Amsterdam, The Netherlands – 07/09 – 07/15

(Michelle) Most of time during the days this week, we were trying to find a way around the Russian visa issue. The Russian embassy in the Netherlands will only give a Russian visa to Dutch citizens or other citizens with a Netherlands residency card. We had to do a lot of research and make a lot of phone calls, but by Friday, we finally came up with an answer. We found a visa support company in Paris that would be able to get it for us. Since Paris is only a 4-5 hour train ride, we reserved tickets for a day trip to Paris (we had room on our Eurail pass, so theoretically the ride should have been free, but they like to stick you with the reservations on the Thalys). There are no border checks between the Netherlands, Belgium and France, so we didn’t have to worry about traveling without our passports, since we had to leave them with the company in Paris. They said it would take about a week.
In the evenings, we enjoyed a lot of tasty home cooking, thanks to our hosts. Between my allergies and TJ’s hatred for mayonnaise, we aren’t the easiest people to cook for, but they were very thoughtful about us and we really appreciated them going out of their way to cook some very nice meals.
We also got to peruse the excellent tv selections in the Netherlands, which include comedy central that shows “the Office” here and the North American Sports Network, which showed a lot of baseball (even a couple of live Cubbies games). Nathan also had a selection of tv shows on DVD, like Scrubs and the Simpsons. Just like comedy central back home, after a certain hour the commercials get a bit raunchy. In Chicago you get the “Girls gone wild” video commercials, in the Netherlands you get Kelly from sexwebcam.nl who is a somewhat masculine female with pig tails who likes to be spanked. They also have a mystery channel here that fluctuates between Monk and Magnum P.I., which is kind of an odd mix. Magnum could seriously rival Mike Donovan from “V” as men from the 80s who can fight evil (human or alien reptile) while wearing extremely tight jeans.

(TJ)

-Thayls has the best food on any of the express trains, riding first class was very nice although I felt a little out of place.
-I’ve now been to Paris three separate times on my trip. I should have stayed with the French in high school.
-I’m not as picky of a eater as Michelle and had no problem with any Dutch (excluding the mayo on the fries) or any other cuisine we had in the Netherlands.
-Netherlands has the best fries in Europe, I even found a place you could get cheese fries (extremely rare in Europe) right on the main drag outside the train station. They’re “Lecker”. Do not order the large size ever, its bigger than your skull.
-If you ever run across a rerun on Magnum PI, watch it and reflect on Magnums shorty shorts and think how that was ever attractive and if it will ever be again. Reflect.
-I think I must have watched a good five years of Scrubs on DVD, a good show that I never watched before. I could definitely see the Grey’s anatomy influence in the more recent seasons however, yuck.
-We also saw Mikey from “American Choppers” outside of a coffeshop one day. I’m sure that is a shock for anyone who has ever seen the show.
-Don’t go to the Maritime museum, its closed until 2008, I found this out after riding a bike in the rain for a hour.
-OH KELLY! SPANK ME!!!

(Michelle) Lecker is a Dutch word that means something like tasty and is apparently used to describe hot women, or in TJ’s case, good tasting fries.
TJ is almost as picky as I am, but somehow he thinks he is not. I will defer to TJ’s parents on this one. Bob can tell some stories about going to McDonalds with child TJ that my dad could relate to: “No, a plain hamburger, with nothing on it, just the beef and the bread”.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands – 07/06 – 07/08

(Michelle) We came back so we could spend the weekend with Nadirah and Nathan. It also happens to be Nadirah’s birthday this Saturday, so we went out to a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant where they sing from table to table. The food was good and we ate a lot. We then drove about 30 minutes out of town to a beach party where we joined some of Nadirah’s co-workers who were dancing the night away to some techno dance jams. The beach bar looked like your average beach party place inside and out, but the only thing that was different from other clubs I’ve seen was that Jesus was watching over the dance floor. I didn’t get a chance to ask any locals as to the meaning (not that there is anything wrong with it), but I’m guessing it was either to remind people to behave, or perhaps it was a statement that Jesus also likes a good dance jam.
On Sunday, they drove us to see the windmills, wooden shoes and cheese. TJ thoroughly analyzed the inner workings of the windmill, so hopefully he can build one for us at the cabin when we return. The cheese we bought was very tasty!
Nadirah and Nathan graciously offered us a place to stay longer so we could look into getting our Russian visas while we were there. We began making some calls and it soon became apparent that it would not be so easy.

