Euro Trip day 8
October 3rd - Friday
Finally a picture of jossel in this one! (she is wearing her pack but you can't really see it)
This is our Bacharach B&B hostess.
We got up a bit earlier than we needed to to catch the train out of Bacharach, so we had a lot of time to take this picture of the hostel on a hill.
October 3rd is the day Germans celebrate the reunification of East and West Germany. A great time for us to be getting the hell out of the country! The train was insanely packed. All seats were reserved, and yet there were 'floaters' sitting in seats they didn't have tickets for. Getting to our seats was stalled by frequent 'ugh you are in my seat' conversations, and people trying to find places for luggage. Once we kicked people out of our seats, we settled in to watch the 'dance of the fare dodgers', as they fled the conductor to WC's, or pretended to be 'on the way back to their seat', from another car. We had Eurorail so this was free for us, but the tickets for these things are like 200-300 euros, that's a big fare to dodge!
We got into Brussels and navigated their less nice (than Paris) subway system to our stop. Our hotel manager spoke perfect British English, and we checked into our pretty generic hotel room. But belgian beer in the minibar! (we bought our own instead of being ripped off).
Look, "Anneessensplein" on that sign post - Double e double s? Flemish folks double up letters like French lop off the end of words. This sign here goes to show one of the confusing things about this city. Some maps had the street names in French, some had the street names in Flemmish. If we googled something and wanted to mark it on our 'beer map', it was real pain since the google map showed one language, and our map another. This caused jossels head to explode.
It was late, and jossel had a craving for a nice simple chinese meal, so we found a little china type area and ate there, picking up beer at a packie on the way back. I recognized most of what they had, but oh man, SO MUCH CHEAPER.
Finally a picture of jossel in this one! (she is wearing her pack but you can't really see it)
This is our Bacharach B&B hostess.
We got up a bit earlier than we needed to to catch the train out of Bacharach, so we had a lot of time to take this picture of the hostel on a hill.
October 3rd is the day Germans celebrate the reunification of East and West Germany. A great time for us to be getting the hell out of the country! The train was insanely packed. All seats were reserved, and yet there were 'floaters' sitting in seats they didn't have tickets for. Getting to our seats was stalled by frequent 'ugh you are in my seat' conversations, and people trying to find places for luggage. Once we kicked people out of our seats, we settled in to watch the 'dance of the fare dodgers', as they fled the conductor to WC's, or pretended to be 'on the way back to their seat', from another car. We had Eurorail so this was free for us, but the tickets for these things are like 200-300 euros, that's a big fare to dodge!
We got into Brussels and navigated their less nice (than Paris) subway system to our stop. Our hotel manager spoke perfect British English, and we checked into our pretty generic hotel room. But belgian beer in the minibar! (we bought our own instead of being ripped off).
Look, "Anneessensplein" on that sign post - Double e double s? Flemish folks double up letters like French lop off the end of words. This sign here goes to show one of the confusing things about this city. Some maps had the street names in French, some had the street names in Flemmish. If we googled something and wanted to mark it on our 'beer map', it was real pain since the google map showed one language, and our map another. This caused jossels head to explode.
It was late, and jossel had a craving for a nice simple chinese meal, so we found a little china type area and ate there, picking up beer at a packie on the way back. I recognized most of what they had, but oh man, SO MUCH CHEAPER.