Erroll & Alex's European Honeymoon Trip!

“When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape out like the squirrel in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves, cool undying life will rush in.” D.H. Lawrence

So, due to events of less than poor internet connections, time complications and being busy doing awesome and baller shit, we have fallen behind on some of the posts…. So the next few post might be condensed or distilled down into the highlights so as to catch up. Don’t fear dear friends as now that we arrived in Amsterdam and we no longer were on the viking cruise, we were left to fend for ourselves. This fact along with the important reality slowing sinking into our bones, muscles, rattled and deteriorated mentality from lack of sleep meant that we also started to slow down a bit. Having to walk everywhere no longer being chauffeured by bus and boat meant that we did slightly less but even more it meant that the things we were doing now were taking more out of us to accomplish. So where to start then? Well, we shall start at the beginning and end at the end! The best way to get to know a city is to walk it, so we walked it! We started our time in Amsterdam with two walking tours, one in the morning covering important sights, some churches and notable neighborhoods as well interesting historical areas with colorful history. We saw one of the only two wooden structures left in Amsterdam, a hidden church, and a beautiful hidden courtyard where only women who are not married, as the guide worded it, spinsters, are allow to rent but with how pretty the place was, makes me want to be a spinster. We started the walking tour by the main area where everyone was busy walking in circles jumping in front of cars and bikes being stupid, the area with the docks and train station and we ended the tour some three and a half hours later up the street from the house Ann Frank and her family used to hide from the nazis. We saw the church and the bells she heard and wrote about in her diary. I’ll post out one thing about taking photos… The world has changed, we now all have the ability to take photos from our phones! Photos that cost nothing and don’t take an hour to develop or need chemicals. Photos that you can take and instantly see, what I’m driving at here is when you can take a photo and instantly see it, you should be able to see if it is good or bad and in this case when I say good or bad I mean tasteful. Taking selfies of you in front of the Ann Frank house with a shit grin on your face is tasteless. Please take a moment to realize what this place is and why it still stands and what its remembered for. Or ball up and double down on being classless.

The afternoon passed quickly through the aid of naps. The curtain of night fell and we slipped around its velvety bellows to again meet up with our guide to go on the evenings walking tour of the red light district. Ladies of the night “dressed” up and presented themselves as meat hanging in a window curves detailed in glowing dim red lights. It was like a sticky, smelly, acid trip gone of the rails a cheap rip off of Disneys It’s a Small World as we passed windows of women from around the world bardering  in the windows with men I remember from my childhood, seen in americas most wanted or to catch a predator with Chris Hanson. Small alleyways with tilted buildings leaning in touching at the top from century old foundations giving way to time rowed at the bottom with windows in front of curtains. Red curtains akin to those that pull back before a show drawn back concealing one, a small overly used bed and sink that has seen unspeakable things…. all tools of the the worlds oldest profession a show seen by those willing to pay. No matter where in the world or throughout time, no matter the state of things or the value of what ever currency reigns supreme this trade job will always be active, a lady turning tricks and a John supplementing her endeavors will be eternally active it seems but the methods in which it takes place in Amsterdam is something else entirely. Our tour ended in the red light district museum of prostitution which was less museum and more a book report of flash cards giving tidbits about prostitution in the area. Its main goal, as to be expected in a city where prostitution is legal, was to make the attendee view prostitution as less an act of selling sex and more a Tuesday night.

