I’ve done quite a bit of travelling in the past week, going to three cities in the span of seven days. It all started last weekend when I suggested going back to Bremen to see a bit of the city. The Akademische Auslandsamt had organized another trip to go to Bad Iburg, a tiny hamlet fairly close to Osnabrück. I never signed up because I had zero desire to see a place smaller than Osnabrück. So instead, Kevin and I returned to Bremen. After barely missing the train (it left literally 5 seconds after we boarded) we arrived to a nice sunny day in Bremen, one of the three city-states left in Germany.

The day was mostly uneventful, we wandered around and eventually made our way to the Beck’s brewery (it’s freakin huge), but unfortunately all the tours were booked for the day. So, since I had donned by newly purchased Werder Bremen hat, we decided to see if we could catch the game in a pub nearby. After some random wandering we stumbled upon a completely packed Irish pub with several TV projectors. Werder was playing Bayern München for the top spot in the Bundesliga. Unfortunately Werder’s lack of defense killed them again and they ended up losing 3-1. The crowd was noticeably subdued for most of the match.

Last week I had almost zilch homework to do so we ended up going to a bar and/or club every night of the week. On thursday I went with a group of AEGEE’ers (this Europe-wide club promoting European integration) from our Osnabrück chapter to a party across the border in the Netherlands, Enschede to be precise. Unfortunately it was raining so we only hit about 90 mph on the autobahn, but made it there in 1.5 hours or so. I was amazed at the complete lack of border control, you literally just drive across as if entering a different state in the US. At that point I realized Germany would never have a shortage of marijuana or other soft drugs.

The party was initially pretty tame, yet it was interesting being with a bunch of Germans who didn’t speak the native language. AEGEE’s official language is English, though, which made things easier. However the entire party was conducted in Dutch. The facilities were fantastic, at one end a band played and at the other was the bar, dishing out 80 cent beers. Midway through the night the Enschedens decided the crowd wasn’t lively enough and started handing out free beer. The tactic was quite effective, after an hour just about everyone was dancing. It ended up being a fantastic night filled with all sorts of boogeying. However we didn’t get back to Osnabrück until 4 AM, which made friday’s 8 AM class pretty awful.

Since most everyone had devoted the weekend to preparing for/attending the Uni-ball on Saturday (think prom, but a lot cooler) there wasn’t all that much going on in terms of nightlife. I declined to go to the ball since I didn’t have proper attire (I regret not going, it sounded pretty great). So instead Brittany and I headed to Hannover. The day involved wandering around the city and checking out what it had to offer. There were a few art museums I wanted to check out but we never ended up finding them. The city was laden with modern art sculptures which I enjoyed. Overall the day was fairly uneventful. Once again (two Saturdays in a row now) I found myself on a train filled with drunk football hooligans, carrying on and smoking the whole way. I didn’t understand how this had happened, since there weren’t even any games on Saturday, nevertheless there they were. Maybe they forgot there wasn’t a game and just went through the normal Sat. routine, who knows. I have had about enough of their carrying-on, incessant smoking, and general idiocy.

I think further travel will have to involve surveying the night life as well.

This trip was intended to be a short, half-day tour of Münster, about an hour (by train) SW of Osnabrück.  Wellll, it turned out to be much more than that.

So Brittany, Kevin and I took the 11:18 train to Münster (for free due to our semester ticket) and arrived sometime after noon.  We got off the train and realized we had no idea what do in town or where to go.  This was fine by me but the others wanted to check out a map so we could head to the city center.  Fair enough, so we walked down a few streets into downtown Münster.

Münster is a bit larger than Osnabrück, and something like 40% of it’s population are college students.  It has a nice shaded park that pretty much circles the city, for biking and walking, or in our case, wandering.   Luckily the weather was beautiful so walking around was quite nice.  Brittany suggested we go to one of the churches in the center of town, so we did.  It was mostly pretty unremarkable.

Afterwards we got lunch and headed to the Dom, or main cathedral.  It was pretty interesting, the church had gotten severely damaged during the war but had since been fully rebuilt.  The stained glass was really interesting, quite modern and abstract.  I took quite a few pictures.

There happened to be a market surrounding the Dom which Brittany was interested in.  I think shopping sucks so Kevin and I walked to the zoo.

Well, the zoo was an hour away, and technically not even in Münster.  We thought it was pretty amusing that we had walked from one end of the city, to the center, then all the way out of it in about 3 hours, so I snapped a shot.  Soon afterwards we got to the zoo and realized it was going to be 12€ to get in.  Not cheap.  But I decided that 50 minutes of walking wasn’t going to be wasted, and we bit the bullet and went in.  Before paying we called Brittany, who claimed she was bored and was going to catch a train home.

