gotta love germans!

so i didnt spend long in the city museum, maybe like 2 hours because andy left work to come meet me at some busy square in the city center. so i walked over there and i kept calling him and saying ok i think i am here but i dont see you...and he was saying "no go here" blah blah but i didnt see it so i ended up leaving that square and getting all lost but after 10 min i finally found him, he was across the street the whole time lol. so then he took me on a little tour of that main city center area. we were on konig strasse (king street) which is the name shopping mecca of dusseldorf, equivalent to 5 th ave. the street was actually very wide, with a pond in the middle, so like park ave how it was divided by something in the middle of the street. that pond had a very pretty neptune fountain, which is apparently famous according to andy. so anyway we are walking down this street, and we pass an abercrombie and fitch store, which i was a bit surprised to see all the way in germany, i didnt know that it had global appeal. so being that andy works in the marketing department of his company, he says to me "this company is very smart about how they market themselves" and i say why? and he points to the front door, and there was a scantily clad sexy model there standing outside, with lots of ladies around him taking photos with him! i was like "wow, its making me want to shop there, and i hate that store!!" i didnt know whether i should go take a pic with him, or give him a winter jacket. but anyway we continued on. after a short while we started walking to his car because we had to go pick up sophie from her music lesson and then we were going out to eat. So we are talking about australia and everyone from there. he was telling me about how andre is in hiedelberg and connie is looking for a job in berlin etc etc. so i asked him several times to tell me the story of how him and Sophie met but he kept avoiding the question whenever i mentioned it, so i think maybe he forgot lol. So anyway we go to the car, he pulls out the gps to go to the ladys apt where sophie is for her lesson, but the gps "Roberta" is having trouble finding the signal. He keeps talking to her like she is a real person saying "Hello roberta, wake up, can you take us to Sophie now?" Lol so roberta eventually guided us and we got there a bit early so we sat in the car and waited. He asked if i had any photos on my phone of michael so i went on fb and showed him the latest ones we were tagged in together like from the end of the term, graduation and Christmas. He said he approved and michael was very good looking! :-) so a little later sophie came out and then we went back into the center, the pedestrianized area with lots of shops, bars and restaurants and went to a restaurant there. Because the menu was in german i needed their help in telling me what there was to choose from. So they said there was a veggie burger but some of the things it came with on the side they didnt know what they were. So when the waiter came around they spoke German together and i said i didnt speak German and he said he didn't speak English very well but he wasn't particularly friendly about it. so andy asked (in german) what came the veggie burger and i dont know what the waiter said but andy told me it was meat. Im like thats dumb! So i saw there was a veggie wrap and so i asked the waiter "is this vegetarian" and he said "obviously" in an obnoxious way. I didnt say anything but i wanted to be like "well obviously veggie burgers are vegetarian too!" Andy and sophie paid for my meal (i was supposed to pay them back but i forgot to give them money when we got back to their place) so i dont actually know if they left a generous tip (i clearly wouldn't have!) But they agreed he was unnecessarily rude to me. So anyway we were at the restaurant for a while, it was actually an American chain, something along the lines of chillis, but ive forgotten now. So sophid told me she also takes german night classes, even though she is nearly fluent! I said wow you are so busy!! And then they said 1 night a week they both take salsa lessons, which was sparked by our nights out in Sydney. I was like wow how do you guys have time for everything!? Props to them.  So at one point while we were having dinner, we hear a marching band parading down the street. old town area where i was earlier. I forgot to mention in the previous post that i saw a really funny outdoor urinal that was like a body capsule you go into and pee in private but the image on the outside was of a giant naked boy baby peeing. Europeans have such a great sense of humor! That would never ever happen in the usa, well we would need to realize the necessity for public toilets first!! But yeah its nighttime by now so the urinal is lit up so the giant naked baby is glowing and it just looked so great! I wonder if the light from the inside creates a silhouette on the capsule so that us on the outside can kinda see what is going on inside!? Ok anyway, so andy and i are in this aldstadt srea and there is a marching band stomping through and a relatively small crowd of people following them. they stop at some point in the square and continue playing their instruments. after the little show is over there is a proclamation from a balcony of what i think was the town hall, but obviously that was in german so i had no idea what he was saying, but andy was translating as he was going along. basically it was the official closing speech of karneval. then everyone cheered and started shouting something related to karnval, not alaaf but i guess a more localized term. and with that, there was no more karneval! i was sad to see it go! ok the night continues in the next entry!

official last day of celebrating

so continuing on with my stressed ride to dusseldorf..they lived about 5 miles outside of the center in a bit of a residential community. there building was very confusing to find, and google couldnt really locate it. they lived in a complex of tall apt buildings with traffic free (and im assuming bike free but oh well!) walkways connecting them all. i called andy and he gave me directions on how to get to the building. i had to carry lance up an initial flight of steps (again with difficulty as the back was so bottom heavy) but then he went in the elevator up to the apt. finally arrived at andy and sophies at 9:30 pm! i had texted them when i left svens to say i was going to be about 3 hours and i was right on the button. so they had eaten without me which i of course dont blame them, but they saved me some food. so they sat down with me while i ate and we had a proper catch up since the parade was too busy and hectic and not to mention noisy, so we really couldnt chat. andy was working for a marketing type company and i forgot what sophie was doing but her german was really good although she was taking a class 1 night a week. after dinner they showed me to my room, which was the computer room, and they set up the futon for me. i hadnt planned my sightseeing for the next day, so they whipped out all these maps of the city center and where showing me how to take the bus to the center and things to see. then i took a shower. when i got out, we chatted some more, i forgot how long they said they were living in dusseldorf, but it wasnt too long. they showed me their photo books they had printed. the one of the US was cool, that was the trip where i met up with them in times square in august 2011. so they printed a pic of a usa map with a route drawn on it. they flew to california and rented a car and drove around the west coast. they spent a lot of time in the west actually. they went to places that ive only dreamed about going, and im the american!! sad how that works..they went to redwood national park, joshua tree and yosemite. they went to vegas and the grand canyon. they had some lovely beach and coast photos! sophie made a joke about how there were lots of hot young guys on the beach, and andy said something about how he didnt notice any other girls on the beach because sophie is the only one for him. i thought that was incredibly sweet! so while we are going through the album i get a call from michael. i didnt check in with him and this was quite a late time for me to be arriving so he was concerned. but i told him i arrived not too long ago and was safe =) when we hung up, a&s were asking about him so i said he was english, works for rspb, met him at leeds etc etc. they said they were very happy for me =) so then  we continued through the album, they took a lot of pics of things that i normally dont think to take pics of. like road signs, the meals i have, random things like that. on their own the pics would seem pointless, but together in the album, i think it added a fun element to it. in the nyc section, they had pictures of cop cars, fire trucks, fed ex trucks, one way signs etc. i thought that was quite funny because im so used to it but they said they see those things all the time in so many movies based in ny, but to see it in person was so magical. i didnt really see it that way lol but then again, i felt the same way about the iconic red double decker buses in london (which i still havent ridden but anyway!). so still in the ny section i saw pics of me and when i was with them that night =) i was happy to have made it into the album! so after looking through that it was time for bed, because they had to be up mega early for work in the morning. i went on the computer for a little bit, looking up stuff to do for the following day and skyping with michael. but then i finally went to bed.
tues feb 21: so a&s had already left for work by the time i got up but they left me some cereal and breakfast food. we had made plans the night before to meet for dinner so i didnt bring lance. andy had given me directions to the bus stop through their pedestrian walk ways that led to the street but i got lost. i eventually found the main street and the bus came within 20 min. i was really missing lance because i did not want to wait for that long at like 8:30 am, if i had known the schedule, i would have just slept for 20 min longer. but once it came, the ride wasnt too long, and i got off in the altstadt (old city), like near the market square. it wasnt too busy at this time of morning. i went to the tourist info and got a map and a little free guide book. and saw there was a museum called haus des karnevals (cologne and dusseldorf are rival cities for hosting karneval events..like glasgow and edinburgh for hogmanay! cologne = edinburgh. so i figured since the karneval museum was closed when i was there, i would check out this one. so i went in but it was more like the office for the karneval organizing committee with some costumes and memorabilia upstairs. when i walked in i asked the lady if i could walk around because the ground floor was like a reception. she said yes but didnt seem too friendly. so i went upstairs and saw all the stuff. they had pictures of some of the floats from previous parades. a lot of them were political humor, negative things about george bush. it really gave me an idea of the stuff that i missed when i was at the cologne parade because i couldnt see the floats too well at all, except for the one i saw when nathan lifted me up. the costumes looked really fab too. so as i was looking around, an older man who worked there came upstairs with a family sized group and was chatting away in german, so im assuming he was giving them a tour of the collection. i wish i knew what he was saying =( so when he was done with that and they left, he asked me something in german, probably "can i help you with something?" and i said "i dont speak german" and he said "oh..no english." so there went my tour. but after i saw the small collection i realized i didnt have a souvenir of carnival. i remember when i left a&s at the train station there was a souvenir shop in the station with carrnival stuff but i figured it would be overpriced so i thought i would have other opportunities with cheaper souvenir shops, but i never did get the chance, so i figured it was now or never. but my problem was how do i ask this guy if they sell them!? so i whipped out my trusty google translate and typed in carnival memorabilia. whatever it came back as in german, he had no idea what i was asking. so i tried again with like "carnival type items." and showed it to him, he then reads it and goes, "oh souvenirs!" and im like yeah! then i thought to myself, why didnt i think of that word in the first place!? but i was surprised out of all the english words to know, he knew that one lol. so he brought me downstairs, and into the reception office with the sweet lady in it and he took a something small that was in a packet in a bowl (like a candy dish when you go to the doctors) and he opened the packet and inside was a fake gold pin of a jester and on the bottom said "karneval dusseldorf 2012". and he pinned it to my jacket and smiled. i thought well, i didnt celebrate karneval in dusseldorf per se, but i left the building satisfied. he was a nice old guy anyway so that made me happy. so next i walked around that little market square area, where there is an equestrian statue of Jan Wellem (thanks wikipedia). nearby there was also a unique sculptural memorial to dusseldorfs history and being granted privileges as a town. it was eerie because it had skulls and a peasant, but it was really cool looking. so i walked along the rhine for a bit, there was a nice promenade path there. it was also a sunny day out so i wanted to take advantage of the nice weather, although i hadnt had a bad day weather wise in a while! i walked by a film museum which seems awesome because they ahd a lot of old antique stuff and told had the history of film exhibitions and of course lots of film memorabilia, but decided to skip that and perhaps visit on a return trip when my german would be a bit more better. so i walked around, following my little self guided tour. i passed some nice old churches. i then went to the stadtmuseum, the city museum. this was all very close to the rhine by the way. so i went in for a while and saw the permanent exhibitions (temps in german again) which told the history of dusseldorf. sorry to end on a boring note but i must rest now. really i am not doing the beauty of dusseldorf any justice, perhaps once i figure out how to post some pics i can really spark things up in this blog!!

