A Few Closing Thoughts

Word on traveling with someone
I'm generally super adamant about traveling alone, and making my own decisions about time and location. I had a tremendous time the last time I went, and feel like it's the best way to find yourself and explore a culture when you're alone. I thoroughly enjoyed my lone day in Rome, and made friends without a problem. That being said, I think if you find someone you're compatible with in terms of traveling, it could really be phenomenal. Of all the trips I've ever taken with anyone, the trips I've taken with Liam make the most sense. This time, particularly, I felt like we meshed really well and got along nicely for a full two weeks of 24/7 contact. I don't think these relationships are frequent, and I do think that it's almost impossible to do a trip like this with most people [especially with the added stressors from moving as quickly as we did]. If you can find it, definitely do it. It was nice having a co-pilot for figuring out transportation, and a drinking partner all day. We never were sitting texting [well, liam didn't have a phone, so taht could be why], and we knew when to shut up and sit in comfortable silence. A lot of it though was what we valued in terms of purchases. We agreed on which museums to pay for, and how we wanted to stay fed. There weren't really any times that we'd have to contemplate which activity we should do, because we always wanted to do the same one. I've known him for almost two and a half years now, and even though we have been physically apart for most of what isn't even such a long time, we can read eachother's minds and know eachother well enough that this holiday was awesome. If you can find this, then definitely traveling with someone is worth it. Liam starkly changed my opinion, an opinion I thought was pretty steadfast. 

Word on backpacking in the winter
Surprisingly good! I think if I had been alone I would be more put-off by the idea of travelling off season, since it's harder to make friends, and less likely to be spent sitting inside cuddling, BUT for this experience, I really enjoyed having more vacancies and a less touristic venture. With Europe in the winter there are christmas markets everywehre. It's a really interesting and different cheer from the one that I'm used to having in the states. I quite liked it, and quite liked being able to wander out to cool spots to sip on some gluwine and take a break. Europe has an interesting charm at this time of year. 

Word on two days per place
So aggressive, but similar to what I've done in the past I suppose. I wish we had more time, but until you race through the space, you don't know where you'd want more time to be spent. If we could go back, we both agree that Berlin would've been where we should've spent more time. I suppose it's like a little whirlwind tour of the area, figuring out what we'd want to see in the future. I like moving fast, feeling like the days are super full, but it was a massive blur, the details only to be remembered through writing. 

Word on eurail pass
I've been pretty back and forth about this the entire trip, not being sure if it was financially worthwhile. You pay this exorbitant fee to get this pass, and then for any night trip or on-peak trip you take, a reservation is compulsory. There's another 6-30 euros, just so that you can get a stupid seat number. We played our luck with it a bit, not booking the expensive seats on night transport, hoping we would just have an empty car [sorta worked], but as an overall it seemed very expensive. On the contrary, the few times when Iw as able to compare what the price of booking the trip on its own would've been, it may actually have been the cheaper route to use the eurail pass. More research is probably necessary, but whatever. in summary, it's very expensive to train around europe. 

Word on offline Google maps
To get around, Liam and I would spend a bit of time in or preparing for a new place, 'saving' places on a map. This would throw a gold star down on the area, and then we could take a snapshot of the map [which was accessible offline] that encompassed the whole region of stars, and use GPS [which doesn't use data] to move around. The stars were a bit ambiguous but if you tapped it you could see the name of the location. This totally saved us and made travelling around way easier. Totally worth doing again, and even in your own city.

Word on heels
So fucking unnecessary. Thank god. We didn't club/go out much in London, which I think is somewhere that heels would be recommended, but everywhere else they were unnecessary. In berlin, it would be strange to be seen in heels at clubs. Everywhere seemed way more grunge. 

Word on smoking rooms-Prague only?
Two of the restaurants we went to while in Prague had smoking sections and non-smoking sections. I thought this was a bit weird and a bit outdated, but interesting. I've been to a lot of places where every room is a smoking room, but this was an interesting way to see the country beginning to deal with smoking as a potential negative. I liked it.

London

When we got to London passport control was almost just as easy as getting out of London. Quick, painless, show your passport and continue on your way kind of existence. Liam didn't have any problem, as with leaving Brussels. We wandered on further and literally, as we entered the part that had our bags coming out of the carousel, our bags were already coming. Like, they were the first two creatures we saw moving down the infinite treadmill of bags. So clutch, and so infrequent that such an awesome occurence, well, occurs.

We continued forward now in gatwick airport. That was the forest time in a very long time that I flew with someone I knew and cared for. The flight was really short so we mostly just slept for the duration, but coming off an having to navigate the area with a good friend was a weirdly positive experience. It made feeling extremely lost feel so much more comfortable. On the plane they were selling express tickets to Victoria and to heathrow and to be perfectly honest, j wasn't really sure where we were headed. Because of that, I was willing to grab the immigration customs cards, but less inclined to purchase, on board, some train to Victoria (like, wasn't even sure what nor where that was, to be perfectly honest). So we didn't, and we walked in further looking for whatever piece of public transit would get us close to our hostel. For this trip I was 100% reliant on the textual instructions I had screenshotted based on the confirmation email Liam had received, reserving our room in London. A quick few sentences, this was meant to get us from gatwick to hostel. The beginning suggested we get to Victoria. Fine. Should've bought the passes on the plane. 

As we continued from the airport to the other part of the station where trains could be taken, we had to travel on a wee tram. In doing such it became so apparent to both of us that we had absolutely no idea where we were going, but we were both more confident, and more committed to travel stupidity than we had been anywhere, because for the first time all trip, everything was in English. It was a weirdly empowering moment feeling comfortable with our lack of knowledge, relying on our final lack of language barrier, playing around with the London vibe. Before we had left he fist terminal though we walked past this super old couple who was playing in individual computers. Like, computers from the eighties. They say their jamming their fingers at the keys, writing something. I thought it was funny, but at the time was making pretty loud zoidberg-like noises (from futurama) on and off. I kept doing it, and heard Liam laugh, unsure if it was the product of my stupid sounds or the old people on computers that I was also laughing about. I asked him, knowing that a level of comfort between us, so strong, had been reached that I could properly be like'yo, r u laugh urban Ng houses or something else?'  It ended up being also the old people in computers. So weird, random, and strikingly similar. As it goes

We got to the next station and walked toward the area where the passes were sold and I was confused about what line to wait on So I waited on the express one whilst Liam waited ont he normal one. Standard procedure if you have two people, I'd say. I got to close enough that u could hear the questions that the people before me had, the same questions I had, and learned that although purchasing an express train led to no stops aside from Victoria, it was an extra five pounds each person, each way. Right now, that's like 9 extra dollars. Going from 15 pounds to 20 pounds, no thanks. I thanked Liam for waiting in the other line, though at many times he felt uncomfortable and tried to join me on mine, and went over to bounce in with him. We purchased our 2 one way trips and one return trip (for me, for the next day) and tried to figure out where to go

We went downstairs looking for the next train that stopped in Victoria and found one not too many minutes later. The train the arrived said 'express' all over it which worried me slightly. Was this a train we were meant to get o? Or would we have to pay the difference when someone caught us riding an express train with a regular ticket. Who knew. 

I was bugging out for the whole train ride, as per usual (reference my trip from Berlin to Amsterdam if you have any doubt to how much of a worrier I can become when I'm not confident in my ticket related decision) but we got through no problem, with no one Checking our tickets. I tried to pay attention to time and guesstimate when we would be arriving, getting our bags on way too early to get out of the train, this time channeling the fears from missing our Brussels stop when we were coming over from Amsterdam. 

Anyway, we made it. The tube station at Victoria was such a hot mess. There were so many people stuffed in, such long lines, and such widespread confusion. I thought it weird for being midday on a friday, but whatever. I had to figure out what type of card to purchase for transportation, and wait in line to get it done. I went with a day pass thinking that we'd take at least two subway trips that day, which somehow at nearly 9 pounds, that's the cost. Good shit britain. NOT FUNNY.

We got out of paddington station and made a right, which was the suggestion of the wee blurb from hostelworld that I screen shotted. The street was meant to change names, and then we'd hook another right on some other street. We were walkig a good while, losing faith. I was pretty sure that the exit from the station we took was the only exit, but i was incorrect. We found one of those touristy 'where are you right now' sidewalk maps and saw that we should've turned the other way after exiting the tube station. Rats. We turned, continued, adn not before long we found our hostel. 

It seemed pretty nice! we dropped off our bags because we still had some time to kill before checkin, and asked for a good pub food recommendation. Beer and fish and chips felt incredibly necessary. The lady at the desk sent us to the 'pride of paddington.' Pretty close. The menu seemed kinda steep so we countinued to walk for a little because i noticed some other pubs on our wander around the area lost before. Not only were the price ranges all about the same, but I swear the menus were completely the same as well. Same layout, same typography... weird.  We went back to the first one and I spent a while trying to figure out how to get connected to the wifi in the pub. We each bot drinks. Liam wanted a cider so went with that, and I intended on avoiding a cider, one of my least favourite dirnks, and ordered something called a 'strongbow.' he handed me this pee coloured bubbly drink and i was like, fuck. That must be the name of a cider. Liam should've stopped me, but he told me he thought I was just giving them another chance. Whatever. I drank a water and sipped a poopla cider, not even to its completion. 

