There and back again.

I'm not confident that anyone still follows this blog, but if any of you do, I'm back in the old U.S. of A. Liz (my girlfriend) got pretty sick and was hospitalized. I rushed back from Berlin as soon as was financially possible. I don't want to go into detail about it here, but suffice to say, although it was serious enough for me to travel across a quarter of the earth, (and I would travel a thousand times that distance again) she is recovering quickly, fortuitously. I'm glad to be home. I still have a lot of updates on my trip to post, but I'm too pressed with other things at the moment to post them. If you can exercise patience, I will continue to update this blog with the last leg of my trip (with photos!) when the chance arises. For now, I have some personal issues to attend to. I hope you understand, loyal readers.

Still alive!

I haven't updated in a while, but I'm still alive. I don't have time to upload photos at the moment, but I hope to soon. After Liz and I parted ways, I spent a week in Utrecht couchsurfing where I met some wonderful people. I have a few pictures from my stay with folks. Couchsurfing is really great for this kind of trip because it helps me get beneath the surface level, consumerist tourist attractions and experience the real culture and community of a place. I learned a lot about the Netherlands and Dutch culture this way. After Utrecht I biked to den Haag where I stayed for a few days. I hope to post more details about these two cities later, but right now I'm pressed for time.

I'm staying with Liz and her family in an apartment in Amsterdam. It's quite a change from my usual style of travel, although I am still sleeping on the floor. It's a challenge for me to hang out with them and still keep my spending level low. They want to go to museums, eat out, see shows, and buy impulse things.

I'm with them until Wednesday, and then I'm going to Berlin for an outdoor camping music festival that should be pretty cool. It's called "Fusion." I don't know anything about the music but I think it will be interesting. Plus, the festival has free camping and the cost is the same as if I paid for a campground every night. So that's not too bad. Although, to get there in time I have to take a bus with some people which will cost me 30 euro and break my streak of human powered traveling (except for the giant fucking airplane I came in on of course).

More in depth updates to come!

Oops. I just realized the picasaweb album link I posted wasn't open to the public. Everything is in Dutch, so it's a bit confusing. You should be able to view the photos now if you wish. I'm staying with this guy Ingmar in Utrecht whom I met through couchsurfing. He's really cool and I'll do an update with pictures and everything later.

I uploaded a bunch of photos onto Picasaweb. I don't want to waste time reposting them here so I'm just going to link to them and you can browse them at your leisure. It has all of the old posts and then all the new ones up through Amsterdam. Liz left yesterday for Scotland. I'm on my own now and it's been rainy and cold. I think I might head south after this where it's warm. I went to a science and technology museum today, but it was mostly targeted at little kids. There were only a few exhibits that were for adults, so it was kind of a waste of 12.50 euro. They did have a hydrogen fuel cell. It was kind of funny because you had to crank this lever a whole bunch to make it work and the end result was that this little toy train went around in a circle. I couldn't help but think it would be way easier to simply push the train around with my hand. There was this one exhibit with all these old animals and bones and things in formaldehyde that some Dutch biologist had collected in the 1800's. I saw a siamese pig baby. I'm taking refuge from the cold and rain in the Amsterdam library. It's actually a really cool place. They have a multimedia center (where I uploaded all my picture) and free internet access. They also have a radio station that does a bunch of live music to broadcast out of the library. So I'm sitting here listening to a live performance and messing around on the internet. Not too bad. I head for Utrecht tomorrow. It'll actually be sunny, so it should be a nice bike ride.

We stayed at two hostels while we were here in Amsterdam. The first was the Flying Pig, which I thought was terrible. It was under renovation so they didn't have a lot of the amenities that are included in the cost. Except, they didn't discout the cost of staying there at all. Also, the people staying in our hostel weren't that cool. They had this spring break mentality and just wanted to get trashed. I mean sure, pot is legal here, but that doesn't mean it's the only thing to do. The second night we stayed at a more well-organized hostel. I pretty much hate staying in hostels because there is always someone snoring and I'm a light sleeper, especially when it comes to light or sound disturbances. I actually sleep better outside on the quiet ground than inside on a mattress when someone is snoring. The third night we stayed on a boat in the harbor area. It was cheaper than the hostels and way cooler. We had our own room, bathroom, and a shower. The owners made a big, delicious breakfast in the morning, and we got to smoke on the top deck of the boat and look out at the lights of the city. They also had cheap (relatively) beer in the fridge that you could pay for on the honor system. The last night we spent at this cool campground. There are a bunch of young people/hippie types staying there. They've got free range chickens clucking about, scavenging ducks and cats, and some cute goats that will let you pet them. One of the things I've noticed about Europe is how many farm animals you see around. Even in cities, it's not that uncommon to see farm animals as long as you aren't downtown. I'm getting me some goats when I come back.

