Week
22 (August 26-September 1, 2001)
AUGUST
27: HANNOVER. Beer with the Supervisors. After work,
almost all of us (except Dave and Kurtis) met up with the supervisors at
"the Mövenpick clock", or as the supervisors called it, the Kröpcke
Uhr and we all set off for our dinner/drinks. First stop: the
Bavarium
which was a Bavarian-style biergarten and we stayed there a few hours,
sort of bonding with each other and with the supervisors, which was definitely
interesting and fun. Somehow, I ended up bonding more with The Boys
and Klemens than the other supervisors. Kitty and Plato focused their
attention on Tobias who we think looks like a Backstreet Boy. I think
we all had half a litre of pils and a little shot of this clear hard liquor
stuff. Then we moved on to another bar called Mezzo
where I had another beer and we did more storytelling around the table:
Klemens and the Canadian co-ops at one table and the rest of the German
supervisors at the next table. We left at 1 p.m. since we still had
work the next day! It was super fun and it was really nice of the
supervisors to take us out like that. They paid for everything as
well, which was very cool and very gracious of them.
AUGUST
31: HANNOVER, HOME. Woke up, finished the rest of my packing
and ran to the grocery for some really last minute shopping for Milka and
Bahlsen cookies. We got picked up by Jörg and Karsten and they
lugged our stuff to the van and dropped us off at the airport. We
took lots of pictures, then went in claimed our tax refunds, checked in
at the KLM counter and spent the rest of our coins. I bought
my last Mövenpick gelato. Sigh! I'm really going to miss
gelato. Took the hour flight to Amsterdam, and snapped some parting
shots of Hannover from the plane. At Schiphol, I spent the last of
my Dutch coins and we boarded the plane (unfortunately we were all split
up so we all didn't get to chat that much). I was in between this
old-ish blue-collar British dude moving to Vancouver Island, and a 13-year
old kid from Delta who just travelled all the way to Russia by himself.
Guess who talked to me throughout the 9 hours on the trip back? Yep,
the kid. I barely had a chance to listen to my CDs since he was really
trying to get me to watch "Shrek". I popped in on Derek and Kitty
every now and then though, to swap CDs and to exercise my legs. Once
we were back, we all reunited with our families and went home. No,
I didn't get to run to them in slow motion like I had originally planned
(my shame got the better of me), and no, they didn't bring my much-coveted
Tevas to greet me at the airport but they did bring me a box of doughnuts
and an iced cappuccino. What a welcome home!!
Week
21 (August 19-25, 2001)
AUGUST
19: LONDON.
AUGUST
20: LONDON.
AUGUST
21: LONDON.
AUGUST
24: HANNOVER. Co-op Going-Away BBQ, Part 1. Question:
What do
you
get when you have a Bring Your Own Wurst & Bier BBQ with 10 UBC Co-ops?
Answer:
Over 60 bratwurst, substantial beer, salad, bread etc. to last two BBQs.
So that's what we did. Plus,somehow, the BBQ ended early and transformed
itself to a movie night, and we all went out to watch "Final Fantasy".
To be continued....
AUGUST
25: HANNOVER. Co-op Going-Away BBQ, Part 2. Hung out
at Dave
and
Kurtis' place at Heidjerhof, watched some soccer ("researching" for my
next job at the company that's the home of the FIFA soccer video game,
Need For Speed (yay! rock!), NHL, NBA, SSX Snowboarding, etc), and eventually
got coerced into playing Quarters with the boys. Got introduced to
a certain gentleman, he was tall, brown and totally transparent.
His name was Cook, James Cook, and he was a bottle of 54% proof rum, my
friends. He also burned my throat and made my eyes
water.
