Whirlwind European Visiting Trek Stop #2: Heidelberg

I highly recommend staying Chez Annette and Tobias to all my Cali friends when you come to visit Europe. They were most excellent hosts!

Champagne on our hike up the Philosopher's Way, and a Cali-style bbq with more delicious meat than we could eat. Also got in some mountain biking, hipster coffee, beer gardens, and old university sights. And some games! And chocolates! It was great catching up with Annette and Tobias. We should all move to Europe :-)

Whirlwind European Visiting Trek Stop #1: Hamburg

After the cycling adventures, I headed off to Hamburg while Yael headed down to Malta with Andy and his mom. In Hamburg I stayed with Karolin and Christian. Karolin's a friend from Australia who was there on exchange my first year there. We went on many excellent adventures there, and I've visited her in Europe before and gone on some excellent adventures with her there as well.

Karolin is just over 8 months pregnant at the moment, but still managed to get out and do a bit of sight seeing with me. We took a ferry around the harbour one day, so we could see the city without doing much walking. Hamburg is much greener than I expected! Many many parks, with rivers and canals all over the city. There's even a beach (although a man-made one, but looks quite nice). Check it out:

We also went to see "The Grand Budapest Hotel" in the evening. I find it awkward talking to German's about WWII, often, and it was interesting to see a movie with such heavy WWII ties in Germany. The theatre was actually in the Jewish quarter of Hamburg, and Chris was pointing out things for me. Like where the synagogue used to stand, there's now an open square with the outlines of the old synagogue foundations and walls tiled in a different colour stone. And also all the houses have small brass plates in front of them with the names of the people who'd lived in the houses and were taken off to concentration camps. Some houses had 5 or 6 plates in front of them. So it was interesting to see a film about the lead-up to WWII in a place where the events the movie was based on actually happened.

It has been 6 years since I'd last seen Karolin and Christian, and so 6 years since being in Europe, and it feels a very long time. Hopefully it won't be 6 years before I see them again.

Denmark Cycling Adventure

Gah. Sorry this post is so late. I started it a week ago, but I think I put too many photos in it, so it kept crashing every time I opened it. I just deleted it and am starting over. For photos, check out this link.

So. Yael and I flew up to Craig and Sarah's. Crashed at their place on the first night, then the next day went to the shops for food, rented the bikes in Copenhagen, and hopped on the train, heading to Esbjerg, on the very west coast of Denmark. We arrived in Esbjerg, cycled around a bit in the rain, finally checked into a hotel, and had a good dinner and good night's sleep in beds.

Day 1

The fellow we rented the bikes from told us about an island you can take the ferry to from Esbjerg where you can go to the beach, look for amber, and have a nice cycle around, so we did that in the morning. It was a cool little island. You could drive and cycle along the beach, the sand was packed so hard, and it was quite beautiful. Back to the mainland, and we cycled for another 25 km or so, finally finding a camp spot for the night pretty much when our bodies (mostly our asses) refused to carry us any further. It was an amazing campground. Just one sight, at a local fishing hole, surrounded by trees, with a large supply of cut wood, and fire pit, grill, stools, and flat ground for the tents. Also access to running water and a toilet closer to the fish pond. It. Was. Amazing.

Day 2

We cycled through forest, fields, and finally dunes, making it to the southern point of a fjord. A very long and very beautiful day, again cycling until our knees (and asses) couldn't take it any more. Sarah miraculously caught sight of our campsite in the distance. When cooking dinner that night, we discovered that German camp stoves and Swedish fuel canisters are not compatible, so Craig had the brilliant idea of jerry-rigging the canister by shoving a small wooden "spacer" into it to help hold the valve open. We also devise a two-tier soup can cooking method, and managed to cook the rice and the lentils at the same time. Here's a shot of Yael cooking, expecting the set-up to explode and blind her at any moment, and wondering why the hell I'm taking a photo of this most brilliantly MacGyver-ed situation.

Day 3

Cycling up the fjord peninsula. I guess I'd never really thought about what Denmark looks like, but if I'd had to imagine something, it wouldn't have looked like this:

This day was amazing, and would have been even more amazing with mountain bikes and without drag chutes camping packs, but there's never anything quite perfect in life, so this is probably as close as it gets. Also, all of these days we managed to stop in small towns for beers and ice cream and fries in the middle of the day, so also nice.

We stopped at another most excellent campground in the evening, where we had our own little out-building with a kitchen and dining room in which to cook up dinner and breakfast.