Liam and "I went with fish and chips, and chicken tikka masala, split them both. They were both fantastic. The fish was a much larger cut than I was used to in New Zealand with their newspaper wrapped fast food, flash fried fish and chips. We played a bit on the phones setting up a map of stars for our stay in London. One thing that sounded pretty cool was this winter wonderland that was happening in hyde park. We decided we'd probably go later. Liam was pretty knackered so when we got the chance we went back to the room and checked in properly, at one of the slowest reception desks i've ever seen, and went to have a nap. We shared the bottom bunk and slept for a long while actually. I was wanting to get up a few times, but figured laying and relaxing meant more to me at the time than necessarily sight seeing and forcing myself to look around London right then.  A mix of people travelled into and out of the room as we were there, but that was fine. 

Eventually we decided it was time to make moves, and Liam got pretty focused on looking up some things to prepare for storage of his items while he's off to SE asia. I cleaned out the little wine glass I had stolen from the italian cheap wine shop we had gone to in venice, and filled it with this strange eggy alcohol that I totally forgot i had purchased whilst in Bruges, at the last beer shop we hit up before leaving. The texture was pretty gelatinous and it was kind of impossible to get out of the tiny jar that it was living in. So gross. I pulled it out with my finger and then tried to drink it. Lickign little bits, it tasted okay, but as with highly alcoholic jello shots, the second I got any sizeable chunk in my mouth, I was completely repulsed and could not continue to imbibe. Liam felt the same way, So I flicked the rest into a trash bin, washed the glass, and we stuck to this half bottle of wine [that we purchased for the train ride from berlin to amsterdam] which I had completely forgotton was in my bag. In retrospect, at this point I relised that we should've kept the absinthe from prague, since there was obviously no troubles with flying with open bottles of alcohol in our checked luggage.

Once we were sorted and good to go out, we were heading off to the winter wonderland that Liam had heard about, and seemed to be worthwhile. It looked like about a 20-30 minute walk, which we decided to venture in to, but not without the helping hand of some beers from the minimart nearby. Now, we both had been speculating that there was some, awful chance that in London you're not allowed to drink in the public. Unsure about any truth to this statement, we figured it woudl be worthwhile to ask the minimart owner whilst purchaisng beers. We asked for the cheapest one, and settled with 4 tallboys of carlsberg. He also told us that you are in fact not allowed to drink in the public in London, but can sometimes get away with it in a park. He also seemed to think taht the winter wonderland was definitely not reachable by foot, and we should take some bus to get there. We didn't really listn to any of his advice as we walked towards the park, and pretty openly drank on our walk over.

So we had been seeing christmas markets all over europe at this point.. Almost a christmas market in every city. They had similar feels and were basically the same repetative notion of little stalls with unnecessary purchases, gluwine, and strange snacks. We expected the same, but this winter wonderland was totally a different animal. You could see the ferris wheel from a while away, and walking thorugh this giant light-up signage really made for a new type of entrance. The entire space was filled with carnival rides, live music, tons of food and drinks, and buttloads of humans, at a massively spanning age range. I think it was definitely worthwhile to check out after the sun went down, though to be honest, at this time of year, the sun is down more than it's really ever up. 

The Winter Wonderland stayed open until 10 pm, so we hung around through till near the end of that. Liam got a cider and i got a mulled wine in the beginning, both being extremely overpriced and not terribly tasty. We kept the clups though and For our final to carlsbergs, I used the privacy of the bathroom to fill the cups back with some beer. We hung out briefly in this carosel bar, where everyone was standing on this platform that was slowly spinning. I thoguht that was really cool. Also one of the live music groups we spent a while listening to was really cool. They were a 70s cover band, playing all the best 70s hits, drawing a large crowd of excited people, semi willing to boogie. There was this one dude who kept trying ot get other people to dance, which I was not really having any of. He then danced like a crazy person for a while, a solid source of entertainment. We were joking about the amount of drugs he must be on... such a tripper, but then also discussed how it's fucked up that we find it to be so strange for someone to properly enjoy their boogie style. It should be accepted to do what you want. 

After a while we walked through the stalls, were fascinated by wind mobiles [the super colourful ones] and were building up a hunger, so headed out. At this point, I figured we might as well venture towards some of the sites I had marked on my map since they were all pretty close by and I was leaving pretty early the next day. 

We walked to buckingham palace first, hanging out briefly looking at the dark building, as liam imparted some more history on me. The next stop was big ben, and parliament. It's weird going to all these sites because it's just like, "okay. yeah. I can take a picture of this like everyone in the world before me has, but it'll still be shittier than any picture I find in google image search." Idk. I find this giant clock kind of silly.  When we got futher to trafalgar square though, we sat for a little while at these wooden tables and Liam told me the whole store about the fight and the man depicted as a statue. He had read up while we were at the pride of paddington, and I much appreciated to better story telling and concise summary that he was willing to give me. Thank's liam. 

by now we were pretty starving and hadn't passed any beer shops, so were losing wind. I was pretty keen on still going out, but Liam needed food and sleep so we went to a mcdonalds to figure out our next move. He got a big mac and a cheeseburger. I got 20 nugs, with all the dipping sauces. Liam finished his big mac while we stayed in this area filled with drunk 20-something year olds, and helped me finish the chicken nuggets. He p9cketed the cheeseburger for later [ew, right? That' was my first thought, but his counter argument of it not really even being proper meat, sorta made sense. Whatever man.] I waited to go to the bathroom before we ventured out, and subeequently ventured home. The line for the bathroom was a scene, with drunk people freaking out about some homesls woman who tried to cut them. I was being quiet, because I honestly didn't care, but the dude in front of me was losing his shit, and asking me questions about whether or not i thought I could also cut him because I was wearing a 'christmas' hat. I was wearing my prague hat, buddy. not a christmas hat. There was a guard controlling the flow into and out of the bathroom, this strange unisex room, and there was a surveilance camera in the sink area that we could see from outside to know how many stalls were free. I thought it was kind of weird, but I apologised to the guard for all the drunk people being such a pain, used the toilet, and left. 

Getting home on the tube took a little while, but Liam was pretty tired so I didn't mind it.  Earlier we had discussed whether or not we should squeese into a little bed again, since it was our last night together, but when we got back he was playing on his computer, looking some things up, and I drifted off into slumber.

At about 3 am I awoke from a terrible nightmare -i don't remember it, but I remember feeling like i needed to fully wake up and sort myself out before going back to bed. I woke liam, and joined him on the top bunk. He said he tried to wake me, but i was too far asleep earlier. 

We woke up pretty early and ventured downstairs for the free breafkast.. More hard boiled eggs and toast mostly. There was a toating machine that was pretty shitty, and we had to send our pieces of toast in multiple times to get them, well, toasty.  They had individually wrapped pieces of different kinds of cheeses, which I had with my toast. Prettttyy good. I'm glad they didn't have this everywehre though. Way too easy to indulge with.  We were sitting in an area wehre there were music videos playing on TV, sort of how MTV used to be. I saw a few sam smith videos and then it was maybe 9:30 so we ventured out, towards the science museum.

It looked to be about a 25 minute walk, or 27 minute tube ride. Worth the walk. We got there a little before 10am, when it opens, so queued up outside with all of the adults and their young children. Completely the wrong age group to be there, but we had a really awesome time.  It's 'pay what you wish' for museums in London, a concept I'm pretty fond of, so for free we entered, and ran up to the top floor. The door we appraoced seemed to be the exit, but sneaky Liam pulled it open anyway and we went into the interactive, top floor exhibit. Definitely the best place to start, since of all the exhibits, it was worth it to not feel rushed at this one. We were the only people int he room for a long while, fucking around with the crazy interactive toys. They reminded mo of the science section at the otago museum wehre liam and I once raced cars based on brain waves. Here there were things to complete circuits. magnetic and static experiments, periscopes, a heat sensor camera [this was pretty cool. you could see yourself infrarred, and if you warm up your hands and touch the wall, then your hand print stayed for a period of time] among others. The worst thing there aws this spinny item to help you feel like an iceskater spinning in circles. I couldn't get it started so liam took the liberty of spinning me on it. I was terrified and didn't know how to stop, getting more and more nauseated. Awesome. I was able to stop it, but ugh. Still regret.

We continued arund the rest of the museum which had a history of medicine, walk through the creation of different scientific apparatuses, a study of different materials, and a section on energy usage. The history of medicine was okay, kinda of gross/scary. The crazy appartuses were really cool. A lot of old microscopes and telescopes and different tools taht seemed out of the ordinary and amazing for their time. Materials was pretty wahtever, and taht was by the end, and the energy usage section was kind of interesting. Tehre were a lot of interactive games and tasks set up for the user to fuck around with and 'save the city' or 'earn about making informed choices.' I couldn't save the city. There was this one thing in the middle that said not to touch and then explained that it was a piece to check if the user would be willing to touch that which says not to touch, especially after knowing that touching it would administer a small electric shock to the participant. I eventually tried. I don't think it was working that day.

I was a little rushed by the end of our journey at the museum, worrying about seeing everything before heading off to the airport, so not too much longer later, we got to a nearby tube station, off for the millennium bridge, by the tate museum. During this tube ride, Liam took out his pocketed cheeseburger and finally ate it. Ew. He offered me some, but I politely declined.