(TJ) I spent three weeks in Amsterdam.

But, not in that way.

Yes, the windmill was very intriguing and I could definitely see the connection between a sailing ship and the windmill. The interior was wide open and you could see the main drive shaft and all the gears spinning. As I was examining the gears of the windmill I could only think of how many tourists have had their hands or fingers crushed in the massive gears and cogs on the interior of the mill. I’m just saying it was wide open and you could easily catch some clothing or a hand.

Utrecht, The Netherlands – 07/04 – 07/05

(Michelle) We heard from somebody in Lubeck B&B hostel in Utrecht was the best hostel ever. We were so curious about this talk up that we had to check it out. Utrecht is a cute town and all, but the B&B was a little bizarre. On the surface, it was all that was described – cheap lodging with free internet and food all day. The clientele was a bit more sketch than we have seen elsewhere though. We came across a guy who slept for at least 30 hours straight and another guy who sat on a computer looking at porn for 3 hours (if you were watching tv, you could easily see what other people were looking at on the computers) and then when he was done looking at porn, he shuffled around the room for another hour afterwards. He left and then came back in about 15 minutes to shuffle around in his tighties a little while longer. It’s enough to raise an eyebrow. We decided to check out a movie (Die Hard 4.0), as we had the time and the Netherlands doesn’t dub the voices over to Dutch like they do in other countries. We experienced our first movie intermission. It was weird though because it cut off the movie right in the middle of an action scene and then it changed to a screen where it said something (in Dutch) that we assumed to say that it was an intermission. I later read that that was common in the Netherlands, but Nadirah and Nathan had never heard of it and when we later went to the movies with them later in Amsterdam, there was no intermission.
While in Utrecht, TJ and I created a new bar game that we called “Slider”. It is a horseshoe like game using coasters and immense wrist skill to try to hang the coaster off the edge of the opposite side of the table without it going over. I’m sure we are not the first to create this game, but if you are looking for a game at a bar where there are none, we recommend it (if you are really curious, we can send you our rules). TJ was mad because it started as his idea, but I beat him at it.
By now, it has become abundantly clear that the Netherlands is the place to have a bike. We have seen lots of people biking in the city regularly in other towns in Europe, but between Utrecht and Amsterdam, I have seen some crazy bike skills like
1. Talking on the phone while riding (extremely common)
2. Dialing a phone number while riding
3. Eating a hamburger wile riding
4. Riding with 3 kids on the bike
This is all as they are dodging tons of people, cars and trams.

(TJ) One of the best things about the movies in Europe is that you can buy beer at the movie theatre. Why has this not caught on at US theatres besides the occasional Brew and View?

I’ll add to the biking list.

5. Text messaging while riding a bike
6. No one wears bike helmets, Helmets are for sissy’s and those who can’t ride.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands – 07/02 – 07/03 “Where are you from?” “Berlin”.