Week
20 (August 12-18, 2001)
AUGUST
12: AMSTERDAM. Woke up early and rushed to the Van Gogh museum, where
there was already a line-up. We were there 30 min. before opening
and we barely made it to the part of the line-up under the shade (people
after us had to line
up
in the rain. Sucks to be them). After a couple of hours in
the museum, happily
moving
from painting to painting and shopping for souvenirs afterwards, we griped
(the
MOST FAMOUS VAN GOGH PAINTINGS WEREN'T THERE!!) our way to the Rijksmuseum,
passed through the entrance arch, then headed straight for the highlight
of our trip.... The Heineken Experience. Pure amber liquid heaven,
we even skipped lunch for this!! After experiencing Heineken to the
fullest, sending several unsuccessful Heineken e-cards (as I found out
later), three rounds of beer and a couple of photos with a cute Dutch bartender
later, we staggered our way back to the Dam where we had pommes frites
with fritesauce a.k.a. mayonnaise, then did more souvenir shopping, spotted
Miffy stuff in a pharmacy, sniffed more secondhand pot smoke (I really
tried not to... honest!), window shopping, bought food with our leftover
Dutch money and left for home.
AUGUST
18: LONDON. Caught the 5 a.m. train to Frankfurt FOR FREE!!!
When
you
look like 2 helpless girls, someone's bound to help you out and this time,
it was this tall thin German guy who offered us a free ride on his Wochenende
Ticket all the way to Frankfurt. A thousand thanks to you, o kindly
stranger. You're my hero for life. We kept offering him money
for the ticket over and over again but he kept refusing and even looked
a bit offended, so we pursued it no more. A long, sweaty bus ride,
and a decent plane ride later, we were in Britain. English was being
spoken!
Week
19 (August 5-11, 2001)
AUGUST
5: NORDENEY. Our first ever European boat/ferry ride, plus a day spent
on the beach playing with a lot of dead crabs and jellyfish (we pretended
that they were giant lumps of snot or vomit and took lots of pictures of
ourselves messing about with them). No swimming though since it was frigid!
We ate sour cola gummies (me), Doritos (Kitty) and olives (Derek) on the
beach, and just chilled. Sure, it wasn't Copenhagen but we had tonnes of
fun anyway :)
AUGUST
11: AMSTERDAM. We got to Amsterdam late, and after searching for a place
to stay, we ended up at a Christian hostel half a block away from the Red
Light District. The first hostel we tried had a smoking area (and I don't
mean tobacco) right by the reception desk. We stood there a few minutes
and I already felt dizzy. The rest of the day we went to the Anne Frank
Huis, checked out the Dam, and scouted out the Rijksmuseum and The Heineken
Experience. At night, we walked around the Red Light District for a bit
then went back to the hostel where we met some pretty cool people.
Week
18 (July 29-August 4, 2001)
JULY
29: INTERLAKEN. We got there, sorted out our hostel situation, shopped
for souvenirs then headed straight to Harder Kulm for some cheat-hiking,
i.e. took the Harder Bahn (like a funicular/tram) to the top of the mountain,
and hiked down. Bad idea. I was carrying loads of stuff (the shopping)
which I accidentally dropped and almost lost my precious cool-looking Evian
bottle down the mountain. Hike took two hours, including breaks for resting
and taking photos and examining myself for ticks and stuff. Then we sat
in the park near Hoheweg, walked around town, and tried fondue (blech!)
JULY
30: LUCERNE. Dumped our bags in train station lockers and grabbed a map.
It was BOILING. We went to the Dying Lion of Lucerne (one of the saddest
statues I've ever seen), peeped inside the Glacier Museum (no time or money
to check it out) and checked out the big church nearby. Since it's my mom's
birthday,
my goal was to visit as many churches as possible. In total I hit three.
We went into the Altstadt with all its painted buildings, fountains and
town squares. Sat by the river, near one of the churches. Caught rays in
Kapellemarkt while listening to some teenagers sing. Checked out the two
covered bridges, one of which had some morbid paintings in it. According
to my travel guide, it was "The Dance of Death". Shudder. I was a bit disturbed:
why would you want to paint that in a covered bridge in a town as pretty
as Lucerne??