http://picasaweb.google.com/jas.sellers/BikeandaTent?authkey=Gv1sRgCM-YkP-CkLKw-QE&feat=directlink

Dusseldorf to Amsterdam

From Dusseldorf we biked to Stokkum, Netherlands. It was exciting crossing our first border, although there was no actual demarcation of the border. We were just sort of like, oh shit, we're in Netherlands now and everyone is speaking Dutch. We had a false start because there is a city in Germany near Netherlands with the same name as a city in Netherlands that's near the border. Anyways, we stopped at a couple of small towns, most notably Stokkum and an area outside of Scherpenzeel where we camped on a farm that was converted into a campground. Stokkum had this cool Dutch castle with a moat, drawbridge, and the whole works. It inspired me to look up renaissance fairs in Europe. I didn't really find any good ones (if you know of one or can find one please let me know) but there is a cool reenactment of the Battle of Agincourt that I may go to in July. It's in France, obviously, where a bunch of English and French people get together and reenact the battle. There are also craft demonstrations from the time period. Appropriately, there's also an archery competition.

Anyways, we stopped in Stokkum and Scherpenzeel and ended up in Amsterdam. The bike through Utrecht was cool. The city seems pretty neat and I'm going to head there next. Liz and I part was today (or possibly tomorrow) but she'll be back in Amsterdam on the 16th for about a week, so my plan is to visit Utrecth and Rotterdam and then bike back to Amsterdam. Her mom may be renting an appartment and I can probably stay on the floor for free. I have a bunch of couches lined up for Utrecth already. I got TONS of responses from people. They're all really cool people too. Musicians, artists, students, teachers. These are the people I like to hang out with.

I haven't kept a great record of the things that have happened to me on this trip, other than photographs. It takes a long time to upload photos, so I haven't actually caught up with the present. I think all the pictures I've posted so far are of Germany still. The last few I posted were in Dusseldorf and include some Frank Gehry buildings. Since then, we did some wild camping, saw tons of farm animals, ate delicious food, drank intoxicating wine and beer. I did almost get run over by a truck. People here drive pretty crazy, but they are pretty good at it which is basically the reason I'm not in the hospital right now. We were biking in Dusseldorf and a truck was parked in the bike lane so we had to swerve around it. I didn't notice that there were tram line tracks in the passing lane and my front tire got caught in it, which through me off balance and sent me crashing into the parked truck I was passing. Behind me was a really big truck that slammed on its brakes just in time to avoid crushing me. I was grateful. I also fell down some stairs in Dusseldorf and thought that I broke my arm. I still can't believe that I didn't. Basically, my whole body weight landed on my forearm on the edge of a stair. It was numb for like an hour and then it started hurting really badly and had a bump that felt like it might have been the ridge of a broken bone. The next day when I woke up, there was a tiny bruise, the bump was gone, and it pretty much felt fine. I think I'm too clumsy for someone who doesn't have health insurance.

Amsterdam is pretty amazing. Biking here is so much fun. Everyone rides bikes. I have some pictures but I don't think they really capture it very well. Most of the roads are really narrow, so it's very difficult to drive a car, and most people don't. Germany had a lot of cyclists, and I was surprised that so many old people rode their bikes everywhere. I'm talking about people in their 60s-70s. But Amsterdam and the Netherlands in general is so much different because it has a much higher level of organization for their cycling network. There are maps and long distance paths everywhere. Germany had long distance paths, but there were few maps associated with them and often the signs were confusing or vandalized. There are bikes everywhere in Amsterdam, it's pretty much my favorite thing about the city.

The central area of the city is kind of lame. It's really pretty, but a lot of it is designed to appeal to American and British tourists who come the Amsterdam with a "spring break" party mentality. Some of the coffeeshops here sell pot (and you can get other drugs like mushrooms as well at various stores). But you don't really want to go to any of the ones in the center of the city. They have this douchebaggy hot-topic kind of feel to them. It's not the real culture, it's what business people expect tourists to want. But if you bike outside of the city center, there are some really cool places that seem really authentic. Most of the clients are Dutch or Jamacain or various immigrants who live in the city. You don't see many tourists there. The best parts of our stay in the city have been when we biked out of the city center and got lost in the real parts of Amsterdam, where the people who live here hang out and you don't have to deal with drunk/stoned frat dudes.

It's weird how Amsterdam is very socially liberal with prostitution, drugs, etc. but it's also very structured. There are traffic lights for bicyclists and lane demarcations in the bike paths. Businesses are very strictly regulated, according to the people we talked too. There is also the sense that people here don't really like the commercialization of their liberal culture, where people come here to get stoned because it's legal, but that they make so much off of tourism that they're willing to put up with it. It's like, a bunch of foreigners are taking advantage of the fact that the Dutch aren't puritanical about drugs to use their city as their party town.

