Nov 14, 2007 21:00
London!
-we got there late so stefan and i stayed at andrew and jess's place just hanging out. also, the bars in london close at 1130 on weeknights. wtf.
-the next day we got up early and were complete tourists. we saw: tower bridge, globe theatre, st pauls cathedral, tate modern, millennium bridge, Piccadilly, Westminster abbey, big ben, Buckingham palace, Trafalgar square, national gallery, st james park, etc.
-we had fish and chips from the oldest place in London for dinner. fucking delish.
-stefan and i then met up with our czech friend peter to go to the arsenal slavia game at emirates stadium where we witnessed a record breaking event in champions league history(until a week ago) with a score of 7-0 for arsenal. it was an amazing thing to witness.
-after the game we went to a bar that used to be a public toilet and drank and hung out. Took an old school cab back to their place, got our stuff, then Took two double decker buses and a train to get to the airport. Arrived back in Amsterdam by 9 am. it was a long and wonderful whirlwind of a trip.
-while on the top of the DD bus we saw paparazzi chasing some goodlooking guy to his car. I couldn’t see who it was but im gonna pretend it was someone super famous to make this story more exciting.
Paris!
-We went on a hitchhiking competition organized through the university to paris. everyone got into pairs of girl and boy and we could start at 430 am.
-stefan and i Started at 730 am and didn’t get picked up till 10 15. the hardest part was getting out of the city. it was so demeaning. Jumping up and down with a sign smiling when its freezing and im tired and unbeknownst to the driver im swearing my head off through my fake smile. Finally a red bull truck picked us u driven by a Really cool young dutch guy. he ended up driving out of his way to drop us off somewhere that was convenient. Free red bull and carpe diem water (if you ever see it, try it. Best shit ever) stef sat behind a glass window in the back on top of red bull boxes so he couldn’t even hear us talk.
-it Took us a total of six rides to get to paris, everyone was super nice and amazing. The highlights were an English dude who made sadles for a living who was working in Belgium. Such a cool guy, said he would come with us to paris if he had more clean clothes on him. Gave us his card and told us to email him with pictures. Also, some guy took us directly from Brussels to paris, about 300 km.
- Kirs and neil got dome druggies to take them from Rotterdam to paris. They were only going to Antwerp but the girl to her bf was like, come on, I wanna go to paris and he said yes. i love spontaneous ppls. The most rides ppls needed was 12 and the least was 2. we got there at around 4 pm. The first ppls at 1 pm ( cause they started at 4 am) and the last at 11 pm.
-it was so fun to be able to practice French and understand what people were saying. Something that is hard to do in Canada with quebecois french
-saw everything we could. Arc de triompe, went up the Eiffel tower, notre dame, place de la concorde, the louvre, jardins de tuilerie, champs elysee, palais royale, grande palais,Moulin rogue. About as much as you can pack into one day. we ate croissants and baguettes and tried frogs legs and lots and lots of wine! Laughed when I saw royale with cheese at mcdonalds (like pulp fiction, duh) and pretty much marveled in the beauty that is paris. Way too crowded with tourists and would never want to live there but it is definitely one of the European cities that I love. So historical and beautiful. Reminded me of italy. And my god the stores. Lets just say im lucky I never got a chance to go shopping.
-highlight - Pierre Lachaise cemetery. Where jim Morrison, oscar wilde, morat, Moliere, edith pilaf chopin etc are buried.most beautiful place in the world. I would have stayed all day if I could. Going to paris in the fall was the best thing we could have done
-we Took bus at 1 am to get back to amsterdam and arrived at 7 am, a full 48 hours after we started. Great fucking trip.
Berlin!
-drove there with travis, Emily, Kirsten, and Stefan at 2 pm on thursday and Got there by thursday night. we went out for german food. Yum and cheap, as always, because germany rocks my world.
-we were tired so we just went back to stefans place which is awesome and cheap (germany!) and did tequila shots and played drinking games until 4 am.
-Woke up at 830 am. it was a super cold weekend and I saw my first snowfall of the year. Not typical for it to snow that early. Stefan is from berlin so we got to see so much stuff. All the typical tourist attractions plus some not so famous ones. We went to this thrift store that is super hard to find but massive and amazing. Brige, I was thinking of you the whole time and how you would have killed me (cause I didn’t buy anything) mostly because the store worked in weight, so you could get 1 kilo of whatever you wanted for 14 euros. Insane!
-while there we realized we were in the city for two important anniversaries. Nov 9 was the night of kristallnacht (night of the broken glass. look it up) in 1938. it was also the day when the wall fell. So being at checkpoint Charlie that day was pretty stellar. There were dudes there with soviet and American flags and outfits playing the role and they also had real passport stamps for the gdr frg and cccp that you could get in your passport so I got a stamp from east germany and the soviet union, of course. It made my freakin day.
-we got to bypass the 2 hour line to see the Reichstag (german parliament) cause stef used to work there and we said that kirs was pregnant and travis was a gimp so we could go in through the entrance for the disabled. Totally worth it seeing as it was freezing and raining outside.
-we also got free tickets to see a football game at Olympic stadium, the stadium built by the Nazis for the 1936 olympics thanks to stefan and his hookups.
-we had amazing Indian food for only 5 euros, a full Mexican meal for 3 95, and 4 26ers of vodka bought for 20 euros.
-Friday night I did a stupid thing (s). 1) I did not eat dinner. 2) I took tylonel 3 with codeine. 3) I drank a lot of vodka in a short period of time. Note to everyone: don’t ever do that. Its stupid. I felt like such shit the next day
-I got to makeout with karl marx's statue. Pictures to come.
- we went to a photography exhibition of helmut newton's work which was incredible
-I bought a soviet flask, old stamps from the gdr, shoes that look like the german flag, super cool curtains, and some books
-Saturday night we went to a fancy looking place, but cocktails were dirt cheap. (germany!)
-Then we headed to the fritz club, which has three rooms of different music. And corona for 2.50. drunk were we. We didn’t leave until 530 am. The room we were in was reminiscent of my music taste from grade 7. limp bizkit, korn, rammstein (singing du hast in german in berlin was awesome, just so you know). But they also played the killers, dandy warhols, nirvana, etc. Weird weird mix of stuff, but fun nonetheless.
-other than our nov 9 experiences, we also were able to visit a concentration camp, sachenhausen, on remembrance day. It was definitely a surreal experience. Especially because we left the camp after the museums closed and it was dark and empty. Walking through a camp alone in the dark in the cold really is a reality check. Knowin what happened there. Trying to imagine how people must have felt.
-east side gallery, the last remaining portion of the wall, is super rad.
-east berlin kicks west berlin's ass
-trams and metro run all night. Yes.
-we all agreed that it was our favourite city so far, even though the weather was complete shit. Berlin, unlike a lot of European cities, is very real, and not pretentious. So much stuff happened there and you can really feel it when you are there. It was destroyed in the war so there are so many modern buldings, but at the same time, in the mix, there are these historic buildings that were left untouched.
-all in all, berlin rocked my world. My third and final trip to germany was a definite success.
-next: London (again) on Friday to see my baby! Wheeee!