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!!