(Michelle) Since Laura extended her trip a few days and we were so close, she wanted to check out Amsterdam. We took the train up from Bruges, but had to sit on our bags most of the way because we had forgotten that most of the campers from Rock Werchter were taking the train up from Brussels and it was full by the time it reached Antwerp.
We got lost on the many “side” streets looking for a recommended restaurant and decided it best to take a cab to find one of her friends from work who we were to meet up with. Our cab driver was very impressed that we new the words to Billy Ocean (our favorite Ocean) ‘ s song “Suddenly” as the three of us belted it out in the cab along with the radio. The cabbie asked us if suddenly he would wake up in love… we can’t answer that question my friend.
Laura’s co-worker brought two friends and we all had a nice time over some drinks in the busy “Nieuwmarkt” area. After they left, the three of us decided to check out some of the other local establishments. Surprisingly, given the reputation, we were surprised to find that most of the bars in Amsterdam close at one. We were able to locate a bar that was open until 3, but the clientele was a bit questionable. At the start, we thought it was kind of strange that a guy who seemed homeless was allowed (and possibly encouraged) to enter the establishment periodically to finish leftover drinks that were sitting around. While TJ was distracted talking to some new friends from Puerto Rico, Laura was getting the serious stare down from some guy from the entrance. Laura tried to shake him by going to the bathroom. While she was gone, a really drunk couple in their 40s, and showing a lot of skin, started dirty dancing around the pool table (and on the pool table and in numerous other places around the bar). When Laura came back, it seemed the freaky guy staring her down was gone, so we went to the entrance to get a breath of fresh air and to get out of the way of the dirty dancers. We were wrong about the freaky guy and out of nowhere, he approached us and indicated that he had been checking her out and he had to know where she was from. She might have answered the question, but before she had a chance, the previously mentioned homeless guy enters the picture out of nowhere and answers “Berlin”. Freaky guy thinks that homeless guy knows where we are from, so he continues with Laura, “oh, you are from Berlin?” But once again, before Laura can’t respond in time and homeless guy says “No, I am from Berlin”. He continued to add enough confusion to the situation that Laura and I were able to escape. We couldn’t stop laughing as we tried to recreate the confusion of the Berlin conversation to TJ. Laura is now officially from Berlin.
Unfortunately Laura left us the next day, but she promises to meet us again for a Thanksgiving feast in SE Asia!

(TJ) As soon as noticed that the girls had left to go outside I knew it was trouble, it would only be a matter of seconds before some of the creeps that were inhabiting the bar came over to hit on them. When I looked up I was correct, I saw what was happening and I came over to them and said that it was time to leave as I proceeded to drag Michelle and Laura away who were laughing hysterically.

Itin Update - Turkey

So, we ended up going to Greece afterall... Not sure if you get the CNN commercial about traveling to Greece back in the US, but we've seen it a lot in Europe and we decided we needed to explore our sensations. We are currently on the island of Rhodes (Rodos) and we plan to hop over to Turkey from here tomorrow (It is about an hour boat ride from here).

Also, we have somehwat updated the map of pictures, but we usually put our fav pics in the blog.

We have just updated Lubeck Germany and Brussels, Lueven and Bruges in Belgium. Still need to update Amsterdam, Utrecht, Berlin, Prague, Cesky Krumlov, Budapest, Bucharest, Athens, and Rhodes.

Bruges Belgium – 07/01 “Oh God…… sh*t”

(Michelle) Laura had heard the Bruges was a really picturesque town in Belgium that might be worth a peek, so we decided to go there on Sunday. The town is very pretty, so we mostly just walked around, but we did briefly check out a few of the main attractions. First of all, I am sure you will all be impressed to hear, we went to a church (Bloedbasiliek) where we saw a few coagulated drops of Christ’s blood. I hope nobody calls me a heretic, but I don’t understand how you could ever determine that that was actually Christ’s real blood, but I donated and prayed to it anyway (the picture attached is Laura being offered a view). We also saw a begijnhof, which started in the 13th century as a religious community of unmarried or widowed women. I am not sure why this is different than a convent, but I think maybe it was just slightly less strict. I think that it is still being used for something like that purpose even today. We saw in guidebooks for other cities in Belgium and the Netherlands that they had begijnhofs as well, but once you’ve seen one begjjnhof….
We were using the map given to us by the hotel, but nothing on the map was exactly where it was marked, so we never found anything on the first try. We finally found De Halve Maan brewery where we tried a beer they called “the fool of Bruges”.
We found a hostel that had dorms and private rooms, so we booked a private triple there for the three of us. It was a decent looking room, and while we had to share the toilet in the hallway with other rooms, we had our own shower…. Which turned out to be the worst shower we have encountered so far in our travels, but unfortunately for Laura, she was the one who discovered that fact. She rolled out of bed first in the morning to head to the shower. TJ and I were sort of awake, but not really and Laura didn’t know we could hear her. About 30 seconds after she entered the shower, the saddest voice ever cried out “Oh God”. TJ and I heard this and we totally lost it, of course we didn’t know what the problem was yet, so I guess we are bad friends. TJ does a perfect recreation of the “Oh God” and it was repeated for laughs several times over the next couple of days. Just when we were about to contain the laughter about a minute later, we heard an under the breath S bomb dropped, and we lost it all over again. I think we were still laughing when she got out of the shower. So, I went into the shower next… The stall itself was ok, but to turn the water on, you had to stick your finger into a dark hole in the wall and feel around for a button that you had to press really hard and exactly the right way and then it would shoot out a hard blast of water (Laura’s first “Oh God” ??). The water didn’t stay on for one second after you stopped pressing that button and there was no way to control the temp (perhaps the S bomb). My shower lasted about 10 seconds.