there is hope for humankind

sunday feb 19: so i miracously woke up in the morning before my 8 am alarm and found everyone from the night before sprawled over various pieces of furniture in the living room. i quickly got up to go to my phone to turn off the alarm because i didnt want that to wake everyone up, but my moving and shifting woke up one of the girls. so i got ready to leave and so did she. right before i left i told her i was sorry for waking her and she said it was no problem because she wanted to leave early anyway. i doubt it was THAT early though! so i snuck into svens room to get the key to the terrace to get lance but i woke him up and he again didnt look too thrilled about that! but i was able to get lance and then head into the center of cologne again. so i went to one of the art galleries, the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, and i was actually 5 minutes early for the opening! it is one of the main art museums in cologne, and one of the only open ones during karnival. the cathedral was again open from 6-9 am so i missed that. so yeah anyway i got to the museum early but the front door was already open so i stepped inside but the person at the desk said they were closed, but i asked if i could wait inside since it was freezing out! and he said yes =) so when it officially opened i went in, they had a special exhibition on german cartoon/comic like art, but of course no captions in english so i had to miss that. the museum has art from medieval times to the 20th century. i saw the modern stuff first to get it over with. it was a lot of glass and tiles and stuff in a narrow corridor. so i then made my way through the rooms, the medieval stuff was very old, some 14th century wood sculptures of religious scenes and saints and of course mary and baby JC. when i made my way to the second floor (there werent a lot of people in this museum the whole time by the way), i went looking around and then when i was near the window i saw a parade marching down the street, going right next to the museum. i watched from up top for a bit, i didnt feel compulsed to go join in on the festivities because i was going to the main parade the following day. still, it did look like a lot of fun. so as i continued to go around, the security guard, who clearly was very bored, came over to me to explain one of the paintings. it was a 13 set series telling the life story of saint ursula (there was a big wood carving of her downstairs with the virgins she took with her on her voyage, from like the 15th cent or whaterver). im quite glad he did explain it, each one individually, because the text panel next to it didnt give enough detail (in english anyway). then he asked where i was from, so i told him. and he said he had family there and he has visited a few times before. he had quite a strange accent because he was not a native german, but clearly learnt english in germany. he was from like cambodia or somewhere in that area of asia so when he spoke english it came out as a mix of asian/german lol. then we got talking about other paintings and i forgot why, but he took me to one of the other paintings, a real famous one, i already saw in the previous room. it was a nice religious painting, about ibraham or something. i cant really remember what he was telling me about it, other than there  is a second half to it, which the museum doesnt have. there was a computer screen on a bench in the middle of the room which explained that, but it was only in german =( so i was glad that he told me. so then i continued around the gallery until it was closing time. i then went back to svens and we cleaned up and then had dinner together. michael was not so friendly with me anymore, clearly annoyed at my rejection the previous night. so when sven and i were doing the dishes after dinner, i was unloading the dishwasher to put the new batch in, when i dropped a tall guiness glass on the floor and it shattered. i felt extremely bad about this and cleaned it up and kept saying i was sorry and sven said "oh we spent all night trying to steal that glass!" and i said "well dont make me feel even more bad about it!" and he explained that him and daniel and michael were out at a pub one night and they were determined to steal the glass and they eventually did, so it was more the memory of the fun they had that night that was attached to the glass than the actual loss of the glass, that he was concerned about. so i told him i would steal him a guiness glass this night and he can pretend that was the same glass. he said that not a lot of cologne bars/pubs sell guiness so i wouldnt be able to find one, but i said i would make sure i did. so we decided we were going to do our own thing that night, he hangs out with his friends, and i go out with mine. carmen had left in the morning so she wasnt coming out that night but at least i was going to see jorien again! so a little later on i ended up taking the train into some part of cologne and meeting them at some bar. when i got out of the station i had no clue where to go, so i asked some guy on the corner but he didnt speak english very well. he was asian so im not sure if he was a tourist as well or a german immigrant but either way it was pulling teeth to ask him where this bar was. after like 5 minutes of getting nowhere, i saw mayke, floor and crew across the street so they started frantically waving but then crossed over to me so i told the guy that i didnt need directions anymore because i found my friends! im sure he got the message. so we went to this german pub and they played more horrific german/karneval music. but the atmosphere was fun, although it was very crowded and i was getting squashed. it was just more chill than your average club. i liked it a lot more than the previous night! and there was no one smoking. so it was good to catch up with jorien and see everyone again. some of them changed their costumes, stefan was a scottish highlander, chris was some builder guy/construction worker, floor was a dutch girl, lotte was like a 20s flapper type lady, jorien was a king?? she wore a crown and red faux fur coat with white trimming, and mayke was the flight attendant again even though she had bought 2 costumes, she couldnt fit the other one in her bag!! so everyone kept buying rounds of beer, but everytime i asked for water =) i reallly appreciated that none of them ONCE tried to pressure me into ordering an alcoholic drink. they asked what i wanted and i said water and then for the rest of the night, they got me water =) i did ask though for a guiness and chris said they wouldnt have it there but he asked anyway and he was right. i thought oh no, sven was right =(  so we had more crazy antics going on, stefan said he kissed a guy once so i tried to get him and chris to kiss but chris said he didnt do random hook ups, so that was a bummer for me! after a while of dancing and jumping around to the fantastic soundtrack, we went to another place. but not before going to a late night take out shop, i was hungry but not very tempted by the food, my god did we take a while in there though! so this other bar was more of your typical bar. this neighborhood of cologne was apparently really good for nightlife but it actually wasnt jam packed with lines out the door and outrageous entrance fees. so we got in right away and went directly to the back where the dance floor was. it was sooo full of people that there was a lot of bumping and rubbing against me. within 5 minutes of arriving, i realized i lost my purse. i kept my composure but inside i was freaking out! my phone, camera, debit card, passport, cash and svens key was inside! if i lost that i would totally be screwed!! so i told my friends and mayke and floor immediately started calling my phone over and over. i went and retraced my steps from when i entered the door. when i got to the dance floor, a guy sitting in the corner saw me looking around on the floor and said "what are you looking for?" and i said "my purse!" and he said "what does it look like" and i said "its small and black" and then he handed it to me! i said "omg you are a lifesaver!!" and he said "no, he found it" and pointed to the guy in front of him. so I went and kissed that guy - just on the cheek ;) and i checked inside and everything was in there, including the cash. my faith in the people that frequent the club scene was restored. so i then went back to the gang and told them i got everything and they said i was so lucky. so the partying resumed! we continued dancing away, the music was a bit more varied. people smoking inside again though =( i again tried to order a guiness at the bar but the bartender said the only beer they sold was the cologne brew. i thought omg this is impossible!! so i gave up and didnt end up replacing the glass lol. we were having fun, stefan was taking provocative photos by hiking up his kilt. so after a little while, i was eyeballing a guy in a ghostbusters costume that had outrageously horrible dance moves. i was thinking to myself "he looks like kevin james" and literally a split second later mayke said to me "that guy looks like the guy from hitch!" and i said "i was just thinking the same thing!" so i went up to him and told him. he was not impressed! he said "are you calling me fat?" and i said "noooo [but thinking, well you do have a bit of a belly!], its a complement, kevin james is funny!" and he said "but youre saying i need to lose weight". but mayke and i were denying we made any implementations. so then we got chatting with him and his friend, who was also in a ghostbuster costume. they were both german, but kevin james guy didnt know english as well as his friend. either way, i managed to find out that he was from heidelberg and so i told him i was going to be there around march 9th and so we traded numbers and said maybe we would meet up while i was there. so the night went on, chris ended up bumping into a friend of his who was this real sweet gay guy, with a possible latin background. so we hung out with him for the rest of the night, but he kept buying everyone shots, including me! i kept saying no but i took them anyway. i got a bit tipsy real quick. when it got towards the end of the night and the place started clearing out, people were leaving their costume pieces behind. i found a black covering for a shoe in the shape of a boot, like that puss in boots would wear. mayke and i were playing with it and i suggested in my not so sober state of mind that we keep it as our friendship boot and whenever we see each other we pass back and forth the boot and call it "the sisterhood of the traveling boot". mayke was not so much for this idea so we left it at the bar! we then left a little bit later, although chris stayed with his friend. so mayke and lotte ended up walking me to the train station and taking me down into the actual underground and mayke asked someone on one of the platforms if i was headed in the right direction. then they asked if i wanted them to wait with me until the train came but i said i was fine and i knew what i was doing and where i was going so they didnt need to worry. but mayke wasnt convinced (i still wasnt completely sober at this time but i did really know where to get off etc) so she asked this guy (in german) sitting next to me on a bench waiting for the train if he can make sure i got off at the right stop. he said ok. i then told her if she could ask him to share his pizza with me because i was hungry! she didnt. i asked in english. he didnt understand. i went hungry. so i told mayke i would call her tomorrow to figure out a place where to meet for the parade, and then they left. pizza eater didnt exactly do a good job of "looking after me" but whatever, i didnt need a babysitter anyway. so i arrived at svens without incident although i did kind of forget where to turn to get to his house, but i found it. it was like 3 am again and i went to bed right way on yet a different couch.
monday feb 20: so another early wake up, but not 8 am early. i didnt end up doing any exploring, or the self guided walking tours that i paid 50c for!! it just warrants another visit to cologne then =) so after breakfast sven said he wasnt going to the parade because hes been there several times before, he explained i was going to get a lot of camela, which i understood was candy but not exactly sure what kind though. so i left in the late morning and found myelf a cozy spoke somewhere along the parade route, which was along the pedestrian area that i walked around the first day i arrived. so i of course went in my costume. it was still a while before the parade started though, so in the meantime i was texting mayke to try and describe where i was to so everyone could meet me. but it became clear that that was unfeasible because of the large crowds of people and the rows of people behind me! so we called it off and decided to just meet up later. so the parade finally started, there were lots of fantastic floats with people in costumes and bands on them. they then threw LOTS of candy and chocolate at us, while we all screamed camela!! there were kids scrambling in between everyones legs picking up all the remainders on the floor and bagging them, but seriously every float threw tons of candy at us, there was PLENTY to go around for everyone. i couldnt believe how much free chocolate i was getting, it was like halloween in the winter, without the effort of going to peoples houses! i thought, hm if i knew i was going to get so much i 1) wouldnt have gone crazy on sat looking for german chocolate and 2) should have brought a pillow case! i should probably mention that a few days prior, i had made plans with andy and sophie to spend tues and wed night with them in dusseldorf. but on this monday, they asked what i was doing and i mentioned the parade so they said they would come (i thought wow they are coming all the way from dusseldorf just for the parade! i later found out its only a 20 minute train ride lol). so while i was waiting for them i see a group of 5 guys behind me all dressed as mario characters - yoshi, wario, luigi, mario, and toad. they were trying to take a pic of themselves so i said i would do it and then asked if i could take one with my cam. so after that we got chatting and i ended up hanging out with them for the whole parade! they were really fun and knew english quite well. they were all around my age, with the youngest being like 19. i asked where peach was and one of them's gf was peach but she left early!! that would have been cool to see them all together. so as the parade is going on, they explained what some of the floats meant, because some had like paper machie figures on the front, like mardi gras, only they were like propaganda. like one said something (in german) about the US being bankrupt. so we continued to collect the camela which apparenlty meant candy and we screamed as loud as we could at every float "camela!!" and i truly felt in the karneval spirit then =) a bunch of the camela we got was fake money and yoshi told me that used to be the deutsche mark before the euro. the guy who was mario, nathan, put me on his shoulders for a little while and wow could i see so much more, especially the floats!! i also swapped to the yoshi  guys shoulder and he was taller so that was even better for me lol. i of course had to explain my costume to them but i think they liked it! nathan seemed to have a thing for me (go figure) but i was more interested in luigi, philipp. but either way i had a great time with them all. toad and i switched head gear. he made his toad hat himself, by covering a motorcycle helmet. it was really heavy!! he wore my devil ears for a while but i left my place in line to call andy to tell him where i was. i really couldnt describe much to him though. when he and sophie arrived he said it was sooo crowded and hard to move that they as well wouldnt bother meeting up with me until later. so i was alone with the super mario team lol. when i got back to where i was standing i found out that toad broke my horns lol. i thought oh damn, i was planning on selling those! but whatever. they even persuaded me to drink some of their beer which of course was awful, but there are some funny photos floating about of them dribbling it into my mouth! id say the wario guy was the only one who wasnt so drunk and rowdy, and ironically, he was from bavaria. but then again, im sure he gets wild for oktoberfest =) so after about 5 hours of parade madness, it was coming to a close and andy and sophie tried again to meet up with me. i put him on the phone with one of the guys who could give better directions that i could. andy and sophie showed up about 10 min later, him wearing a pink wig and and crazy big sunglasses and she wore big glasses and a big wig lol. but it wasnt before long that the last float passed and the parade ended! there was soo much crap on the floor but the sanitation workers were lightning quick to clean it up! so i then said goodbye to my new friends, got philipps email address to swap the pics and then i went with andy and sophie through the streets to the train station but it was a bad move because we kept running into the parade route!! so we had to wait after floats passed to dash inbetween them. what would normally be a 10 minute walk took us like 30 min but we finally made it to the train station. they told me i should just go with them but i said that i had all of my stuff at svens still so i needed to go back and i was just going to bike there. it was only 20 miles but it was getting late and i was getting nervous about what time i was going to arrive because i originally didnt plan on staying the whole time at the parade. but nonetheless, i still ended up meeting with mayke and everyone after i left andy and sophie. we met not far from the parade route, in a popular pedestrian square where there were so many people still. so it was just a quick goodbye, everyone was back in their costumes from friday. mayke said she was sad to see me go but i assured her our paths would cross again! so then i was a bit in a rush to head back to svens, so i got on the tram like trains which was the first time i was taking them so i was confused as to where to actually stand to get them. someone helped me out but i of course went in the wrong direction so i had to get off at the next stop and go on the other side. so this only delayed my trip even more. i finally did get back to svens, about 6:15 pm and i was so stressed. i quickly changed out of my outfit into normal clothes, gave sven half of the camela i collected (this broke my heart to give up so much chocolate but i had no more room in any of my bags!), told him to keep my succubus wings as a memento of our karneval 2012 together, and i packed the rest of my costume and then got lance outside and set up my bags. its 6:30 pm now and starting to get dark and i hadnt even left yet! i get my tail light out and of course it doesnt work. i changed the batteries quickly, but it still didnt work. sven was like "what are you going to do?" and i said ill just have to continue on my way. so another quick goodbye, i thanked him for having me, he said it was a pleasure, and then i invited him to ny and he said he would take me up on the offer one day. and with that, off i went!! so luckily the route wasnt too difficult where i had to keep stopping and checking the map, because that really puts time on the clock. just followed  the b9 for a lot of the way. and luckily it was flat. as the night went on the streets had hardly any traffic at all, but i still stuck to the sidewalk as much as possible, which had no people. it was lit too but not too bright either. i was pretty panicky the whole time because i was afraid i was going to arrive at 9:30 and I wanted to spend time with andy and sophie. ok enough for this post, another long one coming soon =)

