I went back to Munich this weekend to discover that it really is a very beautiful city. Will update later. Tomorrow night I am going to Florence via Zurich, which should be fun, but very tiring sadly.
Update hopefully tomorrow before I leave, if not, then next week.
Cheers,
Bryce
Gday,
I managed to pick up a free P-133 w/ 256MB RAM that uni was throwing out when cleaning out their basement. It is a SCSI machine with 2GB SCSI HDD and a 4x SCSI CDROM. Very low end machine, but it will be able to do text chat, email, website updates and general surfing. It also doesn’t have a monitor or a keyboard, but I am working on that. Further good news from this is that to have internet I have to get a phone in my room. I wasn’t gunna bother but now I have to.
I was very disappointed that I didn’t grab an old monitor and keyboard when they were throwing them out the day before, but I figured that a monitor and keyboard were useless without a PC and I wasn’t likely to be getting one because it was out of my budget. D’oh!
Bye,
Bryce.
My first stop in Paris was the Eiffel tower. As I got off the metro
(subway), I was walking down the street towards what I could see of the
tip of the Eiffel tower. I rounded a corner and looked up and there was
the Australian flag billowing out in front of me in front of the Eiffel
tower. I thought, ‘What the hell?’ and went to investigate. It happened
to be the Australian embassy, so I giggled and went back to take a photo.
I took a few shots of the Australian flag in the foreground and the Eiffel
tower in the background, so I really hope that they turn out well.
This tower is big, really stunningly big. It stands around 300m high and is the 2nd or 3rd biggest tower in the world. And with a 1.5 hour wait to get through the queues and a pricetag of about $20AUD it had better be good. Fortunately, it was. Paris had beautiful clear skies and all was very nice. There is a definate nip in the air at 300m above Paris though.
Next I metroed my way to Notre Dam. This place has a very plain front facade and was slightly boring inside. I was very disappointed until I went around to the side of the building. Notre Dam is very majestic from the sides and the rear, with those gargoyles singing and large flying buttresses. Fantastic, I was back to being undisappointed! Further to this, there was a lovely park at the back where there was an open-air classical guitar concert, which was very enjoyable. The French don’t have concrete pathways, just dirt. This makes for dirty, dusty shoes. I was on a tight timetable and I was very hungry, so I only stuck around for about half an hour, but I could have easily have stayed there for several. Oops, I didn’t run off for lunch (I have just consulted my notes - they say ‘Skipped lunch bcos too poor’. There you go, but I do remember I was very hungry).
I then headed off to Sainte Chappelle. This is a church that is very near to Notre Dam, and it was build to house the crown of thorns worn by Christ, and to show off the wealth of the King. It is absolutely gorgeous. About 80% of the walls are stained glass, and all of the windows tell the story of the bible. It would have been absolutely stunning at midday. Sadly, I got there in the late afternoon (about 7pm here, hence I was hungry - Sundown was about 8pm) and only saw one side lit up by the sun - impressive enough and very pretty. This building was partially destroyed and the relics destroyed, lost or scattered in the French Revolution because it was too closely associated with the upper class. It has been restored now, but I overheard someone sum it up nicely when they read that: ‘History has a lot to answer for’.
The Lourve was first the next day. The Lourve was enormous. People say you could walk around the Lourve for days and not see it all. I say that’s because half the exhibitions are closed! Even so, I still didn’t get to see it all. I did, however, miss out on half the Egyptology exhibit, which grated slightly when the entry fee and audio-CD-guide costed about $30AUD. Why does Paris have to be so expensive? I love Egyptology. If I ever get tired of being a computer nerd or a businessman, I think I’ll be an Egyptologist. The Mona Lisa was a lot smaller that I thought it would be, and I can’t tell the difference between original paintings and copies. The eyes, however, did follow me perfectly around the room. That was a bit creepy. I saw sculptures and paintings galore all day more of less.
Next was the Sacre Coure (Sacred Heart) church. What a beautiful church! It is situated right at the top of a hill overlooking Paris which you get to by either climbing stacks or stairs, or riding the finicular (a passenger pod that runs on very steep tracks). I had heard that it was at the top of a hill beforehand, so I ducked into a cornershop that was labelled ‘Supermarket’, and picked up soft drink, cheese and crackers. This was my quasi-Frog lunch. I had a very nice picnic (thanks in part to my trusty pocket-knife - thanks Barbers), and then toured this very pretty church. I really loved this church, and I can’t quite put my finger on why that is. It was very beautiful, but that isn’t all. Maybe it was influenced by having a full belly, I don’t know.