(TJ) Ditto on Bruges being a very picturesque town and yes Michelle is a heretic for not believing that we did not see Jesus blood. As far as the oh god! Moment, I was pretty sure Laura had just gotten shocked with a nice burst of cold water, and yes I’m a bad person for laughing my head off as it happened and after. Also don’t believe the bit about Belgium having the best “French” fries in the world, as far as I could see it was not any better than any other in the world that I have.

(Michelle) TJ did not step into the shower, so he cannot really comment on the cause of “Oh God”. I thought the fries were pretty good. We had some good ones in the Netherlands too.

Lueven Belgium – 06/30

(Michelle) ROCK WERCHTER!! We heard about this music festival from a girl we met in Madrid. It just so happened to be at the same time we were meeting Laura. We weren’t planning on going because we thought Laura was only going to be in town until Sunday, but she decided to change her flight to hang with us longer, so we all went to the festival on Saturday. Lueven is about a 30 minute train ride from Brussels, but the free bus to the festival from the Lueven train stop took us for quite a long ride out into the country. Amy Winehouse was dull, the Blond Redheads were interesting, Peter Gabrial was a disappointment, but Snow Patrol, Killers and Keane were unbelievable. Check out our picture where the singer of Snow Patrol unknowingly posed with us. Like all music festivals, you see all kinds. We were happy to see Bert and Ernie make an appearance, and we also saw some very excited medieval characters.
Upside of going to a music festival in Belgium, the beer on tap (which also was very reasonably priced) was Stella (SWEET). I was somewhat delirious on the bus ride back to the train station and I may have been throwing down repeatedly some variations of an Anchorman quote.

(TJ) I must say I think Europe has some better music festivals than the US. The prices are reasonable unlike the typical gouging that goes on once you are in at US festivals. Not to mention that some of the line ups are excellent, Killers, Snow Patrol and Keane in one night?

Brussels, Belgium – 06/29

(Michelle) One of our first major miscommunications, TJ and I missed the train from Hamburg to Brussels because I erroneously thought we should get a seat reservation with only 15 minutes until the train was supposed to leave when we probably didn’t need one and TJ waited for me one store over from where I had pointed and was behind a pack of teenagers with his headphones on. We didn’t have to wait too long for the next one, so it was a good communication learning experience.
We were meeting my friend Laura (also from St. O, but a different Laura than the one we stayed with in England) at her hotel as she was in town for work and fortunately for us, we got to benefit from the fact that she was allowed to keep the room all weekend. That was definitely the nicest place we have stayed so far!!
We did a little bar hopping, enjoying the Belgium beers, and the last bar we went to was an Irish pub. TJ got scolded by a drunk Irishman hanging out in the bar because he ordered a Guinness and apparently you are not (according to this idiot) allowed to order Guinness outside of Ireland. He pointed it out to TJ several times. Meanwhile, some very bizarre man had his sights set on Laura (this will be a recurring theme for the next couple of days). He didn’t get the hint when after a few minutes she said, I just want to hang out with my friends, so we tried to hide from him. He found us. She repeated her hint and he finally went away.
As a joke, when we were in Lubeck, TJ decided to shave his facial hair in various bizarre fashions. In the end, he settled on the Lt. J. Dangle stache. He kept it until we got to Brussels – he was saving it for Laura.

(TJ) Brussels is like a dirtier version of Paris with better beer. Did not seem like there was a whole lot to see, good thing we only stayed one night.