not impressed with the german club scene!

so when svens friends arrived we got the party started with the music and everything. they were quite nice and spoke english mostly in my presence so i appreciated it. but when they would switch to german for like a sentence it made me wonder if they were talking about me lol. stupid me for not learning the language prior to my visit!! so jeff asked for my fb so i gave him my name and he added me then and there on his phone, and then we started going through my profile pics, so i had to explain them all (well, not ALL of them, we would be there for weeks otherwise!) and i realized that i put up lots of pics of me in costumes as my profile pic cause that was nearly every photo! so after a bit of chatting and trying to communicate with michael, i told him to teach me german. so he tells me to repeat some sentence. i had no idea what he was trying to say and i kept pronouncing it wrong so i told him to write it down. this was the sentence: Ich liebe Männer mit dicken Schwänzen. so all i knew of that was i love ___ with ___ ___. so after practicing this sentence over and over and continually screwing up the last word, i decided to announce to everyone my nearly learnt german phrase. it didnt come out crystal clear, but everyone laughed so i guess they knew what i was trying to say. i then asked what the translation was: "i love men with thick dicks". and ironically, dicken is the word for thick, not dick lol so after a bit of laughter at my expense, i got in touch with mayke and persuaded her to bring the crew to svens. i thought for sure they arent going to venture all the way out there but sure enough they did. they had to go pick up jorien at the train station around 11:30 pm so they came around 10:30 so obviously couldnt stay for long. it was good to see them for that short time and we caught each other up from when we were together last at the medicine ball the previous night. they were such party animals, staying out till like 6 am. i thought, my god i am turning into an old maid, cause i went to bed at 3! but then again they woke up in the afternoon and did nothing, at least i got to do some sightseeing and explored a bit of cologne and felt the carnival atmosphere. so they soon left, i thought it would be best to stay with sven so i wouldnt feel like i was ditching him and only using him for a place to rest my head, but we decided we were going to go to a club altogether (meaning with svens friends as well) later on in the night. mayke said she would text me once they got jorien and figured where they were going. well some time goes by and the germans decide we are going to a club. so im completely at their whim since i didnt know the area at all. so i just followed along when we finally left svens. it kind of reminded me of when i was in high school and went out as a huge group, and feelings of how much i hated going out as a big crowd came fleeting back. it was just so annoying, this one needed to go to a gas station to pick up food or cigarettes or whatever so we had to wait. and blah blah, it was all just so slow getting there. not that i was in a rush. sven ignored me the whole time to be with his friends, and sometimes they would talk to me, but they mostly spoke to themselves. every now and then daniel or michael would ask me something and i would answer and that would be the end of the conversation since they didnt know how to respond to my answer in english. so we eventually get to this club, long line, so we wait. had to pay E5 to get in and the guard told me to do something but i just stood there blankly until one of svens friends told me to open my bag to be searched. so once we got in, it was extremely crowded!! the line for the coat check was unbelievable. no organization at all, just a huge mass of people all surrounding a tiny desk. these are the times i wish i was a giant. so after dealing with that for like 15 min we finally got on the dance floor and danced for a while. most of the music was either german, carnival and/or kologne related, or shitty american dance music like the song "hangover". so needless to say i wasnt enjoying that too much. but the worst part was people smoking inside. it drove me crazy. the smell was getting all over my clothes. and also i was being bumped into and shoved a lot. but i just kept dancing trying to have fun although i couldnt wait for carmen and mayke and gang to come. i texted mayke saying where we were but no response. time ticked by and i kept checking my phone to make sure i hadnt missed a call/text from mayke but nothing. i didnt hear from her all night. i guess i should have been a bit more persistent, like called or sent another text, but i didnt. so they never showed up. svens friends eventually started disappearing on the dancefloor amongst all the people. sven danced with his friends and didnt talk to me at all and i saw michael sitting in the corner looking bored so i went over to try and talk to him. some song came on and i made a comment about how cheesey it was and he said something along the lines of, "its robbie williams!!!" with such excitement. didnt realize he was so big out there lol so we went and danced a bit. 2 of svens female friends said we made a cute couple and that he really likes me and i should go for it. i said ummmm no thanks!! so shortly after we rejoined the mob scene to get our jackets and then walked back to svens. sven was real drunk by this point and saying stupid things and spoke to me a little bit but i was tired and annoyed i hadnt heard from mayke so i wasnt really in the mood to be dealing with his drunken antics. when we finally got back to his place, everyone crashed in the living room. i slept on some broken couch, and went right to sleep as soon as we got back. they told me they were going to watch some movie, forgot what it was now, one of these new action films, but it was in german dubbed so there was no point in me watching. they asked if it was going to keep me awake but i said no. so i curled up as best i could on the broken sofa, sven said something like "thanks so much for coming i really really appreciate it" but im sure it was just the booze talking. michael invited me to share his bed with him to sleep for the night but i said no and with that i went to sleep. still nothing from mayke. i was so tired by this point that i literally did not hear anything from them or the tv while they watched the movie all night long!!