I then checked out Hotel des Invalides, which was erected by Napoleon as a residence for injured soldiers. It now houses Napoleon’s tomb and museums of French war. I don’t know whether it has any active military status. In any case, there was a lot of troops. I arrived at about 5pm and got to see the troops parade, march and fiddle with guns all in unison and formation. There would have been about 300 troops there. After about 15 minutes of this which I watched in fascination, they clambered into coaches, stopped traffic, and buggered off. Back to the barracks I presume. Sadly by the time that had finished it was 5.15pm and I was told that the museum closed at 5.45pm and that I wouldn’t see it all in half an hour. I couldn’t justify $10AUD for 30 minutes in a muesum and a tomb. I might come back tomorrow and see it. Went back to hostel and slept.
Next day was Versailles Palace ($40AUD inc train). What an enormous palace! No wonder the French revolted, all of the money was spent inside this place. The main palace is a number of enormously large magestic and gilt buildings, surrounded by vast gardens (still had those stupid dirt footpaths). Apparently there were 2 more palaces hidden away in the gardens somewhere that I couldn’t find. That’s how big this place is. Another indication: The grounds has it’s own lake. It’s a 20 minute walk from the main palace down a grand pathway to the beginning of the lake. Just phenomenal. I had my lunch here also, which consisted of flat soft drink, day old brie cheese that stunk up the jumper in my bag, and stale crackers. Not quite so wonderful a lunch as yesterday, but food nonetheless. I left some of the brie that looked the most foul though for the rubbish bin.
I finished up here and caught the train back for another crack at Hotel des Invalides. Today they closed at 4.45pm instead of 5.45pm like yesterday. These French bastards! I got there at about 3.45pm though, so I forked out the $10AUD to do a blitzkreig of the French war museum. Napoleon’s tomb was included and is the giant gold dome that is in the photos. It is a very large tomb and coffin. Very impressive, with big sombre statues standing guard. Not really much else you can say about a tomb, is there? Off to the museum. I was a bit disappointed that in the WW2 display they bundled the ANZACs up with the Brittish forces, so Australian troops weren’t mentioned once in any of the commentaries. I only counted 2 references to Australia in the museum - in the dummy area showing uniforms of the participant countries, and in a drawing showing the direction attacks were coming from. The ANZAC attack arrow was accompianed by the Brittish flag! There was also a very good room here that contained war impliments from Neanderthal man that I just had to race through, as well as hundreds of suits of armour and swords from medieval times, cannons, muskets, WW1 & WW2 stuff galore. I would have liked to spend more time here, but as always there wasn’t enough.
I finished the day completely exhausted. And that was where I had to leave for M
Hello everyone,
I have just realised that my email account bryce@brycewinter.com is either not sending or not receiving emails.
I will continue checks and will let you all know. I apologise in advance if you have sent an email in the near past that I have not replied to.
Regards,
Bryce.
Amsterdam is a very fun and easygoing city. It was also the first place that I have been to in Europe where the local people talk English on the streets. It is a very pretty city, with a lot to see and do in the day-light hours. Daylight, however, is not what Amsterdam is known for, and not when we arrived.
Our tour group was organised to go en-masse to a live-sex show in a club called ‘The Moulin Rouge’. The first act was a female stripper who picked a gay guy from our group as her on-stage victim. We all thought it was hysterical. In fact, no choice could have been more ironic. It gradually got more seedy as the show progressed. The last act, which involved a fat black woman and a banana was not so much fun for me. All in all, it was a very funny show (not intended to be I don’t think), but I wouldn’t go back to see it again.
On our way to that fine introduction to Amsterdam, we were led through the main part of the red-light district. For those of you that don’t know, this is endless alleyways with glass-fronted cubicles on either side that contain prostitutes clothed in bikinis who wave and blow kisses at you as you walk past. It kind of gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘Window shopping’!
The next day I went to Anne Frank’s house. This was very interesting, but sad. It shows where they all lived and explains how they were not caught for so long. It would have been really difficult to not be able to go outside or see the sun for several years. I had forgotten much of the book from when I read it in high school, but I will read it again I think.