AUGUST
4: HANNOVER. Slept in. Stayed at home. Nothing else. Sigh.
Week
17 (July 22-28, 2001)
JULY
22: BRUSSELS.
JULY
28: GENEVA. Leaving Hannover the night before, Kitty and I took the
CityNightLine to Basel and arrived at around 6 or 7 the next morning and
took a local train to Geneva. She read her 'Bridget Jones' and I
happily read my 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' and napped, and we
finally got to Geneva at around 11. Got some Swiss francs from a
nearby ATM (nice, colourful, papery money with a killer exchange rate to
the Deutsch mark though), then went about buying our train tickets to Interlaken
for the next day. When we lined up for roughly half an hour to make
sure we got the right ticket, the guy told us that we had chosen the wrong
kind so he corrected it for us and we shelled out another 30 Swiss francs
for the proper ticket. Switzerland is insanely expensive. We
walked to the hostel, found it closed so we had a mini-lunch break on the
benches outside and debated whether to wait or explore the town, and finally
decided on the latter. It was boiling hot and we carried our heavy
backpacks along quai Wilson and quai du Mont-Blanc on the edge of Lake
Geneva almost all the way back to the train station, and did some window
shopping on rue du Mont-Blanc. Then we went back to the hostel, checked
in (scrambling to do so with the rest of the tourists), dumped our stuff
in the lockers and started walking to the headquarters of the United Nations
and the Red Cross. We took the tour of the UN headquarters (very
pretty guide), had dinner, walked back to rue du Mont-Blanc and crossed
the bridge to the side of the Jet d'Eau and people-watched for a while,
and then relaxedly headed home (in the rain). Back at the hostel,
one of our roommates started telling me all about her troubled life.
It was all very depressing and stinky.
Week
16 (July 15-21, 2001)
JULY
15: VIENNA.
JULY
16: VIENNA, SALZBURG.
JULY
17: SALZBURG.
JULY
21: BRUGGE.
Week
15 (July 8-14, 2001)
JULY
8: MUNICH. In the morning, after breakfast, we walked
to Schloß Nymphenburg which was absolutely huge! Checked out
of the hostel, dumped our stuff in a train station locker and went to church
at the Frauenkirche. Turns out it was Cardinal Ratzinger's ordination
anniversary and it was all being televised. That was probably the
most memorable mass I've attended in Germany. After that, we joined
the horde of other tourists at the Glockenspiel to watch it ring noon.
It was pretty entertaining with the twirling dancers and the jousting knights
but definitely neck-crick inducing. Most people left before the cock
crowed, but Kitty and I stuck around to watch it (and watch a street entertainer
make fun of passers-by) and took the train to Dachau. Spent a few
hours in Dachau (a very very sad place) and then walked around downtown
Munich past the Bayerische Staatsoper, this big plaza that had a stage
with a huge statue and a lion (possibly the Feldherrnhalle near the Hofgarten)
to find souvenirs but no shops were open. No Bavarian beer steins
for me (Germans actually call them bierkrug). So we walked down Theatinerstraße,
past Marienplatz again and down Sendlingerstraße past the Asamkirche
to Sendlinger Tor to catch the U-bahn to the Hauptbahnhof and catch the
afternoon train to Hannover.
JULY
14: BUDAPEST.
Week
14 (July 1-7, 2001)
JULY
1: CANADA DAY IN HANNOVER. Stayed at home. Slept a lot. Alone... sigh!
Everybody else was travelling this weekend, so it was just me, by myself.
Then in the evening, I talked with Stefanie (the landlady's daughter) for
three hours straight!! I was just asking her for laundry tokens too.
