so with the frequency that im updating this thing, i wouldnt
believe that anyone is still bothering to read it.
fortunately, the trip hasnt ended in anyones arrest or death.
unfortunately, weve tried our damnest. heres what weve been up
to...
So! When i last posted we were on our way to munich. we showed
up somewhat surprised but very happy to see a healthy, wealthy
and wise david. why did we get there at different times?
in a nutshell... david likes soccer. so much in fact, that he
refuses to leave the damn restaurant where were watching the
game (i keed, i was doing the same) in time to get to the
train station to catch our overnight train. no big deal, but
our luggage was in luggage storage. we'd never used luggage
storage before... and while we knew it was getting more
expensive by the hour, we hadnt realized that it closed. so
we got there maybe half an hour late. thankfully, people will
still there. of course theyd get us our stuff, take our
money, and send us on our way, right?
wrong. this fatass diego maradonna looking prick and his
compadre stood inside and watched us yelling, begging, and
putting up bribe money for an hour with little more than an
annoyed smirk. soon it came to be decision time. davids
ticket was nonrefundable, so we had to send him on the train
with the clothes on his back. jim and i would find a way to
munich in the morning... problem was, that until then we had
nowhere to spend the night. our plan was to stay awake all
night somehow since we had no luggage to bother us or hotel
for the night. the later it got, the dumber that idea
sounded. fortunately we managed to slip into a hotel for the
evening and score some sleep and shelter away from the less
than friendly confines of the train station.
we rode up to the border of italy with a beautiful italian
humanitarian worker named francesca. she seemed pretty pleased
with italy and less than thrilled with the united states, but
nonetheless was really interesting to converse with being that
she had ben all over the globe... except america. At the town
on the border we watched the end of the USA-Algeria game, and
flush with pride we boarded the train to munich. By the time
we arrived, munich was celebrating the german victory over
Ghana,so we walked around town, wrapped in the stars and
stripes taking in the scene. the scene was a rather cool one.
so the next morning we decided to do a walking tour and get a
feel for the city. our guide was really good. cliffs? here
it goes. munich couldnt be anymore different from berlin.
when you think of german culture, ledenhosen, bratwurt, beer
brewed by monks to survive lenten fasts, you think of munich.
so post world war one, in 1920 the nazi movement is rising in
munich. quickly. germany however, is collapsing as a nation
and bavaria is looking at splitting off. hitler, knowing that
a split germany would put a massive dent in his plans of a
third reich, walks into the beerhall where the secret meeting
to discuss seperation was taking place, takes the leaders to a
backroom and threatens to kill them and himself after if they
dont join him in revolution, which would be starting.... a few
hours ago. they obliged. hitler takes off for an emergency
and leaves his alcoholic buddy in charge at the beergarten.
that turns out to be about as good of an idea as it sounds.
the leaders escape, blockade the city, and hitler comes back
and leads a march on berlin, which ends in his arrest. which
leads to his book, and so on and so forth. we got to see all
of the places where this went down.
its tough to find though, why? because we bombed the christ
out of pretty much all of munich except for a few towers that
let the bombers know what they were hitting. the nazis knew
that munich would sustain damage so they made sure to keep
records on how everything looked so that hitlers capital could
be rebuilt. they used these same plans to rebuild the city
from scratch... but the rise of the nazi movement is
essentially swiped from history. just a couple of tiny
monuments you need to have a really good eye to spot.
swatstikas are illegal, zeighieling (yes, misspelled), will
land you in jail.
after spending the night doing munich-ey things david caught a
train to bremen for a wedding. jim and i, feeling that we'd
seen all that was to see in munich, started to work out how to
spend our time before having to meet david in stuttgart on
monday. we decided on vienna. spent the rest of the day at
the bmw factory and museum by the olympic stadium before
having to hustle back to the train station to catch our train,
which we made with some time to spare.
ive met like 15 australians for every american ive met on this
trip. i cant believe it sucks so badly there in the summer.
