So yesterday we left Frankfurt for Bern.  I am not even going to bother writing about our day in Frankfurt because it was just so boring.  But that was exactly what we needed.  A boring day where we could sleep in and do next to nothing all day.  As for Bern, it is nice enough but it is not nearly as nice as the internet made it out to be.  There are no mountains here and yes there is an old part of the city that is a UNESCO world heritage site but to me it is ruined by all of the modern stores that are in all of the buildings.  There is nothing that is too appealing here.  The languages make it confusing too.  I am not sure what languages and customs they go by here because it is a mix of so many in Switzerland. 

So while Braden and I were sitting around last night discussing what we were going to fill our time with today we decided to go to Interlaken.  I had heard other people talking about it, including one of our roomates last night, and it sounded so nice.  Trains run there every half hour so we got up this morning and hopped on one of them.  It is only an hour away and it is so much nicer.  It is pretty touristy but it is beautiful.  The lakes are so green it is unbelievable and it is surrounded by the Alps.

We walked from one side of the city to the other looking in the shops and had some lunch.  Then we decided to head towards the mountains and see what we would come across.  We found a trail and decided to walk up it.  It led us to an observation tower.  At the foot of it was the cutest little bunny in a cage.  Of course we stopped to play with it for awhile.  From the tower you could see all of Interlaken, both of the lakes on either side, and the mountains all around.  It was quite beautiful.  Afterwards we had ice cream at the restaurant up there.  It was overpriced like everything in Switzerland is.  Once we were done that we saw that we were able to bobseld, that is what they called it anyway, back down the mountain.  It was literally just a small plastic shell with a seatbelt and a pole on a track.  The pole allowed you to control your speed.  Braden wanted to do it but I was not so sure that it was very safe.  For a long while no one else seemed to be using it but eventually some people did and after watching them I decided that I would try it.  It was a short and overly priced ride but it was fun.  After that we walked back to the train station and now here we are back in Bern.

Tomorrow we start our 3 day treck back home.  We take the 4 hour train ride back to Frankfurt.  Then on Thursday morning we fly to Dublin and the next day back to Ottawa.  That sure is a long time to get home.  It feels like it has been so long since I have been home yet the trip has gone by so fast at the same time.

Oh, and for you back in Windsor I have a whole lot of Swiss chocolate coming back with me.  That is unless Beth eats it all on the way back to Windsor :)

-Jen 

So after our off day in Frankfurt, we once again rode the rail to Bern. And when we ride the rail, we literally ride to rail (inside joke). Not too bad of of a trip, got it late afternoon. BUt we used our honed traveler skills to deduce a few things:

1. There are way too many languages here. It's likek a summary of everywhere we've been so far, with French, Italian, German and even English making appearances.  The upshoot is you never know what language to speak to people in until they start, at which time it's easier to just go English.
2. Switzerland is freakin' expensive. To give you an idea, a meal at McDonalds ran us 12 Francs apiece. And the conversion rate is about 1 to 1 with the Canadian dollar. It was like, just in case we had some moeny left at the end of our trip, they were gonna sqeeze it out of us. Thank goodness we aren't here long.
3. Finally, Bern is just boring. We came because the website promised a little city nestled in the mountains. But there is not any mountains. None. And the city isn't all that pretty either. And there is certainly nothing to do. Neither of us were looking forward to the day, but we did have an extra slot on our Eurail passes. So we decided to skip town and go to Interlaken for the day. 

Interlaken was everything we wanted Bern to be, and it cumilated in a roller coaster down teh Swiss Alps. All in all, a good way to end the real part of our trip. From now on, we are just backtracking. First to Frankfurt tomorrow, to Dublin the next day, and finally home. I'm okay with that, it's been a long, yet fun, haul.

-Braden

Nothing much happening in EuroWorld today.  We skipped over Warzburg to spend a day just catching up on life in Frankfurt.  I'm not regretting that, all the small towns were looking the same, I don't think I could have stomached another one. Note that I enjoyed them, especiallly Rothenburg, but enough is enough. Highlight of today was doing our laundry in the sink, as all the laundromats were closed. On the plus side, that's the last time we have to do laundry! Home stretch!