I couldn’t remember my last trip to the zoo so it was pretty interesting.  It still seems superficial observing wild animals lounging around fabricated habitats, though.  We caught a dolphin show which was pretty fun.  If you’ve ever been to a dolphin/seal show I’m sure this one wasn’t much different.

Well the real adventure began on the bus ride home.  It was nearing 6 or so and we just happened to sit next to a few kids near the back who were speaking English.  This of course was a treat to us so we inquired.  Turns out two of them went to the University of Münster, while the other girl was visiting from Moscow.  English was their common language and they all spoke it quite well, especially Nina (sp?), the Russian.  They were planning to get some real German food, and we mentioned that we too had been looking for some traditional German cuisine.  So we decided to meet up again at 8 for dinner at this place across the street from Kai’s apartment.  In the meantime Kevin and I wandered around a bit, got some ice cream (’twas a good idea in the long run) and an espresso.

The restaurant was pretty homely, and extremely busy.  We sat at the bar and had a few glasses of one of the local brewery’s beers while waiting for the table.  The beer was quite delicious, I’m sorry I never got the name of it but apparently the stuff doesn’t really leave the city anyway.  By the time a table was ready, we had downed about 3 apiece and it was nearing 9:30.

Ah, but it was worth the wait.  Kai was kind enough to translate some of the dishes for us non-native German speakers and we ordered relatively quickly.  And my oh my our dishes were interesting.

I ordered a traditional Münsterisch soup on Beata’s recommendation, and it was quite good.  Like french onion soup except with meat and a much rounder taste.  Afterwards I ordered a plate of sausages with sauerkraut and fried potatoes.  Oh man, was it good.  I had been looking forward to trying a variety of unique sausages for a while, and there were about four varieties.  One was a "blood sausage", and looked like a charred peace of toast.  However, it was quite tasty though a bit salty.  I can’t even remember what the others were but they were all delicious.  The sauerkraut was leaps and bounds better than any I had ever had in the States, and the potatoes also excellent.  The other very unique dish was called Tötchen.  It basically was a hearty stew consisting of meat from a cow’s head mixed with meat from it’s guts.  I was not brave enough to order it but Kai did (probably due to our reaction after hearing it’s description).  He of course offered us some to try, and I obliged.  The consistency of the meat was very strange (almost like squid) but the concoction tasted very good overall.

It was a fantastic meal, and leisurely, and by the time we left it was a few minutes past 11 (I thought this was a Spanish thing).  So we went to Kai’s apartment and checked out when the next train was going to leave.  7 AM.  We had just missed the 11 PM. 

This news really had no negative effect on me as Kai had been a kind soul all night, and offered his room for us to bunk for the night.  So we had a few beers, I tried some homemade Lithuanian honey shnapps (kind of like a thicker mead), and eventually we headed out to the bars.  The rest of the night was spent drinking Weizens and having vibrant conversations with our new friends.  By the time we got back it was almost 3:30, and we were reminded of the time switch.  Woohoo!  An extra hour of sleep is always good news for this guy.

I slept in my contacts and woke up feeling kind of shitty.  But Kai again amazed me with his generosity and offered us a modest breakfast (tea and toast), and we chatted about his travels all over the world for a few hours.  At one we caught the train back to Osnabrück.

So it came to me on the way to Köln that the city has the same title as the stuff guys spray on themselves in an attempt to cover up BO, or something (I can’t remember the last time I used the stuff, to be honest).  This left me kind of curious as to the historical aspect of this similarity, or rather, wtf?

This was also the first real outing for the international students of Uni-Osnabrück, on the first weekend after our arrival.  We showed up at a bus stop near Neumarkt (the city center) at around 7:30.  I believe I had gone to a movie the night before and had missed out on my beauty sleep, so I wasted no time catching up on it during the entire 3-hour bus ride there.  So at around 11 three busses worth of international kids in their late teens/early twenties invaded Köln.

The first stop was the Schokoladenmuseum across the street, or as the pamphlet claimed, the MMMuseum (nice work guys).  This was rather enjoyable, they even had a tour in English which I defiantly denied (and later regretted).  We basically toured the automated section of the factory and got some history of the cocoa bean and the factory and some other nonsense.  The high point was the fountain of chocolate (oooo baby) at the edge of the museum in which a worker dipped wafers in to dispense to tourists.  It was gooey and delicious.  The rest of the tour was kind of dry, well I guess I can’t complain since I couldn’t understand what the hell our guide was saying anyway.  I did make sure to buy a healthy selection of truffles from the gift shop before leaving.

