Spieler Urlaub: March 2011

So after spending my second day in Germany finishing up the last of my finals for winter term, Carolin and I embarked upon our euro vacation with plans to see Brussels, Gent and Amsterdam. That's right, Amsterdam. I remember when I was a bit younger, and I could only dream of the thought to see Amsterdam. I could name a few people who I wish were going to meet me there, but that's for another day. We got up pretty early that next morning and hopped on the Autobahn. If you’ve never driven on the German Autobahn, and like to go fast, you should probably book a flight over here and rent a nice German Auto. I cant elaborate enough on how amazing the Autobahn is. It’s like your going 160kmh and people are passing you going what looks to be twice the speed you’re going. And if you like nice cars, you should definitely come here. I swear all of the cars that passed us on the Autobahn were my dream cars, especially the Audis that you cant get in the states.

We moved at a relatively slow pace (150kmh) and had a great time listening to the radio stations here. Pretty funny story as well. They love to play every genre of music on the same station. Dance music, classic rock, David Bowie from the early days, fairy tale music and so on. I would recommend bringing your own CDs if you plan to drive a lot here. It took about four and a half hours and two countries besides Germany before we got to Brussels. It was a cool sight to see and there was a very international presence among the people. After we spent 30 minutes battling the Cairo like traffic we finally reached a good parking space right in the city center. We wound up walking around the city for 3 hours stopping a lot to look at all the chocolate and had a few beers. We visited a nice church, one you would think of from a creepy exorcist like movie, but it was fun. It was kind of a dreary day and wound up raining after a few hours, so we posted up in a nice restaurant and had some beer and crepes with Belgium chocolate. It’s funny how people will eat chocolate covered crepes with beer for dinner. So wrong, but so right.

We decided to leave because of the rain and wanted to start our journey for Gent. Carolin has a friend from school who is working out of Gent between the term, and she was very happy to be our tour guide. Carolin and I thought it would be cool just to cruise back into Brussels the next day because our tour was cut short because of the rain and its only an hour or so drive from Gent. But after we spent well over an hour trying to navigate out of Brussels (probably a 2 km drive), which included lots of frustrations, we decided that it would be best to chalk Brussels as a loss and enjoy the time that we did spend there. With Gent on our next list of places to go, and me having literally no knowledge of what Gent was all about, we made our venture onward not looking back. This was probably the best decision I’ve ever made.

Here are some photos of Brussels. It was dreary so a lot of the architectural shots are better for a photo book later on. Enjoy!

Menu looks good

I thought these were cool. Kind of out of place, but fitting.

Really cool view. Really smoggy.

Cool garden. There are statues perfectly in a line from behind me to in front of me. I think it was part of the royal palace.

A street in the rain. Very romantic.

They call this "The Butcher Street". I love the butcheries here. Pfefferbeisser sind lecker!

This guy knows everyone.

Arrival/Frankfurt - WOW!

So I know I said that I would be updating my blog frequently, and I assure you that I will be. However, I do promise you that if any of the rest of my trip over here is anything like the last week, I won’t be posting as much as I had originally anticipated. “Why” you ask? Well to be completely honest, I was having way too much fun for me to even think about sitting for one extra minute at my computer, let alone to post to my blog. But now I’m back to a point where I have a few minutes to relax, so it’s a great time for me to post some photos.

To start my trip off I flew Air Canada from Portland, OR to Vancouver BC. After a short four-hour layover in Vancouver, I got on my second Air Canada flight to Frankfurt. Let me tell you about a little secret I learned about here: If you fly Air Canada overseas, Lufthansa operates the flight. And if you don’t know, Lufthansa is probably the best airline I have ever stepped foot onto. They treat you like a king even when your flying Economy. We had warm towels every couple hours to assure comfort, they provide two four-course meals, and free alcohol the whole flight. Not just any alcohol either, I’m talking aperitifs, champagne, and cognac. Not saying that I was drinking, but if I were, I would have had a lot of fun.

Upon My arrival in Germany, around 11 in the morning here the next day, we (Carolin and I) went straight to Frankfurt to walk around and do some shopping. I was trying to fight my jet lag all day and wound up walking around like a zombie. I would like to speak on Frankfurt though. It was probably the coolest blend of modern architecture and history that I have seen thus far. And to add to the cool ambiance of all the architecture, the style of the people walking around was amazing. Not saying that I’m going to come back to America looking like a euro, but I will definitely come back looking like I’m from Frankfurt. I’ll go back and take some photos that I can post for you. Jet lag had me down that day, so I didn’t really get to enjoy the whole city. To sum it up, the food was delicious, the shopping was great and the girls are really pretty. I do plan to go back, multiple times.