Last night I braved the dark and a new forgein city to go watch the Sens.  Jen was all 'I want to sleep at night', so I went alone to a sports bar I had found out was showing the game.  It was pretty loud there, but I did get to see my game.  Okay, some drunk guy did bowl my table over spilling my beer on my pants.  But I was given a fresh one, so it all worked out.  Unfortunately, the bar had to close at 4am, so I had to leave just after Alfie's tying goal. I had visions all night of the outcome, and the reality proved a dream come true! We are back in the series :)

I suppose I should set the record straight before Jen comes in and says it all.  Yes, some sort of women's blouse was found in my laundry bag today. No, I don't know whose it is and it's certainly not mine. At first I thought it to be Jen's, but she denied everything. So it looks like I picked it up in Munich from the dryer there and just packed it thinking it was something else. I dunno.

Tomorrow we take a long journey to Bern, I'm sure it will be worth it.  And then Game 4, which I will miss. But GO SENS, reset the series!

-Braden

Maybe I should have actually read Braden's last post before posting my own.  It seems as though I repeated much of what he said.  Oh well, I am too lazy to change it.  At least he named the castles for you :)

I have to say, out of all of the countries I have been to so far I am enjoying Germany the best.  It is so beautiful here.  And clean.  The mountains are amazing and I love the old German buildings.  But more than anything the people here are so nice.  They are very helpful and don't treat you like crap if you don't speak German.  Even those who don't speak English themselves.  We just use lots of hand signals and we figure it out.  They aren't snotty about it like the French and to a lesser extent Italians.  They just seem to be nice people.  Mind you we haven't been to any huge cities like in the other countries.  I am just really loving everything about Germany.  It also helps their case that they drink normal coffee here unlike France and Italy.  Ireland and England are nice too but they are just too much like us for it to be as exciting as Germany.  Besides, German beer beats Guinness any day. :)

I am going to go a little backwards here and talk about Munich again.  It rained the entire time that we were there.  But it is a nice little city.  Little in comparrison to the other major cities we have been to anyway.  It is big enough to have some interesting stuff to do but small enough to be relaxed.  It is safe to cross streets there.  On our last day in Munich we took a day trip to the Dachau concentration camp memorial.  I know that Braden already wrote about it but I feel that I should too.  It was just a surreal experience to see the sites where such horrible things occured and to hear the stories.  We saw where the prisoners lived and where so many of them died.  We saw the gas chambers and where they burned the bodies as well as where they tortured people.  Yet even as I stood there looking at these things it was still just too much to get my mind around.  I know that these things happened but it is just to horrible to actually imagine it happening.  It was such an eery experience but it is important and I am glad that I went. 

For the first while we were there I struggled with wether or not to take pictures.  They allow you to take pictures of anything but I decided that I didn't want to have pictures of such horrible things.  But then I changed my mind.  I thought of all of the people that I know that might not get the chance to visit such a place and because it is so important for people to know what happened and to never allow it to happen again I ended up taking pictures.  Not ones that I will want to look at again myself too often but I wanted to be able to show people what this place was like.

Even in Munich itself there is a lot of history concerning Hitler and the Nazi party.  It was talked about a lot during our city tour and there are other tours you can take that only take you to places of importance concerning Hitler.  I wasn't sure what to expect in Germany.  I didn't know how open they would be about discussing their past but I am glad that it is not something that is hidden.

I also just thought I would point out that I haven't been complaining too much lately.  Even Braden is complaining more than me :p

-Jen

We are now in Frankurt and boy do I have a lot of posting to catch up on.  We have been staying in several small German towns along the Romantic Road for the last few nights so internet has been hard to come by.  The first night we stayed in Fussen.  It is right at the foot of the Alps and is a beautiful little town.  However, there is not much to do there besides a few shops so we took a bus to another town 5km away and visited some castles.  One of them seems to be quite famous but I am too lazy to look up its name at this moment.  We got guided tours of the 2 castles and looked around in some shops before heading back to town.  As you can probably imagine in little towns everything closes early so we ate dinner at the one restaurant that we found that was still open.  It just happened to be the same one we ate lunch at.  But man was it delicous.  I was so worried about the food in Germany but is so good.  The best so far by far.  Italian food is good but it gets old fast because it is basically either pizza or pasta.  At least in Germany you can get a meal with several different things and the prices are so reasonable. 