We got to the stop and I was having trouble orienting myself and figuring out wehre we should go to get to the millennium bridge,. We walked the wrong way a bit, but then figured it out. I'm a huge fan of the millenial bridge for a few reasons. Firstly, its an awesome design. It's strange and looks oddly bendable. It's also very modern looking, feeling like a strange piece to be sitting so close to such other magnificant, old structures. The other love for it comes from the fact that in one of the harry potter movies, it blows up in the beginning. Now the bridge is starting to get the same lock-treatment that a lot of bridges and fences in Europe are undergoing. We didn't put a lock on anything we went to, which I'm a  bit upset about, but maybe next time. I think on the millenial bridge the locks look stupid, and from the bendable nature, I'd say the locks are probably not the safest of ideas. 

I didn't think we had enough time to checkout the tate, but we crossed over to go to the christmas markets in front of the tate. It was at this point that I was really reminded about how all of the christmas markets look the same, and it was highly unnecessary for us to venture out there for that. Oh well.  We walked through it and then ehaded towards the london bridge, the next site marked on my map, close to where we were.

So we were looking at it, thinking it was impossilbe for it to only be a 5 minute walk, like my phone was suggesting, from wehre we were. No way, man. We were pretty deep into the walk, kind of far from the water by the time that i saw the enterence to get onto the bridge. We walked up, and at least for me, this was the realiation that the london bridge is just some standard bridge. The tower bridge is the one I wanted to go to, and yes, it was way further. We got the recquisite photos out of our experience and continued on. What a weird disappointment haha, but mostly just my stupidity.

We took the tube off to camden market, an area that I thought was pretty cool the last time I was in london. Interesting shops and lots of people and food. Liam was kind of freaking out about getting a  cell phone, and it looked like there were no shops of that type in this area. i felt bad but also didnt care to go to a cell shop and waste time that could be done after I leave for the airport. Oh well.

We wandered around and sampled different foods as we moved. I was looking for this shop called CyberDog that sells club/rave clothing and is a brick and morter club like experience. Couldn't find it at first, but eventually it popped up out of no where, so we waited on line [waited ON LINE] to get in. The place was crowded and bumping as much as I rememberd it. Liam really liked it, and i thought it was a worthwhile stop. We made it out, and i wondered what the rate of turnover for that store must be. I can't imagine even one out of every hundred people that enter the store purchase something. It's so expensive and so impractical.

We went towards japanese food after and sat on a bench splitting our noodles and mixed chicken. Pretty good, standard street food. By this time, the clock was not on our side and we headed towards the station. The station was incredibly packed, and it was impossible to navigate wehre to go. I made a guess, and picked the wrong direction. We had to get off the train we were on to switch lines. It wasn't entirely the wrong way, but the line we were using has a north and a south part. I went south, should've gone north.

Two changes later we finally stressfully made it back to the hostel, to quickly gather our things and make moves. Liaim was staying in london that night, but at a different hostel, so while I was off to the airport, he was going to his new little home. We hugged before putting on our packs, and traded sweatshirts. I gave him my favourite upenn sweater and got his sailing holidays quarter zip fleece instead. I also gave him that weird towel I had, since it's small and pretty useful and I can easily jsut order another one off of amazon the next time I go for an adventure.

We picked up two waterbottles from the minimart nearby before getting on the tube. I was feeling super dehydrated and thought water could be useful for the plane ride. 

Our stops were two away from eachother, on the same line, so we sat together, sad, saying goodbye until Liam got off at south kensington.  I definitely shed a tear or two before I landed in victoria, lost again and looking for the train to gatwick.

Unlike my last express gatwick-victoria train, the only way to get into the area where express trains went was to have an express ticket, so this time I had to be a normal person and take the slow train. It was fine, though I was sad the whole way and feeling pretty lost, but I made it to gatwick quite quickly, with a lot of time to spare. 

I went to check in and the woman told me that my bag was to be considered oversized luggage because there were straps hanging from it [which really makes very little sense], so I brought it to that area and then continued with the security process. This was pretty new. Instead of being ushered to a line to wait to fill your basket for security, you were sent to a spot, which was already among the line you were going to, to fill a basket and send your shit down into the xray machine. It was quick and super hectic feeling, but there was way less downtime and it seemed a million times more efficient. Whern the items came back otu the otherside, everyone was also a bit more frantic and it was kind of stressful getting my things back on my person, quickly enough. There was an easel'd note pad at the end to write your comments. I wrote that it was stressful and efficient and I liked it. 

I walked through the airport and saw that the internet only worked in 45 minute chunks, so assumed that it would be impossible to find tali, who definitely already went through her 45 minutes. I sat, texting liam for my first 45, plugged into the wall. Then I was movign around a bit. Walked to the gate, walked back, turned on the 45 minutes on my other phone, and then at a bar, quite obviously drunk, I saw tali. She had made friends over there and apparently had been drinking for the past couple of hours. I sat there briefly, spent my last few pounds, and then we raced towards our airplane to get on before they took off. I spent my actual last few pounds on a bag of doritos and a malteasers bar. Great dinner for the airplane.

we sat together on the plane and I had to keep quieting her down during the security video because she wouldn't stop yarning about her trip. Too drunk. Eventually she passed out, adn I wrote a little, watched "Crazy Stupid Love" and then watched "The Great Gatsby." Some sleep was had, but I was mostly just sad and confused to have said goodbye, and to be getting shipped off back to home, to JFK.

When we landed, it was the longest customs Line I've had to wait on in yaers. It took easily over an hour and there was an entire electronic part wehre you had to fill out your infomration on a little computer and then get a print out slip that you brought to the passport control window you were interacting with. Pretty weird, and I'd say extremely inefficient since no one knew wehre to go with their tickets, most of the computers were not in use, and there was just overall commotion. At least by the time we got out, all the bags were already moving on the carosel so finding mine was a breeze, and we were off to venture back to nyc. 

End

Brussels & Bruges

So, we got to brussels and walked through the sketchy area that our hostel was situated [i'll rant more about it later, since apparently i already wrote about it at some point. so disorganized]. We decided to get a room, to counter the horrors of our previous night in amsterdam, but we weren't allowed to check in until 2pm. We had about an hour to kill, and grumbling hungry stomachs to fill. I asked the reception for advice on a good place to get belgian food and she sent us towards the 'grand place' and said anything around there would be good. 

We picked one, kind of arbitrarily, but it was one of the first ones to have moules frites on their menu [my main reason for wanting belgian food]. We got two draught beers that were soooo good. Ugh, belgium, you do not disappoint with beer. We ordered a spaghetti scampi -- some sort of creamy spaghetti with an interesting variety of seafood mixed in, and mussels with escargot and a side of frites. so. fucking. good. Like, maybe, probably, the best meal of the trip. Kind of expensive, as expected, but filled us up nicely before we continued out to adventure and check in.

I checked the stars I placed on my map and noticed there was one really close to where we were. It was called menakken pis, and I couldn't remember what it pointed it. Regardless, we headed towards it to try to figure it out. First guess - little chocolate shop. We went into this chocolate shop that was filled with only asian people, and a lot of chocolate, of course. Like, so many asian people that you'd assume a tour bus stopped there and they all just piled in. It was kind of weird and super crowded, so it took me a while to to get samples from the lady who was giving out samples. I grabbed two and we dipped. Delicious, but not worth the efforts. Then, across the street there was an intersting looking bar. Maybe that's why I marked it on my map.. Closed, and we had no interest, so whatever. As we started to leave the area I remembered what Menakken Pis was. Well, I was reminded from the souveniers being sold in the store next door. Tis this weird statue of a peeing baby. Mildly interesting. It was right next to the chocolate shop, so we just happened to miss it before. it is pretty tiny. I took my requisite photo, and then we went back towards our hostel, picking up an assortment of beers on our walk back.

We checked into our absurdly tiny and misshapen room, and had a few beers while we decided what to get up to. I was really set on trying to hit up a trappist brewery while in Belgium, but we realised that they're rreally far and most tours were meant to take place over multiple days. Whatever. Not worth it. We settled instead on going to a brewery tour that was pretty close to where we were situated, so we could fit it into that day. Cantillion Brewery, the land of lambic beers.

It was a pretty weird experience since it was a self guided tour. You got a little book to read through each room you passed, and a brief introduction about Lambic beers before moving forward. So Lambic beers are pretty sour and they rely on spontaneous fermentation. Traditional lambic beers don't have expiration dates, and are aged for a few years before being put into production. The taste changes over time and no brew tastes necessarily the same as another brew. There are modern versions of lambic beers that don't use the same spontaneous fermentation techniques, but try to mimic the taste. these do have expiration dates and are less sour, so if you ever wanna know the difference, there's your quickhand guide. 

The tour itself was fun and simple. I felt a bit like we were intruding in someone's place of work though in a few of the rooms. Liam and i switched off reading the pages as we entered each room, and we constantly contemplated stealing one of  the many stacked beers we passed. At the end of the tour you were given a tasting of a lambic brew and then you had the choice between either one that was the mix of 1 year, 2 year, and 3 year brews, or a raspberry one. They were alright. I don't think I would buy them, but not too bad. Kind of champagne-y I guess. We each got a different one for the second beer so we could try both. The whole area was filled with people who seemed more in the know, speaking french and eating cheese, so I felt particularly out of place and touristy. 

When that was done we were a bit drunk from our beers of earlier and I was really itching to take a nap. We passed out for a long while and awoke at about 10pm. We hugn out a bit and contemplated going out, but shot down that idea pretty hard. I was keen, but liam passed out almost immediately. Much needed rest was had and we were up early the next morning planning our day trip to bruges. 

