Germany, the Quickening

GERMANS

They are 'egg shell people'. In other words, you have to get through the shell they are kind, generous and nice folks. But you have to get through that shell. Unfortunately, from the way I am dressed people seem to believe I am homeless. I guess the homeless people around here dress up pretty good. Sucktastic. You wouldn't believe the looks I get when I am trying to be polite and say "Excuse me, can you help me (I am looking for X)." I've started saying, "Where is the (subway) please?" instead so they don't tune me out or whatever.

A good example of this is when Pete and I went to a fairly upscale clothing store to get Pete a nice hat. The guy at the store waited for me to speak German to him for awhile then revealed he spoke English better than I.



GERMAN LANGUAGE

The range of my German language skills is rated anywhere from 'shitty' (Austin) to 'excellent' (Germans in Germany). I suspect they (the Germans) are being generous because everyone (younger generation) seems to speak English. I think they are just grateful I put in the effort. The need to actually learn to speak German (in Germany) has dropped substantially in the last twenty five years. The last time I was here, the attitude was more along the lines of "You are in Germany, you should speak German." It has shifted to "I am educated, of course I speak English." I still hold that if you want to get on with the natives (Germans) well, you need to make the effort to at least master a few of the simple phrases.



GERMANY

Despite the screaming idiots outside (they didn't bother Pete) we decided to renew the room. It was 90 euros (one night for two people) when I did so. I also checked on a price for a single person room, 50 euros. You save a bit of money traveling with a friend. Also, when you get your room and present a ticket at the bar, you get your choice of a free shot of: Teachers, whiskey, tequila and Jaeger. Liam the Tasmanian the bar tender does a good job. He is traveling around the world bar tending. It seems to me a good way to do it. I think it's kind of interesting the people you meet who are doing things like that out on the road. I admire anyone who is able to break the bonds of 'what normal people do' (school, work, death) to get some adventure.

If you are wanting to extend your stay in the same room you had previously, you may not be able to stay in the same room. It may have been booked to someone else for the next day. I didn't have that problem but if I did, I'm able to just walk to the next building and book there where I'm at. I still like the idea of staying a night to see how you like it however. If you are going to something with a high amount of people (however) like Oktoberfest you'll want to book it all at once.

Watching the young beer swilling hooligans that come to this hostel to party, I keep thinking 'why the fuck didn't you go to Amsterdam instead?' It is only 8 hours away by train or they could have flown there for approximately the same cost and gone completely out of their minds. Idiots.

Remember Thomas from Amsterdam? (No? Go back and read the Amsterdam blog stuff you lazy bastards.) We had talked to him there and agreed to meet him in Marienplatz (Munich old city square, big tourist spot) at noon. He was there spot on time while we were watching the Glockenspiel do it's little dance.

Edit courtesy of Pete! Before we went on (to the next paragraph) Thomas took us to have a traditional Bavarian food, 'white sausages' and showed us how to eat them. White sausages are served floating in hot water within a covered pot, presumably to keep them warm. You remove the sausage from the bowl with some sort of tongs. The knife is then used to slit the skin and you pull it off of the sausage rather like a condom. The sausage is then placed in the mouth followed by some 'bretzen' (piece of the giant pretzel). Sweet or spicy sauce can be added as well.

Thomas introduced us to his 'gay family' at - you guessed it a 'gay bar'. The owner is an Austrian named Wolfgang K. He's owned the bar for eighteen years. If you're in Munich and want to visit the 'fireman's bar' it's called Bar Zur Feuerwache, Blumenstr 21 a 80331 Munchen. Wolfgang gave Pete a membership card. I think he likes him.



ARMY BASE CHALLENGE

As those who know me pretty well, I use to work on a US Army base back in the early '90's. They closed it shortly after I left the army. They probably said "Well, if Logan isn't here any more, fuck it." That's my guess anywhere.

The internet had a hand drawn map someone put up. I talked to the nice hostel lady and she figured out which stop on the subway I needed to get based on that information.

While we were wandering around, both Pete and I felt an urgent need to visit the restroom. Possibly due to the wide variety of 'beer gardens' in the neighborhoods. [A beer will cost you about 4-5 euros. Anyone who tells you different doesn't know where to drink.] Some of the places we checked in claimed (lied) that they didn't have a restroom. We eventually found an Italian restaurant that let us use theirs. I put this part of the story in as it is foreshadowing. We found the base and wandered around with Logan making comments about how most of the things were different twenty five years ago (read as 'old man babbling'). The main building I use to work in has either vanished or they've gotten very good at hiding four story buildings. I also found the gate (still standing, built do last) that a buddy of mine lost his pinkie on when he tried to scale it to go visit a girl.

Then it was time to attempt to find 'the Greek restaurant'. It's about twenty meters square and two stories high, cunningly hidden in a residential area. We went around talking to various people who gave conflicting, contrary directions. We eventually came across a group of old men (who naturally only spoke German) but not only did they know the waiters name (Vacilli)and Christos (owner) but remembered the restaurant and gave us directions. Impressive. The building is still there, but it has been replaced with an Italian restaurant. Found it! The inside looks a lot more cluttered and smaller than it use to. Pete thinks it could be twenty five years of fond, selective memories. I suppose he could be right. For those interested, the former Greek restaurant address is Hohenschwangamhof 19.

At the restaurant, the lady who was waitressing was from Pula (Croatia). It is one of the countries I'm interested in going to and I remembered they had the sixth largest Roman Colosseum (still standing). She said she'd read the blog and drop me a something in the comments section when I'm getting ready to head there.



PRICES TO PRAGUE FROM GERMANY

If you take the Czech student bus at bad, fucked up times it's 35 euros + 8 euros for your second (or big bag). Read as 43 euros. If you take a German train, it ranges from 63 euros (which we got) up to 90 euros (all of the prices are per adult) depending on when you travel - different times of the day.