The next stop was a bit more light-hearted. It was the Heinekin beer museum! This was a moderately boring museum for me (pictures of grain, silos, beer fermenting, grass growing, etc), but when you bought your entrance ticket, you got little vouchers that gave you one beer in the first pit-stop (half way around the museum), a Heinekin glass in a tin, and 2 beers at the bar at the exit. Even better than this was, we were sitting at our table at the exit enjoying our 2 beers each, and whilst doing so, had people walking past us on their way out saying ‘I don’t like beer much, do you want my vouchers?’, and other very drunk tables getting up to leave and saying ‘We’shve been here for thsree hourssh, and we have more vouschers than when we schtarted. I will give theshe to you.’ I am writing these comments from hand-written notes that I made as I went along, and the one that I made when I got home after this museum is quite amusing. All that I have written, in drunk scrawl is ‘Heinekin beer museum - had around 8 beers - can’t exactly remember’. I wrote this note to myself just before I crawled into bed at around about 4pm for a quick nap before dinner. Sadly I overslept a little bit and was late for the last meal of the tour. Oh well. I kept the group waiting for 15 minutes, but I did rescue 2 people who thought that we were meeting for dinner about 1.5 hours after we actually were supposed to. I saw them as I was walking/running to the meeting place. It was fortunate really, because I knew what time I had to be there, but I didn’t know how exactly to get there. They, however, knew how to get there, but were wrong about the time. So I cost the group 15 minutes, but I either saved the group from waiting for 1.5hours, or saved the 2 people I saw from missing the last dinner of the tour. After dinner the group went to ‘The Dolphins’ coffee shop for some mild blends, and then I got the metro (subway) back to the hotel with some other people.
This was the end of the main part of the Kumuka tour, and only the bus trip to Paris remained. I must say that I had a superb time on this tour even though it didn’t go exactly to planned all the time. When we got to Paris, we would all part ways, save for a few lucky people who continued on to see the French and Spanish countryside. I was very jealous, but I knew that I sadly couldn’t affort the time or the money to keep going.
In the next installment, I will be by myself again, but now in Paris! Ahh, Paris, where the people aren’t so bad if you don’t talk to them. Join me again.
Bryce.
For those of you that don’t know, I bought a very crappy bike on my second day here. The day after I bought it, it got a flat tyre. 2 days later the seat broke, 2 days later the pedals turned freely in the breeze with no resistance and no interaction with the wheels or the brakes, rendering the bike useless. Kaput in less that a week. This grand little fellow cost 43Euros, plus 6Euros for a new tyre tube (49Euros is about $95AUD).
Today, 2 weeks after purchase, my neighbor Ali and I went down to pay the man who sold me the bike a little visit. Ali is a black guy who is about 2-3 inches taller than me, and a great guy. So here we go down to try and get some money back even though the receipt explicitly says ‘No warranty’. Ali did all the talking as he can speak German. First of all the guy was very hostile and was saying a lot of ‘Nein’ (no). Ali kept talking to him and then I started hearing haggling going on (I could barely understand anything until the numbers started to be said). He managed to get 27Euros (about $50AUD) back for me - which was way more than nothing, which I expected to get. I asked him how he did it as we were walking away, and he told me he had to use some ‘hard talk’, which I thought was excellent. This bike guy completely ripped me off and Ali told him so. So now I have 27 more Euros to buy a replacement bike than I had before.
Thanks Ali!
So here we are, 45 of us after 13 hours in a bus (2 buses actually) arriving at our hotel in Rudesheim. It’s raining and very cold. The first thing that happens when we get off the bus is that we are yelled at by the hotel manageress that we are late and so on. Kas explains what happened to us and the Mother of Hitler ‘Harumphs’ whilst looking down her nose at her.
‘You must leave your bags on the footpath until after dinner.’
‘But it’s raining.’
‘We have an awning.’
‘We have bags for 45 people.’
‘That’s why they must go on the footpath, they can not clutter up the foyer.’
‘Why can’t we take them to our rooms?’
‘You are already 1 hour late. Leave your bags and have dinner now, or you won’t get any food. My waitresses are already being paid overtime.’
‘We have someone who is sick and can’t eat dinner, can you get somebody to show him to his room please?’
‘No, we are all busy. He can sit here and go to his room with everybody else after dinner’ (At least she didn’t make him sit in the rain! We were all disappointed that he didn’t throw up in the foyer to serve her right).
This was followed by us heading into dinner while Kaz kept trying to negotiate with the Mother of Hitler, and Billy guarded the bags on the footpath in the rain under the small awning.