I had been hoping to see a gigantic vat of liquidy chocolate where perhaps I could bribe a worker to let me dive and swim in, thus checking that off my list.  Unfortunately the mysterious vat never appeared.

Later we wandered about for an hour or so before meeting up again near the cathedral.  I had been looking forward to going there since arriving in Köln since it dominates the sky for miles.  That, and it’s probably the most badass-looking structure I’d ever seen.  Very imposing.
So we split up again into a few tour groups.  Having learned my lesson from the last tour, I took the English one.  We went to both the new and old part of town and were treated to a fantastic history of the city.  Along the way we stopped at the world headquarters for this type of cologne (eau de frufru maybe?), which apparently must’ve been good enough to spawn an industry.  There was also a fountain of cologne in the corner of the store which I just had to identify as an actual fountain of cologne (yeah it was, and I smelled kinda fruity the rest of the day).

Eventually we made our way back to the cathedral and entered it.  Having been in a few cathedrals before, the layout and general feel of the inside was unsurprising, albeit still incredibly immense.  I do believe the inside was better decorated from its richer history (a King for each stained-glass window). 

The cathedral culminated the tour.  Somehow we (Katya and I) got separated from the group after that, but ran into one of her friends later and found our way back together.

Hopefully this was the first of many weekend trips…

A whole lot has happened in the last week-plus, so I’m going to break this post up.  Let’s start from the beginning…

Arrival in Munich

On Sat, Oct 1 I departed from Heathrow airport in London bound for Munich.  I was in very high spirits, with great confidence on my navigation abilities, and maybe not so much with my german language abilities.  The flight to Munich went without a hiccup, and having run into 4 or 5 different groups of Californians bound for Oktoberfest, I delayed switching to German mode.  Upon arrival it hit me: "shit, I’m gonna need to use German to get around." 

Well, for the most part anyway.  Passport control was a joke, they didn’t even ask me how long I was to be in Munich.  I managed to buy my train ticket using English and took the hour or so train to the Hauptbanhof, or central train station.  Upon arrival I realized I had forgotten how to get to the hostel from the train station and hadn’t printed directions.  Awesome. 

So I wandered outside and walked a couple blocks, not recognizing any of the streets (I did remember the name of the street connecting the hostel’s street).  I decided to ask this old dude where the street was (in surely horrid, scrambled German) and he didn’t know.  So I wandered around some more and eventually found the street and hostel.  Chris greeted me warmly upon arrival.  He was a welcome, familiar sight in a strange, foreign land.

That night we met up with Kevin and Ivan, his friend from Munich, and promptly made our way to a club.  The club was below ground and was fitted with a room consisting of nothing but large couchlike cushions lining the walls in a seductive red color.  Unfortunately the room was reserved so we grabbed a table in the adjoining room, near the bar.  Upon receiving the menu I opened it up and immediately (as in less than a second) lay my eyes on an interesting cocktail: an Absinthe martini.  "Hell yeah," I thought to myself and ordered one soon afterward.  I had wanted to try Absinthe for awhile.  So we sat and talked for a little while and sipped on our cocktails.  The martini had a very strong licoriche flavor, but wasn’t too unpleasant.  After finishing it I felt definitely intoxicated, but not really drunk.  Later Kevin/Chris and I went to a Bierhaus for a few beers.  I had a bit of a buzz but that was it, the absinthe was a bit disappointing.  No worries, for I will dabble in it again since it must be legal here.

Day 1: Where’s the party?

Oktoberfest is like a gigantic fair with several beer "tents" run by
a few of the local breweries, who develop a special Oktoberfest brew.
It is quite immense, the tents themselves are huge and probably sit 5
to 10 thousand people.  It has the special distinction of being the
largest public festival in the world (making it quite touristy). 

So on sunday we slept in a bit and didn’t meet up with Kevin/Ivan til mid-afternoon.  We were told that if we got to Oktoberfest too late all the tents would be full and we wouldn’t be able to get in.  Well, that was exactly the case, as 3 PM was too late for every tent we tried to enter.  The rest of the day was mostly a bummer, we ended up riding the bumper cars for a while and then (on the third try) getting into a pub for dinner and a drink.  I ordered a random beer and it was pretty gross (real sweet).  Later we went to a Russian movie (dubbed in German of course) of which I understood just about nothing.

