Oct 2008

Brussels was supposed to be a transition city, just somewhere to stay before we headed onto the next place. We were here for two days and we ended up packing in a lot of stuff into them.

We went to a Japanese film festival where we saw a new spaghetti western with Quentin Tarentino (hilarious),


Magic changing lights building (should’ve had Tetris)

Walked round a few markets

Saw the birds nest like sculpture (soon to be replaced by a mall)


Had lunch

The little girl you can see on the fountain was doing laps around the perimeter. A few laps after this picture was taken she was getting a bit too confident and a tad to fast and took a slip and fell in (as Rachel had been secretly hoping). She was ok, some passer by hoisted her out, it was all just a bit of light entertainment.

After the fountain incident we were all tuckered out so we lay in the sun.

Lastly we went for a ride out to the big globe nucleus atomic building. It’s ok but we didn’t go in.

So we are finally starting to feel better, the weather is warming up and we’re at our first stop in Belgium. Brugge is a pretty cool place, sure it’s over touristed and a tad fake but when you get here it all kinda melts away into a warm pool of chocolate.

We stayed in an out of the way place off the tourist trail, nice BnB with an old Belgian lady. There was a chocliatair just round the corner to whom we visited twice daily to just try that one that was next to the one we got last time, you know it had the swirls.

Long way up the belfry, you might wanna take the lift

To combat the extra intake of fats we were getting from the unnecessary (but oh so good) local ‘foods’ we got our walking shoes on and went round the standard churchy big building impressiveness that abounds in the old town. There was once a lot of money in the town which built all the churches and buildings but this dried up with the receding shoreline and hence the trade.

Contemplating the few hundred stair climb to the top of the belfry


Down is so much easier

If she wanna go ta da playground she get’s ta go ta da playground

More looking up at buildings into the blue sky

If you hadn’t caught on there is heaps of chocolate in Bruges, so much so that they have a museum dedicated to it. Which we diligently went round reading all the guff, slightly speeding through the end so we could get to the demonstration and tasting.

Another thing the Belgians have a handle on is beer. So many different types, flavors and varieties that it’s just plain rude not to try a few. Again they have a museum type deal which goes through the only working brewery in Bruges and the tour guide goes over the making and process …blah blah blah…. there was tasting at the end.

Sitting on the top of the brewery..happy

Still not happy that we were burning off the extra calories we went on a bike tour to an outlying town. Sweet for us as there was only one other guy on the tour so we pretty much had the guide to ourselves. The outlying town (Dam) has it own churches and niceness as it became the main port after the shoreline retreated from Bruges. It was easy as to get to, just get on a Napoleonic canal which directly links the two towns.

Look mum no teeth

The combination of indulging and trying in vain to burn it off lead to an afternoon of laxing in the sun at a local park. Reading books and consoling ourselves with more chocolate.

So Brugge, too much chocolate, too much beer and too much chips (they have a newly opened museum for this as well). But probably the most unexpectedly good place we have been so far.

Amsterdam is an expensive city – on the weekends! And as we arrived on a Friday night we booked ourselves into a dorm in a camping ground on the very outskirts of the city. 10 euros each a night (well within budget). Still getting over our mammoth colds we took it pretty easy on the first 2 days, walking the city and trying to stay warm.

Note this is not like the ice cream tucks back home. They will not stop if you run beside them waving money.

We opted to do the ‘free’ walking tour on the 3rd day after we’d moved to our luxurious (compared to the plastic sheeted snore infested no door lock BYO TP camping ground) Hotel room closer to the city. Below are some photos of the walking tour, very informative and interesting, lead by an overenthusiastic American student.

Interesting facts (maybe fact or fiction, who knows what drivel come out of tour guides):

- Houses lean forward so that large furniture can be hoisted to upper floors without hitting the exterior.

- Houses get wider at the top due to the width tax being imposed on the first floor only. Bringing us to our next point…….


- Thinnest house in Amsterdam, short one in the middle, apparently someone just walled up a alleyway looking to get the lowest rate of width tax.

- Thoudsands of bikes get stolen in Amsterdam every year only to be thrown in the canals. They even have a bike extraction from canal barge.

- This guy is not Albert Einstien or Mark Twain, but some other guy who’s name escapes me but is important in some way and from Amsterdam.

One of our late night strolls through the red light district, hence the glow.