The following day, which I believe was Thursday, we travelled most of the afternoon to get to Dinkelsbuhl.  This is a beautiful medieval town but unfortunately there was not much to do there.  So we ate a lot and drank some beer.  It seems as though we arent't the only ones who find the nightlife in Dinkelsbuhl to be quite lame.  All night we kept seeing teenagers driving down the main street in their pimped out cars blasting their music and driving really slowly.  It was the weirdest thing.  Here you have this medieval town with beautiful old buildings and cobblestone roads and these cars with their loud rap music going up and down the street all night.  It was quite entertaining.

On Friday evening we headed to Rothenberg which I had been excited about for weeks.  It is also a medieval town but it houses Christmas Village.  It is bigger than Dinkelsbuhl and is more of a tourist city so there was a lot more to do.  We got in late so we weren't able to do much but we did go on a tour with the night watchman which was fun.  Lucky for us they offered one in English unlike the all German one in Dinkelsbuhl.  So today we got up nice and early so that we could have breakfast and be at Christmas village for when it opened.  It was Christmasy and exciting but nothing like Bronners in Frankenmuth.  However I did buy some ornaments which shouldn't surprise anyone.  Afterwards we went to the crime musuem and learned about how they use to torture people in Europe.  Did you know that at one time coffee was illegal?  The rest of the day was spent browsing through other shops in the town.  There are a lot of them.  I am also happy to report that I bought a beer stein today :)

Then we got back on the bus and now here we are in Frankfurt.  If you are following our itinerary you might have noticed that we are supposed to be in Warzburg tonight.  We decided last week to change our plans so that we had 2 days in Frankfurt.  We need some time to rest after moving everyday for the last few days and we need to get some laundry done.  Had we stayed in Warzburg tonight it would mean us getting into Frankfurt late tomorrow night and then having to leave early the next morning for Bern.  So we decided to skip it and spend 2 days in Frankfurt even though it doesn't seem to be too exciting here.  The rest will be nice though.  I can't believe that I am going to be back in Canada in less than a week.

-Jen

Just a quick check in from Dinkulsbuhl, also known as the most boring town on Earth. :)  We had a good time in Fussen yesterday, checked Hohenshaugau and Neuechweistein (sp?!) castles. Very cool, but the mountain landscape was more impressive.  Had lunch in a restraunt specializing in asparagus, although I ordered a non-asparagus dish.  It was so good we went back there for supper! Not that the town was overflowing with options. Especially since we are used to the late dinners of France and Italy and by the time we were hungry, most of the few places were closed.  Strange being a place that starts shutting down at 6.

But it was a blast compared to Dinkulsbuhl.  So far there is nothing to do. But its supposed to look great at night and there is a night watchman tour to go on at 9.  Here's hoping!

I tried not to complain much this time. I'm feeling much better, not sick anymore, the rain is gone.  Hopefully no more episodes of Jen-ness!

PS: Freakin' Sens

-Braden

That was soooo worth staying up until 5am for, wasn't it? Stupid Sens couldn't hold the lead.  At least the German hockey fan on staff took pity on me and gave me coupons for 2 free beers! Too bad the brand sucks, give me Augistiner over that stuff any day.

It's been raining hard non-stop all through our stay here.  It sucks not wanting to go anywhere because you will get soaked. There are flood warnings all over the country...

So to cheer ourselves up, we went on a tour of the Dachau conentration camp.  Of course, the horror was too much.  I just cannot fathom it. I can intellectually accept that the holocaust happened, but it won't fit in my head. Doesn't matter how many sites I see, or how many accounts I read or videos I watch.  And it's not like this is in a galaxy far, far away. It happened in the modern country I'm in now, within living memory.  Unreal.  Still it's important to see these things and keep in mind 'never again.'