Day 2: Success!

So upon our return I decided Monday was to be dedicated to getting into a beer tent so we could really experience Oktoberfest.  We (Chris and I) got up at around 9 or so and were on the festival grounds by 10:30.  After wandering around a couple tents and not finding any seats I spotted a table that was just being surrendered, and quickly pounced on it.  (The tent was #14, Löwenbräu)  Not two minutes afterwards we were joined by a couple from Texas and a Bavarian family, filling up the table.   Then the fun began!

We were happy to find the couple was American and chatted for awhile, putting down a Liter of beer apiece (check out the Munich photo album, these mugs are just huge!)  After awhile they left and I started chatting with the rather attractive young German lady next to me about all kinds of stuff.  Luckily her English was still pretty good, and my German good enough to initiate converstional topics.  This continued until 5 PM or so when they took off.  All this time the beer had been flowing freely (4L!!) and we decided it was time to leave before I got in over my head.  So we wandered back to the hostel in the rain, well after buying a sweet hat at the festival that is!  After 15 minutes or so of sitting in our room watching the tube I got bored and wandered downstairs to the bar, conveniently located near the check-in desk (I highly recommend this hostel, the Euro-Youth Hotel in Munich).

I was still wearing my ridiculous hat from the festival and drew all sorts of attention at the bar.  An Irish lad flagged me down and I took a seat.  So the next few hours were spent chatting with him and a few Australian girls about all kinds of stuff.  Then a Spanish girl the Irishman knew took a seat next to me and the Irish kid tried to get us to go with him to a local pub, where he was to perform or something.  I decided that’d be a horrid idea based on my current level of inebriation and declined.   By midnight or so I headed back up to my room to literally pass out.

Day 3: Hangover!

4 AM came real real fast.  This was the time Chris and I had set to get up and head to the airport for our 620 flight (I knew this was a horrible time when booking it but did it anyway).  Needless to say I was still quite drunk and felt awful, but managed to get up, pack up my shit and head back to the Hauptbanhof.  The train came pretty quickly and we were at the airport by 5:30 or so.  However the walk from the train station to our departure terminal took forever and we arrived at the checkin line at quarter of 6 or so.  By the time we checked in it was 615, and too late for the flight.

So we bought tickets for the next flight and paid the 40EUR rebooking fee.  Then we sat around the airport waiting for our new flight at 14:10.  I managed to sleep for a good deal of it, feeling horrible, and eventually we checked in and made the flight.  I contacted my Hausmeister when we arrived in Münster and the rest of the day went fairly well.

Welcome week fun will be my next post…

It’s nearing midnight, and I’ve spent the better part of my day in France. It served as the climax of my stay here in SE England, precursed by many enjoyable activities throughout the week. My Aunt and Uncle have treated me like royalty, their unabashed generosity and warmth has really been great. This week I’ve been treated to several dinners around the Reigate area, namely Thai and French (all were delicious, and complemented with merry amounts of wine). I’ve golfed 18 holes on the course viewable from my bedroom windown and gone into London solo on two occasions, for sightseeing and theatregoing both. Kevin Spacey reaffirmed my faith in him as a fantastic actor, especially on the stage (second-row seats didn’t hurt).

Today was our glorified booze cruise. We took a ferry from Dover to Calais for the purpose of restocking the wine cellar and having lunch at this magnificent restaurant in Boulogne. The meal had as many courses as days in a week, and each one seemed more tantalizing. It still amazes me how the French treat food like an art form, and how the presentation is almost as carefully prepared as the food itself. The emphasis on quality, rather than guantity, is a welcome change from typical English and American cuisine. Not to mention the service; the waiters constantly topped off our wine, water, and bread throughout the meal. (I could go on for hours about French cuisine, guess it’s my inner frenchman surfacing.) They’re not so welcoming, but they sure as hell know how to cook.

After picking up a dozen cases of wine and several selections of cheese, we made our way back to the harbor. It was pretty interesting seeing French men and women mingle about on the tiny streets and squares of Boulogne where we purchased the cheese.

I have captured several dozen photos of my adventures here in England and France, and will post them when I get a free afternoon (tomorrow?). Alas, tomorrow (Friday) is my last day here before I depart for Munich on Saturday. Don’t have anything planned as of yet, so I may just lounge around and relax. The last few days have been pretty tiring (Poor me, haha).

My next post will be from Germany. Rock!