The madness continues

sat feb 18: So the next morning I don't know how but I managed to wake up at like 8:30 am, even before my alarm went off! So I decided to do some sightseeing before another manic night ensued. I wanted to take lance but he was on the terrace, behind a locked door so I went shuffling around in svens room looking for a key, I didn't find it but it woke him up and so he got it and unlocked the terrace. He didn't look so pleased about being woken up so early and was wondering what I was doin up! So hopefully he went back to sleep after that. So anyway i was off, I rode to the cathedral to maybe do a guided tour and finish the last parts I didnt get to see the day prior. But it was already closed and it was not even 10 am! So I went back to the tourist info and she said the cathedral opens at 6 am and closes at 9 am during carnival! I would imagine that at 6 am there would be stupidly drunk people running rampant on the street then, so perhaps having church doors open isn't the best idea, but hey whatever works for them (at least by 9 all the drunk people would be fast asleep but I guess they don't see it that way). So I checked my leaflet that said which museums were open and a shame that the carnival one wasn't, so I went to the stadtmuseum which was nearby. It had an audio guide that corresponded to the exhibits, and also in English, which was great, and the temp exhibition was separate so you didn't have to pay for it if you didn't want to, a nice change from the Netherlands! The lady at the desk said it was all in German anyway. So I went around seeing artifacts and paintings and religious stuff from colognes history from the middle ages to now. Ww2 memorabilia in there as well. So I spent a bit of time in there, learnt about this specific family that made a brand of chocolate in cologne in the early 20th cent (so kinda like sunlight soap made in port sunlight) so after reading about it I wanted to try it. So in the early afternoon I was still at the museum and I texted sven asking if he needed any help setting up for the party he and his house mates were throwing that night. He said yes and to show up around 3. So I finished the museum, and as I left I asked the guy at the desk where I can find that brand of chocolate and he told me the names of a few department stores and their locations. So I was riding around the pedestrianized main area and went to one of those dep stores, they sold chocolate but not that specific brand I read about. And I think this happened the day before but when I was in that pedestrianized area some man came up to me and was one of these annoying charities that pester people on the street for money, so I just said I don't speak German and he walked away. As opposed to when Mayke and I got stopped by some cancer charity in maastrict and the guy spoke dutch and I said I don't speak it and he said in fluent English"ok ill speak in English then!" So yeah anyway I continued to ride around, found an aldi, that was closed. And I couldnt find anywhere else that sold that chocolate so I gave up and was just about to head to svens when I saw this little performance going on on the street that drew a big crowd. Musicians banging drums and playing pipes and the rest of it, in carnival costumes of course! So I watched that for a bit, I wanted to continue hanging around outside and see what other street performances were going on, but I felt debted to sven for letting me stay, so I left and rode to his. On the way though i stopped off at a netto and bought a 35c bar of chocolate! Wasn't the cologne brand, but I was just craving chocolate by that point. Cologne has a chocolate museum but that was closed :-( :-( oh well, just means I need to revisit! So I arrived at svens and helped make streamers out of ribbon. I was trying to curl them with scissors but I was terrible at it. I preferred to clean than to decorate but the place was mostly clean by the time I arrived. So my job was to make these streamers and blow balloons and place them around the house. I really was a bit crap at that! But in the end I dont think anyone cared! I tried to hang balloons from the low part of the ceiling with scotch tape but it wasn't sticking so sven did something magical and got them to stick. He pretty much fixed my bad decorations into decorating the way he wanted and I thought, why did I come back to help again? Lol so in no time it got dark, we had some dinner and then I showered in his housemate Michaels bathroom when he wasn't there. But when I got out I saw Michael in his room so I think he was a bit shocked to see a stunning girl in a towel walk out of his bathroom! (I knew he was there cause I heard him shuffling around) . His English was very bad, as was Daniels, the other housemate. So yeah conversations didn't really get anywhere, unless sven was interpretor. So after a bit, we got our costumes on and his friends started coming. And this seems like an opportune moment to end it here so I will cut it off for the night!

Kölle alaaf!

So sven and I did the usual catching up, and we made pizza for dinner. Prior to me coming we had been in fb message contact and I told him that Mayke, carmen, Chris, stefan, lotte and floor were going to a medicine ball for karneval, so I asked if he wanted to go. So we decided we would try to go but all advanced tickets were sold out so we would have to line up at the door and see if we get lucky. But he was for it so we got on our costumes, him as an NYPD officer and me as succubus and we hopped on the train and went to the hall where this was taking place. We went quite early, maybe like 6 ish because I had emailed the organizers asking for tix  and they advised to show up early. I didn't bring a jacket cause I was afraid of it getting stolen since I knew this was going to be a massive party, so I had lots of glances on the train!! The corset I bought didn't fit too well so my boobs were kinda popping out! But oh well that just adds to the fun of it all right, I mean it was karneval after all! So when we got out of the station it was a short walk and not windy but I got cold quickly.  there was a long line but we waited anyway. After about 10 minutes a woman went around selling tix to the people on the line, saying her dad was the owner of the building or something like that and offered us tix at discounted prices (this was in German obviously so sven did all the negotiating). So we accepted and I was worried they were going to be bogus but they weren't and so we got in! But since we skipped the whole line we were one of the first people in there, so it was quiet to begin with. When we entered a professional photographer took our photo :-) So then we walked around, checking out the place. It was ginormous! 3 floors, each with at least 2 rooms all with different music. No wonder it was like €25 to get in. But of course the food and drinks were overpriced at the bar. Sven was nice enough to buy me a glass of wine though and he bought himself several beers throughout the night. So as the night went on it got busier. The dance floor got more crowded as people poured in. I saw some brilliant costumes but one that is permanently implanted in my mind is a huge man (tall and broad) in a dress with heels and a long blond wig. That was probably my favorite! So everytime sven left me for the bathroom, I got hit on. Once was by a group of middle aged German guys who didn't know English very well, one was by 2 cute guys around my age, guy A started up small chat with me and about a minute later guy B chanted "kiss! Kiss! Kiss!" And before I knew it guy As tongue was in my mouth. So I pulled away and then guy B asked for a kiss on the cheek so I leant in and at the last second he turned his head and got me on the mouth. I should have seen it coming, but I also wasn't complaining. And with that they walked away. And the third time was later on in the night, people were starting to get drunk. Sven and I went downstairs to where the photos from earlier were displayed. I could have sworn the lady in charge said the first photo was free but you had to pay for the second, but there was no one working the stand with the photos so I just took both. They came out real nice. So while we were downstairs sven went to the bathroom again and I was waiting outside for him and a guy in the line started talking to me, first in German and I said I didn't speak it and he switched to English and said I was very short or something like that (he was gigantic).  Then he asked where I was from. So we got talking about ny, he had been there before, blah blah then sven comes out of the bathroom so goliath asked where he was from and he said Massachusetts (he had told me earlier he wanted to pretend to be American) and the guy goes "oh I've been to Boston!" And sven is like "uhh..ok" and the guy is asking him all these questions and sven is just making up stuff, clearly with not a clue as to what he's talking about. So eventually the conversation ended nd we walked away I go "you know Boston is in Massachusetts right?" And he goesz "oh no I didnt!" So I explained that's why goliath mentioned he had been there lol. So then we headed back to the dance rooms.  We danced to a 70s/80s cover band which was real good but had a mostly older crowd. I preferred them to the dj rooms with the annoying crowd and packed out dance floor.The main room had some karneval music and traditional dancing on stage though which was cool. I also saw a guy I met in sydney, hurst his name was( which I had actually forgotten) , but I didn't know him very well in Sydney so I didn't think he would recognize me, but he said hello. So all the while I had been texting Mayke and she first said they would be there at 11:30 pm but that came and went so I was wondering if they were ever going to show up, but they did, at like 1 am! And the party wasn't going to go on much longer, so I hope they felt they got their moneys worth! But once they arrived I was so happy to see them, esp everyone who I hadn't seen since Sydney. So I introduced sven, he was very well received by my friends and we all danced in the main room together to more karneval music. Carmen and lotte were betty and wilma, stefan was a gold person, Mayke a flight attendant, Chris was some German cartoon character with red hair, and floor I can't remember lol. So we were all dancing and having a good time, everyone kept buying rounds but got water for me cause I didn't want any beer. And the water was sparkling only!! So I said to carmen "who was that German guy we met in Sydney that was weird?" And she goes "hurst?" And I go oh yeah (I had forgotten his name) and I said he was there and when I spotted him I pointed and carmen went over to say hello so I went too and I said "do you remember me from Sydney?" And he said "yes, Michele right?" And I couldn't believe he remembered! I hardly spoke to him there and that was over 3 years ago! So I started talking to his date and she was real nice, I think she was French Canadian or something. So then carmen and I went back to the group, and we continued to party the night away until the dance floor got more and more empty. I even saw someone waving an American flag at some points!! But I was really starting to dislike the karneval songs, even viva colognia. The tunes were just too cheesy! Then we started mingling with some cute guys next to us, but nothing ever came of that. And of course we took plenty of pics. We eventually started trading costume accessories, so in one of the shots, I am wearing carmens black betty wig, and she is wearing the long red haired wig of floors costume. All in all it was a great night, I was super happy to be having all these australia reunions. But within 1 1/2 hours or so sven and I decided to leave while the rest stayed. We were going to see each other all weekend so I didn't feel compelled to spend every moment with them. So sven and I hopped on the train and went back to his where we set up one of his many couches in the living room for me to sleep on. And with that, at around 3 am or whatever i finally fell asleep!