Tomorrow we ship out for Fussen, a small town on the Romantic Road. We are gonna see castles. Hope the rain isn't too, too bad. Go Sens, get that split!

-Braden

So today we deviated from our itinerary a bit.  Lately we have grown tired of following a set plan and are just doing what we feel like.  We decided to go on a city tour that was recomended to us by 2 guys we are staying with in our hostel.  Actually before that we had a decent breakfast for a change at the hostel and I had a big Starbucks coffee.  People seem to eat normally in Germany.  I can get breakfast and a decent sized coffee to go again.  Unheard of in France and Italy.  I can even eat at normal times and get a decent meal for a fair price and not get horrible service because I don't order multiple courses.  So we did the walking tour and it was great.  It is a free tour and you just tip the guide at the end.  It was much better then the one we went on in Venice and it was 3 hours long.

It was raining so afterwards we decided to go to an indoor beer hall that we had previously been to on the walking tour instead of the beer gardens.  A bunch of Germans/tourists drinking in a big room with a live German band in the middle of the afternoon on a Monday.  What a wonderful city.  At one point this old German man came and sat next to me at our table and was telling us some story.  Of course he was speaking in German so we didn't understand what he was saying.  But it didn't matter.  He was so happy about something.  It was great.  I have to admit that I drank a little too much beer myself.  I am pretty likely to do the same again tonight.  There is beer everywhere here. 

After the beer hall we went back to our hostel to do laundry.  After this we are going to go find some dinner and nap before the Sens game that starts at 2am.  Actually, until the Hockey Night In Canada pregame starts at 1:30.  That is exciting.  It is also exciting that people actually watch hockey here.  Germany is actually similar to Canada in a lot of ways I am noticing.  Clearly there are a lot of differences but especially when compared to the other countries we have been to so far Germany is quite similar.  I really like it so far.  I don't understand a word of German but I am getting use to not being understood half of the time and not understanding most of what is going on around me.  So far Germans seem to be pretty helpful.  I definately don't sense the arrogance that I did in France or the craziness of Italy.  Maybe it is just because Munich is a smaller city.  Who knows.  I definately have a lot of thoughts about Europe and even the way I look at Canadians and Americans now.  But I won't get into that now.  It's time for more BEER!!!! :)

It was a holday here today so everything is closed.  That means we have a lot to do tomorrow.  We are going to Dachau and need to fit in some shopping time.

-Jen

Braden always steals the fun stuff to write about and leaves me with nothing to focus on but the bad stuff.  He says that complaining is my job since I am so good at it.  Or something like that. 

So the day before yesterday we made a brief stop in Venice.  It is a beautiful city and I wish we had been able to stay longer.  We didn't even get checked into our room until around 4:00 thanks to the hostel people not being there and us having to call them.  Luckily there were some other girls staying there and they let us in to drop off our stuff and wait for someone to show up.  Apparantly they do this to everyone.  So we got that taken care of and wondered around the island.  There are tons of little shops and churches but we just did not have enough time to see them all.  But we managed to do some shopping and yes I bought a few things.  But nothing like what Braden makes it sound like.  He is just cheap :)  In the evening we went on a ghost walk/historical tour and it was good but I expected more for the price.  As previously mentioned our hostel was horrible.  The bathroom floor was flooded and there were aunts all over the place.  But we only had one night there so that is good.

Yesterday we were on the train for much of the day travelling to Munich.  The ride was long but the views were amazing.  We came through Austria and thus through the Alps.  I took some pictures from the train but as you can imagine they aren't that great of quality.  There were so many little villages on the sides of mountains with even bigger mountains behind it.  I can't wait to go back into the mountains on Wednesday.

I am also very happy with our hostel here in Munich.  It is big and has a bar so it's a little loud but I somehow find a bunch of loud English speaking young people comforting at this point.  It is nice to have people to talk to again.  Our hostels in Italy were all small and sketchy.  This one is very clean and organized and I love it.  But then again Germany so far is very clean and organized and I love it.  We didn't do much last night but we did have dinner at a traditional Bavarian restaurant.  That was pretty cool.

