The Trains

so today was the big move from the mainland out to England, for the most part it has gone well. I got my ticket in the morning and while the train was somewaht consufung and I made it on. I had a 2 hour layover in Brussels where I had a sandwich and a cup of coco. After that I hopped onto the second train from Brussels to London and was happy to find myself in a city where I felt equally lost as the others mbut could count on people to be speaking my language. At this point I did not know how I was meeting my contact in London. So at Waterloo station I asked where I could find a Cyber cafe and went in to find that the Email said if I arrived at Waterloo before 5:30 I should try and make it to New Maldan (the place I will be staying if you could not guess). So I hopped ona train that would get me there and I arrived 10 minutes too late since my host had to go to work. After that I made my way to the cyber cafe I am currently at and I am hoping to pass a little time before grabbing some dinner and meeting with my host at around 7:30 when she gets back from work.
It seems that I have really bad luck with trains and what not, I allways seem to manage to miss the train or not know where to go, like I said earlier its relief when you know everyone around you speaks the language you do. I really cant wait to get lost in somewhere like spain or Greece where I dont know ANYTHING about the language. Anyway I;m signing off for now but I will update later with how the meeting goes.

Wanderings

Well another day down, today I had intended to visit two locations somewhat near each other, the amsterdam history museum and the jewish history museum. Well I made it to one of the things, I made it to the amsterdam history museum which was surprisingly cheap (5E) and went about my buisness. The museum was pretty informative and efinitly had some very interesting pieces both that seemed to pertain to the histroy of the city and some that were less so. Also I cant remember if I put this in any blog post so its going in this one, apologies if this is a repeat. I have really stared to notice that most of the museums I have visited in Europe have the oddest pahways, you will very often find yourself going the wrong way through an exibit and even when you know youre going the right way its this kind of nagging feeling your doing it wrong.
So back to the point, after the museum which was kinda loud I made my way to the jewish histroy museum where I found another large group of kids ready to go into that museum, feeling that I just could just take it any longer I passed right by teh museum and continued my enjoyable walk through the city, losing myself among the streets before returning to a small grocery store and buying food for lunch and dinner. overall the walking took around 2 hours and that was pretty much my whole day.

Today and Yesterday

So I ahve a blog for today but unfortunaly the iternet at the hostel where I am staying is down (normaly it would be free), so I am going to blog todays events(froma cyber cafe) and then post up the blog I wrote yesterday when I get the chance (proably the 30)
So today was good for the most part, I visited two museums, the plan had been to go to the museum area of town since it was pretty far away and then visit teh two museums that I wanted to see there then abandon that area for the rest of my time in Amsterdam. My plan hit a snag when I found that the larger of the two museums was closed for remodling. Instead I went to museum number two, the Vicent van Gogh museum. It really chronicaled van Goghs life through his works, how he started and moved through what was really his best period and then began to wane before killing hiself. After the first museum I went and grabbed a quick lunch from a nearby store where I got 3 bananas,a 1.5 liter coke and cheese and meat for like 6 Euros. After the impromptu lunch I made my way to the Hash Museum which is what you would expect it too be, not quite worth te money you pay to get in if you ask me. Thats pretty much todays happenings, im writing this around 4 so I'm planning on reading some more then grabbing soem dinner and then back to reading. Tomorrows my last full day in Amsterdam and I am planning on visiting another museum or two and maybe a church as well.
I do have plans to use cyber cafe again tomorrow since it is my line of communication with the nxet leg of my trip but something could happe, anyway I do PLAN on blogging tomorrow but thats not a garuntee, the next blog should come at the latest by the 31st and moe likly tomorrow or the 30th.

Photo

Hey so a little extra here is the postcard of my favourite photo, it looks better in the museum and the photos also no the best.