first true carnival experience!

friday feb 17: so my host woke me up at 7 am in preparation of his daughters' arrival, but i didnt want to leave just yet because it was still dark. so we had breakfast together, which was some really yummy soft waffles! and when his daughters arrived, they didnt speak english really so it was a bit awkward to communicate with them. his older daughter who was maybe 9 understood i was from ny and was 24, but that was it. so the girls went right to playing video games, and i got ready and left soon after, at 8:07 am. i didnt want to dilly dally on my way there, just wanted to get to cologne as quickly as i could to get some sightseeing out of the way before going to sven's. so i followed that route along the railway track and it went well for a bit, but then it suddenly just ended. at first the path turned to gravel (it was originally tarmac) so i thought ok i can handle this. so i continued along and it very literally just disappeared. i really dont know where google maps was getting their route info from, because there was not even the slightest indication of a path, it literally was just a wall and some trees! but just earlier i had gone over an intersection, with a bridge over the railway tracks, so i thought about retracing my steps, but then i decided to take the risk and continue going forward, not where i was, because that would require bushwacking! but if i retraced a little bit and found a road parallel to where i was, i could continue straight and eventually get to cologne. so i did find a road and i indeed followed it, but that only took me to some construction work that was going on near the tracks! it was a completely muddy area, lance was sinking in and there were workers in caterpillars moving dirt around and stuff. i thought, ok this is just stupid now, i need to get back to where a normal road is! so i ditched the idea of moving forward and went back to where i saw that bridge (by the way, the wind was against me the whole time, except for when i was heading back to where i came! so that was quite irritating, esp with the costume bag flying all over the place!) so i went and crossed the bridge and took a road that was on the other side of the railway, very slightly uphill, and a little windy, but it led me into cologne so that was all that mattered! before long i was approaching an urban setting for sure, lots of cars, people (not too many in costume just yet!) and lots of marlboro cigarette ads (again in english). i did pass a nice building that looked like an old gateway that belonged to the city walls or something. i took a pic and thought oh ill definitely have to come back and find out what that is (i never did!!). so i rode through the center, there was some little street party happening at one of the squares, some rides and stuff going on for the carnival. saw some people dressed up there! but i wanted to go to tourist info first and get my bearings. but my arrival time was 12 pm, did 29 mi, max 18.1, avg 8.4 and spent 3:48 actually riding there! so after getting a bit lost through the crowded pedestrianized shopping center, i followed the signs to the tourist info and wow did i get quite a shock! after i passed all the ugly new retail buildings, there opened up the square with the cathedral! it was massive, i was completely awestruck!! i took some pics like the rest of the 3214123 tourists around me, and went to the tourist info. i bought some walking tour brochures for 50c and also received a list of museums and attractions that were open during the carnival week, which wasnt much!! i couldnt believe it, i mean mardi gras is a big thing in new orleans, but i dont think life there stops completely!! but at least the cathedral was open so that was the main thing! so i went inside and took some more photos. i firstly was able to store all my crap in a locker thank god! they are really good about locker storage in europe i have to say, even thought i known i complain about the redundancy of it costing (but not really) E1. there werent any guided tours on at the moment, so i paid 50c for a self guided one that cost E1 =) that kept me busy for a while! i saw the gero cross:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gero_Cross -> for more info and its significance! then i went to the top of the tower (which was a bit confusing because you needed to walk outside and turn left and walk back into the cathedral but at a separate underground entrance) so i walked up there, and went through the bell area and everything. it wasnt a guided way up, just on your own. on the spiral staircase up, you would not believe all the grafffiti on the wall!! i swear, people can be so god damn disrespectful, it really boggles my mind sometimes! but yeah once i got to the top it was real amazing. the weather was good so i could see for miles. but i was kinda focusing on the mini people below me, esp the teletubbies walking by! so there was no info on what was off in the distance, so i really didnt know what i was looking at lol, other than the rhine! so when i made my way down, there were a bunch of kids my age coming up to the top, but in full costume! lol. when i went down i then went to the treasury which was a pretty decent size. and i was so happy that everything was in english! they had some really nice artwork down there, esp old stone carvings, and since it was like in the basement, there were panels explaining the foundations and the stone pillars and stuff. there was also a room on all bishop clothes and yada yada, and of course the elaborate monstrance and those type objects. in a separate room that i very nearly missed, there was the shrine of the 3 kings. here this is also taken from wikipedia (you can tell i am getting tired and lazy):  The most celebrated work of art in the cathedral is the Shrine of the Three Kings, a large gilded sarcophagus dating from the 13th century, and the largest reliquary in the Western world. It is traditionally believed to hold the remains of the Three Wise Men, whose bones and 2,000-year-old clothes were discovered at the opening of the shrine in 1864. <p>

so i was happy to not have missed that! so after i saw pretty much all i could of the cathedral, i then called sven and told him i was on my way. he lived not too far from the center, but still, finding my way was a bit of an obstacle, with all the busy traffic. so as i was riding along, i did pass another oldish building attached to a wall that could have belonged to old city walls, and right at the end of the road was a very tall modern business building, overlooking a human made pond, so yeah, cologne was very much an integrated mix of old and new! when i finally got to svens street i had trouble finding his place because say his address was 67, the apts went 65, then next to it was 69! so i was just about to call him when some boy walking down the street comes up to me and says "are you looking for sven?" and i am thinking to myself, ok i know i havent seen him in 3 years, but surely this cant be him, he is nothing like i remember!! so i say yes and he says to follow him and he takes me to a little back passageway inbetween 65 and 69 and lo and behold, there was svens place, very well hidden! ok theres lots more to tell about carnival but i will have to continue sometime soon, i hope!

Need to avoid single old men hosts..

So anyway, this host whose name has slipped my memory takes me out for Greek food. He apparently goes there a lot so the owner knew him, so they were talking in German about how I'm a couchsurfer and im cycling around and yada yada. Host told Greek guy that I'm originally from new York so he asked what my background was so I said Italian, so the guy asked if I speak Italian (in Italian) and I said no so then he asked hablo español and I said un poquito and then he asked if I spoke German, then French in their respective languages and I said no to both lol. While we were waiting for the food, host told me he messaged dirk from arnhem, asking if I was trustworthy to host. He said I was no problem. But I thought it was strange he picked dirk out of my references since I had more recent ones than him, but maybe he saw another old man living alone and thought he would be the best to confide in. I thought it was a bit weird that he told me he "did a background check" on me. Not that I don't blame him, I am a stranger after all, but why tell me? Lol So when dinner came out we took it to go and ate it in his filthy kitchen. Then he started telling me stories about how he used to cycle tour in the 70s and 80s in days before cell phones and gps and couchsurfing. So he said sometimes people would notice he was touring so they would talk to him while he was on the bike and offer him a place to stay, so he would accept. But he told me this story about when he was in France he was waiting at a red light and a man in a car pulled up next to him and asked if he was touring and he said yes and the guy asked if he had somewhere to stay for the night but host said no, so the French guy offered him to stay with him for the night. He went back to Frenchies place and the guy kept offering him beer. My host said no but accepted coffee. The next thing he knew, he woke up the next morning at the train station with all his stuff and with a sore dick!! So obviously that French guy drugged him, had his way with him and dumped him.! People are Freaking outrageous. Well at least he didn't kill him, and he left him with his bike and stuff. So he was a considerate asshole. He told me more stories about his cycling travels when he was younger, it made me really appreciate these hosting network websites!! So after dinner I had a shower. I first had to remove the suitcase that was sitting in the bathtub! And the showerhead had no hook to put it on to, to stay put, so I had to use it detached, and there was no shower curtain, so yeah, water got all over the floor! So after the shower,I used one of his many computers in such a small space to look up directions for tomorrow. There was a route that followed a railway track nearly the whole way to cologne but he warned me that sometimes those tracks aren't paved. But I decided I would risk it! Then I put the finishing touches to my costume, which entailed cutting the black fabric to go around the aluminum foil to look like a tail. Then  after chatting some more I got into his daughters bed and tried to go to sleep but because it was actually all one room, with just a curtain separating the "girls room" from his room, he kept asking me questions, and played computer games loudly. So I ended up going to bed late, but at least I was warm in a comfortable bed!

Day 1 of carnival: uneventful!