JULY
6: MUNICH. My most expensive trip ever. Makes me wish that
I had bought a BahnCard at the beginning of the summer. Kitty and
I left after work, and caught an ICE train to Munich (travel in style!)
but since we didn't buy seat reservations with our TwenTickets we had to
look for vacant unreserved seats, which is an art form/adventure in itself.
When we got to Munich, we rushed to get to our hostel before midnight or
our bed reservations would be cancelled. We barely made it (walking
down a dark street in unfamiliar territory -- scary).
JULY
7: MUNICH. Scarfed our breakfast (probably the best hostel breakfast
I've had so far) and went to the train station to catch the castle tour
of Neuschwanstein, Hohenschwangau and Linderhof, but we couldn't find the
cheap tour so we went to the EurAide office. They told us the cheapest,
most flexible way to go would be to explore them ourselves, so Kitty and
I bought a Wochenende Ticket to Füssen, caught the bus to the Königsschlößer,
then bought a ticket for Neuschwanstein (we only had time for one castle,
but we saw Hohenschwangau on the hike up the mountain to Neuschwanstein).
Took the tour (nice), barely escaped the downpour, and had to hike back
down in the rain (this time we found a shortcut). Explored the Olympic
Games grounds, sat by the Olympic pool and watched some kids get catapulted
(literally) into the water. On the way back, we saw the memorial
to the Israeli athletes and German security guard killed by terrorists
in 1972, as well as the BMW buildings. Had dinner @ the Augustiner-Keller
biergarten and got hit on by a decent-looking Italian guy.
Week
13 (June 24-30, 2001)
JUNE
24: HANNOVER. Explored the churchy part of Hannover. Went to
St. Clements Probstei (the big Catholic basilica in Hannover) an hour early
so I loitered and just sat down to think, and after mass, I walked around
the Steintor district a bit, which is harmless during the morning hours.
Karen Number 2 came over for lunch, and then we set off to walk around
the old part of Hannover, like the Rathaus (which she hasn't seen before)
and the St. Aegidienkirche and the Maschsee. Took some pictures,
then we walked Kitty to the tram stop so she could go to church herself.
Vegged the rest of the day, gossiped and tried to update my very obsolete
travel journal.
JUNE
30: HANNOVER. Stayed at home alone since all the other kids were
travelling this week. Geez it was boring but relaxing. CD batteries
don't last very long on boring weekends. Slept a lot. If there's
anything that effectively cures boredom, then it definitely must be sleep.
One happy thought: not travelling means not spending which means
having more money for later.
Week
12 (June 17-23, 2001)
JUNE
17: ROME.
JUNE
18: ROME.
JUNE
19: FLORENCE.
JUNE
20: MILAN. On the train from Firenze to Milano, we shared a compartment
with a lady and her elderly parents. I spent most of the trip sleeping,
but when I was awake, I heard the lady say a few "Mama! (hand gesture,
hand gesture)"s. It was very Italian, and the mom tried to talk to
me but there was that language barrier. From the body language, I
figured out that she was telling me about her leg injury and her crutches
so I smiled, nodded and looked concerned. When we got to Milan, we
left our bags with attendants which I felt sketchy about, but ended up
being okay. We bought metro tickets and headed for the Duomo which
was awesome, and there were loads of pigeons out front. I have never
seen stained glass like that before, and entire church was just colossal.
Spent some time inside, praying, lighting candles and thinking; then off
to lunch at Spizzico. The pizza was surprisingly blah, and we kept
getting bombarded by pigeons who wanted our lunch (they were very bold).
We went to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, bought postcards and walked
to the Castello Sforzesco and explored inside, up to the beginning of the
Parco Sempione (which had an Arc de Triomphe-looking arch at the other
end, and it seemed like there was a festival going on). Taking the
metro to Corso Buenos Aires, we got in serious shopping mode and checked
out stores. It was kind of disappointing, since none of the shops
we saw were as mindblowing as we expected, so we walked back to the Milano
Centrale train station to meet the boys. The Italy-Switzerland Cisalpino
train ride was fun, like a roller coaster with great scenery and we even
got stuck in a tunnel for about 20 minutes due to "technical difficulties".
