through their taps.

At one point during the trail we were a bit confused. We came to a walled field that looked like some farmer´s property we´d have to trespass upon. We continued through the gate hoping it was our trail. A biker along the way assured us that this was the way to Mürren, that UP is the way to Mürren. Halfway through the farmer´s fields we stopped to hear the music. It sounded like a thousand wood chimes, but Dermot said it was the cowbells:

We stopped in Winteregg, yes, that´s what the village was called to eat some sandwiches and watch two mountain men de-barking a log - which will probably be used to build a house I´m sure, all the houses in Switzerland are timber-framed, like little matchbox houses. We started to notice during the climb that the air was gradually getting cooler. It was when we stopped to sit in the shade that we realized it was FREEZING. We put our packs back on our back and howled because our sweat had turned to icicles.

From Winteregg we had about 40 minutes to go, and thank the heavens above it was downhill. Those mountains that 2 hours ago seemed so distant and so high were now to the left of us, at our side, all the way to the town of Mürren. You could extend your arm and try to grab them, so to speak, go-go Gadget arms.

We arrived in Mürren where we payed a fortune to go up to the highest peak in the Jungfrau region: Schiltorn via the cable cars or as they´re called here funiculars. I was terrified the whole way up and down but it was worth it for the views. I kept thinking as I was looking around the funicular that there were pregnant women onboard, old people, little kids, people in wheelchairs, a few puppy dogs, God wouldn´t kill us, right?

When we came back down from Schiltorn to Mürren we decided to take public transportation back to Interlaken. We set out to walk back... fuck that! Climbing up to Mürren was the hardest thing we´ve ever done, and although the journey back would be shorter and downhill, nothing seemed more appealing than sitting down in a train and resting our weary selves.

Okay, so basically, Switzerland was amazing. Despite not going to Lucerne or Bern as anticipated I think we really experienced the essence of that country. We´ll be back, definitely.

Loads of pictures have been posted! We´re in Salzburg at the moment, Vienna is at the weekend. We´ll post more about Austria later. Until then, G´day mate!

My arm hurts, cause I did so many

We left Cologne on a 3 hour train ride down the Rhine Valley. Imagine a child drawing mountains on piece of paper, you'd see a frantic set of horizontal zigzags. Then imagine the child drawing fairytale castles on top of those mountains, on the very tippy top. That's what the Rhine Valley looks like. Sharp, dark green mountains, countless fairytale castles on the peaks, and little German villages in the valleys along the river. It was a wonderful surprise. I wanted to go to through the Rhine Valley, but had no idea how we would fit it into our schedule or afford it with our tight budget. So the journey towards south Germany was a gift.

Since Cologne was a big stinkin failure we turned to Heidelberg for redemption. So thank God for Heidelberg. It was lovely. It had the little things that tourists want to see without having to sacrifice its authenticity. Beer halls, cobblestone foot paths, and weiner schnitzel. Our hostel was a pub. We were greeted by a friendly publican who gave us two welcome pints of their local brew. Then we were shown to our rooms that were every backpacker's dream: clean and secure. We ate our very first weiner schnitzel, very exciting all together. I understood from then on why Germans were such good drinkers, look at their food! It was fried pork chops with fried potatoes with bacon and rosemary as garnishes. Yummy in my tummy. And to reiterate, it was great drinking food, so off we set to check out the town and sample the local spirits.

Heidelberg was a lot bigger than we expected, so we walked through the town's main street to hopefully get our first feel for it. It was mostly shops, high fashion and German souveniers. Dermot had to pull me away from the coolest coat I've ever seen, ever. It was only 120 EUR. I said we didn't have to drink for the next week. And he replied by saying that I didn't have to eat or drink for the next week. Point taken. Anyway, we ended up in a pub called the Hemingway. The sun was going down and it was getting cold. We couldn't believe the chill in the air because it was just in Bruges that we were sweating our asses off and melting under the humidity. Excuses, excuses. So, in the Hemingway we were feeling a bit adventurous and decided to pick a random beer off the menu. We chose Rauchbier. It was a dark, thick bottle with medieval writing on it. The bartender decanted the two bottles and from somewhere the smell of bacon came under our noses. Because it was dinner time, and the Hemingway served food, we thought it had to be a passing waitress with the next table's order. Nope. It was the beer. Dermot drank it down. I refused. He laughed and tried to convince me that beer does not taste the way it smells. ALL beer tastes the way it smells. And this was no exception. I begged Dermot to drink mine, as he was halfway through his and determined not to waste a beer. He said if I tasted it, he'd finish mine. So I did, I suffered a gulp. And to my fear it indeed tasted like bacon. Neither of us finished it. The bartender saw this and laughed. He said he doesn't know why they even sell it. So we ordered two pints of a normal pilsner and burped up the rest of the Rauchbier, or the weiner schnitzel, I couldn't tell.