Rotterdam Museums

So today was really my exploration day for me in Rotterdam, first I had a nice breakfast at the hostel which was great and I felt good even though they had music beating way into the night (dont get me wrong it was way better then the last place which was oppressivly quiet, it had a god atmosphere). After that I headed out to the Maritime Museum where they had a cool exhibit about how both the sipping industry and sailing industry have evolved as well as the evolution of Rotterdam as a port city, how it went from a strong port city and then began to dwindle after sand bars egan to form and then they created a channel to solve the problem. It really struck me how the Dutch people thought, when they had this problem of nature basically creating a wall of sand instead of giving in and letting the town sort of devolve they said "no well just move the giant sandbars and control the ocean.
Anyway after that I headed down to a art museum in the down town area along the museum park area which is just what it sounds like, a park with three or four museums along the length of the park. Anyway I visited the biggest art museum and I got a pleasant surprise, since I was 18 I got in for FREE, a very good price for a traveller on a budget. Anyway I explored that for another 3 hours or so, they had paintings, drawings, and prints ranging from the early renaissance through modern times, they also had some modern art things containing both older things like glass and silver cook and dish ware and moving all the way up to things like TVs and toasters. After the museum I had a nice coke and brownie in the small cafe at the museum and I picked up a post card for a really cool idea I had. I want to get postcards at all the places U visit and then when I get home I plan on glueing them to a piece of poster paper around the name of the country and maybe city they are from. Hopefully it will be a sort of overview of the sights I saw on my trip.

Anyway the day was good and I still need to go grab some dinner, tomorrow morning I plan on moving on to Amsterdam and then probably trying to visit the Ann Frank house after I arrive and then spend the next two days after that exploring Amsterdam.
I'm still working on getting all my photos up but here is a quick primer of a few of my photos.


One of the Canons from the museum ship at the maritime museum


My bed at the StayOkay Arnhem (the last place I stayed before Rotterdam)

Rotterdam

So I made my train after some help from the ticket agent and now I am in Rotterdam and staying at a wonderful little Hostel called the Room Hostel, its has themed rooms and has a great atmosphere, compared with the StayOkay hostel OI was just in this is wonderful. When I had first arrived there was a possibility that they were full up but I was told to come back in an hour so I walked around and found a little cafe and had a nice pizza and coke for lunch and then went back and the Hostel had an opening. Unfortunately all the places I planned on visiting close at 5 pm and it was already 3 so I just plan on kicking it at the Hostel and they are having a concert so I may go to that and they also have a happy hour around the same time. I also met a really cool guy at the last Hostel called Ben, he was a really cool dude and he originally came from SF (San Francisco) and he really travels a lot, he has been traveling for 2 months or so now and he had been all around the world. I was pretty surprised that he had even been to Mali, he had apparently came up from Africa to England before I met him in the Netherlands. He was really cool and apparently couch surfs a lot and really suggested it to me heartily.
Anyway tomorrow I'm gonna hit some of the museums around the area, mostly art and theres also a maritime museum.

Now a quick gripe at AAA
I brought along two travel books, well three but I had to send one home already not it seems I will be sending another back. The first book is really great, A Rough Guide to Europe on a Budget, it has been great for finding activities and for the most part useful at getting me to hostels. The second book is the AAA Travel book for Europe which I only brought along because my mom suggested it, turns out I was right. I have been recently trying to use it for cross reference to try and find any more activities I think I would enjoy. My first gripe is that it only lists several cities for each country (most likely done to keep the book smaller) and these are usually the I cities (for example London for Britain) and so far these have been somewhat incomplete as far as I am concerned. The book does not have Versailles for France nor does it have The Globe Theater for London. Anyway that book is probably going back to home soon.

The Last Few Days

So I haven't written anything for a while and i's really sorry since I said this would be a daily thing but anyway. Please excuse it if you notice anything that breaks the time-space continuum since its kind of blurring together in my head.

Roman Ruins-Day
So basically we all loaded into the car and we drove down to a set of roman ruins that were somewhat in the area. So we went down there and we looked around. There was a set of sort of pantheon like columns and after we walked around the area before going to the nearby museum that encompassed also an old roman bath along with descriptions in German and our hosts very thoughtfully translated the German for us. The remainder of the museum was about the area where the ruins where through time as well as some of the roman fashions, amour and such and currency and then moving into fashions as time moved on. After the museum we went back out and checked out the Colosseum they had built nearby. It was really cool and you could go inside and hear the echo and reverb as you spoke. It also seemed like the area for contenders was smaller when you were in the center of the area. It was really weird, after that we went back to the house.