Well past the witching hour we ventured out into the city on the hunt for foods! We found this amazing little place called “Walk to Wok” it was like a chipotle but with asian food. You picked the type of noodles you wanted then the meats, toppings and sauces. This place was amazing! Two people stood in the front window and cooked everything to order, when we got there a line down the street was already in place and we joined the hungry waiting others. We got the food to go and went back to the hotel room and had a midnight hotel bed picnic of noodles and I had a space brownie for dessert. The next morning we slept, kept sleeping, woke up, and went back to sleep. We spent the better part of the day vegging doing some laundry in the sink sleeping some more and standing in a blistering hot shower to quell the screaming of our muscles. Later in the day we walked the city for a bit grabbing some pizza and pastry items including some of the famous dutch waffles with the crystal sugar inside before venturing the walk of near two miles to the dock areas where we would go on a pizza cruise through the canals! Yah, pizza twice in a day, we are adults we will do what we want. We boarded the little canal ship and found we had a table to ourselves! The cruise came with pizza and all the drinks you could manage down, beer, soda, water whatever you wanted. I had a few beers and switched to soda unlike the rest of our boat determine to drink all the beer aboard, rowdy would be a polite way to describe it. The captain, the fresh water sea dog he was, fit right in with our motley group. Pulling out of our dock slip he crashed into the dock behind us, yah thats how we started the cruise. Alex immediately swelled with worry, remembering that I have had the pleasure of playing aqua man on three separate occasions riding the bow of a ship beneath the waves, feared this would be tally four as we could see this ship sink as did the others…. well it didn’t. It was a sturdy ship as our captain hit many more things along our cruise through the canals and not a drop of water made it aboard. You can see in some of the photos that are with the red light, we were going under bridges hitting the sides, it was the the Willy Wonka boat ride without the candy. The cruise was fun and defiantly a different way of seeing the city but when one goes on a pizza cruise and orders the meat pizza, let me ask you would you upon receiving said pizza be surprised to see the pizza cover with more mushrooms and onion than meat? Well we sure as shit were. Scrapping off the mushroom and onion from our pizza mounded up filled half the plate. There was more of it than there was pizza! I wish this was exaggeration.

On the last day in Amsterdam it became clear we over booked, eager for the day and running out of time as we still had tickets to four other things, still we were determined to try and see them all done! Starting the morning with the Heineken beer tour was probably not the best start for a proactive day but it is what we did. Walking again miles away, sooooo much walking now we were off the cruise, we went over bridge after bridge till we arrived at a bigger building than I was expecting. The tour was fun, the best way to describe it would be; if you had an interest in trying to live an hour of your life like a beer commercial go here. They had a room with shaking and vibrating floors where the walls were screens to immerse you, games, several interactive bits, free mini beers half way through, a little museum in the beginning, cool immersive rooms with LED tv screen walls that took you on a ride of being bottled and popped! All leading to in a bar in the basement with free beers at the end. So in the end even if it was bad you get swayed or tipsy enough to overlook any shortcomings. From here we were suppose to go to the museum next door with renaissance paintings but now beer filled we opted for the Amsterdam dungeon. A haunted house highlighting dark and seedier aspects of the past. We headed back over the many bridges quickly regretting every decision we had ever made in our silly little lives but many tens of minutes later and a mile or so to the main square near an old place we arrived. Upon entrance we were placed in a cage with other ill fated travelers in a incredibly dark area; literally this whole place was so crazy dark. After some time an evil wench with black teeth lead us away where she separated the men from the women into evil lifts of torment some would call elevators. While my dumb ass thought we were heading down we were actually heading up as I would later discover through our dissent after each room leading back to the ground floor. Our separation was short as we were all reunited at the top. We were lead through the rooms and shown the horrors! Human dissections and the sale of bodies, a trade common at a time in the area. Enlightened to the trickery how some would be forced into labor on ships, shanghaied in the purest sense if you will. We also were shown the accusation, trial, and burning of witches, a role Alex was chosen to play to which she received a certificate as an official witch of Amsterdam. This tour as well ended in a bar with more free beer! It was here I watched two others in the group from the Ukraine, a couple, engage in crude behavior. I watched this skinny skank full on hold the dudes penis. Like just hold it, little bit of stroking but more just holding it like you would hold a sandwich deciding if you were full or not. As though you are interested in it but past the excitement. It was gross, they didn’t care, apparently no one else did ether or they just didn’t care to notice. It was at this moment that I realized these rooms were not dark enough as they had failed to hide the most horrifying thing in this house of torment, the boney hand of a skanky woman hold the uncircumcised floppy elephant nose of a bald argy looking fellow.