TRAVELERS TIPS

You want to store your toiletries in a clear bag for both TSA to root through as well as to easily find stuff. Rather than have some fancy zipper bag as I use to, use a zip lock freezer bag. Cheap and easy to replace.

Liquids, powders and such. Fucking put them in separate plastic bags or get ready to clean all of your shit and the interior of your bag/backpack.

Record 'white noise' on your MP3 player (whatever kind you like) just in case you need it. When the people are making noise and stuff you might want it to drown it out.



GRACE

“By "guts" I mean, grace under pressure” - Hemingway. Giving a shout out to a fellow traveler I met Grace N. She is traveling around by herself and has gone some places (on an American passport) I have hesitated to go. Like Egypt. Really recently. I wanted to send a shout out and say how much I admired that sort of guts. [And put in a quote that had both her name in it and something about guts - for the slow of thinking.]

Grace is doing her own version of 'round the world in 80 days' - but not like the lame movie. It sounds excellent and I hope she finds ways to keep traveling as long as she wants to.



WEIRD SHIT

Pete found something weird and wonderful. Good stuff.



WHERE NEXT?

Prague, bitches! Jana is going to meet up with us at the Prague train station (five hour ride, prices above) tomorrow afternoon. I'm looking forward to my first 'please don't ass rape me for money' country.

36 DAYS TO GO

MOROCCO

Well, fuck. I was really hoping that would stay stable long enough for me to get in there. Yeah, I realize it is a totally self serving reason for not wanting them to go through a revolution but I really would like to see it and the rest of Northern Africa soon.



GERMANS AND THE HOFF

Apparently, the great love the Germans have for 'the Hoff' isn't made up. This is so strange. The article linked is in 'Der Spiegel', a German newspaper. Apparently, it's not just Eurotrip that believes Germans are obsessed with 'the Hoff'.



MONEY

One of the things I'd like to do is to write up how much things cost. I've been watching a lot of travel documentaries and they usually don't mention the cost of things unless it is amazingly cheap or outrageously expensive. I'm going to try to get the cost of things more into my blog to give people an idea of what they'd actually spend.

We'll see how that plan works out once I get on the road.

I think it would be nice if I had a film crew following me around but I'm not really seeing that happen. I've noticed that most of the people are much better looking than I am who do these things. And in better shape, the bastards. For some reason, a fat, cripply guy wandering around I just don't think is going to make it onto the TV.



LONELY PLANET AKA GLOBE TREKKER

The show gets worse and worse the longer you go on. You can pretty much watch the first couple seasons and be done with it. Not only do they show the same exact journeys over and over in later seasons (like nobody will notice) but then they start splicing together two you've already seen before into a single episode. It's not a really good value. Given the talent they've got and the amount of places that they haven't explored, I'm thinking it was purely a money decision and is a good explanation of why the show got cancelled. I'm thinking that even the people who only watched it as it came out caught on to the fact 'hey, this is the same shit as before'.



MOVIE REVIEW

Gulliver's Travels. This movie gets this award:

On my movie scale, 3 stars out of a possible 10. IMDB gives it 4.7, I think that's way too generous.



SLEEP NOISE

One thing I can't do well is sleep without some sort of constant background noise. I've got a device that makes it rain but lately I've been working on instead using my MP3 player. There are two reasons for this - first, I don't think everyone else would like me playing my 'rain machine' in the room (well, I don't know that for sure) and second, I don't want to carry it.

So, I'm working on instead using my MP3 player.

The big problem with this is that I normally sleep on my side. This is because if I fall asleep, I will make a snore sound and wake myself up. Frightening. So, I've got to sleep on my side. Which doesn't go well with headphones.

So, I'm experimenting right now. It's looking like the 'one head phone in, the other not' is what I'm going for currently. We'll see how that works out. I figure I've got a month.



TV SHOW REVIEW

"Long Way Round". Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman on motorcycles go around the world. I'm two episodes into it thus far and it seems pretty interesting. Surprise, surprise - they had/are having a lot of trouble getting visas to go through Russia. I like that they are showing all of the preparation they have to go through. It appears that they are going to be camping out rather than staying in hotels and such at this point. I'm thinking that's just crazy - they may switch it up later. Thus far, the show is entertaining. I'll do a follow up review when I'm done watching all 11 episodes (10+special feature).



PACKING NEWS

Well, unfortunately, the razor my dad gave me is absolute shit. It seems to cut every other hair and makes me look a bit weirder (if that's possible) than normal. My plan is to use my other electric razor I normally do my head with to shave off my beard every week. My hair grows faster than a bears so within a week, I'll have a full beard. My current plan is to keep it shaved so that I look somewhat like my passport photo. When I get abroad, I'm going to stop by local barbers and stuff to get it shaved off every so often, as well as getting my head shaved. So, that's a bit less weight I get to carry about with me.

Now, I'm thinking that if someone just started reading this they're probably thinking 'What the fuck is he going on about an electric razor for?' Well, I'm wanting to show the entire preparation and thinking on it. When I chuck out other stuff from the pack later (it probably will happen), I'll write about that too.

Due to my current headphones getting a bit scratchy - I think the cord may be coming loose or something - I went an purchased two more $10 headphones. The bubble cases they're in are NOT waterproof. I'm thinking I'll be sticking them in a plastic bag somewhere later. Might put them with my extra glasses in a crush proof case or something, not really sure on that.

After the campaign ends I'm going to do another repack; lie everything out on the tables and try to figure out clever ways to put it in, maybe photograph it for people, stuff like that. Guessing that's probably 3 weeks off.