when we got to our hostel jim and i both wanted to go out, so
we shared taxis and went out seperate ways. i went off to a
club with some australians and jim hung out at this really
cool garden/bar where he had quite the interesting night
mingling with the locals. me on the otherhand, hung out with
some folks from our hostel until they started filtering out of
hte club and then we all headed home (my german is weak, at
best. non existent, at reality). The next morning presented
challenges. no rooms available in all of vienna for us to
stay. and a limited attention span. jim and i spend the day
walking around beautiful vienna, jim having managed to damn
near die at the sight of finding mold at the bottom of his drink (seriously, it was gross). that put a damper on things,
but vienna was realy cool to see. but we'd seen it. and alot
of cities. so it was time to head to the mountains. which
mountains or cities? we had no clue... so we hopped a train
west to see what we could find.
When we got to salzburg train station jim and i were looking
at the next slew of departures when we found a city he had
read about and looked spectacular. fingers crossed that we
could find a hotel. we decided to go for it and hopped the
train minutes before it left... a few hours later, we wound up
in the local beautiful mountain tourist trap of zell am see.
and boy was it beautiful. the town is nestled next to a lake
at the bottom of a spectacular mountain range. apparently its
a haven for high school kids looking for a night on the town,
they were running around everywhere... kind of a strong
argument for a drinking age higher than 16... but no matter.
jim, being a boss, haggled our way into a nice hotel room for
cheap. meanwhile i was posted up at a place watching USA-
Ghana. after jim had another near miss with food poisoning
(raw chicken), we headed for the hotel and he stayed in while
i decided to wander about. the night was interesting.
austrian kids are really into hockey. they think the NHL is
the most amazing thing in the world and could tell me the
starting 2 lines for the dallas stars. it was fun
interchanging broken english. then i found out that the
people i was talking to were 17... the youngest among them 14.
all hammered. what? okay. open minds i suppose.
the next day jim and i felt like walking. alot. uphill.
eventually this would get boring/suck and we took a bus (best
4 euros weve ever spent) to get to the lift to take us to the
summit. what met us up there was views like we had never seen
before. hang gliders and parasailers were taking off next to
us and we were at 6,000 feet just blown away by the views
surrounding us. i need to go skiing here. then jim and i had
a dumb idea. lets hike to the bottom. wearing what was on
our feets (addidas and boat shoes...). 8km and 1400 feet later
we had made it to the bottom. it sucked, but for the stuff we
saw on the way, was totally worth it. we grabbed some food
and checked out the lake, hoping to not have to pay to swim.
it wouldnt be. around now we were getting burnt out on zell am
see... cool place but we had done it all. so we hopped a train
to salzuburg where we would find a train to munich so that we
can catch an early trip to stuttgart.
so we got to salzburg, found our train to munich, and got
on...
and at 1130, we stopped. but we werent in munich. we were in
innsbrook.
fuck.
so, we enacted our dumbass idea from bologna. shed our
luggage. find a bar. hang out until the next train (430 AM).
besides, we'd sleep on the train and save ourselves a hotel
room for the night. great idea!
and thats precisely what we did. we found one of 3 bars open
in innsbrook on sunday nights and made friend with this
awesome bartender. a few hours later we headed for the train
stations bellies feer of complementary shots, redbulls, and
beer. turns out the 430 overnight to munich was pretty
popular though, so we hung out in the dining car and didnt do
much in the way of sleeping. when we got to munich we saw a
train for stuttgart departing within a minute, so we ran to
get on it and got there in time. and this morning we showed
up at the stuttgart train station... with no idea how to get
to our hotel.
and then i woke up. we checked in here, showered, and jim and
i have been passed out for 5 hours solid. tonight we check
out the stuttgart opera... some high culture (9 euro student
tickets? yes please) to make up for being homeless last
night. that is if david finds us in time. tomorrow we check
out car stuff here. gonna try to convince these guys to go to
the zoo too, apparently its really awesome.
just damn glad to be sleeping in a bed.
-Vinnie
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