We left the hostel to catch a train and then realised we were totally confused as to what station we were going to, so came back to recheck the situation. This time we were going to leave from midi, not centraal, and got some sandwiches at a cafe in the station before getting on our train. I got some sort of prosciutto and mozz panini, and liam got a sandwich that had egg in it. We got ont he train and sat in a 4 person table area with another couple. Liam was sitting really cozily with the dude next to him, who was lazily splayed out and taking up a lot of room. We definitely should've swapped locations.  Liam put away his sandwich, which i thought was abit weird and made me question whether or not i should finish my sandwich, or save it for a snack whenever liam decided to finish his sandwich. I figured my warm panini was more time sensitive so I polished it off and we continued to trek. The couple near us got off shortly after, and then liam took back out his sandwich, saying that he didn't want to eat eggs sitting so close to someone. there we go. there's the reasoning.

When we got to bruges LIam we suggested we venture into that muffin. Because of metabolic reasons, I had half of it and pocketed the rest, only allowing him to eat it 35ish minutes later. I caved and gave it to him early because i hate saying no, especially to such a frivolous thing, and then we fed the crumbs to some swan. I was super nervous though so did a really shit job of feeding it to the swan. I mostly jsut made a mess of crumbs on this dock we were standing on.

We were then headed towards a diamond museum. Liam had read about it and heard that they do diamond polishing demonstrations at noon. It sounded cool so we went to check it out. More of a store than a museum, the polishing was actually meant to start at 12:15. We asked a few questions, saw the price, and realised that it wasn't something we'd be too keen on doing. After joking about propsing to me outside the museum, we carried on. 

Next stop was the Belfry. A pretty awesome, giant structure tat you can pay to climb up, if desired. We didn't do this, although in retrospect, we probably should've. Liam wanted to. I dont know what happened. A little past the belfy brought us right to the markt, or center area. This was a pretty small region, sort of similar to the center squares of a lot of the cities we had been to prior to this. There was a little ice skating rink in the middle, lots of shops surrounding the area, and great views of the overall architecture. We contemplated going to ice skating for a litlte while longer than I usually participate in such a contemplation. I've gone ice skating once in my life, when I was somewehre around 10 years old, and don't particularly remember enjoying the event then. Now I'm feet taller and way less trusting of my balance-ability, so ice skating isn't a craving I ever have. We nearly did, but decided not to, and continued on our way, stopping to get two christmas beers in this awesome giant beer shop.

I picked the delirium christmas beer [which I now realise is called delirium noel when purchased in the states] and Liam picked some christmas beer with some slutty chick on the label. Nothing new. We brought them to the bar-like counter near the display cases of beers to pay for them, but then were shuttled to the main counter in the attached store. Liam headed to find the bathroom. When I paid for them I asked if the woman could open them for us. She opened mine, no problem, and then she opened the otherone and it started bubbling over and foaming allover the place. Liam was back at this point I think, asking me if i had 50 cents to use the toilet [here, let's throw a little rant in right now. I'm so unamused by having to pay for toilet use in europe. Like, yeah, I get that it's a service that someone has to clean up after, but then who's paying for it in America? How come I've never had to pay for toilet here, nor nearly anywhere else for that matter? It's annoying! I don't carry change around when I'm at home, so I can't imagine people that live in europe have their pockets filled with gold dubloons enough to let them use the restroom. Idk.], watching me clean up the foamy mess and taking some of the beer. When he went back, I brought the beers to the empty barish like table in the back [not really a bar.. more like a little seat that happens to be inside of a shop] to sip on my beer and wait. After a minute or so the man who had been in this section of the restaurant before came over, and told me that I wasn't allowed to drink those at the bar, since they were purchased from the wall, and not from the fridge. I have no idea what the difference was, but assumed it must be price, so I tried to explain that I was just waiting for my friend to finish up in the bathroom, but he had such a look of disgust. I continued to feel uncomfortable as I sat, and when Liam emerged he immediately read my body language and asked what was up. I gave him his beer, and we left as I was telling him how unwelcome I felt in this silly shop. WHATEVER.

So I marked these two kinda random spots on the map, that were sillyy museums I didn't actually thing we'd end up paying for entry for. The first was the Frietmuseum and then the Chocostory. Fries, and chocolate. They were 7euros and 6euros each [and unsurprisingly owned by the same people.. or at least had a joint deal], so, obv not going in. I grabbed two chocolate pellets from chocostory before leaving though. Those kinds that you would melt. Whatever. It was whatever

We were getting hungry so the next goal was to find food. i wanted to keep wandering off of the main path since bruges was so small and I figured things would be cheaper if we didn't go to places in city center, but most of what we were passing lookedl ike it was just super residential. We went into this little designer Bike shop that was pretty amazing. I was holding back from going inside, being obviously tourists not going to buy anything, but liam reminded me that that shouldn't matter, and we went inside. It was awesome. Beautiful cruisers mostly, thoughtful leatherwork. Just beautiful bikes overall. We talked about clip in shoes and admired this bike that had a 6pack basket and wine bottle holder. Then we were off, walking towards where the trainstation was, where I thoguht it  might be a bit cheaper to exist but stopped first at some cafe that was called Venice something, or something. We split a chocolate waffle and a ham and goat cheese sandwich. So belgium. This chocolat ewaffle was pretty intense, with bananas on top. Not ad hard as the one we got in amsterdam, but still very chewy compared to the fluffy waffles I'm used to at home. The sandwich was delicious. Goat cheese is so good. We went onwards, down a bit towards the station and finally gave in to our chocolate cravings. We stopped at this little store and got a bag of truffles. Holy fuck. So amazing. We were blazing through the package, but then got to some art gallery, and liam wanted to go in.

i felt like such a fuck folding up the loud crinkly wrappers of the truffle, stuffing them into my pocket, in this vacant echoy art abyss. It wa actually a really epic gallery. We walked around, whispering, admiring the art. There was one collection that was really cutout, photographic, and dark. I liked this one most. When we did eventually leave, Liam immediately proclaimed that the gallery was heaps better than the modern art museum we checked out in Amsterdam. We kept snacking, got some more beers and sat on a bit of a stone wall, looking at the Markt. it was nice to sit and relax, and then I really wanted to get fries, so we pointed out a little spot with outdoor seatign right in the square, so liam went in to get fries while I sat outside trying to hide our beers. He got a large fries with tartare and ketchup. We got tartare and mayo, but that's fine. I was cool with that too.

Eventaully we decided to head back towards the train station, and by proxy, back towards brussels. As expected, we picked up a few more beers before leaving Bruges [for the train, y'know] and I was pretty set on looking for another chocolate shop, to find something hopefully as decadent as that first bag of truffles that we tore up. We found some shop, and i saw a little variety pack of more expensive-looking truffles, and hoped this would be the right choice. The other people in the shop, an older american couple, were trying to purchase their own set of chocolate but I heard the man seeming unsure as to waht his pin was on his credit card, and confused that he had even been meant to set it up. They had not enough money, and out of the goodness of my heart, and self proclaimed prophecy to ensure that all the world has chocolate, I asked if I could give them some euros for USdollars so they could get chocolate. That was a mistake. I only had about 60 euros left before flying to london the next day, BUT in all due respect, I couldnt imagine they'd be asking for anything more than 10 euros. 62. Sixty Fucking Two Euros these stupid americans were about to spend on, what turned out to be, an awful chocolate shop. I said I couldn't, and didn't have enough. then the woman said she had some, and maybe with what I had it would be enough. she had 15. I was obligated now with the 50. Rats. It took them so long to figure out how much they owed me, with the internet help of the store owner. So much time wasted, such a shitty money situation to now be in, and a package of assorted chocoaltes later, we escaped and tried to figure out how to get back to brussels. We guessed and picked a train, which ended up leaving when we thought it was supopsed to. Sweet. During the ride we ate the chocolates, which were all bad. Like, awful. I kept eating them hoping they would improve, but not at all. 

When we got back I was pretty exhausted. Liam was dealing with travel shit on his computer and I was moping about not going to Mini Europe. I wanted to go straight there from the train since I figured it would close at some point, but Liam was stressed about looking things up so I conceded. Mini Europe did close, and we definitely would've made it, but WHATEVER. I'll get over it one day. I napped a little bit i think, sorta dozing off in frustration and boredom, but eventually liam was finished. We went to the lobby to get out of the room and because I wanted some absinthe, which would require cups and a spoon. The front desk didn't seem to care about us drinking there, even though I only asked if we could have beer. I kept making stupid remarks about being a beersneezaholicrex. Not sure why.

We had our absinthe, and tries to offer some to this girl sitting near us [unsuccessfully] and then decided we should venture out for food. We walked for ages looking for an ATM to make up for my stupidity in giving chocolate money to those fools. We got almost as far as the Grand Place, and delirium cafe, which is wehre we were heading. Finally, an ATM. We took out money and then walked almost all the way back to wehre we were staying because we wanted to get cheap palistinian food, native to the little section of town taht our hostel was situated in. We ended up at a cheap vegetarian falafel place. It was really good! Youf ill your own salad and then get a falafel pita. No complaints there.

We turned around once again and went back towards the grand place. A grand place it is! It was really cool to be there in the emptiness of the night, prancing around, finishing the beers we had been carrying for our walk. The lights were extravagent and blue, and there was a massive christmas tree. I'm not sure it lokos like this all year, but it's possible. so grand.

