Decompression Stop: Antwerp

I love Monica and Antoine, and their children are beautiful, but after a week at their place I needed some 'me' time. And so before I moved on to Stop #4 and another potential screaming kidlet, I took a one-night decompression stop for myself along the way, in Antwerp.

As this was a last minute decision, I had some trouble finding a hostel on a Friday night. Hostels dot com said that everything was booked. But they also said that for Paris, and after e-mailing the hostel there directly, I found a spot. So assuming the site was just broken, I e-mailed a likely-looking hostel, jumped on a train, and went to Antwerp.

Antwerp is amazing. I really like train stations, and this was one of the best I've seen. Directly outside the station is the city zoo on one side of the square, and Chinatown on the other.

 
The city was less impressive as I walked to the hostel, however. I guess it was garbage day, so all along the way the streets were lined with huge bags of trash, some of which had ripped, and all of which smelled. When I arrived at the hostel, it turned out that all the rooms were booked, except for a double that was expensive. And they couldn't let me on to the WiFi, so directed me to a pub/cafe around the corner where I could access the internet and figure things out.

From here, the luck changed and things got great. I ordered a delicious ginger tea, hopped on-line and started looking for accommodation. The bar tender brought me the tea, and we started up some small talk. I said I was only in town for one night, and my hostel plan had fallen through, so was just trying to figure out where to stay. He looked at me, thought for a few seconds, then said "You look like a nice person. Do you want to just stay with us?". I thought for a few seconds, looked at him, and said "You also seem like a nice person. Sure." So that was taken care of. He also plans events in the city, and said I was in luck. The night I was in Antwerp was one of three nights in the year when all the private art galleries are free and open to the public. Then he pulled out a flyer, circled the good galleries for me, and suggested I rent a bike for the 24 hours I was in the city. So I did. And it was most excellent!

The art galleries were amazing. Also free wine and cheese events at most of them. I particularly enjoyed one with interesting photos of famous artists and musicians. Another that caught my attention was all watercolours, like this:

That's actually the cleanest photo I could put up. They all had sexual under-tones/over-tones. Including this one. But it was interesting, and there was a narrative you could kind of follow, and I liked the style. As far as modern art goes, not terrible.

The fellow and his boyfriend went to some massive CD release/art opening thing which I was invited to, but I was too tired. They got home around 7am - I was feeling too old for that kind of a night. I got up and went to the Exotic Market in the morning - basically a regular market, only you can get awesome Greek and Moroccan food as well - then had coffee with Bert (bar tender) back at the house before leaving for the train station around noon.

We had a bit of a conversation about random acts of trust like this, and politeness, and travel. I guess after I left the bar to adventure around town, he'd offered the gallery advice to a couple of other tourists that had come in. In general, he was excited about the increase of tourists to the area. I think it was a predominantly Turkish or Moroccan area, that's been morphing into hipster, so it's a bit off the beaten path. Anyways, once he gave them an inch they wanted to take a yard - they started demanding information from him, how to do things, where to go - he had to back waaaaay off, as he was at work, and shake them somehow. He said he would never offer to have them stay at his place had they been in need of help - they were so demanding. I told him about my other random house-stays, when I was taken in in Fiji, and when we reciprocated and offered our place in Sydney to some random German tourists I met at a beach. I guess you get a sense after a while of what type of person is ok, and what isn't, and generally you can recognize each other, and things work out.

Anyways, that was my Antwerp adventure! The city was really amazing. I highly recommend checking it out should you be in the neighbourhood some day.

Whirlwind European Visiting Trek Stop #3: Brussels

My friends Monica and Antoine and their two little kidlets were the attraction for Brussels. They were excited to have me, both for the visit, and for the added help with the kids. Carolina is 2.5 years old, and David is 3 months. It's quite the handfull- there were many days where the kids traded off crying in the mornings and the evenings, and I gave myself a one-day decompression stop in Antwerp after this one. But I love kids, and David is a charmer, super happy, and so he fell to me for a good portion of the days, which was amazingly awesome.

Part of the excitement for the visit was the chance for Monica and Antoine to cook all sorts of delicious traditional French and Belgian meals for me. It was amazing. Antoine has an actual crepe-making flat-iron thingy, and made delicious savoury crepes for dessert one night:

Another night feature honey-glazed duck filets, with potatoes fried in duck fat on the side. Again, amazingly delicious!

During the days, Carolina was in day care, so Monica and I wandered about the city, did a bit of sight seeing, and hung out in a number of comic book shops. Also went for lunch at this excellent little restaurant that was basically the Cultural Exchange version of all restaurants. Mmmm!

Thursday ended up being a holiday (labour day, I think), and so Antoine didn't have to work. We drove up to the Netherlands, had lunch in a very cute little town, and then went to the beach. The weather later in the afternoon wasn't fantastic, but it was cool to have the beach to ourselves. Turns out it wasn't a holiday in the Netherlands, hence the low traffic. And super touristy photo as proof of our day trip:

Monica and I had a really good catch-up too. She's a great person to just talk about general life stuff with. Her current debate is whether to move to California for a job at the moment. She and Antoine have good jobs that they like in Europe, and life here is pretty good for them. Raising kids in America is tough, compared to Europe, due to headaches about school districts, health care, and the general American indifference to appropriate work-life balance (not enough holidays, long working hours, and generally discouraging working from home). The job would be a good opportunity, but it's debatable whether the personal sacrifices are worth it. I'm trying to figure out a bunch of life things too at the moment, and it was good chatting with Monica.

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!