-Jen

So today we got up and got ready to take our water bus to the train and outta the country.  But, it's Italy, so surprise! There's a strike.  We were bemoaning our luck, as we knew water taxis are crazy expensive. One just happened to offer us shared ride and it ended up being cheaper than the bus!  We made our train with time to spare; one bullet dodged.

Our journey involved a quick tranfer at Verona. I went to use the bathroom while Jen guarded our bags.  While I was gone, some guy came up to Jen and started asking all these odd questions, trying to lure her from the bags.  She was smart and stayed put, but creepily he asked her if she was alone just as I showed up.  He left quickly after that. No robbery for us; second bullet dodged.

Our tickets read to get off at Munchen Ost, so that we were going to do.  We tried to open the door, but we couldn't get it to go.  Luckily, we wanted the next station anyway, and saved ourselves a big mess.  Final bullet dodged, home free.

And how it is worth it. Our hostel is one of the best in the world, but I could care less. That is because they have the North American Sport Channel, which is showing the Cup finals!!! I know what I'm doing tomorrow at 2 am :D Went to a Barvarian restraunt, and I had a big plate of different meats and a big old German beer.  Two of them would level me, I intend to prove that later.  It's a nice city, not too busy.  I definitely wanna stay.

One day to game 1! GO SENS! I ate some duck tonight to help out.

-Braden

Yesterday was spent getting to and blitzing Venice. Train was the usual boredom interspersed with nice scenery. But once we arrived at the city we got to do something uniquely Venician right away:  ride on a water bus. As we boated down the Rio Grande, we saw an ambulance boat speed by, sirens wailing. It left huge waves in its wake that shook all the boats diving out of the way.

It was late afternoon by the time we sorted out our hostel. I won't miss Italian hostels.  But we spent the rest of the evening waltzing through the Rialto market grabbing food as we went. A coconut slice here, a cup of fruit here, some McDonald's fries there.  Jen spent a pile on souveniers. Meanwhile, the clouds rolled in to set the mood for the Ghost Walk we signed up for.

The rain came just in time for the walk, but it wasn't too bad because it cleared the streets.  The walk itself was well done, but very expensive.  Cheaper than a gondola ride...those are rediculous.  It rained so much, that combined with the tide, they started to flood the main square to spare the rest of the city. This is a common occurance, which is why Venicians wear fisherman boots in the winter!  We some some people splashing in the square, but our walk guide told us we'd never see a native doing this as the sewer system is sketchy.

The hostel was lousy, but the next day we were leaving, so no huge deal.

-Braden

Colleseum

Another one off the list.:)  Went to see this wonder today, and of course I enjoyed it.  Its fun to sit there in the ruins and imagine the building in its glory.  The events there must of been the highlight of the spectators' year.  Those sick, demented specators.  Thank goodness we have action flicks today to alleviate the blood lust with mininal actual death.

As good or even more so was walking through the Roman Forum. Not only do we get one deceased building, but a whole downtown core. You really felt as if you were in the middle of a dead city, brought back as a zombie.

Above all, it is HOT here.  Absolutely stifling.  It must of been a good chunk over 30 the whole time we've been here, and since ruins lack heavily in roofs, we melt.  It sucks our energy dry and we are wiped out by midday. Gelato dealers make a killing off of  us. Now I know how crack addicts feel.

For those of you that recall my essay on crossing the road in Dublin, I share with you notes on how to cross the street in Rome

1. Don't.

If you have to, just walk around the city or to another city or anything to avoid this fate.  Don't bother looking for crosswalks or traffic lights because any that exist are ignored.  The motorists are crazy and the scooter drivers purposely hunt you like game.  Now I know why the Catholic Church is based out of Rome; faith in an afterlife is necessary in such an environment.  Seriously, I hope Florence is better. I'll never complain about Quebecois drivers again.

Tomorrow we leave this city, which had its ups and downs.  Firenze will surely be great, and if not...there's always the next place :)

-Braden