Then we headed to the delirium Cafe, which was my top sight to see in Belgium. We had to get rid of our beers before entering the alley way that it is situatid in, and then we ventured into this awesome bar/club. Good vibes, live music, and a great beers selection. It was actually way cheaper than I thought it would be, at about 4 euros per draught beer [we got a mix of regular and dark deliriums]. The music was a selection of cover bands that were all pretty bad, but the song choice was good enough to forgive the fact that it soundded like these people's first time playing their instruments. We didn't stay too terribly late, with an early flight in the morning, and eventually made our way back to enjoy our own room for one last night.

We woke up at the crack of the fucking morning, pre sun, pre functionality, pre packed and tried to gather the scattered belongings from our closet sized room. This was dug a weird room. We decided to treat ourselves after the horror which was our top bunk lawnmower and near bunk fuckers in Amsterdam, so got a proper (psh) private room. The shape of the room suggested that whomever built it only realized there would be space for a bedroom afte all the other walls were accidentally put up. We had two twin beds, lazily smashed together, posing as the ultimate death trap for falling through the middle as they moved in our sleep. the whole bathroom was a shower, which like, as far as design goes, I'm all for it, but the functionality does not exist. Our window led to a ladder, for easy entry I suppose. The hostel itself was located in a seemingly sketchy, extremely Pakistani, area. This meant good prices and good food options, but we were confused about the life of Brussels when we first got in. Anyway, yeah.. I'm writing super out of order so if that was repetitive, sorry but I can't be fucked editing or rereading any of this horrible garbage. 

Yeah, so we gathered our belongings and left all of our illicit and non-fly-friendly shit (ie the rest of the absinthe, some herbs purchased in Prague, and a bunch of empty Belgian beer bottles)  in the room (you're welcome) and raced to the station. 

No worries, yet again. We had a good few minutes to wait before getting our train to (hopefully) the airport. All seemed to work out even though I was desperately trying to fudge our eurail passes to include this day as a travel day incase someone came along to check. No one came along. Whatever. 

ANYWAY, Check in was super quick even though we had some trouble finding the check in table, weirdly located in a whole separate section. I suppose that's what you get when flying budget airlines like easy jet. Next was customs. Liam had been worried about his visa situation all trip, and though we got through to prague no problem (and everywhere else thereafter) this was the next obstacle. Leaving the schengen area would finally let them (THEM) know that he had fully overstayed his welcome. He had printed out all these documents to prove he had the funds to exit, had flights out, was doing something while he was there, and all the details of the bilateral visa waiver that gives residents of nz some special potential privileges while traveling in the schengen region, but I could feel his fear as we approached customs. Right before we got up to the window, a new window opened up and Liam went to wait on that line. He was his second passport check and maybe it was the good mood of recently starting, or the Liam's devilish good looks and charm (just to see if you're reading this, Liam) but customs took maybe 15 seconds, and he was in. Cleared. 

When we were in the airport we were looking for a toilet and became confused by the fact that the sign for bathroom and the sign for elevator looked strikingly similar. Some sort of rectangle with two people standing. strange.

It was fun flying with Liam for the first time, even though the flight was really short. In the little introduction safety talk, we were told "if you hear brace, brace." Thanks guys. 

Liam found all the belgian air staff to be quite attractive. eyeroll

Review of Belgium: absurdly good food. I feel like everything we consumed there was top notch. The beers were also amazing. Being able to go to a mini mart and get relatively cheap, amazing beers was such a godsend, and such a refreshing change. 

Amsterdam

I went to Amsterdam about 3 years ago to visit tali who was studying abroad in London, and then together we spent a weekend in Amsterdam. We stayed at this hostel called the flying pig downtown which was a pretty big party hostel with a bar, smoke room, and amazing location. I booked it again for when Liam and I arrived.

The only weird part of the hostel, in my opinion, which was I suppose less weird and potentially positive for this trip, was that you could book double bunk beds. In a room with 32 people you could sleep on a full sized bunk bed setup with another person. Weird big bunks.

Anyway, we got there, checked in, and had a little over a half hour to kill before we could go to our room. Breakfast was still running for another 5 minutes so we went downstairs to get some free brekkie which was mostly toast, chocolate spread, and some fruit. I also got a bit of granola. We hung out down there, sucking on the internet and creating a map for Amsterdam while we waited to go to our rooms. Once we got through, we showered, layed down for a minute, and then decided to venture out and hit up a coffee shop. I was super exhausted from being nutty the night before, stressing about people coming into our compartment, but gave in to the desire to wander and travelled to this coffee shop, abraxas, which was a little ways away, but very well reviewed. There were a ton of options to choose from, but it did feel kinda touristy, so I was not fully convinced. After receiving our pure skunk purchases, I retracted my concern. Super good. Too good. Comatose good, which maybe was bad. We handled ourselves for a little while there, chatting but also mostly being dead and useless. Once we could handle movign our legs in a useful manner we ventured out. On our way up there we passed through a town square type of place, and decided to stop back there and check out the magician who was performing there.

When we had first passed he was merely explaining what tricks there were to come, and sort of harrassing the audience in his attempt to build interest among the passersby and those committed to standing in the circle and watching. He was whipping this whip and being all awkward and weird, which is why we left the first time. We figured, if he's somehow still there by the time we got back, he may have finally started his tricks. When we got back he was kitted in a straight jacket, yarning about how he was about to get out of it, but first he had to explain his need for money. He had this whole rant about how it's the cheapest entertainment you could find in amsterdam anywhere and you got a full hour of his best performance, and yadda yadda yadda. I mean, yeah, sure he's totally right and I shouldn't have then walked off to avoid giving him a wee euro or whatever, but his speech made me so uncomfortable that I didn't even wait through it to see him escape from his straight jacket. Idk. rough life being a street performer I'd imagine.

We wandered into a H&M because Liam's been needing a belt. It was a really small store in terms of length and width, but a giant store in terms of height. It felt like we had literally been moving forever by the time we got from floor 0 to floor 4, where mens clothing had started. We were rapidly losing hope and thinking that this obviously was not a place in which men could buy belts, but tried al ittle harder and at the 5th and final floor, in the last place you'd be able to ever look, belts were found. they were pretty tiny I reckon because Liam bought the largest length of belt and he's really fit.

We ventured back to the hostel afterwards and rested for a little bit before heading to the eye, a film museum and theater that was a ferry ride away [pretty and fun, and free!]. It was a weird conglomeration of humans taking the ferry, with so many bikes squeezing on and motor bikes ready to race off the second the gate opened. There was an afternoon showing of Boyhood we were trying to make, and had a good bit of time to wander around and hang out in the grass near the theater before it started. We also took a walk around the museum gift shop which was really awesome. IT was filled with all the weird little toys and stories that modern art museums and film museums usually have on display. Then, when the doors opened, we went in to get seats in the theater. I haven't seen a movie in theaters in a long time so it was kind of a nice experience and it was a really good sit-down break after all the trekking we had been through over the past few days. The movie was actually really good. This is this one that was filmed over 12 years of someone's life, but pretty long. We both passed out for a little bit of it, unfortunately I think for the same part, so i'm left with at least a question or two. 

We ferried back and arrived at the hostel, drank a bit of wine in our bed.

So here my memory is a little foggy again. I know we played pool at some time, but it actually may have been the next day. Let's pretend it was, okay? But I can talk about it now. Liam accidentally got one of mine in, and then on my next turn I literally aimed at one of his, and got it in. Not thinking about the fact that it was a solid, not a stripe. Such an idiot. He ended up winning our 1euro 

I think then we went out and were on the hunt for food. Everything looked kinda pricey so it took us a little while to decide. In compariosn to berlin, and even moreso to prague, amsterdam was really expensive. Like, our hostel was certainly more expensive than the ones in those cities, and we were sharing a fucking bed. Anyway, we settled with some empty italian place. We got some beers there, and learned that a heinekin bottle comes in .25 l, not .3l like we suspected. cheapskates. We also got our fill with a burger, for me, and pizza for liam. It was highly mediocre, if not bad. 

Too cheap to pay for more expensive beers there we wandered looking for a beer shop, but they all seemed to have shut. Mini marts as well. We settled with a different counter pizza shop and bought beers there to venture with for a little. Walked around, helped a couple get directions to where they were going, and generally were tired and feeling lazy so decided to go smoke hookah in some lounge. That was pretty fun and they were very willing to add our leftovers to the shisha mix, giving us an interesting buzz. The place we went to was called Lost in Amsterdam, and was filled with pillows all around, and we sipped on beers while hanging out and smoking the honey flavoured shisha. 

When that was enough, we headed back to the hostel, exhausted and chilled in the hostel's smoke room for a little while, tampering with our leftovers, shoeless on the pillowed area. The place was absolutely packed and we soon were done there as well and retreated to our double bed bed bunk to lay down and read some wikipedia articles together, answering questions of some of the ponderings we had shared that day.

At around 1015 the next morning we woke up and decided to take advantage of the free brekkie once again. Same game, but today i tried my first hardboiled egg. I mean, I've had them broken up into salads and whatever before, but i've never dealt with it in its whole form, let alone it's whole shelled form. I was kind of stupid with figuring out how to do it, but it ended up being pretty good. Good job chickens. 

I was really keen on renting bikes during this stay in amsterdam so we trekked out and tried to find a good, cheap enough place to rent from. We passed on that was 12euros but then realised that we wouldn't be able to return the bikes in a time that they were open. The next mini market we passed was suitable though, and super random, because they were open pretty late. only 10euros each we got our handbrake bikes and started to bike through one of the biggest biking cities on the planet. 