Switching at Basel, I experienced my first night in a CityNightLine train
(with cool half-moon type reclining seats) all the way to Hannover.
JUNE
23: COLOGNE, BAD HONNEF. My mission: Buy Birkenstocks.
Kitty and I trekked to Bad Honnef on the Rhine River, past Cologne and
Bonn, to blow our hard earned money on the most foot-friendly sandals ever.
I found mine in under 30 minutes, Kitty took a bit longer, and we had to
get Derek a pair (he put in a special request and we found the perfect
pair). By 2:30, we were walking out with huge bags, lighter wallets
and 6 pairs of Birkenstocks. My feet were happy. We took the
hour-long train back to Cologne and did our sightseeing. We got tossed
a pack of Pick-Ups (the King of all Doppelkeks) by a circus van, walked
down the path along the Rhine to the Schokoladenmuseum where we saw all
things chocolate. I got carried away and took too many photos of
the chocolate-making machines and the chocolate fountain. Then we
went to the Alter Markt, past the Rathaus and to the Römisches Praetorium
und Kanal. It wasn't that exciting since we had just been to Rome
a week earlier, and also the Praetorium was closed. So I took a picture
of the sign. We walked back to the Dom, spent some time inside and
saw the Magi, bought postcards outside and walked past all the sidewalk-chalk
artists drawing Mozart and some prince on the plaza pavement to House 4711
(which apparently has a fountain of sweet-smelling water, real eau de cologne).
Week
11 (June 10-16, 2001)
JUNE
10: POTSDAM - THE RETURN.
JUNE
16: ROME.
Week
10 (June 3-9, 2001)
JUNE
3: PARIS.
JUNE
4: PARIS.
JUNE
9: BERLIN - THE SEQUEL.
Week
9 (May 27-June 2, 2001)
MAY
27: HAMBURG. Woke up early and split in four directions as each one
of us went to church, either for Mass or to explore. When we met
up again, we were off to explore Hamburg-Altona, the city's rich district.
It reminded me a lot of Vancouver, with the harbour/port and the parks.
I still like Vancouver better, even if there aren't as many soccer-playing
hotties in the parks. So, in Altona we checked out their Rathaus,
the Patrician houses and ate lunch in the park. Then we went off
to the Hauptbahnhof again, this time to catch a train to a nearby suburb
and then a bus to Neuengamme, a concentration camp. This was undoubtedly
the best part of the weekend. My first ever concentration camp was
quite a walk from the main road, but it was super quiet and sad.
There were all these fluffy white seeds being blown all over the place.
We went into one of the large workhouses and checked out the exhibits,
we passed by the mud pits where the prisoners dug for clay, and we saw
the memorial from up close. Then it started to rain, so we headed
back to Hamburg and back to Hannover.
JUNE
2: PARIS.
Week
8 (May 20-26, 2001)
MAY
20: BADEN-BADEN. Royalty Weekend Part
2. After taking a train for nearly two
hours to Baden-Baden, we decided it was time to take a taxi to Caracalla
Therme, one of the spas that we had read about. Bad idea. We
were totally ripped off by the stinky, sleazy taxi driver and it ended
up costing almost DM 30. Goodbye weekend budget! We got to
Caracalla Therme and were totally intimidated since it looked like such
a posh place, but we marched in, handed over DM21 and asked how the facilities
worked. Here's what happened: you pay and get an electronic
keycard. Go through the turnstiles using your keycard as a ticket
and pick an empty dressing room (it has 2 sets of doors, one for the entering
hallway and one for the hallway to the lockers). Lock the doors with
'arms' on the end of the benches, and put your things in the baskets or
hangers provided. Exiting from the locker-side doors, pick an empty locker
(one that has a key in the lock), put your keycard in the slot behind the
lock and stuff your things inside the locker. Lock it with the key
and strap the key to your wrist and ankle. Don't forget to bring
your towel. Explore and use the facilities for two hours to your
heart's content. We used the aromasauna, thermal whirlpools, the
massaging shower heads in the pools and the tanning beds, and peeped in
the naked section, but were scared off by all the nudity. Then our
time was almost up so we rushed off to dress up and shower, and I realized
that I had locked my bag with my wallet and keys to the locks INSIDE the
bag. Sheesh! I squished my hand in and managed to fish it out
and got out just in the nick of time (they charge you for overtime).