So I rode through aachen, my butt was so sore I started singing songs to myself about my butt hurting. And well düren wasn't too far from aachen, and it was flat too so that was grand. I stuck to the main roads, didn't follow the few cycle signs I saw, passed through eschweiler and a few other Weilers, which is ironic cause these were decent sized cities and towns, yet I translated Weiler to mean hamlet. This is also when I wikied the dog breed rottweiler and sure enough, they originated in rottweil, Germany! So I had the carnival stuff on my handlebars and it was driving me nuts again, the bag was slowly deteriorating as it rubbed against the wheel! so nearly 30 km to birksdorf in north düren, and I arrived! Very quaint and quiet neighborhood. It was 5:55 pm, so just getting dark. I rode 44.99 mi, max 24.5, avg 7.4 and took 6:03 cycling time. My host was a middle aged man from warmshowers, who lived in an apt on his own. We put lance down in the basement, like how I had been doing with a lot of my dutch hosts. But when I walked into his apt, I was quite shocked! It was a complete mess! Shit was just everywhere!! I thought Omg, how could someone offer their place to guests, whether it be friends, family members, or strangers, and its like this, unnavigable! Well needless to say, his kitchen was in quite a state as well, so he suggested we go out for Greek fast food, in the area. He asked if I wanted to go to the town
Center for the carnival celebrations and I said no, I had the whole weekend to do that, and he said ok good cause he didn't really want to go either lol. Ok the dramatic story continues tomorrow!!

short entry tonight, just so i can feel accomplished!

thursday feb 16: mayke left to go to work before i woke up so we had our goodbyes the night before, even though i was going to see her in 2 days lol. so i cant remember if i wrote about this or not but when i was in amsterdam and went to the van gogh and rijksmuseum, i had lost my bike lock key (the original one) in the snow so this morning in maastricht i went to a key cutting shop and made a duplicate from the duplicate i had made in leicester. i was hoping it wasnt going to take days like how it did at timpsons cause that guy had to order in a special mould or some crap, but luckily it didnt, the guy cut the key and it works even better than the first duplicate i had made. then i went back to one of the karneval stores and bought some black fabric for my tail. the day before, before i went to the museum i went to aldi and bought some aluminum foil, but i only took a piece to make my tail out of and i gave the roll to mayke. so i didnt hang around maastricht too long because i didnt want to spend my first day in germany under a lot of stress from being lost or whatever other issues i may run into from being unfamiliar with the country. so i left maastricht at 10:34 am and followed the red and white bicycle route signs out of maastricht. they already had german town names on them so i followed them to the border. the first city i came to in germany was aachen, and this is where i ran into problems! First of all, ok it was flat, so that was good, but it was nowhere near as bike friendly as the Netherlands. They did have similar red and white cycle signs so that was good, and actually the mile markers were accurate to the nearest tenth of a mile so that was good too, cause it always drove me crazy in the Netherlands when they rounded to the nearest whole number so it would say 15 km, then 14, then somehow 15 again! But yeah once I arrived in aachen, I just tried to follow the road since I didn't have any cycling atlas. But I didn't know which color on the road signs were for the highway (things to remember In order to be more organized next time!) So I kept checking Google maps but I read it wrong so I circled around this strip of the main road a few times. One thing I did notice was some of the billboards (shops too) were in English, esp Marlboro. And I thought at first it was an advertisement for smoking but I thought oh no that can't be. I'll come back to that later (if I remember). So yeah I finally figured out which way to go and then I was back on track, although I had to now ride in the street. So as I was riding through the center (and its the afternoon) I saw a lot of people in karneval costumes! I thought, damn its only Thursday, everyone is starting early! Don't they have jobs?? as I got more into the center I saw a huge gathering for some type of street party. There I was riding along with my costume on my handle bars (which was real irritating, between getting blown in the wind and rubbing up against my wheel!), I so badly wanted to join them! So I didn't stop anywhere to sight see in aachen, just passed through. I did see though on a sculpture of a life size person in front of an important building, someone put a "Man in the iron mask" type paper mask over the statue, which I found very entertaining. ok ill have you leave you hanging with suspense here cause i am too sleepy to continue!

sydney reunion in maastricht =)

feb 15: so mayke left early in the morning to go to a job interview in the hague, so i did a walking tour that i had purchased from the tourist info the day before (right before i met up with mayke). So it took me to basically the same sights, it just told me more history than what mayke did. although it didnt take me to the old mill, so that was quite a nice hidden gem! i went to more of the city walls that mayke didnt take me to, and i went inside st servaas basiliek church which was quite pretty with its flying buttresses and everything. the church adjacent, saint janskerk, has a red tower so i wanted to go to the top but the door wasnt open even though i was visiting during their so called opening hours. so after wandering around, taking pics of all the churches and the roman remains and the bridges (sint servaasbrug is the oldest bridge in the netherlands!), and parks, i decided to go to a museum, so i tried Museum aan het Vrijthof, which was housed in a 16th century spanish government buiding. it told of the local history, but i couldnt go cause there was construction work going on on the building. so i went over the Maas river and went to the Bonnefanten Museum. it was a mixture of contemporary and old dutch master art. some of the contemporary stuff was a bit bland, but they had a special exhibition on japanese prints, and those were quite cool. and surprisingly, it was in english (the museum texs, not the prints themselves). so after going round the whole museum, i wandered around that side of maastricht for a short while, and then went back to maykes area. she lived right near the basilica of our lady which had a treasury, so i thought id pop in there real quick. when i entered the church it was reallll dark, as if lit by a few candles! and there was a sign in the corner that said pay E1 for entry beyond this point, but there was no one to collect the money and the door was open so i just went in. the treasury was there as well but it was closed off, so i just admired some of the old religious paintings and left. i asked someone in the church if the treasury was closed and he said in bad english that it was closed for the season, so that was a bit annoying. so then i went back to maykes and she was home from the interview. she said it went well but she was upfront with the boss about her potentially going to brazil so the woman told her to go and enjoy brazil and to give them a call when she comes back and she will practically have the job waiting for her. i hope she meant that and was just not saying it! so then we cooked and ate together and i looked up my directions for the following day. this was going to be my first day in germany so i was a bit nervous again, esp since i didnt know what the roads were going to be like in terms of cycle lanes, and cycle routes. but mayke told me that this part of germany is pretty flat and has lots of cycle signs, although not as much as in the netherlands. i was heading to düren in germany because it was in the middle between maastricht and cologne, but closer to cologne because i didnt want to arrive in cologne too late since i needed to get my party on for karneval!! and so i realized when i was looking up directions, that because we dont have umlauts in the english language, we change the names of places (and we change the names of places that dont have umlauts as well). cause i was on the US google maps looking for düren and nothing was coming up until i realized that in english its deuren. how annoying is that!? so anyway after i looked up directions, i skyped with mike so mayke could see him and then she studied her spanish. they had a mini competition, who knew the most languages. mayke won with 5 that she is basically fluent in. i said i am only fluent in english, but i know the bad words in lots of other languages =) but that wasnt good enough lol. but after the skype sesh mayke and i went to bed pretty early cause she had to go to work in the morning and i wanted to possibly go to the fort sint pieter which was a bit outside of town, since there were no casemates tours going on while i was there. 

What a great Valentines day present :-)

So mayke showed me the usual stuff, the churches, the market sq which had a pretty town hall and a statue of Jan pieter minckeleers who was a native that invented gaslight. So there is a flame in his hand that is always lit, even when its snowing! And mayke told me this story like some students tried to put it out and they were badly punished by the university. I forgot the whole story but it was something along those lines! So we went to the old city fortifications from Roman times, the helpoort, the city gate from the 13th century and the oldest in the Netherlands apparently. Then she showed me where the natural history museum was and we walked along some tree lined avenue which was a bit scenic. Maastricht, like most dutch cities, had lots of sculptures on the streets, so I took a pic of me on a donkey. She also showed me a fancy hotel which had like Roman remains in it, and a bookstore which used to be a church! so the ceiling and paintings on the wall were not like your average Barnes and noble! We also went across the bridge to the more modern part, which had a museum, an aldi and a building where I think the eu was born, as the official date the eu started was written on a brick in the ground. Then she showed me an old water mill, which was like a little secret cause it was on a small street and probably not very well known so that was quite cool. So yeah all the while we were walking around checking out the sights, we also went to 3 karneval shops. I wanted to buy demon wings, a devil tail and horns, and some type of black and seductive outfit to wear. So I got the wings and horns no problem from the first store, but couldn't find a tail so I decided I will make one out of fabric wrapped around aluminum foil. Then we went to a cheap clothing store and there I bought some black velvet pants, and a corset type top, so with that my costume was nearly completed. Mayke also showed me the university campus, who recycled some old the old cloisters and buildings around town and now they house a few faculties. and she also pointed out a typical person from maastricht, which was an older woman all dolled up in a leopard print outfit and hat, walking her fancy dog. I guess a lot of rich, snoody people live in maastricht!? And We also went to HEMA so I could try tompouce, super yummy! And we went food shopping after all the sightseeing and karneval shopping. I felt like we were married!! And we decided to go out for dinner this night so we went into a restaurant near campus that is cheap and popular with students, so we could make reservations for the night, but it was all booked, probably because it was Valentines day! So we went to a nearby pub and tried there. When we walked in, mayke goes "oh look who's here" and we go over to a group of people and one of them comes over to me and says "oh hi michele, how have you been!?" And I'm thinking who is this guy, he looks like someone who I met at NU but obviously this isn't him! So I just played cool like I knew who he was and I just assumed he was her brother anyway, and I was right, so awkwardness diverted there! But mayke and I made the reservation and stayed and talked with them for a little bit and then left. I said, "you're brother was skinnier when I met him in Sydney", hoping she wouldn't take offense, and she said "yeah he got fat from too much beer drinking!" So she agreed lol and then after we saw all of maastricht we went back to hers for a bit and I showered, and then in a few hours time we went back to the pub and continued to catch up. So she had gone to Mexico for her studies, I forget how long but maybe a year. And she really liked it out there, so I think that's where she got the idea to then go work in Brazil (even though they speak Portuguese and not Spanish) . And at the moment she is doing a masters in some topic relating to management and helping humans in developing areas so that's quite nice. And she works part time in one of the offices at the university, so she is quite busy! She told me I hadn't chAnged much, in looks or personality. She said carmen changed in personality but not looks and I agreed there lol. She also told me she will see andre and Connie in dusseldorf at Andy and sophies at the end of march. I got a bit jealous cause they see each other regularly, but its so hard for me to see them since I live so far away! Damn that Atlantic, why does it have to be so big!? also i had mentioned something about the lady she lived with in sydney and she said she didnt like her, and i knew she didnt like her in sydney but i forgot the reason so i asked her again and she said she wasnt very friendly and probably didnt like the idea of her coming home late from partying, and she was like acting like a mother figure, saying "oh dont you ever study?" so i think that got on maykes nerves. and she told me that she said to mayke after she met me for 10 minutes that i was a typical new yorker! not quite sure what she meant by that because if she ever did meet some other new yorkers she would know i clearly deviate from the mean, but i was in fact dressing up and painting myself green to go to a party as the statue of liberty when she met me, so maybe that had something to do with it ;) so After dinner we went to a bar and had some drinks. I was happy no one was smoking inside like in Amsterdam. She told me this story of when she went driving around australia with andre and Connie in the campervan, they had parked in a caravan type park one night and she managed to lock the keys inside the car! Andre and Connie were nice about it, but not happy!! So they tried to pick the lock to get the door open and to break the windows but they were pretty secure so both methods didn't work. then they started asking other campervan drivers in the park if they could borrow their keys to see if it would open their door, and they had several of them but none worked, so they were going to go up but they asked this one last person and it worked! So they were relieved but also a bit weirded out that some campervan keys work on multiple vehicles! Kinda makes me not want to rent one when I go back! She also told me that when she was in Mexico she was telling her friends how she wasn't religious and how she believes in evolution and they all laughed at her, saying how could you actually Think we evolved from monkeys!? So clearly science isnt a fundamental subject taught in Mexican schools..what a shame! So anyway we stayed there for a bit but went to her place. when we were getting ready for bed mayke was explaining the raunchyness of carnival. she said that there is a lot of cheating going on and drama. she said the percentage of people from eindhoven who cheat on their partners is 25% whereas in maastricht, its only like 14% or something. and i just remembered that when i was at patrick and anne marie's, patrick told me some crazy stat that in july there are more babies born in germany than any other month, and thats because of all the debauchery that goes on during oktoberfet! i cant remember the exact figure but something involving 80% lol.but anyway, so mayke and i went to bed cause she had work in the morning! 