The day before, as we were walking around, I found it pretty difficult and daunting to cross the road and traverse intersections. There were bikes coming form everywhere and i was often accidentally standing in the bike lane. [not as aggressively as we did in berlin though. I don't think i wrote about it, but as we were leaving the train station and getting on a bus towards our hostel, we both nearly got hit by a biker coming because we were fully standing in the bike lane. so dumb]. Also street lights are hard to see and weirdly placed. On a bike though, it was way less daunting and I felt way more in control.

We biked up to the I AMsterdam sign and parked briefly to take some photos. Liam climed to the top part of the d and i stayed on the inside. We wandered a bit but thought it would make sense to just bike further and park our bikes by the art museums we were thinking about going to. 

Before leaving the area our hostel was in we did a quick shop to get some art enhancing goods for our adventure, so after parking our bikes we were headed to indulge. We walked to a park pretty close by and hung out on a statue, trying out our buy, which was way weirder than the one from the day before. Much more light headed feeling, way quicker onset, and disappeared shortly after. Interesting.

As we were entering the park we noticed a little food truck like setup with elaborate chandeliers inside, and an assortment of pastries for sale. We went back towards it and liam got 3 pastries. i got two, but had some of his chocolate waffle. The chocoalte waffle was kind of interesting-- way more solid than I had expected. He also got some sorta cream puff like thing. I got an appley item and a nut filled, pecan pie-like, item. We hung out and munched a bit, saving some for later, and had a little more before heading back towards the museum.

trigger warning: if you're not me, you probably don't care about this part more than you haven't cared about anything else i've written in my almost purely for-personal-reasons blog. So we were walking away with a bag of our leftover desserts. Liam was caryring it and then asked me if i could hold it while he put on his jacket, or hat, or something... so i obliged, and then we continued walking. I never gave it back to him and fully forgot about it for a bit. Maybe a block or so later it crossed my mind, and I wondered why I was still holding it. I contemplated saying something and then didn't care. Theres not much bother in holding a lightweight object for a bit. I needn't whine nor force him to hold it. Almost immediately after he asked if i minded carrying it, and offered to take it back. i said i didnt' mind but gave it to him. I thought that was weird so after thinking about it for a few seconds i confessed that i had actually just been thinking about the bag, and he told me that he felt me tense up, and decided he should probably ask to take back the bag. We both thought that was so weird, and was one of the many times that day and through this trip that we felt like we were on the same wavelength. We weren't even looking at eachother, but silent communication through humans that know eachother really well never ceases to amaze and confuse me. Idk. sappy and silly maybe, but you had to be there. it was nuts. 

Drinks [non-alcoholic for once!] seemed necessary so we ventured into a little grocery store that was right next to the entrance for the modern art museum, the Stedelijk museum. I got a water and an apple, liam got some sort of kiwi flavoured fizzy water, and while in the checkout line we also decided to get a white kitkat bar and some sort of bubble chocolate bar. At first we were in the wrong checkout line, which accepted some sort of weird point payment, but then we got through to cash and got out alright. I ate my apple, and then we started working on the kitkat bar. i was wondering if it was just because it was cold outside or if the white chocolate they used was just not what I expect from white chocolate, but i think the kit kat bar was just awful. Never try one if you've been considering and contemplating the idea of one as you first read that I had one. Dislike. 

Finally we made it into the art museum and moved thoughout the exhibits, consistently fucking up the order in which we were supposed to traverse the rooms. For the first section we were very clearly taken through the years in chronological order, seeing the progression of art and homeware, but we didn't realise [similar to the way we didn't realise at the mika concert a year and a half ago that the dj opener was movign through the decades] until we were nearly at the last case. We went in descending order. oh well. This mostly just made us more aware of the fact that a path in museums often exists, and it could be worth following suit. 

The next area we were trying pretty hard to go the right way, but in this retrospective, which seriously should've had a fucking order if there's any kind of display that hsould have an order, there seemed to be no order. We gave up and just went through. A lot of the work in this section was really creepy and very in your face. Human faces and forms were depicted with a warping of facial features and placements, and sickly, flat appearance. 

We joked about what it would be like to have some of the weird dishware and flatware that we passed in the museum and watched a few strange videos before leaving. One I rather liked had a bunch of projectors set up in a room with the images horizontally next to eachother from about 7 screens. They all seemed quite unrelated, and for the most part exhibited only slight, consistent movement, but every once in a while one would become the main focus as the subject of that screen was manipulated and someone came in and cut a cake, for example. Pretty weird. The last video we watched was about the affect of heroin on a lot of places which was kind of heavy and not so 'arrrrrrt'. Then we left. Liam proclaimed that he hated all of it as we exited.

As usual, the next move was to go back to that supermarket and stock up on some beers to bring back to the hostel. We spent a good period of time picking out a few good beers each, weighing cost, abv, and the creation of multiple styles. We didn't fuck up which line to go on this time, and went to the cash line, but then got stopped when they asked to see both of our IDs. Liam didnt have his wallet, and he had left his passport at the minimart earlier as collatoral when renting our bikes. bullocks. I was really not keen to go back in and try again, so i insisted we leave and just continue on. 

We biked towards the redlight district, getting lost a shitton and constantly having to check the map when we realised we had gone too far, often for the sake of sightseeing and following people who were in front of us. 

It was dusk at this point and moving through the redlight district was kind of weird. Not as explosive as I'm sure it owuld be becoming in the next few hours, but still filled with many women in windows, beckoning the passersby. Though our eyes were peeled the whole way looking for a supermarket or beer shop, we were pretty unsuccessful until we were through with the redlight district and beginning to head back. A little overpriced supermarket would do the job. 

So we did as we tend to, and moved to the back of the store to figure out what would give us the most abv for our dollar. Not quite as cheap as the supermarket we were rejected from before, so it was really a bit annoying. We picked a bunch of interesting beers to taste- large variety of types, but all in the 8-11% range, and then grabbed three of these tall boys of grolsch that were 11.6%. Not too bad. As we approached the counter and placed our beers down for purchase, the store owner laughed and said "two of those? no. you [liam] can't drink two of those." he proceeded to explain, and tempted to warn, that these beers are really intense and would be more affecting than ones of similar strength, but different brand. He wasn't sure why it was the case, but seemed to have experience in drinking one too many grolsch tall boys. We saw it as a challenge and I added a bag of crisps to our order before we strapped the cans to the back of my bike and continued on our adventure. 

We dropped off the bikes, [it was maybe 7 pm, and we were planning on intoxicating ourselves for the rest of the evening] and then went to the hostel to hang out in the lower breakfast area, to drink our beers and not cause a disturbance to the sales at the bar. There were a bunch of people watching american hustle so we watched a bit while sipping and snacking. When those humans cleared out, three new ones came that were super friendly and pretty fun. three american dudes, one [or two?] of which were studying abroad at the time. We chatted a wee while but then decided it was time to go out. 

Though I was a big fan of abraxas the day before, we thought it wise to try out a new spot, and hit up this place called Baba which was meant to have great edibles. Prices were high and I was just not realy feeling the place, so we defaulted and went back to the place we trusted well, abraxas. This time in addition to a muffin and a brownie [for the next days, of course], we took some pure purple, their most expensive type. This one, a sativa, while the other was an indica, made a big difference. much preferred.

Man from the mini mart was pretty correct about the beers and we were well drunk at this time, and ready to wander back and tucker in for another night. On our way back we went to this place Walk to Wok, which we had pointed out earlier in our day as good looking, cheap, chinese food. exactly what we needed. It ended up being amazingly good, and though we were hoping to find the three americans in the downstairs lounge again to keep drinking and eat, the room was occupied with a whole new crowd we werent' prepared to handle. We resorted to this little cave-like booth, recessed into the wall. We sat, ate, and tried to finish the last of the grolsch's [struggle all around I'd say], as liam faced frustration with the hanging lightbulb illuminating our post. It was really bright, and hanging aggressively close to his face, so he twisted it off. Some chick that worked there came by after to see if it had broken, but we explained we just turned it off. Conversation devolved into joking death threats, and though I can't quite remember the start, I told liam that I would warn him when a kiss was the third to last one he'd get before being cut off. All jokes.

We went to our bunk and i tried to put on a movie, but liam [who somehow did drink two grolsch's] was pretty far gone, unwilling to turn around and face the screen, so I turned it off and we passed out for a while.

So I have really bad misophonia, and rely heavily on earplugs to get through the often snore filled hostel nights. Nothing though could've helped with the night to follow. The dude above us was making noises only comparable to that of a broken lawnmower. A guy a few beds over was choking on snore, and the best, at about 5 am, Liam had also woken up to join me in the listening of two people's early morning coitus. There were 32 people in that room, but absolutely no noise control on their humping. ick. I found another pair of earplugs to give to liam and we tried to go back to bed until 7am, when we woke up to get ready to get out.

Liam and I had been sharing this weird towel that I bought on amazon. It's one of those dry-lite towels that folds up really small and dries rapidly. It can hold an incredible amount of water, so makes drying easy, but is a strange suede like material that you pat on your body instead of rubbing. It's nto the same luxury experience as a plush towel, but it does the job pretty well. I heard liam moving towards it, to get in the shower, and stopped him, hoping he'd let me shower first. Success. I showered, he showered, we packed, we sat, we checked out, and we went for a really quick brekkie before heading to the train station. I put some fruit in my backpack and two hard boiled eggs in my pocket for train snacks to come.