Time ticking we were off and headed to the next location, the Van Gogh museum. It was again back to the previous location over bridges and a long walk away, we had not planned this day well for walking. The museum was behind another, surrounding a large park area that was filled with people enjoying the weather. These tickets were timed and so we arrived approximately 30 min early and were directed in without them even bothering to look at the time. A frustrating fact as we were planning events due to the timing of tickets. The Van Gogh museum was interesting for sure, but not what I expected at all. While I am happy to have seen many of his works in which I was unfamiliar and one in particular that I am a new fan of, the lay out for the museum left much to be desired. For sure a promenade artist in todays eye and a museum founded by the nephew of the artist very little thought went into the layout and thought of how the art is presented and displayed to the viewer. Even this being the case we spent the remainder of the day here and left at the museums closing. We heading back to the hotel to shower and pack, relax and prepare for our travel to Paris the following day, travel we would face alone, together!

“Travel makes one modest, you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world”      Gustave Flaubert

The last night of our cruise we had drinks and a wonderful dinner. We also had a game night of trivia with the theme of cinema; Alex and I couldn’t resist. While the rest of our shipmates bound together making large groups of six, eight or in one case twelve people to pool their thoughts we remained the underdog as a crew of two! We packed into the lounge and got set up with our sheets and picked out team names. While the old ones of us went with cocky names like “The champions” or “The Trivia Masters” we went with a modest name, “The Defeatables”. So, the game started and we were afraid it would be maybe European films of really old movies playing to the crowd and we thus would perform poorly. Turns out we were in our jam and we were nailing all the questions… all except for one group of the questions. The trivia was broken into about five parts and one part was stupid, this was the part we did poorly on. In the end of the game we found ourself placed firmly in third place! Down by only three questions with the two teams ahead of us ending in a tie. The teams below us were quite a few questions down, but they did their best, how embarxseing the cocky names must have seemed at that point. Anyway the two youngest people nailed the trivia against large groups and teams and we nailed every set of questions on the end which covered one of my favorite films, “Signing in the Rain”. In the morning we slept in the longest we could, it wasn’t much as we had to be up no later than nine am to get some food. In the morning as we came out of our room the ships dynamic had definitely changed. The once slow moving vibe of our retirement ship had drifted away and a bustle had replaced it as everyone was in frantic mode to get everything cleaned and turned over for the next group of tourist. We ate our breakfast and were able to leave our bags under the studious guard of the staff, a most reliable group. In killing time until we could check in at our set of new accommodations we went to the east side of Amsterdam and visited the Dutch Resistance Museum and then the city zoo that was built in the 1800’s.

The Dutch Resistance Museum, while small, was defiantly put together in an interesting way. It covered a very small area affected during the war but it was an area that I really never knew much about and that after leaving the museum we literally walked the streets and past buildings that were effected and highlighted. They had a special exhibit that focused on a group of artist that during the occupation firebombed the building that stored the records on the jewish population and records they used when tracking and shipping people to the work and concentration camps. You walked through this special exhibit following the steps that they took in coming to the decision, then the plans they made and carried out, through the capture of some of them, the trial execution and aftermath. In the museum we saw propaganda from both sides and many examples of forgeries of documentation and even examples and authentic spy watches and weapons among other things.