Lubeck, Germany – 06/27 – 06/28

(Michelle) Lubeck was a cute little town where we were able to relax for a couple of days at a reasonable price. We took care of important things like getting a hair cut (very important at this point) and we went jogging around the whole island of downtown. They have a lot of cute old buildings here. They also have a church that got bombed during WWII and they left the bell where it landed on the ground as a monument. The same church (St. Marien Kirche) has the freakiest skeleton stained glass I have ever seen.

(TJ) Nice kind of sleepy old trading town of Hanseatic League. Nice place to chill for a couple of days and get your hair cut.

Itin update - Budapest

We have just posted our stories from Rome, Innsbruck, Salzburg, Munich, Oslo and Copenhagen. We still need to write Brussels, Brugges, Amsterdam, Utrecht, more Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Cesky Kumlov and Budapest.

We are not sure where we are off to next. We had thought Greece, but we are now worried that since August is the biggest travel month in Europe and Greece is such a popular destination, it might be too difficult to get reasonable accomodations. We are also going to try to get our Chinese visas here so we don't know how long that might take.

Copenhagen, Denmark – 06/26

(Michelle) Copenhagen was so expensive, that we spent 4 hours there and decided to leave. The only thing we really saw there was Christiania. In the early 70s, some people interested in an alternative living arrangement eventually got the government to agree. There is about 1000 people living in this graffiti filled "ghetto". They allegedly have their own political structure and school system separate from Denmark as a country and Copenhagen as a city (although it is right in the middle of Copenhagen). As you can see from the picture, they do not consider themselves part of the EU. The main thing we saw walking through it was a lot of dodgy looking people, many of which were selling drug related items. Actual drugs used to be sold openly (though illegally) here but not since the 2004 crackdown. TJ and I tried to figure out how this society works, but we were unable to come up with an answer and we didn’t have time to ask any of the locals. I am curious though, because they have maintained it for some time now and I would like to see how this system works. Does it work better than the system as we know it?

(TJ) 2 Burgers and 2 cokes……that will be $30 please. Yeah, no need to go to Copenhagen unless you are a millionaire or the dollar suddenly spikes 200%.

Oslo, Norway – 06/25

(Michelle) Rachel and Andy headed up north on Monday, and we booked reservations on the overnight train to Copenhagen. TJ and I then went to the fort where we found another military focused museum on the Norwegian resistance to the German invasion. This museum was not focused specifically on the Jewish deportation, but just the overall occupation and what people in Norway were trying to do to fight it. After that, we took a long walk to the Sculpture Gardens. This place was cool (Rachel – I am so sorry you missed it… stupid rain). It had a central statue that was a mixture of intermingled bodies and then it had block like statues of different human poses 3 to a row coming down from it in all directions. While TJ and I did make silly poses with a lot of the statues, they were covering a wide span of human emotions and it was a very interesting set up. There were more statues in other parts of the garden as well, following a similar theme (human emotions) but they looked less like grey blocks as in the main sculpture area.

(TJ) If you go to Oslo see the sculpture garden, some of

the coolest statues that I have seen. There are statues of men wrestling men, women wrestling women, man throwing woman by the hair, man throwing babies. All of the statues are naked. They also have some incredible iron gates that have very intricate designs to them.

(Michelle) On a side note, Oslo is a very expensive city.

Oslo, Norway – 06/24

(Michelle) On Sunday, we took a quick ferry ride to Bygdoy where there were 3 museums of interest to us. The Viking ship museum houses 3 full sized actual Viking ships, as well as some other finds that were in or near them. I would have liked a little more information on the actual Viking history, but I suppose there is another museum for that. The second museum we saw was a Holocaust exhibit for the Norwegian Jewish victims during WWII. This museum had good English translations for some parts and then no translations for others, so it was difficult to get the timeline of everything that happened in Norway. I know for myself, when I thought about Jewish victims from WWII, Norway never came to my mind before, but they were occupied by the Germans just like many other countries. The last museum of interest was on Arctic explorations. Rachel and I hung out on some benches outside while Andy and TJ went in (2 is my max museum intake in one day).