We visted a local beer hall called the Vetter, but I had to stop drinking because I'm a delicate flower with a weally weally sore throat (and I wanted to save my health for Munich) so we headed back to our hostel/pub. There I drank tea while Dermot drank liters of beer as if they were pints. The bar tender informed us the next day that most normal drinkers try one for the experience. Not our Dermot. We ate weiner schnitzel again for breakfast, then went back to bed. German beer is unfiltered and therefore zehr headache inducing. After the nap, we headed up to the Schloss or Heidelberg's mega castle. It was ontop of a mountain overlooking the city. It was a tourist must, so we did, and it was nice. If I described the castle as looking very German, can you picture it? Cause, it looked really German. Stoic and to the point.

We walked around the side streets of Heidelberg to see what we could of the rest of it. We stopped for a while in the square to eat some pastry thing and feed the pigeons (they must not know the Goodfeathers family of Boston - an inside AWA joke). I got some great pictures of the cute little town, but since neither of us were drinking we headed back to our hostel early to get a good night's sleep for Munich.

We left Heidelberg in the freezing morning. Switzerland's impending weather was looming in our minds. Our train to Munich took us through the German countryside. Scattered little towns in between large, dark forested mountains. It was nice to be seeing some mountains after the incredibly flat Belgian countryside, it satisfies the whole aspect of "it's a journey, not a destination" thing.

Munich is massive. It's in the heart of Bavaria, and therefore is the heart of all things German. We planned to come to Munich for the Oktoberfest, but after having met people in Bruges who said they paid 35 EUR per person for a TENT, and that the beers are 4 EUR a pint, we panicked and re-routed our trip to specifically avoid the fest. And for good reason. The population of Munich is 1.6 million. For the Oktoberfest it swells to over 8 million. You can enjoy Munich without the madness of Oktoberfest, as we've found it's a vibrant, youthful city. We started off Munich with a super sloppy pub crawl. Free beer, free Jagermeister shots, litres of beer galore, and lots of pretzels to soak it all up. It was the best night we don't remember, hehe. Our second day here was recovery and a free walking tour. These free walking tours that we're going on are the best ways to see the city and hear it's stories. And Munich has stories. And very dark ones, at that. It's sickening to walk in the foot steps of Hitler. To see where he held his meetings, planned his plans, give his speeches, and hear how there were so many failed attempts to stop him. It's wildly frustrating and at the same time fascinating to think that this was all only two generations ago. Munich is coping with it's past, but it's hard for a first timer to see one discreet plaque on an unmarked wall memorializing Kristelnacht.

But I'll shut my mouth, or in this case, type very little, because it's not for me to pass such judgements. We went to Dachau Concentration camp today and I'm... speechless. There's too much emotion to paraphrase. Too much anger, misunderstanding, hatred, guilt, fear, in modern Germany's past. It has something to do with me because I'm a human being and I'm part of this world. I'm glad at the end of the day for memorials such as Dachau. Because there was so much human suffering there, it spared no one. I don't know what it's like to be a modern German. I wouldn't know how to cope with such a past. Is it a simple, discreet plaque that serves to remind those who take the time to look at it and reflect? Of course it is, as is Dachau. You can't turn Germany into a massive memorial. You have to move on, and as we heard today: to honor the dead we warn the living. I believe Germany is aware, and they can and are coping with it's past.

How to leave on a good note? Don't think I can. Dachau was real, and it will haunt me. But it will hopefully guide me.

New pictures are up. It's taken us 2 hours to upload only Antwerp and Bruges. Cologne, Heidelberg, and Munich will have to wait. Our hostel's happy hour is happening as we type this.

Interlaken, Switzerland is next. We have a 7.5 hour train ride through the alps at 8 a.m.




And on a wonderful sidenote:

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE EVER EXPANDING KUHN FAMILY!! Danny and Sara Kuhn and Kevin and Meghen Kuhn are both expecting little additions come 9 months from now. All the best!! Health and happiness to you all in the meantime!!! WE LOVE YOU GUYS!!

One week later...

We left Amsterdam running (literally). We made our train to Antwerp with a few minutes to spare. Running with 6 months of supplies on your back was fun. I think half way through the train journey I stopped sweating.

We arrived in Antwerp Centraal midday Monday 8th. It was a very impressive station, and by impressive I mean large, and by large I mean very hard to navigate. We had a bit of trouble figuring out the transport system, but sure enough we found our hostel (3 hours later, hahaha).