We walked out of the museum after we had our fill of morbid yet fascinating history and worked our way directly across the street to the Amsterdam Zoo! We still had a few hours to kill before we could head to the hotel and what better way to spend it than looking at cute little animals! A swell idea in any country. Following the GPS on our phone we ventured around the left side of the zoo into a parking lot, we realized our error and circled back, following the hordes of dutch children we figured would be heading to the main gate. We stood in line for a good twenty minutes before a less than enthusiastic ticket booth lady charged us an extra tourist fee, take a minute to let that sink in!, tourist fee, to gain entry. Once we were in we were transported to a different world. The zoo had one of the best layouts we had ever seen and personally took the cake of my favorite zoo. The winding paths and exhibits were surrounded by vegetation, gardens, statues and other beautiful and natural looking decoration. We wound our way around the entire zoo, taking our time at each exhibit and enjoying the lack of additional safety measures that would never cut the mustard back stateside. We saw a whole host of animals, including a black jaguar playing in the water with a plastic jug, a really noisy seal, and some awesome little monkeys. We spent some time sitting around the penguins (something neither of us can resist) and then headed around to take a gander at the elephants and giraffes. They were happy and in an exhibit much larger than most we’ve seen. After we got our fill of the animals we headed to the front of the zoo where there was a planetarium show was to start in a mere minutes from our arrival. We laid back in the air conditioned room and enjoyed ourselves as the announcer zoomed out of our line of sight and brought us out so far that the earth faded to a speck before fading out entirely. Being brought face to face with subtle differences between regions on earth we were made to feel even more removed and insignificant in the expanse of things while we learned about the size and vast emptiness of the universe. You know…. normal honeymoon stuff.

Filling our time and the clock now reading well past when we were due at the hotel for check in the zoo kept us more occupied then we thought. In honesty we could have spent the summer in the shade cast down by the trees smelling the flowers and chilled with the animals. We walked back to the harbor, collected our bags, and asked the receptionist to call us a cab and waved goodbye to our ship, until next time! We only had to wait about ten minutes and before our cab came ripping around the bend and screeched to a stop feet from us; our driver had shit to do. The cabby ripped through the city narrowly missing other motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians without prejudice each time our cabbie getting more upset with his living speed bumps. Despite the manic driver, we made it to the Raddison Bleu alive, even with the battle to pay with the card as he tried every cabbie trick he could to get cash out of me. After we checked in and put all of our stuff in the room we both collapsed onto the bed and began plotting our night. As it turns out we were too tired to do anything much the first night (having already knocked out a museum and a zoo) we did however find a little pizza place just up the street and decided to give it a try. After getting back I ended up making friends with the concierge who called out another hotel worker who vacations in Florida and so we all chatted and talked for more than an hour. They helped me picked out what tours and sights were worth seeing in the few days we had in between our chatting so by the time I got back to the room Alex said she was ready to call out a search party. The remainder of our night was spent picking tours and planning out our next few days fitting every minute to a plan keeping the momentum of our trip going. Hello Amsterdam, welcome to the Martin honeymoon!

“The best education I received is through travel” Lisa Ling

The morning was filled with onboard activities as we worked our way up the river that now was higher than the land around it. It was pretty interesting, while also unsettling looking out the window and seeing rooftops and land down the side of the river bank much as though you were playing ships in the bath tub. Then again this was apparently the case for most of the Netherlands as the majority of the land was reclaimed from the seas and rivers. The way they like to put it is through a saying, one we thought was cute the first time we heard it and that got less cute each time after and boarded cocky by the end when the count of being told the phrase surpassed a dozen. The phrase as I’m sure you’re on the edge of your to hear was, “God may have created the world, but it was the Dutch that created the Netherlands.” The landscape over night changed most dramatically in comparison to the rest of the trip. From the mountains and cliffs dotted with castles and very German architecture to thatch roofs and low flat lands we were no longer in Deutschland anymore. While we were kept occupied the land passed by quickly and we docked in between two grass covered berms. We walked the fifteen feet up to the summit of said hill and from there we could see the famous windmills trailing away down the carved water ways in the low land almost grown in place in between the grasses that covered the land. Over the bridge and through the paths we walked to the water pumping station and down the gravel path toward the windmills we’d go. Shortly into our fairy tale walk ominous music began…. it would seem we found our first terrible guide! This woman, though. I mean THIS WOMAN y’all! oh good lord. Uggggghhhhhhhh. We ended walking ahead which was not hard as she moved slower than a movie on pause. She kept telling stories that had absolutely nothing to do with anything we were looking at or anything in general. She rambled about her life and politics and she told us how all the people in the Netherlands don’t like us because we are tourists. I unfortunately learned more about her ninety four year father than the windmills. We unplugged and ventured out alone to discover what was to be discovered on our own!