Chilling-Day 2
Basically I chilled I the house for a day, I watched a lot of videos and planned some of my time and travel in The Netherlands.

Traveling-Day 3
This was when I hopped a train and split up with my aunt and uncle and left Sarah and Detlef's house and went into Arnhem, it's a small town near the the border with Germany. I basically got off the train and got kinda lost finding the train I needed to get on. Got on the right train and made it to the biggest landmark near my Youth hostel, a hospital and it was pretty easy to get to the hostel from there. Unfortunately it was 2ish and I only really had one thing planned and it required a full day so I ended up watching videos and reading at the hostel then going to bed early.
Also the StayOkay Hostels which tend to be the main hostels you find around the Netherlands are kind of bland and they don't really have anything super nice going on especially in the bedroom areas.

Going Biking-Day 4
So I got up around 8:30 and ate a nice breakfast (included in the hostels price) and by 9:30 I was out the door going to De Hoge VeLuwe National Park, basically its a really nice park where you pay 7 Euros or 14 for the park and museum. They had white bikes you could use for free so I grabbed one and biked for a few hours then went into the museum with a ton of cool paintings. They had a lot of Van Gogh's they said around 300. It was pretty amazing, they had two long halls of just Van Gogh's. I had a nice cup of hot chocolate and a piece of cake. Then I went back out and biked around for about another hour. Also I got lost both on the way to the park and on the way back. Since this was really the only thing I had to do around Arnhem I plan on moving on to Rotterdam next and then onto Amsterdam on either Saturday evening or more likely Sunday morning.

Also I am working on uploading photos right now so please bear with me, you should be able to see my 400ish photos soon

Thank Yous
So the whole Germany thing was really cool, I really need to send a BIG thank you to Sarah and Detlef for letting me stay in there house for so long, it was really enjoyable and they had a lovely house.
Also thank you to my aunt Carol and uncle Mike since they paid for me for the last week.

Guided Tours

So I missed a day or two so this blog is going to encompas two days of things.

Day 1
I started the day at my aunts friend sarahs house, she and her husband were kind enough to give us a tour of a somewhat nearby open air museum. The museum was of old houses and buildings from 1600-1800 that had been scheduled for demolition. This group had methodically taken apart the buildings and then transported them to the museum. Then they rebuilt the houses and whatnot at the museum and researched the history of the buildings before putting that history on little plaquerds in front of all the buildings. My favourite was either the windmill they had, the water mill for grinding grains (still fully functional too) or the old bakery they had.
After this we went out to a church, it was one of the oldest churches in the area, it was built around like 1200 or something. The church looked really cool, after exploring the church we went around the town looking in at some shops and walking around the small river in town. After that we went back to the house on the autobahn, we got up 220 kph.

Day 2
Me, my aunt and Sarah all hopped on a train together and went down to cologne to see the church in cologne. The church was really impressive with a ton of stained glass windows and a lot of reliquarys After the church we wandered down through the town looking for a set of ruins which when we found them were not very interesting. So we wandered down to the Rhine river where we walked along the banks until we found the chocolate museum. Sarah decided to stay out since she had already seen the museum so me and my aunt explored the chocolate museum for around 2 hours. At the end of the museum I finally bought my first beer in Germany. It was a chocolate beer that they sold at the gift shop. AFter meeting back up with Sarah we went back onto the train and went halfway back to Sarah's house where we stopped at Düsseldorf. WE had intended to go find and art exhibit in Düsseldorf but it turned out to be closed so we spent a good hour maybe more just wandering the town before return home.