We had some of their therapeutic water (which was scalding hot), and went
off to explore the town, which looked like classic Italy. Then we
took the bus back to the Hauptbahnhof (only DM 3 each! sheesh!) and
spent 9 hours on the train all the way back to Hannover.
MAY
24: CELLE, BERGEN-BELSEN. What can I say about Celle and Bergen-Belsen?
I had the entire day planned, and none of it went according to my plan.
I bought a train ticket there and was going to take the bus to the concentration
camp and spend the day there. The only thing is... nowhere in Let's
Go Germany or on the website or on the bus station schedule did it say
anything about buses not operating on public
holidays. So I went to Celle, I bought
my postcard, and I waited half an hour for the bus to arrive. When
it didn't come, I decided to go back to Hannover, instead of exploring
Celle (I was pretty mad since the train ticket was NOT cheap, and it screwed
my budget). The rest of the day was spent exploring the free sections
of the Herrenhäuser Garten in Hannover, looking at the open-air photo
exhibits and the mausoleum where the Hannover royals were buried.
MAY
26: HAMBURG. Another Schönes-Wochenende, this time to Hamburg.
We got there and headed for the hostel only to find it closed for cleaning.
We killed time for a few hours by exploring the St. Pauli Landungsbrücken
and having lunch on the pier. We saw some interesting sandwiches
on the boards outside the shops -- one of them appeared to have an entire
fish, including the head and maybe the scales, stuffed in a bun.
I didn't choose that one. When we got back to the hostel, we dumped
our stuff, sorted ourselves out and headed for the city. We had a
Hamburg Card and planned to make the most of it by hitting some museums
and maybe later, the Reeperbahn or the Erotic Art Museum. The interesting
museums were not included on the Hamburg Card so unless we wanted to see
the Arts and Crafts Museum (we didn't) or similar museums, it was pretty
useless. We ended up exploring around the Rathaus, the shops near
there and the market just in front. We also walked around the Operahaus
and the Alster lakes. We checked out 'Der Michael' and the Nikolaikirche,
then we went back to St. Pauli to do some souvenir shopping, and were introduced
to Nordsee, fish-sandwich and seafood central. What happened to the
Erotic Art Museum and the Reeperbahn? Well we were feeling a little
cautious so we just walked along St. Pauli, saw the Rickmer Rickmers and
went back to the hostel when it got dark.
Week
7 (May 13-19, 2001)
MAY
13: BERLIN. After failing to make the rendezvous point by the time
I agreed to meet Kitty and Plato, I got dropped off in front of the Hotel
Adlon, right beside the Brandenburger Tor, and managed to catch a bus tour
for half price. I went around the city once and got off at Unter
den Linden and walked around that area for a while and passed the Russian
Embassy, the Peugeot dealership, some pay-toilet booths and nearly reached
Humboldt Universität and the bridge near Bebelplatz, the place where
they burned books in 1933 ("Nur dort wo
man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen" --
Heinrich Heine. Translation: "Wherever
books are burned, ultimately people are burned as well")
Then I took another bus tour, with the same ticket, and went around the
city two more times since my heavy backpack was killing me. I almost
memorized the words to the the audio commentary. Then I hopped off
near the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche, did some sightseeing at
the market there and headed towards the train station to meet Kitty and
The Boys.