One of the mills is maintained by a gentleman in wooden shoes who has it set like it would have been by a family that lived and maintained the mill in the past. We had the pleasure of hitting our head on everything making our way up to the top! It was here we saw something truly interesting, wood gear and cog mechanisms making up all of the innards of the mill! It was interesting to see how they built such a thing entirely out of wood to perform such a important task for the country. For such a plain chuck of land of mostly water and grasses there was really something calming and beautiful about the area. The ability to control the land and water the magnitude and force applied by the sheer power of human will and its still and calm with the sound of the wood clicking and tapping against itself in the mill and the stiff breeze blowing against the you and the grass.

Alex and I walked along the path until it ran out just to the bike path and not wanting to play chicken with those maniacs we made our way back to get ready for our next tour, A FAMILY CHEESE FARM! I was excited. Some excitement dwindled as we boarded the bus and were greeted by our prior guide, the lady with a cheese grater personality. The hour and a half drive was not made any easier with her commentary as she spoke as if she was eating the microphone licking and clicking her lips boring insanity into our minds…. we learned more about her and her elderly father and her word political beliefs, then she told us how she has some weird fear or beliefs about corn on the cob and how she tried to eat it with a knife and fork, not like cut it off the cob but more like eat it like you would a steak with a knife and fork. We had had enough of this lady and we began to be overcome with the crazy insanity laughs, luckily we were saved as we pulled into the farm, ready to get our cheese on. We had a guided tour around the farm seeing where they separate the curds and whey and then where the cheese is pressed and coated in wax and aged. The aging room had a very strong and interesting smell, as one would imagine. After seeing all of this and the dutch girl making a jab at the American smoking processes, one we allowed to pass as we are polite individuals and being guests in her home and business we would never be as rude as to insult our host as she would her guests….. but I’m not saying anything about that. Anyway, fueled by her mean words she directed us to the store area where were we given free reign on samples. We went hog wild and ate all their cheese. Gorged on truffle cheese and spiced cheese and aged cheese and other cheesy tidbits of cheese we then got a tour of the cows and working areas of the farm. We saw baby cows and big cows and one boy cow in a breeding sex pit with 30 lady cows. The farm hand guide made a joke about him being the hardest worker on the farm….. We were back on the bus to deal with our cheese grater guild once more back to meet the ship before we disembarked for the last time to head to our final stop in Amsterdam!

“It is better to travel well than to arrive” Buddha (While I agree its best to focus on the trip and the now and not worry of tomorrow but I would like to be clear that I want tomorrow still, this sounds almost like he’s promoting to live crazy and not even make it to your destination!)

Cologne… quite a pretty city… from the cheap side of the river, something we realized as we passed over the bridge into Cologne. Looking back we learned all of the fun that was to be had was on the West bank, the best bank. Weaving through the crooked streets we passed what the locals called a blue garbage bag opera house. It was originally set up as a “temporary” preforming center… temporary in Cologne, Germany, I’m assuming, spans well beyond 20 years it would seem. The opera house is still in use and currently had a vampire opera headlining. I pondered for a moment how vampire operas could bring in enough revenue to cover expenses, but then quickly realized the overhead was literally a blue trash bag and subsequently I’m assuming quite low. 