Our hostel was... an attic? It was above a jazz/folk music bar. 8 beds, two showers, a grand piano in the corner of the room, and for all that mattered to me a toilet outside. The stairs were like walking in an M.C. Esher painting. Alex, the guy giving us the grand tour said the steps are even more fun when drunk. And to add to the madness of this place, the next morning when I came back from the shower Dermot was being serenaded by a large black man from Brazil named Patrick playing the piano that was in the room, I think he was singing "A Kiss is Just a Kiss". I have pictures. We'll post them tomorrow. We fell asleep and were eaten alive by mosquitos while some crazy girl howled below Dermot's bed. And in the morning, we were talking to the owner of the place about our travels and our money concerns 6 months from now and he said not to worry, you can always rob some old ladies. There are lots of old ladies in this city. So, that was the hostel, anyway. I was going to give it a bad review on the website we booked it on, but now in retrospect I don't think I'm going to. It had character... or atleast was full of them.

Antwerp was beautiful. The weather was perfect so it gave us the opportunity to stroll and get lost and take lots of pictures. We've been surviving on pizza this entire time because we're on a strict budget and Italian food is the cheapest. I told Dermot that I felt like I should be eating meatballs, yanno maybe something cultural, but cultural means expensive. So we ate Belgium waffles instead, it was a nice compromise. Belgium beer is the best beer in the world. And in Antwerp we found it to be very inexpensive. Our first day we drank around the city in various street cafes then ended up in the Old Arsenaal, a pub that hasn't changed it's decor since 1924. We drank Troubador, a strong but sweet tasting German lager, as recommended by a gay Englishman who was sitting next to Dermot. We soon ventured to Robinsons, a real local pub with a wonderful bar lady who spoke English alongside 4 other languages. I must say, the trip thus far has really humbled us. I know a few words in German and Italian, Dermot speaks beginner French, and we meet people like this who are quite common in these areas. The bar lady was wonderful to talk. And we actually got to talking to a local who was sitting next to us at the bar who taught us about the rivalries within Belgium: North/Flanders/Flemish speaking vs the South/French speaking factions. On Tuesday we ate some more Italian food and headed to a beautiful, quiet part of the city to play scrabble under a tree. Dermot won, whatever. A guy was playing the clarinet next to us. We eventually ended up in the Old Arsenaal again, this time staying til closing time. We got to talking to two very nice old ladies from Germany that were impressed that we were heading to their area of the world the in the coming week. I counted to ten for them in German, they feined excitment. A local Belgian popped up for a bit, and we had the bar man Stefan take a photo of the five of us. Stefan's family has run the bar since it's opening in the 1920's. We told him as we were leaving that we hoped to see one of his son's here again someday. He smiled as best he could considering that we had drank more than we could afford to pay for.

We left Antwerp for Bruges on the morning of Wednesday 10th an hour later than intended. How do you say hungover in Flemish? Stupid sexy Flanders beer. I said to Dermot as we were on the train to Bruges that we might as well taking a train through rural Pennsylvania the countryside was that similar. I wondered if it was a reason why the Amish decided to settle in PA. Even the passing houses architecture was similar. So, we arrived in Bruges 2.5 hours later, and got a bus to the center of town. Luckily it was a beautiful day because we had to walk some distance to our hostel. The hostel had a perfect location. It was probably one of the best we'll stay in. Cheap beer at the bar and a happy hour to boot. Bruges was gorgeous. It was touristy, over priced, over crowded, but for a good reason. It had that stuck in time feeling. The locals seemed very proud of their city's beauty, and as we saw they had good reason to.

Our second day in Bruges we decided to beat the crowds and the high prices and head to the beach across the Belgium countryside on bikes. The beach was an hour and a half from Bruges, so we headed out early morning. I think that road to the beach will be one of the things I see before I die, one of the supposed scenes that flashes before your eyes. It was heavenly. It was the highlight of the trip so far. The road was through a secluded countryside, slopping downhill in the shade of the trees and the wind was at our backs. Now, uh, during this piece of heaven, we weren't really thinking of the return journey. A town called Damme really saved our asses (literally). We stopped on the way back to cool off and eat some pancakes in a local restaurant. The pancake was called Franse and it was artichoke and ham wrapped up and covered with cheese and tomato sauce. It was good, actually, our first real affordable authentic meal. The way back to Bruges was torture. Stopping for the meal gave our asses time to bruise. We had to cycle to the train station on the complete otherside of town in the searing midday heat, and of course we went in wrong direction before turning around. And while we're on wrong directions we never actually made it to the beach. Do they make watches with GPS systems? That night we went on a free walking tour of the city, which was a nice rounding out of Bruges and of Belgium.