Frankfurt

So last night I fell asleep like 6 maybe seven and I slept 12 hours round to 6 or seven in the morning. We had breakfast at the hostel which served a buffet style breakfast with fruit, meat, cheese, cereal, and drinks. The breakfast was actually better then I expected and after wards we went to a museum about the Jews that lived in Frankfurt, from the middle ages through the present with most of the stuff concentrated in the 1800-1900. It was pretty cool, they had lots of old documents, a couple Torahs and a ton of old menorahs including the place they came from, what they were made of and how old they were. The whole museum was in German so we had to read these booklets that had anywhere from a room to five rooms of information filling them and then we would go through the exhibit and see the pictures and what not. After that we went back and grabbed our bags we left at the hostel and went and got a train to Düsseldorf along with some sandwiches for lunch. After the train we arrived at carolyns(my aunt) friend's home where we were greeted by her son. After meeting with the son we went out to a nearby cafe and had coffee and Ice cream, I had an ice cream that was vanilla Ice cream with whipped cream and butterscotch topping with butterscotch pieces and maraschino cherries. After the ice cream we went back to the house and got a tour of the house and got to meet carolyns friend and we sat down and had a nice chat.

Planes and Airports

So I had to get up at 5:30 this morning to get to the airport with plenty of time to spare so there would be no chance of missing the plane and being in a bad situation, anyway I got to the airport and I spend around 25 minutes just hanging with my mom having a coffee so she could have some final time with me before I left the country for 2 months. So eventually its time for me to go through security and right after I go through the security I immediately manage to read my ticket wrong and ended up at the wrong gate. I was at the complete wrong side of the airport and it was like 5 minutes till my plane started to board. I'm still not quite sure how I managed to get lost in my home airport but I still made it to the plane and got there right as they started boarding my section. The plane trip itself wasn't that bad, there were several babies, seemed like 6 months maybe a year but they were mostly quite for the flight and even when they did start to cry I had my Ipod so I just cranked on some music and drowned them out. Flight didn't seem too long, I slept for maybe an hour and mostly just listened to music but I also read maybe 35 pages of my first book for the trip, Shantaram. So far I'm enjoying it, my mom suggested the book to me and its like 950 pages so it should keep me occupied for awhile. I have a 2 hour layover at Dulles so I'm just kicking it near my gate, might grab a bite to eat and I will write more when I get to Frankfurt.

P.S. I really could tell I was at the right gate since a lot of the people really look like mad German.

Mackenzie

Part 2: Frankfurt Airport

well I made it too the airport, my flight managed to get in like super early (I'm not sure about the actual numbers but I think it was like an hour early). Anyway my Aunt was supposed to meet me at the gate when I arrived but my plane beat hers in so I had to figure out her arrival time an now I'm waiting for like an hour until her flight gets a gate assigned, anyway figured it was a good time to blog about the plane trip. The overall trip was good except I fell asleep and no one woke me up for the meal service so I missed that, thankfully I had a ham and cheese sandwich in my bag so I ate that instead. The plane seemed to take forever (the planned time was around 8 hours I think), made me really think about how long a direct flight from Portland would have been (I think around 12 hours). Also the difference between economy, business and first class was huge, the dudes in first class had like giant bed like seats with tvs and remotes and all sort of goodies and I barely had room for my feet. They decided to put the electronics for the tvs under the window seats, they were packed inside of metal boxes that took up half of my foot space so plus my carry on I had almost no space, I had to put it next to my feet instead of underneath the seat in front so I could stretch a little.

Overall the flight was okay though, nice and quite, we arrived early and I was actually able to sleep.

Mackenzie

Part 3: Frankfurt

So me and my aunt had planed to meet at gates but as I said my plane got in early and I could not find the gate so I spent 2 hours moving around the various exits to the airport trying to find my aunt. After that I went onto plan B. I hopped on the train to Frankfurt, unfortunately I got on the train headed in the wrong direction and only realized after 3 stops. I had to hop out and immediately shift to a train going the back the other way. I eventually found my way into Frankfurt and was going to stay at a youth hostel, turns out there pretty hard to find without directions so I ended up wandering around Frankfurt for a good 45 minutes before finding a cyber cafe and finally being able to both email my aunt who said we would meet at a youth hostel and also get good directions to the youth hostel and thats pretty much what happened. We also ate a really good dinner at a restaurant near the hostel that served traditional Frankfurt food

Mackenzie