For our last night in Oslo, we went to a number of different bars in the area. First we went to Andy’s pub (had to go to Andy’s pub with Andy)! Somehow, we attracted the attention of a somewhat questionable woman. We think she had a crush on Andy, or (based on what we saw after she left the bar) that she may have been a prostitute trying to sell something to Andy - she was very focused on Andy. Rachel made it clear that Andy was her man and she even tried to throw some attention onto TJ and me just for fun, but this woman would not stop with Andy. He was her “Ghetto Tiger”. It was so funny that I tried to make a video on my camera, but she was wise to my ways and she kind of scared me, so I quit trying. During this exchange, this woman noticed some “Paracet” on the table (Rachel had bought some Paracet earlier for a headache) and she offered some unsolicited advice about other pains you can use it for. Good Lord, we did not need to know that. Rachel- somehow I ended up with the Paracet. I thought about throwing it out, but it still makes me laugh.

(TJ) Andy and I went to the Fram Museum (the one Michelle and Rachel skipped) which is an exhibit on a Polar exploration boat that went on three trips for a number of years to the north and south Poles. They had the whole old boat inside a huge building. You could walk around inside the entire boat. In addition to this it has a small section on just about every polar exhibition that happened before 1940. Really it was an interesting museum that we just stumbled on.

Oslo, Norway – 06/22 – 06/23

(Michelle) We found a really cheap Ryan Air flight from Frankfurt to Oslo, so we took the opportunity to meet up with Rachel and Andy in Oslo. We got in after midnight on Friday night, but Rachel waited up for me (Teej went to bed). This is the first time since I went camping in the Yukon Territory that I got to experience the midnight sun (side note, for people who might potentially go camping with Beth Henry in the future, even if it is fully light out, do NOT wake her at 4am and ask if it is time for breakfast). It got mildly dark between 1am and 3am, but it was pretty much light out for the rest of the day. Andy got in Saturday morning and since Rachel had already seen a lot of the sights during the week (she had been in town for work), she acted as an excellent tour guide for the three of us.

Brand new to Oslo, I think the Nobel Peace Museum is well worth the time if you are in the area. I liked how they had a whole floor dedicated to most recent winner with cool pictures and the background on why that person was the winner. For 2006 it was Dr. Yunus, the guy who started Grameen Bank. He started lending small amounts of money 30 years ago to people in Bangladesh who would not qualify for a loan at a normal bank because they were very poor and had no collateral. The people borrowing the money are put in something like support groups with other borrowers where they can work together to pay back their loans. You may ask yourself, how do these banks make any money? The answer is simple… volume. OK, it is not “Citiwide Change Bank” (SNL), but I was surmising that the answer is volume, but also as these people come out of poverty, they start actually saving money at Grameen Bank. Either way, success is definitely marked by an extremely low default rate and millions of people who have come out of poverty because of these loans (the majority are women).

They also had an extremely modern “electronic garden” dedicated to all the winners. You touched each screen and it would tell you about a different winner from each year.

We had dinner at a cool restaurant (Tullins) that was recommended to us by Helga, a girl from Oslo that we met in Madrid. We got the last table available all night… Lucky!

The weather was not very agreeable for most of the weekend – rainy and cold – so we had to curb a lot of the planned walking trips. We did get to walk around long enough to find another statue for TJ to sit on. This time it was FDR.

(TJ) Just so all of you know FDR is the Santa Claus of all the dead presidents. You sit on top of his polio stricken legs and he will grant any wish you want. In the case of Oslo, I was wishing that
1.) It stop raining
2.) To have the prices in Oslo come back to reality
3.) That the Norwegians wake up to that fact that it is not 1987 with their big hair/mullets, stretch pants and long sweaters with belts on the outside. Honestly you have the highest per capita income and this is what you are wearing?

Berchtesgaden and Munich Germany – 06/20 – 06/21

(Michelle) I will let TJ describe sights of Berchtesgaden. When we first arrived there, we grabbed a little food. I tried the local specialty, the name is escaping me – although I’m sure it ends in “zle” and it isn’t snitzle, but it is basically a really rich mac and cheese.