MAY
19: HEIDELBERG. Royalty Weekend 1.
Kitty, Plato and I took the Schönes-Wochenende ticket all the way
to Heidelberg: a 7-hour train ride from Hannover with about 4 stops.
Once we arrived at the Hauptbahnhof, we stepped outside and the first things
we saw were hundreds of bikes ready to be rented, and across the road in
front of a modern building was a metal abstract/futuristic horse sculpture
nodding its head and moving its legs. Once we got settled in at the
hostel, we took the next bus to the Schloß Heidelberg. We were
trying to catch the last English tour of the day, but when we got there,
it had just begun, so we decided *not* to linger around the tour and listen
to the commentary for free and instead wandered around on our own.
The castle was awesome. It had a bridge guarded by stone knights
and lions, detailed sculptures and carvings on the buildings and everything
was pink. And it had the biggest barrel of wine I have ever seen.
Once we finished exploring the castle, we went into the town, and then
walked around the city, looking stuff up in our Let's Go Germany books
as we went along. The University was pink also, and we couldn't find
the student jail or any Rizal stuff, but we managed to spot the Hercules
fountain, the Kornmarkt, two major churches and a little market where lots
of stalls were selling touristy things: cuckoo clocks, Bundesliga
scarves, Bavarian hats, aprons with lederhosen printed on the front and
dolls in traditional costume. When it started to get dark, we headed
for the hostel and spent the evening in the lobby with the very scary painting
of gray-skinned, shocked-looking people playing on the beach.
Week
6 (May 6-12, 2001)
MAY
6: BREMEN. Our second trip of our FairyTale
Weekend brought us to the home of the Bremen
Town Musicians. Got there early and walked past the St. Petridom
and Knight Roland and went to church in Germany for the first time.
I followed along in my Missal, then we went to the Schlachte to check out
the stalls, the traditional German band, the food and the Weser River.
Wurst for lunch and crepes afterwards (they make them pretty big so I "helped"
Kitty and Plato with theirs). Then we walked across one of the bridges
crossing the Weser to the Beck's Brewery Visitor Centre for the English
tour, only to find out that it began later that afternoon. Returning
later, we found The Boys waiting there for the brewery tour as well and
they told us of their bulk candy misadventures. The tour was good,
but the beer test was a bit better even if I couldn't take full advantage
of my 5 rounds. We then headed back to the Petridom, explored the
inside (lots of really old medieval stuff), took pictures with the Bremen
Stadtmusikanten, walked down Böttcherstraße, peeped inside the
Übersee Museum and went home.
MAY
12: POTSDAM. Travelled with Kitty and The Boys to Berlin, then split
off from them at Berlin Zoologischer Garten and took the S7 to Potsdam.
It was pretty cool going all on my own, but I was a little scared too.
Met my relatives and some Filipinos from the Brandenburger Filipino community,
and answered loads of questions. It felt like a giant panel interview,
with lots of food and a mass. Oh yeah, it seems that I crashed a
party that they were having, but they were okay with it. The food
was the best I had eaten in my 13 days away from home, and I was able to
take a nap. BUT I didn't get to go sightseeing in Potsdam, which
is okay since I was so conked out. My relatives then invited me to
their house for dinner and for the night, so that's what I did and we did
a little bonding. It was nice. They have the ultimate car and
house and if I could describe it, I'd have to say it was all "WOW!".
Week
5 (April 29-May 5, 2001)
APRIL
29: HANNOVER. Finally. After a long 9-hour, non-reclining plane
ride to Amsterdam, and a few hours waiting in Schiphol for our 1-hour plane
ride to Hannover, we're here. I felt so lost, since I was expecting
to move into university dorms but ended up in a sort of a boarding house
not even *that* near the university (judging from the fact, that there's
a brewery close by and no university-looking buildings). Hmmm, brewery
next door. Very cool, I'll never get lost and I'll be a stone's throw
away from beer. (I don't really even drink beer that much)
Anyway, we tried to cheer ourselves up and get oriented to the neighbourhood
by taking a nap first and walking around the neighbourhood until it started
to get dark. Oh yeah, and asking my new roommate Annika and her boyfriend
lots of questions on the house, Hannover, getting around, the landlord.