Day 4

From our last campground to the train back, there was only about 22 km (we averaged close to 50 km per day, so 22 seemed too short). So we left our packs at the campground and had a thoroughly-enjoyable side-trip without packs to the village of "No". There were many puns made, and some tresspassing on private farms, as well as pushing our bikes through forests, but was also a really fun and beautiful little trip.

Then we cycled back to the train station, checked back into the hotel, and went our for some excellent pub food at an Irish-type pub called Dronning Louise. I highly recommend it. Burgers were great. Lamb shank was great. Steak was great. Had the local sports on. Brought round shots to everyone in the pub when Esbjerg scored a goal against Copenhagen. A very good end to the trip.

One last photo, to end it off:

One Last Charlemagne Post, I Swear

Before heading off on the cycling trip, I did a tour of the old Aachen catherdral, the Dom. Turns out, it was built by Charlemagne! Or at least the first part of it was. And he had a throne there, where many European monarchs were crowned over the years, and was made out of stone from the temple of Jerusalem. Check it out:

There were also beautiful mosaics all over. A small but beautiful and interesting church.

All Kaiser Karl, All the Time!

I was hanging out at Yandy's, working on the start-up idea, and all of a sudden I saw a flash of red move past the window. I was like, "Is that... Charlemagne??" Yep! Check out this dashing fellow:

Andy and I walked by that huge installation later in the day to see if we could spot where the missing Karl was from, and there was a lady behind us explaining the installation to some visitors, and she said "Can you believe it - two of these guys have already been stolen!". Hahahahahaha!

Here are some more Kaiser Karls, in cookie format this time:

Last one to have a Kaiser Karl in their shop window is a loser!

Aachen

Hallo! I arrived at Yael and Andy's on Friday night. Charmed travel update - my flight was supposed to be Toronto-Frankfurt-Paris (yes, this is ridiculous, but whatever). Fortunately, we were delayed in Toronto for 4 hours, I missed the Paris connection, and Luftansa gave me a free train ticket from Frankfurt to Aachen instead. Win!

Saturday we were out and about shopping, prepping for some birthday parties, and our bike trip in Denmark. Some highlights from around Aachen:

 This was outside one of those dangerously awesome but expensive knitting stores that are everywhere now.

Also, it turns out that Charlemagne was from Aachen, set up the city as the base of his empire, and it's the 1200 year anniversary of his death. So it's all Charlemagne, all the time here this year. Here's a few hundred Charlemagnes outside the Dom, kind of terra-cotta warrior style:

Yesterday we hiked up to the Dreilandes-point, or something. It's the point where Germany, Netherlands and Belgium all meet, and it's about a 2 hour walk from where Yael and Andy live, mostly through rather nice countryside. Along the way we saw these concrete pyramid thingies, which are anti-tank barriers that the Germans put up all along their border in the lead-up to WWII. They're still all in place, for the most part, because it would be just too hard to remove them all.

And here are Yael and I at the Dreilandes-point! I am actually standing in all three countries at once.

This also happens to be the highest point in the Netherlands (327 m, I think it says. Not quite a mountain...). 

My 'guy' wins!

Ellie, Matthew and Rishi put in a request for Canadian maple syrup from my 'guy'! Waterloo maple syrup for the win! My maple syrup comes in re-purposed whiskey bottles, and is sold out of a neighbourhood garage. It's awesome. And then walking to work one day, I saw this:

Yep, that's someone's tree in their front yard tapped for collecting syrup. So many awesome things about my neighbourhood!

First Month Back

So it's been weird. I'm back in Waterloo. Living at home. Working at the Princess. Have met up with high school friends, uni friends, and visiting California friends. I've applied for a variety of jobs. I've hung out with family. Some highlights:

1. Spending 3 days with my nana, cooking for her, crocheting, and watching lots and lots of CTV news.

2. Projecting at the Princess again, and learning the new system there. Also, being introduced to Cheeses Murphy, the Cafe's 12am-3:30am grilled cheese awesomeness for the late night crowd's on the weekends.

3. Tours at the university, talks at CommuniTech and CIGI, and getting involved in the general energy of the region again.

4. Laser Quest, and this LEGO birthday cake for Big Liam's 11th birthday:

5. Rock Climbing at Grand River Rocks, and quality Honey time:

It still feels odd though. Missing my friends around the world, and looking forward to the start of the European adventure next week. It's been too long since I've been in an airport. Four whole weeks!