Again, we rushed, and again, we were super early, waiting for the train to hit the platform. We split half of the brownie and seated ourselves. The first 40? minutes brought us to rotterdam where we finished the rest of the brownie and sat for an hour waiting. The next 2 hour train was bringing us to brussels. 

The train ride was fine. Nothing so interesting. I got through the eggs and put the peelings in the garbage. I still think I'm pretty shit at peeling hard boiled eggs. It must be some sort of skill. Liam finished the book he had been reading, and we faced eachother at a little table for most of the ride. Brownie was okay, mostly just tiring though. 

As we approached Brussels I wasn't entirely sure of where we were. This time at least I did save a map of brussels before getting there, but when it came to be time to get off the train at our stop, we were a little rushed and bit unsure. Something I found kind of weird about the trains in europe is that they often stop at stations for about 5 minutes. Not always, but quite frequently you'll be sitting there for a while before moving to the next stop. As a passanger, I hate this. It always makes me feel stressed out and rushed, wanting to move and not be stuck any longer. This is probably the result of growing up where I grew up. As a silly patron trying to get on or off the train, I love it. It gives us enough time to get our turtle shells on our backs and comfortably exit the train. I asked someone "is this brussels centraal?" Yes. We moved to the door, but the door wasn't open. I tried to press the little open button a few times, cause on a few trains and subways and busses you need to press that button to open the door [it's not always open, which makes sense for temperature control reasons I now understand]. It didnt open. A second later we started moving. Fuck. Missed our stop I guess. Second time we couldn't open the fucking door [first time being in berlin. I think I wrote about it... while we were on the subway this same garbage happened where we legit didn't know how to get out].

We got out at the next stop, feeling like idiots, trying to figure out which train would bring us back int he right direction, and found one, boarded, and got off where we were meant to get off [which, in all actuality, wasn't as close to the hostel as another stop we could've taken. you live and you learn, or you just read directions before you go. whatever].

We got off, walked the 15 minutes with our bags to our hostel, and brussels. 

Berlin

Finally at 315 we arrived in Berlin. I forgot to save a shot of the map so we were relying on a little 2 sentence description from the booking confirmation to get us to our hostel. We got the right bus and got off at the right stop all problem free (aside from how spazzy I was being with paying him the 1.50e for the ride, spazzy enough for him to then not charge Liam, likely to avoid having to deal with any more stupidity) but then could not find the hostel at all. We walked a little while and I then stopped two girls in the street and asked for help. We were with them a few minutes, consulting an iPhone and then an iPad before deciding where we should go. Perfect. Got there no problem.

Fully random aside: I'm on a train to Brussels right now eating a hardboiled egg. Yesterday was my first time having one of those, separate of egg bits sprinkled in salads. First time peeing and dealing with it I guess. They're pretty good but they're definitely like the lobster of eggs. I'm not a huge fan of lobster, so it's just another iteration of way too much work and potential to he yourself and a bland reward. 

K, so yeah. We check in to the wombats, Berlin and asked the reception for food suggestions, particularly leaning towards Asian. He sent us to this sushi and Vietnamese restaurant a few minutes away. It was super cheap and super delicious. We shared a specialty roll and a salmon roll, and a Vietnamese crispy duck curry. Also some beer and sake of course, but it came out to like 11 euros each. Pretty snazzy. You also got a 10% discount if you told them you're staying at the wombats. 

For much of our dinner though we looked like those awful couples that each sit in silence, separately looking at their iPhones. We were actually trying to set up maps of places to hit up while in Berlin. I swear. 

After dinner I went up to the sky bar in our hostel for happy hour and Liam went to have a shower. I was chatting with Michael the Irish bartender for a while about what to do in Berlin, and then somehow that led us to the discussion of the American education system.


he left me with a list, scribbled on a receipt, of which clubs I should go to that night, and in which order I should try them out. Much thanks are deserved. That suggestion list was great, even though we never made it past the first on the list.

When Liam came down I dragged him through a whole explanation of what computer science really is, and sorta kinda what I do for work. I thought it was a pretty interesting exercise because I reckon most people have no idea what computer science is about and just dismiss it as something they'll never understand. breaking it down into a tangible concept was a bit challenging but I thought it overall to be a great chat to have as we drank away our desires to nap, and instead prepare for the evening out. I probably didn't write about it there, but when we were in pizza 2000 in venice, I got the pleasure of the opposite information as Liam finally explained to me all the ins and outs of what his job entails. I dont' know why I didn't really know what he did, but it occurred to me then, when I finally had a chance to sit down and talk to him in person, instead of facebook chat or skype, that I wanted a better idea. So I guess this was the flip.

We then asked the bartenders about why in the bathrooms in the hostel there are hot and cold taps on the wall above the toilet. Like, taps that seemingly had no connection to the sink or anything. Another set of two, meaningless taps. One was completely unsure and agreed that it was a weird thing in berlin that he was used to seeing. The other suggested that it probably turns of the main pipe, and maybe at some point in the past, that was a useful thing to be able to do. Who knows.

When it was a little past 11pm, and we entered the second happy hour of the night [they do 6-8 and 11-12] we got another drink, laughed at how long we had been sitting in this one little hostel bar, and ventured out into the wild; off to crackbellmer. We've been kinda on and off retarded with the subways thus far -- a mix of a language barrier and being unfamiliar with the methods in which people pay for their ride. For berlin, we learned at this time that you have to validate your ticket after you buy it, making it timed for the trip you're about to have. We hadn't validated ours from the previous trip but they were too folded up to revalidate. We bought new ones and headed over.
The area that the bartender sent us to was really cool. It's by the East Side Gallery and is a giant area filled with warehouse-like clubs and sketchy paths, and is the product of reconstructing an old train station. Slightly lower level into the ground it was like entering a whole different, graffiti filled, night time world. On our trek towards it we were welcomed with the friendly faces of more drug dealers. Sort of a similar system to that in Prague, but these guys were primarily nigerian and all seemed to work together. Love pills in hand we went to the first spot on our list.

This place has no cover and has a pretty amazing lineup of djs. It was a house/trance/deep house kind of night when we were there and I'm still trying to figure out what some of the songs we heard were, because they had such an awesome vibe. I can't remember the word liam used to describe how the music made you react, but maybe it was 'bobbing' music. Kinda makes you bob. super chill-- I'd check out this guy [who played that night] to get a feel for the sounds.

anyway, the bar was a bunch of rooms. One main dancing/bar one, and then auxiliary indoor/outdoor rooms more for lounging and getting a little further from the sounds. Overall though it wasn't overly loud. I liked how well we could hear eachother while bobbing on the floor. WE bounced around the whole place getting a beer and a tequila shot each every once in a while and hung out there until about 4 am. The bar wasn't at all emptying out at 4, but we were tired. The nightlife in Berlin, especially because we were ther on a saturday, is expected to continue on into the morning. All these places are open till 8/9am. If i ever make it back there again I'll definitely take more advantage of that fact. For this night though, that was enough, and one of the coolest bar/clubs I've ever been to. Oh, one more thing. We're still unsure of how this was meant to go down, but to get a hand stamp to then get drinks at the bar, I think you were meant to tip the DJ a euro. We were kind of confused.

Our way back was a little slower and a little more lost but we made it in one piece and passed out immediately, each taking top bunks on different ends with interesting characters below us.

The next morning we were up at 9am and felt like absolute mush. One of our roommates, a small hispanic? man  was packing to leave when we were getting ready and was an enjoyable conversation. He called me out on wacky tobacky and told us about how his first day in germany he fell while running up stairs, hurting his nose pretty terribly. Eventually we were ready to checkout of the hostel, stow our bags, and take advantage of their cheap buffet brekkie in the attached restaurant. Meant to be a continental breakfast, but pretty weird in comparison to what I had expected, it focused largely on cheap ham slices and cheese, breads, muesli, and a few cereals. Other than breakfast, that restaurant is generally a cajun restaurant and we learned about [though I don't recall too well] what makes people cajun and how taht group became a thing and eventually a food icon. Good morning paper read.

We moved on and took the same subway we were on the night before, to the brandenburg gate. Even though we had just done that journey twice, we were absolutely useless on this braindead morning at finding the station. It was like probably one of the bigger navigational struggles of the trip. I couldn't imagine funcitoning if we had stayed out any longer. Silly and useless, in 3 times longer than it should've taken, we made it to the brandenburg gate. Crazy giant arch, which was cool in later parts of the day to see in photographs with different statue dressings on top. As in, the one we saw had horses on top, but in one photo we ran into, they weren't there. Liam pointed this out. I honestly would've never noticed.

Reischstag was close so we spent a bit of time there next, before heading to the memorial for the murdered jews in europe during the holocaust. This was a surprise to me. From walking up to it, all you could see is a bunch of large concrete blocks on the ground of varying heights, going on for a while. The height seemed unintimidating, and the height/width proportions were, what I was guessing for significance, kind of the size of a wide coffin.  There were thousands of them, and as we started wafting through the space and walking through the maze that they created, we realized that this memorial was something that had to be experienced, and properly walked through. Pictures couldn't describe the haunting feel developed while walking deeper into the ever growing concrete blocks. Reaching heights well above 7 feet, as you got into the depths of it you felt almost trapped in a maze, belittled by the massive structures surrounding you geometrically. The ground was sunk in the center, which is why these massive blocks looked so unintimidating from the outskirts of the memorial, and the viewer isn't prepared for such massive structures. At every crossing you'd have to look for people passing . It was daunting, and amazing. Pictures definitely wouldn't do this justice. Such a cool memorial.