short but sweet visit to belgium, until i return in a few weeks time!

so more about patrick and anne marie: he said he would really like to visit NY, their daughter went on exchange to the US. i forget where, but i think it was somewhere in like tennessee. she studies psychology although she doesnt want to work with it (dont we all). she is really into music, hence why she went to tennessee and i think she visited new orleans too. she wants to be a producer or something, and patrick told me that she is "in" with like a celebrity crowd and goes to VIP parties or whatever. she went to the birthday party of some jeans designer. yeah i wasnt all that impressed, i could give a crap about that stuff! but he had never been to the US so i said I would show him around. Anne marie wasnt fond of long distance traveling so she said she wouldnt go =( and then i said i was studying in england and patrick took out a map and said he wanted to do some traveling there so he was asking my advice on places to visit. i said manchester and liverpool were nice. and he asked about birmingham and i said he could miss that one! oh and they also know some famous tennis player, named kim K... who was like the best in the world a few years ago, but we checked the rankings this night and she was like 33rd. and anne marie was telling me that kims dad died a few years ago from cancer and her mom has a new boyfriend now but kim doesnt like him and her mom had cancer too, so i think she is on disability so she doesnt work or at least not that often, and kim is a multi billionaire and so she told her mom, if you leave that man i will give you all the money in the world. but until then, you get nothing. and her mom has chosen to stay with him and remain poor. but she is quite broken hearted because she is torn between choosing her daughters respect and staying with the man she loves! i only found that story interesting because you hear about celebrities all the time in the news and see their faces on tv or whatnot, but we forget that they are human beings just like normal everyday people, so some of them can be sweet and kind hearted, and some can be pricks. and clearly kim in the latter. oh and just as we had the news on, there was a story about a pedophile, and i immediately thought, "wow, maybe what joost said about all the pedophiles in belgium was true!!" or maybe just an eerie coincidence lol. then we were talking about my trip so far and stuff. patrick is into cycling but not like long distance. so i asked him if i can take my bike on any ferries leaving belgium and he said zeebrugge possibly. and i also said how i will be riding through 3 countries in 2 days, and how that is unheard of in the US and he said you could ride through 3 countries in 1 day if you go from belgium, over that skinny part of the netherlands and into germany! crazy to think about!! so after some yummy dinner, i dont even know what it was, it had ham in it but i was too hungry to care, and some dessert, i showered and went to their daughters room. she works for some local music festival that is apparently a big thing every year, they have blues and rock bands, some of them internationally famous going there. so she had posters of the festival. she also hung on her wall, post cards and collectibles from all the places she visited in the world, which gave me a nice idea =) so then i went downstairs and patrick let me use the computer to look up directions to maastricht. i was hoping to write in my blog but the keyboard was so different i was typing really slow, so i thought it might be easier for me to use my phone instead! and i was tired anyway, so i pretty much went to bed right after.
tuesday feb 14: valentines day!! so i had plans to stay with mayke for 3 days and then meet her up in cologne for the carnival weekend. so anne marie had already left for work but she left me a good bye note =) so patrick and i had breakfast together. i set off a bit early because mayke got out of class at like 1:30 pm so i didnt want her waiting around for me. the night before annie marie told me to get to maastricht it was easy,  i follow the canal that i had taken for a short while that night, the whole way into maastricht. but there were parts that i needed to cross over bridges and continue on the other side so she showed me a cycling map of the region with the flemish cycle network, which looked exactly like the dutch one. so it looked very straight forward. so after breakfast patrick and i got lance out of the shed, and i forgot to mention but my screw where my rack fits into my fork fell out the day before, so for most of the ride the rack was rattling a bit. so patrick saw and he said he had a workshop on his farm, which was just a few meters down the road, so he could find a new screw for me. so we were riding together and he pointed out the houses of his neighbors, and the majority of them were dutch. he said a lot of dutch people move to the flemish part of belgium, esp his area cause its so close to the border, because in the netherlands there are strict rules on building houses, and what it can look like, so those that want to build a house in their own style just move to belgium lol so we went to his farm and within a few minutes he found a screw that fit the hole in the fork so i was really happy about that. and what he actually does for living is runs a poultry farm. i dont know the details but apparently he receives chicks (his exact words were the chicks come from the machines then onto his place.. that made me a bit worried!!) and then he raises the chicks until they are old enough and then sells them off to the butcher or wherever. he didnt actually tell me where he sends them off to, but i can imagine. so he said oh i just received some chicks yesterday, would you like to see? so we went into the coop(???) and wow was it warm in there! and as soon as he opened the door, 1 million 1 day old baby chicks starting chirping away and running towards the other side of the room. they were soo cute!!! but he lets them roam around, so they arent like caged or anything so that was a relief to hear! but then i was off, and he came with for a short while. we rode along the canal and he pointed out more houses (really big and nice ones too!) owned by dutch people, and then he left me and i continued on my way. i had only been going a few minutes when i hear someone calling my name from behind and i turn around and its patrick! and he came back to say that he forgot to tell me that the first bridge i come to i need to cross over cause the bike trail on my side will soon vanish! so that was real nice of him to come back and tell me and i was sure glad he did because i saw from the bridge that the path turned to dirt, and if i hadnt known any better i may have just continued to follow it thinking it was the cycle network!! so going to maastricht was real easy from there, i just followed the canal the whole way. it was nice weather so that made it a pleasant trip. there was one point where the canal split so i had to go on another bridge and cross over to the other side to follow the correct canal. so i was riding along and there were these snow geese alongside the bike path, and as i was about to turn the corner to go up the bridge, one charged at me, with wings flailing and beak open! i lifted my leg as i rode by cause otherwise i was afraid it was going to bite my foot off! so i crossed over to the other side because there was an industrial estate on the side i was on, and then rode down further and came to the fork in the canal and actually i missed the other bridge to take me to the canal on the left, which was what i needed to follow so i thought oh if i follow the one on the right maybe there will be a bridge soon enough to take me over and i can get back to the one on the left and follow that one, but there were a lot of trees in my way so i couldnt see very far, so i decided to turn back around, and go to the last bridge i past under and take that. good thing i did that, cause it wasnt long before i came to a bridge and i crossed it and then made my way following the left handed canal, but this path was through some woodland which was quite nice. i followed that all the way to the border town of  smeermaas, which looked a bit pretty cause it was on a hill and the canal cut right through it. I didnt spend any time there cause i was running late with my plan to meet mayke. but i did get a bit confused cause i didnt know whether to continue following the canal or not, cause the canal path turned into like a towpath which was unsuitable for a bike, so i took the streets, saw the netherlands border sign, and continued on the road until i got to the center of maastricht. i arrived at the markt place and was amazed by the town hall so i instantly took a pic. then i asked someone where the tourist info was and this was the first time i came across someone who was not old (aka middle aged) and didnt know english too well. but he figured out what i was saying and managed to give me decent directions. so i got there and bought a little walking tour and then called mayke and she said she was at home so i went to her place which was very central so quite convenient! so it was great to see her again, she looked the same except with longer hair. so we simultaneously caught up on each others lives, while going shopping for my carneval costume, while she gave me the tour of maastricht!

2 50+ mi bike rides in 3 days, tour de France brace yourself!!