The food was lovely, but we had another incident with the drinks. 3 of the 6 people at my table wanted still water to drink with their food, but the waitresses couldn’t speak English. I specifically said (after consulting my portable translator) ‘Kein gass’. Anyway, the waitress brought out gassy water, as is popular here in Europe but generally despised by Australians. They didn’t want gassy water, so they said to take it back and bring back water with no gas like we ordered please. This lead to the Mother of Hitler having to come over again.
‘You wanted water, you have water.’
‘This water has gas. We asked for water with no gas.’
‘It has no gas.’
‘What is this then (pointing at the CO2 that was obviously bubbling in the water)?’
‘That is nothing, you are imagining it.’
‘No I’m not - this water has gas.’
‘YOU WILL PAY!’
‘Fine, I’ll pay for this, but I don’t want it. Bring me a water with no gas please, and if that’s too hard, then bring me an orange juice - Just something with no gas.’
‘I have lived in America for three years, I know what you people are like.’
‘We are not Americans.’
‘You’re all the same.’
This was followed by her storming off and ranting at Kas for a bit longer about water now. We didn’t get our drinks either. The rooms were small and not particularly comfortable compared to other ones that we had been to. This was the first time that this hotel had been used by Kumuka & by the main tour group hotel booking agency Gullivers, and Kas said that that woman was the rudest person that she has ever spoken to, and that she had made a few key phone calls which would ensure that that hotel would never get any business from tour groups again. Good, I say. After that shocker, Kumuka shouted everybody drinks for the night, which was nice.
What a day. We played in the snow, we broke down on the autobahn, we missed our boat, we got a new bus, we had a shocking hotel. I thought it was a hoot. I had a great time giggling away to myself about the absurdity of it all. I was very impressed with the way that these minor catastrophies were handled, also.
During the night at about 3am, we had a new Kumuka coach arrive, and the next morning we loaded up and clambered in as if nothing had happened.
Today we caught up on the Rhine river cruise that was supposed to be yesterday. It was absolutely beautiful. Just a shame that it was raining still. Rolling hills with vineyards and castles and small villiages made up of half-timbered houses. Stunning really.
We got to St Goar and looked around for a bit. We had the option of buying traditional steins at a stein shop here, but they were a bit expensive for my tastes. About $80AUD for a 1L stein (empty that is :). St. Goar is a lovely little villiage too, and was marvelous to wander around for a while. Pity it was raining. I don’t think Germany stops raining actually. It’s a crazy place. We met up with the coach again here at St. Goar and started our trip to Amsterdam.
You can read a bit about Amsterdam and my final stop with Kumuka (sob) in my next issue.
Ciao!
Bryce.
The next morning we woke to a sea of white where it had snowed the evening before (everywhere actually). We had been issued a challenge by Billie (our driver) on entering Munich that there would be a prize for anyone who could manage to successfully steal a stein from Oktoberfest. Today, many of us hungover and sick found out what the prize was. The prize was a bottle of beer, on the condition that it had to be drunk that morning. Billy, the cunning Scotsman managed to weasel his way out of buying anyone a beer, because none of the six successful theifs took him up on the offer!
About 20 minutes out of Munich we had to stop for a vomit stop, and while the bus was stopped I begged to go and play in the snow 
Kas consented and so all of us eagerly piled out to be clowns in the snow. We threw many snowballs and generally had a bit of fun and got the cobwebs out. This was only a very short break sadly, so there was no time to build a snowman. The scenery was just gorgeous, with lots of snow topped trees and rolling white hills. Very picturesque.