In the center of it there are stairs to go down into the related museum. this museum was so much heavier than I was prepared for. It was really quite amazing and extremely powerful, recanting stories from notes found during the holocaust, explanations of what people had to go through, and rooms with names and thoughts. Though not as intense as yad vashem in israel, still an extremely powerful museum to go through. Once we were doine reading all the passages and absorbing all that the emotional museum had to offer, we ventured back out. We were en route to something that I then didn't even know what it was [i had been putting stars on a google map and saving it for offline use, and there were a few times when we would go to a star and be unsure of what I was trying to mark off.] We stopped though at a science museum en route. Twas free, and because science. We didn't know waht the exhibit would be about, but the whole museum was focused on muscle connections and scientific mechanisms used to manipulate prosthetic limbs, auxiliary devices, and similar. It was actually really cool. Most of the things were interactive, and it was an interesting way to learn about diseases and conditions taht I hadn't known about before. Though I don't know if I saw, but definitely didn't digest, the knowledge from one display, Liam later was telling me about how prosthetic arm control was used by re-routing the nerves that poeple feel with phantom-limb feelings to the chest, where they could then spark and control the prosthetic arm. Really interesting stuff.

We ventured out and stopped by a little christmas market we happened to be passing. Definitely during the day these christmas markets are more for selling/buying little kitsch christmas things, and less for being used as a bar, but it was cool to walk through.

Our next stop was the dali museum I believe, which we just saw in passing. We never actually went in because figured it wasn't worth the fee, but I pressed a 5-cent piece while we were there in one of those penny-press machines. Then we ventured back on route to go to Checkpoint Charlie and stopped to try currywurst. So this was the food i had been seeing a lot in Germany that I had never heard of, and we were urged to try. It's wurst [sausage], cut up and doused with ketchup, and then curry powder is sprinkled on top of it. Seriously, so fucking good. Like, such a wonderful little snack. We got them in those red and white cartons you'd get fries in at a carnival and worked through them with forks as we trudged further. All though we contemplated, and then rejected, the idea of getting drinks at the currywurst stand, once we finished eating and passed a beer shop, we had to go in.

We each got a beer. Liam had been talking about his craving for sierra nevada right before, and was super excited to find one of these [which i find to be a mediocre] beers. I had been intruiged by this dark beer a few times and finally decided to try it out. Twas called Gulden Draak. The bottle is interesting, and now that i'm looking at it online, the rating is absurdly high. I absolutely hated it though. It was way too thick for my taste [maybe just because it was still a bit of a braindead afternoon] and so hard to swallow. Foam kept pouring otu of the top and I threw it out. One of the few beers in my life I haven't finished.

We made it to Checkpoint Charlie, which was a major passing when the Berlin Wall was standing. There were pieces of the wall scattered around to look at, and a massive passage area to read about the history of the area we were standing in. Overall a pretty cool and interesting exhibit taht I didn't originally know too much about.
A duo from New Orleans was playing when we decided to get up. One on soprano sax and the other on some drum-like apparatus strapped to his waist. They were really amazing and put on a great show. We stood by the fire enjoying and warming up until it became too unbearably hot, making us move back. The soprano saxist was telling a weird story when asking for money. He was on about traveling and planting/selling seeds to teach people how to grow things... and said that we needed to give him money so he could buy seeds and give them back to us. not really sure waht he meant, but that was fine.

Next stop was Mauarpark, a subway ride away, to see if we still had time to catch the sunday karaeoke held there. Apparently it's a weekly event where hundreds of people come to watch people do karaoke. We got to the massive park and walked through it, but either went the wrong way or jsut came too late, because we didn't get any karaoke. Instead we stopped by a street performer for had gathered easily over a hundred people around her as she sang and played guitar. She was pretty phenomenal and we stayed through her set before continuing onwards to what looked like a little market stuck at this end of the park. It was really cool, and everything ws in German. Totally not a tourist-feeling spot to end up. We got a weird spicy flatbread pizza-like thing to split. I'm not entirely sure waht it was but the preparation was really interesting. The woman cooking and giving them out was working with one massive oven that had three different compartments stacked on top of eachother, and coals and wood burning at the bottom. As she got a tray of personal sized circles covered in ingrediants, the tray would spend some time in the top one before systematically being moved down into the middle, and then bottom one. When in the botom one, the tray went through a series of rotations before it was finally ready to be sliced and given to customers. It was really good and we sat on reclined lawn chairs to eat it. We were both super tired and kinda cold and decided taht passing out there [it was starting to get a bit dark] was probably the move. I was in and out of sleep, mostly making it just to that pre-sleep spasm and then waking up again, but Liam seemed to get a good little rest out of it. By the time I was ready to gather myself again, I got up to buy some gluwine [mulled- hot and spiced] and bring it back for us before waking him up. We sipped our wine and the tunes that were being spun in the area at this point were feeling more and more similar to the djs we heard the night before. It was a really cool enclosed space with some bar area and a bunch of food stalls. Live musicians were also getting started and there was a fire burning to keep people nearby warm.

while we were standing there I overheard the girl in front of me talking to her friends about the awesome market they were going to be heading to later. I decided to chime in and asked her what event that was. She spent a while explaining to me how to get there and showing me on my map wehre it was located. Seemed friendly and sweet, and then she told me that they were about to head over, if we wanted to come with. Liam and i went with these three girls from norway, one of whom was living in Berlin [the one i was talking to]. Such a good find. They were awesome company for the evening.

So this place they were heading to actually ended up being in the same little old train station area that we had gone to the night before, just a little further down. Sweet. Apparently every sunday this one warehouse that has both interior and exterior space to explore is converted into an awesome market. There is great food from different cultures, bars, and live music. It was a pretty huge area, kind of difficult to describe, but it was awesome. On Fridays it's a boozier version of the sunday game, filled with more bars. We still had a bunch of time before our night train to Amsterdam so we had our fill of beers and interesting brazillian tapioca tacos while hanging out with and getting to know these girls that we followed over. It was interesting to hear their take on different places to travel, and one of them was dying to go to new zealand, so liam was a good find. Hopefully we'll see them again one day.

they headed off to dinner and liam and I stayed a little while longer, dancing a bit and drinking before heading to the east side gallery, which was right near by, and we had somehow managed to forget about. It was on the map, but so close to the bars that i had marked, that I just assumed it was one of those.

The east side gallery is a bunch of the berlin wall that is still standing, all decorated with amazing, intricate, and often thought provoking artwork, although all of it is covered, to some degree, with graffiti. We discussed what a lot of the panels might mean as we trekked along it. It's a pretty massive stretch and brought us to a different subway stop on the line, which we got onto after figuring out where the hell in the massive station the metro existed. It was also seemingly a regional rail type station, so it was a bit confusing. Also, we weren't entirely sure what line we were meant to take, but a nice man who saw us trying to read the sign insisted on helping us figure it out. There are some good people out there.

We made it back to the hostel to gather our shit, usethe toilet, and get directions to head back to the main train station. The area near the downstairs bathroom may be one of the worst, mouldiest things I've ever smelled. It was so difficult to get through going to the bathroom while also trying to hold my breath, but I made it. We got our luggage from the room and according to the reception, had 7 minutes to catch the next bus that would bring us to the station. We ran to the drugstore next door and bought two twistoff bottles of wine to drink on the night train, and then ran across the street trying to figure out where the bus stop was. We weren't sure, and walked away from it a bit, but Liam flagged down the bus driver and since he was at a red light when he stopped, let us in, a block earlier than the actual stop. I thought that was seriously cool, and not something I would expect anywehre else.

On the bus and off to the train. We had a lot of time to kill so went to a mcdonalds. The signs leading towards a burger king were super misleading and we couldn't find it, so maccers was the move. I got this mixed chicken box and liam got a big mac and cheese burger I think. Fries to share too. They came with those silly monopoly stickers on them, all in german. The chicken box i got was half normal nugs and half chicken wings/drumsticks, but they were absurdly tiny. We were disconcerted by the fact that no chicken would have wings nor thighs that small. Liam wouldn't try one, but I thought they were all good, even if they were made of pigeon and not chicken.  Here we didn't have to pay for ketchup.

Liam was struggling to stay awake throughout all of this, and we ventured up to the platform to find our train which was delayed about 35 minutes. We sat on the ground with our bags, working on our first bottle of merlot, waiting, It was a little confusing since other trains crossed our track, but we managed to avoid getting on the one to poland and some other intercity line. When it eventually came, we got on, looking for our assigned reservation.
We purchased seats, and then regretted doing so instead of getting a couchette [which would guarentee a bed]. Before we went to mcdonalds before we tried to go back to the ticket counter and find out if there was anyway we could upgrade to a couchette, but they were closed. We could only hope that we were the only ones in our car. As we approached our number the lights were off, and there were 3 other people in there. shit. We woke them up but I checked the next car and it was empty. We went in there instead and hoped that no one would be joining us. Liam passed out almost immediately and i was on edge for a while, waiting for the ticket people to maybe tell us to move, and for someone else to join us. Ticket people came twice and woke me with the fear of their presence, and I saw a few people open the door and decide not to come in. Thank fucking god. We were alone the whole night and made it to Amsterdam with not too much harm. I was super grumpy when we woke up, underslept and irritable, but got over it after a little. Amsterdam!