Sunday Feb 12: so yeah woke up at like 7 am and had breakfast with dirk. He put on the radio, which was in dutch of course but he told me that Whitney Houston had been found dead in her hotel room that morning (or maybe last night considering it was in the US) so that was a bit of a shocker. So then the radio played some songs by her, of course. But we ate kinda quickly, and because my water bottle had been freezing the past few days, I came up with this ingenious idea to boil water and then pour it into the bottle. Then I said my thank yous and good bye and then I was off by 8:30 am. I rode quick around the center of arnhem but obviously nothing was open given the time and day. So I just saw the main outer ring road which had one way lanes and in the middle was a grassy area with fountains, and there were several of these fountains in a row so I thought, hey that's quite pretty, wasn't expecting that from a small town lol. Then I rode around the shopping area and center but then headed off. I was doing well with not getting lost and then I saw some train tracks that I followed which brought me to nijmegen, so I rode around that center for a bit. Apparently this is the oldest city in the Netherlands! It was nearly 11 am so the town was just waking up, but still not a lot of people on the streets and the maps were a bit awful so I got lost trying to find a museum to go to, but I eventually found the pedestrian directional signs so I just followed it till I got somewhere lol. I ended up at the valkoff museum which has archeological stuff and old and contemporary paintings. So they had lots of Roman artifacts, and even pre history finds and a reconstruction of a tribal hut and stuff. Not a lot was in English though, just a select few, but I knew what a lot of things were, like the religious treasury stuff, the dull protestant section and the decorative catholic one, but like with the paintings, a lot of them were from the golden age and of local landscapes so it would have been nice to read about them. Then they had 60s pop art and featured Andy Warhol among others, it was saying how american artists really paved the way during that time and had an influence on English artists as well as other European ones. There also was an exhibit, in English, that compared the Roman community in nijmegen to todays life. Like for instance, they explained how Romans traveled across the land and then compared it to using a gps system in a car today. So it was a bit for kids but a cute idea, and they also had archeological finds in each section as well (the permanent collection also had a bunch of Roman stuff but not much had English labels). So I left the museum at 1 pm and quickly went to the adjacent park which had some castle ruins (barbarossa ruins) and continued on my way to eindhoven. Unfortunately I didn't recall which way I came from and thus which way to go back to following the signs. So I pretty much circled the town over and over again for a while. I then saw a sign with "fietsplat" on it so I thought it was telling me this is the way to the bicycle lanes so I follow it until I discovered that sign meant "bicycle parking". So what a stupid waste of time that was. Then I found the outer ring road but I used Google maps to just point me in the right direction, but it was a real confusing intersection, with lots of turn offs, so I kept choosing the wrong one. Well by process of elimination I finally found the right road to follow, so I followed it to grave (which I actually saw signs for earlier but for some reason, didn't follow them!) So yeah after leaving the nijmegen area I did ok with deciding which routes to follow. I mainly went through towns and stuff (uden, veghel etc), in the bike lanes along busy roads, so that sucked a bit, but at least it was straightforward. After riding for a while i finally saw signs for eindhoven, which was farther than I thought, so I was a bit annoyed cause it was cold and dark by then. By the way every time i drank from my water bottle it tasted like plastic! So yeah, not exactly appetizing! Once I got to the area of eindhoven, traffic picked up quite a lot. It was actually a bigger area than I thought! My hosts lived in the center, which was convenient for exploring the next day but the whole time I kept thinking, am I there yet lol. When I really got close to the main center area, I saw this artwork of a giant bowling ball and bowling pins, in the middle of a busy intersection. Ive seen plenty of roundabouts with art in the middle of them, but this was by far the strangest! But anyway i found the building easily and then arrived, 7:50 pm after riding 57.98 (a new personal record for me!) max 20.5 avg 7.3. My hosts were 2 boys similar to my age, joost (dutch) and Chris (English, from London). Joost was going to be attending a star wars party soon and he never really seen the movies so he was trying to do a movie marathon to become knowledgable with the story, but he was only on episode 4 when I arrived (and that was what he started with, not ep 1) and it wasn't holding his attention lol. So they had eaten but they said i could eat whatever i wanted, but they had a very studentesque kitchen. Only cup noodles and cookies! But I ate literally one of everything. I just went through whatever they had! Well not at first but they were really laid back and I could see they really didn't mind what I ate, and their lives consist of hosting couchsurfing guests (their wifi password was csparadise!), so once i saw it was okay, I went for it! I even ate a slice of cooking sugar, just cause I thought it was candy lol but when I put it in my mouth and it was rock hard I asked joost what it was and he said for cooking with, not eating!! Then Chris invited another couchsurfer who apparently sent him a message asking to stay the night but he didn't respond in time so she booked a hotel which she couldnt cancel, so he said well then at least come hang out with us. So she came by and brought cheesecake cause there was some bday party of her friend she went to and made this cake so she brought the left overs cause she was flying back to Romania the next morning and couldn't bring that on the plane. So Score for me, I ate nearly the whole thing!! So the 4 of us talked for several hours, joost said they get a lot of requests because the eindhoven airport has cheap European flights, so they literally host people every few days but usually just for the night. I really liked joost and Chris, they were fun to talk to, and they kept teasing me about eating so much cause I really was just nonstop all night long! Joost told me about how the Phillips company is originally from eindhoven (and all this time I thought they were American!) And he said the old factory is now a museum which is across the street from them although currently under renovation. I told them my tentative plans for the rest of my trip through mainland Europe and joost told me that Luxembourg had a lot of scary hills! Then i asked "are there a lot of cyclepaths in Belgium?" And then he started telling me stories about child molestors from Belgium and other crazy people he heard about on the news but then he asked "why do you want to know about psychopaths in Belgium!?!" And I said "not psychopaths, CYCLEpaths!!" Lmao. And with the Romanian girl we had a long discussion about the cold war, they told me the history behind it and how Europeans were treated when the countries were more communistic and stuff. Then we talked about the space race and she asked me if I knew the name of the first person in space and I said no and she said most Americans would say Neil Armstrong, even though he was only the first person to land on the moon. She was saying that Americans don't know that Russian guy, I forgot his name, who was the first person in space cause we weren't taught it, we were always drilled with neil Armstrong and buzz aldrin because of the rivalry America had with Russia about sending people to space. And i said I bet most Russians don't know who Neil Armstrong is either! So we talked about recent European history with wars and stuff. I really didn't know anything about that type of stuff so it was good to hear! A few hours and lots of cake and cookies later, the girl left and I started getting ready for bed. I was hoping to see Walter actually cause he lives in tillburg which is close enough but I arrived too late and then he had work the next morning, so that didn't end up ever happening :-( I asked joost if I could make pancakes in the morning and he said yes, but I had to wake up early cause he needed to be at work at 8 am. So I packed my bag and talked with Chris a bit more who was going to be up late writing a report for work, and then went to bed!
Monday Feb 13: so joost came and woke me up at 7:15 ish cause I told him I would only need like 10 min to make the pancakes. I forgot that pancakes in this part of the world are actually crepes so I asked if he had baking powder and he said no only baking soda. So I threw that in the mix but the batter was very thick, so I just kept adding water till it got more liquidy, but it was taking a lot of time so I was rushing to get them cooked. So as a result, some came out burnt, undercooked and ok (although this was the least amount of them!) And joost ended up being late for work! So I felt bad but he didn't get fired lol. And Chris left for work too so I was alone but I didn't go back to sleep, I cleaned everything in the kitchen. Then I left and went to the tourist info and of course got a little walking tour of the area. There were 2, the old town and one all about Phillips. So I did the old town first. I walked along the "longest st in the Netherlands" which is the nightlife scene. I know the streets in the Netherlands are short but this one wasn't really long, I think maybe the leaflet meant in a city/town and not like a main road connecting cities. Well I walked around for a bit, there was a nice little river by a convent in a park that still had some snow and ice. This led to the canal and busy roads. The core of eindhoven didn't have anything too spectacular to see, and I got lost on the grand berg and klein berg streets, but found my way back to the old center. Also saw some old churches (duh) and a mosque, I think it was pretty recent though. So after walking around and seeing the museums (from outside) and the historic builidings, I then did the Phillips tour, which took me to the big modern buildings, the old factory by Chris and joost, and some other stuff. I had wanted to Leave kinda quick,  cause I was spending my first night in Belgium and I wasn't familiar with the signs, roads, lines etc. And the Phillips tour didn't last very long so I was able to leave at a normal(ish) time. Oh I also learnt that those giant bowling pins and ball were contemporary art by a local. So I forget but I Think it was around 2:30 pm that I left. Leaving eindhoven was not much of an issue I followed Google maps instead of the cycle signs since I was cutting through Belgium. I made better time than I imagined because riding through Belgium was a piece of cake! The Belgium border sign wasn't as elaborate as I thought it would be, definitely not like the welcome to the fabulous las Vegas sign! The land was flat and there were cycle lanes following the main road, so that put all my worries at Ease. There were no red bicycle direction signs like in the Netherlands though, so I just followed the main road, which wasn't busy at all anyway. I literally just kept going straight on it, and only getting a little turned around in one town, but quickly found my way. I had a slight panic attack cause I thought I lost my phone but I had just put it in my coat pocket and not my pants one as usual lol. and after all that time i spent in the netherlands, i saw no roadkill, and my first few hours in belgium, i saw one. too bad it was somebodys cat! but yeah to sum up the netherlands: i really enjoyed the people, they were friendly, and so open minded and forward thinking. the landscape got a bit monotonous being polder field and canal/river the whole time and no mountains, but i shouldnt really complain about that! plus the water was always nice to see (until it got frozen) because it always had waterfowl in it. but that really did it for the wildlife, but i guess i didnt go at the best time of year! although there just isnt really a lot of natural land left, at least on the holland side of the country. and the cycle paths and network was really good, although not perfect, but still better than anything the US or UK can devise. but i really enjoyed myself! So my hosts lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere! It was a village called neeroeteren in the masseik region, closer to maastricht than eindhoven. I followed a canal until it got dark and they lived on the other side of it, a few blocks in. So I didn't know exactly where a bridge was (and it was esp hard to see in the dark) but when I checked the map it said I was just past their place so i turned around and found a bridge, crossed over and then made my way to theirs. so my hosts were a nice couple named patrick and anne marie. they had a 20 year old son but he didnt speak english so they had to translate for him (usually its the other way around lol). they have a daughter who is my age and she likes to travel but she wasnt at home cause she is at university so i stayed in her room. but she is the one who introduced them to couchsurfing, and patrick likes to travel so he was open to the idea. anne marie was too, as a host, but she only likes to visit spain where they have a house there. but i arrived at 6:15 pm, rode 31.46 mi, max 17.4, avg 7.5 and my time was 4:09 on the bike. and this is to be continued as I am now falling asleep!