Skip ahead to meeting with our walking tour guide. The walk started with thirty minutes of standing in front of a cathedral, then thirty minutes of walking through the cathedral alone, with no tour guide….. Then, the walking tour began. We marched at a snails pace around one side of the cathedral passing by a museum of Roman artifacts that immediately drew my attention (we would come back to this later). We walked down toward the three market squares, stopping in each one. We saw a silly sculpture of a man pooping from the rooftop. Across the street on the town hall a sculpture just below the large clock depicting a government official blowing raspberries at the people. These two statues were a representation of German humor of the people not liking the government thinking they are shitting on them, and the government not caring phhhhhttttt (face fart). These were pretty much the highlights of the walking tour before we were deposited back at the cathedral and left with a choice… go back to the boat and eat free lunch, or wander around until our next excursion started a mere three hours ahead. We chose, as reasonable people would, to double back and check out that museum full of Roman artifacts from the region. The museum included a beautifully preserved mosaic found directly next to the cathedral.They uncovered this wonderful beast from the past when they were digging trenches to deposit and save the stained glass from the church during the war from the pressure and bombing that was occurring. They dug out around the mosaic and it was never moved. The ground level at that time period was so much lower it was equal to a modern day second level basement. After getting our fill on Roman antiquities we then, like sensible adults, got our fill on schnitzel and tiny beers. It was here in one of the old market squares that we spent the rest of our free time, eating and drinking and laughing at a drunken bee as he tried to carry an item much too big for him. 

As the time passed much too quickly we had to leave, vamous, skadiddle, so we could meet with our next group. We misjudged. Somewhere along the line words lost their meaning, or our ability to understand them fell short. We ended up spending an hour wandering back and forth from the bus drop off location and the meeting point for our next tour. All the while counting the number of homeless people we saw (it ended up being 16, a number we thought too high for a welfare state with over 50% tax going to the government with one of its aims to prevent homelessness). Like a drug deal in daylight, we awkwardly crowded on the side of the cathedral, behind the photo shop and next to a construction entrance. Here our guide lead us through a dirty fabric covered fence and a makeshift plywood door, to what would be best described as an OSHA textbook nightmare. We were directed onto an elevator attached to scaffolding, something in hindsight that was a completely undeveloped decision.

The guide closed the door and pushed the button… It wasn’t until about halfway up, about 8 stories, we read a sign that said no insurance, at your own risk, you done fucked up, this thing has no safety features. I then made the mistake of asking “is this hydraulic, or is this set on a winch system?” Hoping she would easily and quickly dispel any fears with a reasonable answer. She simply, silently, pointed at one little box. I realized it was a single gear mechanism with no fail safes… Remember a few blog posts ago when I described Alex’s grip leaving marks? Let’s just say this one left scars. That’s right folks, it would seem we got ourselves a real behind the scenes tour through the renovation areas lead by one of the art restorers. If there was any questions on whether or not this was a public tour that was quickly dispelled as our elevator reached it’s final height of crazy pants high, and we walked out onto scaffolding suspended from random bits of limestone spires. We were probably a good hundred and fifty feet above the roof on rickety aluminum scaffolding with subpar, yea let’s just go with subpar, safety measurements. Getting passed the safety issues and having a misplaced faith in our current predicament the tour itself was incredible, astonishing, stunning, and well worth the risk. We walked along the roofline’s edge, popping in and out from time to time. At one point along the edge of a wall several hundred feet above the chapel floor we leaned over the edge and saw the people congregated to pray or view the remains/tombs of the Three Wise Men. We visited what is now a storeroom in one of the towers, pressed through the small inside corridors of the church, passing the pipe organ which was suspended from the ceiling. From here we went back out on the roof, up some more spiral stone stairs, and into the attic space above the vaulted ceilings. Outside a small door it was here we got a close up view of some of the gargoyles that also doubled as water spouts, and climbed yet again to a higher point in the attic above the main cathedral’s vaulted ceilings. We saw the workshop, restoration room, and storage space for all of the characters and intricate designs surrounding the spires outside. The guide let us in on a little secret; because the creatures and designs were so high up, the artists sometimes decided to add their own signature or flair to the pieces they were replacing or restoring. If you look closely, you may find a little man speaking on his cellular telephone affixed to the side of a spire, amongst other easter eggs.