I could definitely see myself living in the Netherlands, though.

I´m in Dusseldorf at the moment. It´s windy, cold, and sometimes rainy. Other than that it´s cool. My camera battery died, so I can´t upload pictures today. The next chance I´ll get to upload more will be from Amesterdam. We should arrive in Amesterdam in 2-3 days. We´re only about 120 miles away. We ran into some hassles after we left Köln. I got a flat and needed to replace the tube after slamming into a major pothole due to my being distracted by a fruit stand. After replacing the tube, I pumped the tire up as much as I could with the hand pump I have, which is supposed to pump to 120 psi. Assuming that the pressure was around 100 psi, we rode some more only to get a flat about an hour later. I didn´t have a patch kit so I just put in my last tube and pumped the shit out of the tire. That got us to Dusseldorf, where I was able to use the pump at a bike shop. Anyways, Liz and I are sharing the internet at the library so I´ve gotta cut this short.

I´ve got a lot more pictures, but the internet here is really slow so I´ll upload them later. From Mainz, we biked to Rudesheim am Rhein. The trip was through some really hilly areas with a lot of wineries along the way. There was also a holiday festival thing going on, so as we were biking in the morning before noon we saw old drunk german men with beer spilled all down their front shirts walking around. It´s really funny how they do holidays here. There was a bank holiday on Thursday so everything was closed and everyone got drunk. But, on Friday, everything was still closed because everyone was hung over or recovering from the holiday. Anyways, we made it into Rudesheim where we had some excellent food and excellent beer. The next day, we biked to Hocheim which is just south of Koblenz. We stealth camped in a park that night so we wouldn´t have to pay for a campground. It was pretty easy, but having to go get water was an issue. We didn´t explore Koblenz since we are on a tight schedule to get to Amsterdam. The next day we biked about 100km to Köln, which is where we are now. We took a day off and went to an art museum and explored the Dom (cathedral). It was a very beautiful cathedral, and I´ll upload pictures of it later. Today, we´re heading to Dusseldorf. Hopefully I can find a good internet connection and upload more photos.

The photos in this update are in reverse chronological order. Paul dropped me off at the airport around 2PM in Washington, DC. I spent about 27 hours waiting to board a flight, as I was flying standby. Once I got to Frankfurt, Germany, I expected to have trouble meeting up with Liz since we had planned to meet at the campground (campingplatz) the day before. Luckily, we were both running a day late because she had missed her train from Copenhagen to Frankfurt.

The campground we stayed at was nice. It had these ducks walking all around it. There is also some tree here that has these floating seed things. When the wind blows they start flying around everywhere. It looks like snow and is very pretty, especially at sunset. We camped in Frankfurt for a couple of days because Liz had to buy a bike, and we had various other things to do like buying a camping stove. Unfortunately, we didn´t get to see too much of Frankfurt because we were so busy while we were there and once we had finished everthing we needed to we felt like we had spent too many days there already. It´s a pretty cool town though. It´s fairly affluent, but everyone has vegetable gardens and they seem to ride their bikes everywhere. There are bike trails throughout the town and people are very friendly to bikers. Often, you even see very old people out riding their bikes.

From Frankfurt, we took the Main river heading West. The path along the river didn´t stay right along the river the whole way as parts of the river were rather industrial and unpleasant to bike through. I have a lot of pictures posted below of the bike ride. It was only about 36 miles from Frankfurt to Mainz (which is where the Main river intersects the Rhine) so we made it there in the first day. We probably could have gone farther, but we got a late start and we went at a pretty leisurely pace, stopping to take pictures and asking for directions. I think it is important to point out that we have no map of this area. We´ve basically been just asking for directions and following signs. There are these long bike highways everywhere and they are well marked. There are lots of people riding on them and you can tell that a lot of people use them as transportation between towns rather than for exercise.

We got into Mainz yesterday and we watched the sunset from the bridge over the Rhine and drank beer. I have some pictures below. Today we are going to explore the city. Speaking of which, I´d better end this post.






Some awesome graffitti under the bridge that crosses the Rhine.




















The bridge crossing the Rhine (from which we took most of the water photos)














Liz on the bridge.











oooooh, pretty.


















down the Rhine.













more graffitti under the bridge.











































drinking beer on the Rhine.



























An awesome apartment complex on the Rhine.











dinner.














Tired after riding.













Same.













After we stopped for lunch, we hit the road again.














Neu campingplatz!





























How the ficken are we gonna fit all this shizer in our bags?








































A cool looking grain that we saw everwhere.















Biking through a vineyard.












Cooking dinner.


















Getting ready to ride.








A cool kids bike chained up at the U-bahn.









Liz´s new bike (fahrrad).














Stopping for a wine break along the river.


















Would you like some expensive coffee?














Eating breakfast in the campingplatz.