Yesterday, Friday 12th we arrived in Cologne after a 3 hour train ride. Cologne has a cathedral. Actually, the largest cathedral in Germany and definitely the largest and most impressive that we've ever seen. And beer halls, Cologne has beer halls. They serve beer in 200ml glasses from a tray that looks like an old cinema reel turned on it's side. And the halls themselves are like no other place we've drank in (and that's saying something!). Great atmosphere and wonderfully stereotypical. We met some Germans from Frankfurt last night that of course spoke great English. One of them actually tried to tell us a joke. It went something like: what is the difference between a girl in a church and a girl in the shower? One has hope in her soul and the other has soap in her hole. Very droll and we laughed despite ourselves. When you do the calculations, or, let's be honest, when Dermot does the calculations, we were paying 4.50 for a pint of 4.8% beer. And since an Irishman cannot just sit back and sip beer, we sought cheaper alcohol in what we thought was the center of the student population here, and where there are students, there is normally cheap beer. We were wrong. We found swank pubs with even more expensive drinks. We walked by Papacitas, a Spanish restaurant and saw the words Happy Hour. We proceeded to enter and drank ourselves silly on girlie cocktails for an hour. By girlie I mean pink, but there was nothing girlie about the strength of them. We finished off the night with two buritos supremo and said hasta to Papacitas. So, what I'm essentially saying is Cologne has a massive church and nice but expensive beer halls, that's about it. I mean, if you were a gay drug addict, you might like it. But, let's just say we're looking forward to Heidleberg tomorrow.

I like German keyboards I can do stuff like this: ö ä ß

Heidleberg is tomorrow. Then Munich on Tuesday-Thursday. Then we head for Interlaken, Switzerland on Friday for the weekend.

This is quite a whirlwind tour. But sure, what else would you be doing?

Hehe.

My glaucoma... it's... it's gone!

Tee hee.

So we arrived in Amsterdam in one piece. Sleeping in the airport was back breaking, but our plane was one hour shorter than we expected, so we got to the hostel in enough time to take a long nap before exploring the city for the first time.

Hostels are hostels right, our room smells like a hippie's sock, and there is one chick in particular who coughs more than she breathes at night, but you get over it. We're in an 18 bed dorm, not much else to expect. Dermot says we have a sleepwalker/talker amongst the group. Leaning over balconies and asking the coughing girl is she okay. I haven't noticed. You put in the eye cover over your eyes and the ear plugs in your ears and you're good to go... most of the time. Our hostel is very clean, and the lounge where I'm writing this is great. Two tvs, atmosphere, and a bar open 24 hours with relatively cheap beer. Plus a cheap breakfast in the morning.

Our first day here we explored the city ourselves on foot. We ended up in Barney's Brasserie *cough ee shop*. Dont... really remember leaving... but we left not on foot. From there we floated around Amsterdam. It was raining but I didn't care. We were lost but I didn't care. Then we stopped in this magical place with the bestest brownies I've ever eaten in my life. Then this Indian princess convinced us with promises of discounted fine dining so we stopped to eat some food. It was a harrowing experience altogether. Dermot discovered that his feet had toes. And I was a little worried that my stomach was moving. Those bastards must've put something in those brownies! We'll have to go back an yell at them sternly...

Amsterdam is expensive. We took a free walking tour yesterday that lasted 3.5 hours and still we're a bit over budget. The walking tour was great though. It covered the Red Light District first. We have no photos from that part of the tour though. Our guide warned us that photos of the girls in the window is prohibited, unless you want to brave the chances of having her urine in a cup thrown over you. We weren't gonna take our chances. On to other various sites, beautiful canals, which the tour guide said "God created the world, the Dutch created Amsterdam". And a bit of Amsterdam's history - WWII especially with the Jewish quarter's strife and Anne Frank's house. Which we're very moving. Anne Frank's house especially that had the original photos on the wall that she placed there herself during the years her family hid there.

Dermot and I both agree it's an amazing city. Very European, if I may say, from an outsiders advantage. It's clean, safe, people ride bikes... and it's liberal. Very liberal.

Our hostel is in the Red Light District. A very rowdy part of town. I have pictures, a load of pictures. No puns intended. I'll post them on this site within the next two days when we anchor in Antwerp.

We head to Haarlem tomorrow, to walk around another part of The Netherlands, hopefully get a better feel for the country. It's unfair to judge a country by it's main city.

Tonight we're looking forward to a pub crawl.

Now we're looking to kill some free time before then. Free being the key word there.

Antwerp is next, stay tuned!

(We love you all, thanks for the kind comments!)