The landlady left us fizzy water and cookies, which is really sweet of
her. Planned for tomorrow (getting us even more stressed out) and
slept. Note to self: sleep solves everything.
APRIL
30: HANNOVER. Helped Derek move into his new place, which is a bit
far from where I'm staying. Got our Üstra
tram passes for the month and our Kundenkarte. German is such a fun
language but killer to pronounce. Bumped into 2 of the UBC guys,
Shaun and the other Derek, in the Tourist Info centre, so off we went to
explore downtown Hannover. Later ran into Dave on a tram to the Universität/Mensa,
had a huge lunch with the boys while Dave collected Tim, and we all set
off to collect Robin. So, these are the guys I'll be spending the
next few months with. I may later collectively refer to them as The
Boys. Since Robin lives in the dorm just around the corner from me,
I split off (while they went to get their tram passes) and headed home
to wait for Kitty (neither she nor Christoph had house keys). Settled
into my home for the next four months, met Kitty and our landlady (who
is such a mom! She's super nice, helpful and showed us all the shops,
phones etc and explained everything to us), and got the money issue over
and done with.
MAY
1: HANNOVER. Labour Day in Hannover. Kitty and I met up with
The Boys (now including Plato) at noon "by the horse" (you'll be hearing
that a lot) in front of the train station (Hauptbahnhof -- you'll be hearing
that a lot too), so off we went to see what the huge fuss was about.
Christoph told us the day before that there would be a rally by the workers
so we wanted to see that. Following a crowd of people, we ended up
in this huge plaza. There were huge beer tents with people inside
listening to 80s music and laughing a lot, and smaller food and performer
tents. We watched some fancy schmancy drummers for a while then went to
find food, with all of them (but me) discovering gelato. We split
up, Kitty and I wanted to explore downtown and go back to the places I
went yesterday, and Robin, Tim and Dave decided to come along too, and
so did Derek and Derek. So, we wandered, I was the guide, followed
the Red Thread and passed the Opernhaus, some bank buildings and ended
up at the Hannover Neues Rathaus, checked out the unknown soldier memorial
(a real helmet and leather boots embedded in cement in the plaza) and went
inside to check out the exhibits, and up to the tower (in a slanty elevator).
Once that was done, we walked around the pond behind the Rathaus and headed
for the Sprengel Museum and the Maschsee. Then, back home to eat.
MAY
5: HAMELN. Our very first trip was to the Pied Piper's home town
and we managed to collect 5 people to share the Wochenende Ticket.
We got there and walked to the town centre, observing a lot of Pied Piper-related
things along the way (i.e. statue and bread rats in the Hauptbahnhof, archway
to the Bürgergarten, fountain by the Rathaus and painted rats on the
footpath). Had wursts for lunch. Currywurst rules! Walked
further into the town centre, took photos of the old buildings and bought
postcards, went into this old church and did some sightseeing down Österstraße
(saw things like the really old museum and a man dressed like the Pied
Piper but fancier and with more puffs and feathers standing out in front
with a crowd gathered around him). Then we went shopping for things
like clothes and bowls since we had time to kill before catching our train.
Thus marked the end of FairyTale Weekend 1.
Week
4 (April 22-28, 2001)
Two
words: Leee. Ving. Get it?
Week
3 (April 15-21, 2001)
Nothing.
Read on...
Week
2 (April 8-14, 2001)
Nothing.
Read somewhere else.
Hey,
here's that sneaky picture again. Let's just *pretend* that I've been to
Venice. It just might come true. (It didn't). |