We had been driving for another couple of hours and had just cleared the snow when there was a lot of traffic on the autobahn and traffic came to a halt (the merge of the A1 - Berlin to Munich, the A5 - Munich to Cologne & the A8 - somewhere to somewhere else). We ended up stopped in the 2nd fastest lane of a 4 lane each-way autobahn. Shortly after the traffic started moving again… and our coach didn’t. We had broken down on the autobahn! Minutes later very angry Autobahn police arrived on the scene (in a very angry voice ‘Ich bin Autobahn poletzei. Was fahrt du nicht?’ or something, sadly I still can’t speak German). There was much gesticulation between Billy, who couldn’t speak German, and the Autobahn policeman, who couldn’t speak English. Kas, in the meantime had called Kumuka head office and they were arranging for a mechanic from Volvo to call her back. He called a couple of minutes later and spoke with Billy who then asked him to translate into German for the policeman. At about the same time (5 minutes after breakdown), the heavy duty towtruck arrived and hooked us up. Sadly, what had happened was that our compressor had exploded, which resulted in a lack of air pressure. When a coach has no airpressure, the brakes can’t be released. So there we were, hooked up to a huge tow truck, with an angry autobahn policeman yelling at our driver, and 3 lanes of traffic crawling past us tooting angrily as they went past, and our brakes were locked on. Very shortly after, a mechanic arrived on the scene. About 5 minutes after he got there, a specialist Volvo mechanic arrived. About 2.5 hours after that, the brake calipers had been oxy-acetalined apart, and we could be towed. We had a lovely scenic tour through a generic German city for about 30 minutes before we arrived at the local Volvo workshop. No-one on board knew where we were being towed to, except that it was Volvo, so we were all hoping that we weren’t being taken to Volvo’s home in Sweden! We had a Kodak moment when we were being towed:
There was a woman who had hit the kerb in her car and had pushed the front wheel in. There was a towtruck there and she was looking very glum as her car was being prepared for towing. Then we drive past in our little convoy of big tow-truck, mechanic van, police car, Volvo mechanic van, and our coach, with all of us in the coach grinning like idiots and waving out the side of the bus to her. She looked like she absolutely roared with laughter, and so did we. If somebody had gotten a picture of that moment, it would have read ‘You think you’ve had a bad day?’.
So we arrive at the Volvo workshop and in not more that 1.5-2 hours they had determined that it is not going to be easy to fix, and a new bus arrived. We quickly unpacked our coach and loaded our luggage into the new temporary bus, and we were on our way again. The temporary driver of the new bus could only speak a little bit of English, but he told us that we had been on the news here!
After all this, we missed out on our Rhine river cruise (which is delayed by one day), and arrived only 1 hour late to our hotel in Rudesheim.
You will hear about the ‘Mother of Hitler’ in Rudesheim in the next exciting instalment of www.brycewinter.com
Ciao,
Bryce.
I have been talking to family for all afternoon on netmeeting after we finally got it to work, so I will have to let the suspense build for another day or two before u hear of the longest day of travelling that I have had in Europe.
Ciao,
Bryce.
Munich AND Oktoberfest is stretching it a little bit here I think. It was, for me, more like just Oktoberfest. I am sad to say that I saw nothing of Munich but Oktoberfest. Who cares? I can and will come back later to see what I missed.
Oktoberfest was superb. The steins are 1L. This is almost as big as a jug in Australia. And strong - We were told that one of the brews was 12% alcohol. Oktoberfest closes at 11pm - This is my kind of party It also starts at 9am. The first night I skulled 3/4 of a stein along with another 2 steins. That 3/4 downed very quickly was what put me over the edge, and I was rather tipsy. No, damn it, I was drunk. Very drunk. As our group left the beer hall we were given the honor of having the band play Waltzing Matilda - so we obliged them by stopping and singing loudly and raucously along with them. I thought it was great that at the end of the song one of the 2 Poms with us whinged ‘What about Land of Hope and Glory?’. I think some of us replied with ‘get a real country, mate’, or something along those lines. Seriously though, I got along really well with Steve and Angela (the Poms). They both did very well at the Oktoberfest. I think Steve got through 5 steins, and Angela through 3. They also got one of the 6 steins that our group managed to get out of the beer halls. This was a new record on the tours - Previous record was something weenie like 2. I didn’t get one out 
I was a bit queasy the next morning. I had a late breakfast (about 10am) and napped for a lot of the day. Sadly, I would have been a lot better if I didn’t skull that 3/4 stein. Was very cold, windy and rainy. Headed down to Oktoberfest again at about 4pm to get back to it. Had a half a chicken on the bone in the beer hall/tent which was very salty, but had the bonus of keeping me thirsty. This place is just a hoot, and the Bavarians are crazy. It was really cold and there were people wearing traditional Lederhosen. These are leather shorts! Just shorts! We’re all wearing jeans or similar heavy pants, several layers of shirts and jumpers and jackets, beanies, gloves, etc - and some crazy buggers are wearing shorts? I suppose it’s lucky that they get so blind drunk. I headed back to the hotel at about 9pm, and it was cold. So cold in fact, that at 9.30pm it started snowing. Sadly, I was in my hotel room by this stage, so I didn’t get to see it falling (Still haven’t). About a foot of snow fell though, so there was still plenty on the road the next day.
I have got to sleeping now, so I suppose that I have finished Munich. Fear not though, for possibly the most interesting day of my whole trip is coming up next! Sadly it is dark here now, so I’m going to head home. I will do this very interesting post hopefully tomorrow afternoon my time, or else the next day.