WWII monument

Bikes bikes bikes

We also went to the Anne Frank museum where you can actually walk around the rooms where the Frank family and friends hid from the Nazis. No pictures allowed which I think is a good thing as people treat it more as a memorial and less like a tourist attraction.

Amsterdam gets a bit of a bad rap from the red light districts, drugs and general freedom of choice (and yes it’s all here if you want to partake). But there’s so much more to the place than what you expect. It’s a beautiful clean canal city with loads of museums and cultural type things to do.

We arrived to Freiberg after leaving Constance that morning (train then bus then train again) with nowhere to stay. So off to the tourist information we hopped to find a bed in the city. After not to much convincing the lady at the information got us to go to a B&B in St Margen, (train and bus) a tiny town deep in the Black Forest. Dinner was traditional Black forests fare, Rachel with the cheesiest macaroni/pasta stuff ever and me with sausage spinach stuffed pasta balls mm mmmm.

We’d been lacking in any real planning for the next stage of the trip and being that no one in St Margen even knows that the internet exists we went back into Freiberg to find some wifi and book some accommodation for the next few weeks in Germany and the Netherlands.

We did get to have a look round the city which has the standard old town with big church and guild halls. I make it sound dull but it was very nice and good weather to boot.

The next day neither of us was feeling very good but damit we were in the Black Forest and we were goon go hiking flu or no flu, our excuse being “I’m sure it’s one of those ones you just have to blow out”.

Loving the German barn house. Family upstairs cows downstairs.


Half way and Rach is starting to feel it

Yes yes I know It’s a weird photo

The trail we took was only 15kms long so we thought 3 or 4 hours max. But 5 hours later and Rach was dreaming up ways to break her legs and get air lifted back home. We did eventually get back to the BnB but went straight to bed.

We were freezing but sweating, shivering but with high fevers. Who knew a 15k walk in cold weather was bad for a chest cold? Luckily we had the foresight to book an extra 2 nights in the room and proceeded to spend the next few days in bed.

St Margen in the distance, so close yet so far.

The next stop after the black forest was in Cochem. This place had a lot of potential for touristing, good wine area with nice castles and scenery. But we ended up in bed nursing lemon and honey drinks.

Bring on Amsterdam and some good health.

So we’d ticked the Oktoberfest box in our things to do and see list and it was time to start acting like backpacker tourists that we are. So onto the train from Munich to Constance we hopped (loving the regional public transport tickets by the way).
Well technically we did get on the right train except that the carriage we were on split off half way and we ended up somewhere near the Austrian border. It wasn’t really that bad just a 2 hour delay from when we were really supposed to arrive.

From the first train we had another local one where a cute wee German boy had a hard time grasping the concept that another person didn’t speak the same language as him, he just kept speaking to Rach in German with a confused look on his face.

Ooo Rach nice photo.

While waiting for a ferry over to Dingelsdorf (where our campground was) Rach went for some food and I sat mesmerized by a humming bird for 15 min (signs of the sickness from Oktoberfest settling in).

Rach on fire with the camera right now

The next day we caught the bus into Constance, a border town with Switzerland and yes we walked over the border a few times (Hence the title I’m in Germany – I’m in Switzerland - I’m in Germany – I’m in Switzerland…. and so on)

Nice clean place on the lake, had a weird semi sexual statue out on the pier which I didn’t really get, probably something about fertility.

Now a quick promo (doesn’t happen very often) to the place we went for dinner. The Pelican, right near the Swiss border kind out of the main town area but really good food.
The chef cam out and talked us through the menu (we both ended up getting the specials) it was a wee bit hard to take him seriously as I thought he looked a bit to much like Manual from Faulty Towers. Any ways, food was awesome, cheapy cheap price and just a cool place.

Not one to be held down by a small chest infection, Rach and I hired bikes the next day and went for a ride around the lake. Not the whole lake mind (that’s 270 km are you crazy I’m sick here), just 40 odd km from Constance up to a small town where we got a ferry over to Ublinger and then biked to Meersburg.

Both of those 2 places over the lake are pretty cool and in hindsight we probably should have stayed there. Although Dingles (as it came to be known) had it’s charm too.

Self walking tours around Ublinger and Meersburg, a must.

So that was our Lake Constance / Bodeness experience. Now we are off to Freiberg and the Black Forest. I’m sure this cold will pass soon.