Munich – TJ wanted me to experience what he had the last time he was here, so we went on Mike’s Bike tour. There is nothing wrong with a bike tour that has an hour break in the middle at a beer garden. After that, we went to the famous Hofbrauhaus. We enjoyed a nice pint and a meatball dish that was quite good. We also met a couple from Montreal that goes on a month long camping trip every year. The guy is a professional story teller. I’m not really sure what that means, but if you can read French, his website is http://www.videanthrop.qc.ca/. The beer at the Hofbrauhaus is the freshest tasting beer I have ever had.

Since we were in a town with such great beer, we decided to do a Munich pub crawl in the evening. We met some very bizarre people on this pub crawl.

(TJ) Berchtesgaden – This was a day stop since it is right between Salzburg and Munich. Berchtesgaden was where top Nazi Party officials kept their summer residences and was their idealized home. All of the top party officials had houses here along with some Nazi Government buildings. Typically if you are watching a documentary about Hitler you will see film taken at Hitler’s villa at Berchtesgaden over looking mountains in the distance, it was also used as a place to meet foreign dignitaries. I was not quite sure what to expect other than I knew you could go up to the Eagles Nest, which was Hitler’s teahouse on top of a mountain that you have to ride an elevator to get to. What I found was that all of Nazi area buildings had been destroyed by the West German Government and the German Government in order to not become a shrine to Nazism. What they do have is an excellent Museum on the Nazi rise to power and the aftermath and Berchtesgaden in particular; we spent a good 4 hours in the museum. Below the Museum are old Bunkers left over from the war. The Nazis had intended in the closing days of the war for this to be fortress where they would fight a guerilla war. Thankfully this did not happen in part due to a drive to capture it before it could have been put to this use. The museum also covered after the war when the US Army took over the site and used it as an R+R base during the cold war up to right after the first Gulf War. You can definitely tell that there were US service members there in the bunkers with all of the graffiti on the concrete.

Munich – Still a great town with great beer. I wish we could of stayed here longer I know that there is a lot more to see. Hopefully one of these days I’ll be able to come back for Oktoberfest.

(Michelle) One more thing - the museum at Berchtesgaden had a section talking about "home life" for Hitler when he was in the area. Apparently every night he would give these long extremely dull monologue speeches to whoever was around, and they had to listen, but he would put everyone to sleep including himself. It is so weird to think about people who ruled so many people and ruined so many lives just sitting around boring everyone to tears.

Innsbruck and Salzburg, Austria – 06/17 – 06/19

(Michelle) We arrived in Innsbruck at 6 am on a Sunday morning after taking an overnight train from Rome. Finally, a town in Europe that I have been to and TJ hasn’t. Innsbruck is just as beautiful in the summer as it is in the winter (I was there for skiing last time). There aren’t many “sights” in Innsbruck, which is fine. We were looking forward to a little relaxation. We went out for breakfast, where saw a group of guys drinking beer who looked like they hadn’t been to sleep yet. Definitely not unusual in some European towns, but I didn’t expect to see that in sleepy Innsbruck. We did some laundry and then hung out at a cool little beer garden in a the palace gardens. Note for the future – in the summer the town of Innsbruck sponsors free guided mountain hikes. If we had stayed there two days, that would have been high on the list of things to do.

We took the slightly slower train to Salzburg, as it goes a different (and allegedly more scenic) route than the fast train. It was worth it as it is such a pretty train ride.

Salzburg… We spent our first evening in Salzburg trying to figure out what to do about the broken computer (as you read earlier under “Meltdown”). We had to spend a lot of time at a somewhat shady internet /international phone store. I will now have the Fujistu-Siemen jingle permanently embedded in my brain from the time spent on hold.

The next day we went in search of a good Sound of Music tour. This is something TJ was really looking forward to. It was just as cheesy as you would expect, but we were fully prepared for that. Afterwards, we found a crazy big beer garden, so we had a beer and some snacks there. Back at the hostel bar, we were enjoying one more pint when we saw a girl hitting on a dude who looked like he was wishing he was elsewhere. TJ and I took upon ourselves to save him, so we waited until she took one pause to breathe (this was a pretty long wait) and then butted into their conversation. It must have been the right move, as they immediately joined us at our table. So we stayed for another pint and we then got to meet “Middle Aged Toilet Flushing Man”. This guy is traveling to every 10th longitude at various places on the planet to photograph a flushing toilet at each location. Bizarre.

(TJ) I’ll apologize in advance since I have a feeling that some of these recollections are going to be relatively short from me since all of this stuff happened over a month ago.

Innsbruck-Nice scenery, I think that it would be a much livelier place in the winter, there is a ski jump less than a mile from downtown and ski resorts in every direction.

Salzburg- It really is as picturesque as it is in the “Sound of Music” even more so with out the Nazi flags up in the town. Since Michelle suggested that we go to Salzburg and I was subjected to as a child to watching the sound of music hundreds of times, I figured what the hell we’ll do the tour. The tour was pretty laughable; mostly facades of houses or driving around and the guide saying that this was such and such mountain in such in such scene that’s the lane were she skipped, blah, blah. The most interesting story was about when filming one scene with the children and Maria in a Canoe and the Canoe flips over as scripted. Apparently all of the children could swim accept for the smallest child. Julie Andrews was supposed to fall out with the smallest child but fell out of the opposite side of the canoe; hence the child nearly drowned which you can see in the film. It took the whole rest of the day to calm her down. Michelle and I were apparently the only ones on the bus that found this funny as people turned around to see who was laughing. Another fun part of the tour was when a girl a couple of rows in front of us puked in the bus aisle on do to the twisting roads and the terribleness of the tour we were on, good times. Fortunately we were able to buy beer on the bus which made it better.

I also bought a Frisbee and made Michelle learn how to throw a Frisbee. It only took her two hours to learn and the countless flowers that were mangled by errant throws in the city garden.

Rome, Italy – 06/14 – 06/16

(TJ) We took a train from Madrid to Barcelona to get on a 19 hr ferry that takes us to a city just outside of Rome. Since we are traveling on the cheap we booked ourselves in steerage class for the journey. That would have been fine, had it not been for the about 60 Spanish teenagers who also booked themselves in steerage class. Lets just say that we did not get a lot of sleep with all of the talking and slamming of doors, good times. At least the seats reclined back enough so that your neck would not fall to one side or the other. I’ll let Michelle fill you in on the sightseeing that we did in Rome since it was her first time there.

(Michelle) We stayed at a campground about 30 minutes from downtown Rome, where we were able to rent a two person already standing tent for 20 Euro. The hostels in Rome were very expensive, so this was definitely a deal, even if it was a little frustrating to figure out the bus there and back. The campground was very big, with a ton of people and their own bar, restaurant and grocery, so at least it didn’t totally feel out there.

Vatican City – cool statues, awesome map room, and beautiful frescoes on the room walls, but the “art collection” at the end of the tour was kind of bizarre. Sistine chapel is too crowded and the screaming guards (no pictures, NO PICTURES, HEY NO PICTURES) are really annoying, but it was at the top of the things I’ve always wanted to see and it is beautiful. We happened to be touring St. Peter’s Basilica when mass started, so we attended mass. We are little behind on confession, so we were hoping that lightning wouldn’t strike when we took communion.

We walked through other various ruins, fountains and plazas, bought pizza by the kg (great concept) and played with stray cats at a cat sanctuary.

In order to make it to Oslo by the weekend, we had to skip the rest of Italy. This was a difficult decision, since Florence is home to great works of are such as “Venus of Urbino” by Titian, but we figured - hey, we can always come back to Italy someday.

Current Events

Hey all - We are currently in the Czech Repub, in a small town called Cesky Krumlov. We have more updates written, but we haven't been at a computer that we could upload them to or a hostel with wi-fi since we left Amsterdam. The computer I am on here in this hostel doesn't even have a CD drive, let alone a USB port. It might be older than the macs I used at St. Olaf college.

BRIDGE COLLAPSE: For our non-MN friends, we have heard back from almost everyone in MN and they all seem to be safe and sound. I am waiting to hear from 2 more people. There were a few people nearby or have other "close call" stories.

Next up - We will leave for Budapest tomorrow and should be in Greece by middle of next week.