We thought we were done with stairs, but no! We climbed another set of spiral stairs up past one of the belfries to a platform built behind the two towers at the top of Cologne. The view was stunning. We could see our ship, the train station, the roman museum, and even that big blue trash bag. We took a bunch of pictures, laughed at the little people the size of ants below (more of a nervous laugh really), and the silly people who paid for the general tour and climbed 600 steps for a, while safer, much less interesting tour. Our laughter came to a grinding halt when we realized we had to get back into that rickety elevator. Did we make it? Will our heroes descend like angels from the spires? Or will they be defenestrated from the plastic peep holes of a scaffolding elevator and hung like the gargoyles of old, just another easter egg on the side of the building? Tune in next week. Same bat-blog, same bat-website. 

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes” Marcel Proust

We sailed over night and in the morning we cruised through what was described as the most picturesque part of the river, and they weren’t lying. This part of the river was littered with castles, with 0% exaggeration as soon as one castle was out of sight there was another coming up, this went for nearly two hours. While Bjorn commentated the history of each castle the staff served us spritzers and we helped ourselves to coffee and pastries to our hearts (and bellies) content. The day was warm, the breeze lackluster, but the views… muah (insert meme here). We passed a castle with a grim story that Bjorn told us over the speaker system about the rich man in power who once presided over the small town. The people came to him one winter and asked for enough grain to survive, as they were left with nothing after they paid their taxes in gold and grain/supplies. The kind gentlemen said “why of course” and opened the gates to the storehouses allowing all of the towns people to flood in. Just as the last food deprived orphan made his way into the storehouse he slammed closed the gates and razed it to the ground. He believed he’d gotten away with it…. Until the rats, fleeing from the fiery embers, fueled by the vengeance of God, chased him across the river to a castle built on a sandbar between the two shores, where they survived the winter off of his flesh. Dun dun dunnnnnnn. While the story sounded familiar as if I’d heard it somewhere before, Bjorn summarized my thoughts perfectly as he stated “it wouldn’t be a German folk tale if everyone wasn’t miserable or dead at the end.”

While digesting this grim fairytale Alex spotted just around the bend (just around the river bend) another castle! Who would have thought we’d see one of those here. She found this one to be her favorite and we scurried to get photos of it while passing. To our surprise the ship docked at the base of the mountain the castle sat upon. It so happened to be, this was our next excursion, a literal fairytale castle. I’ve never seen Alex so excited to get off of the boat. This was one of the castles used as a model for Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

Like clockwork we ticked away in our quick ascension to the mountains peak… or close there to it. When we arrived at the base of the castle, we were greeted by a series of winding, steep, staircases made from railroad ties. We were in Group D and had a half hour of free time prior to our tour starting, so we found a cozy bench to soak in the views and spend the time. When the time came for us to tour the castle we congregated near the entrance and were greeted by a lanky young fellow with a classic NES t-shirt. Appearances were deceiving as he proved to be quite the wonderful guide. Right as our tour began, the sky opened up and dumped a torrential amount of water on our heads. We had not prepared properly and were subsequently drenched. Despite this setback we ventured on.

For as big as the castle seemed at a distance the inside was quite small. And I mean small… I hit my head (almost) on just about every doorway. We took a tour of the grounds, saw the main gate with a staircase carved into the stone of the mountain. We saw some of the castles defenses along with a demonstrative garden. The entire castle was set up as it would have been in medieval times, complete with furniture and fake food. We learned that people would sleep sitting up because you only laid flat when you were dead, so the beds were very small and half inclined, more like a wide lounge chair. We saw a toilet with a lock on the outside to prevent intruders from climbing the poop shoot…. interestingly, the toilet was located right next to the dining table so no conversations would be interrupted. We are thinking of bringing this floor plan back when we remodel our house.

From here we saw the horse stalls with original ceilings, the wine cellar, armory, and torture chamber. Just at this time the weather cleared up for us to head back down the stairs to make our way back to our ship which had now moved further up the river, leaving us in the chase. 

“Wherever you go, go with all your heart” Confucius

So, Ive realized the titles are getting longer as the trip progresses, hopefully by the end this won’t mean the title are longer than the post as the post are pretty long themselves. The day was bright and it called us out to adventure! We obliged, and our means of arrival, to ADVENTURE, was a little train car thingy! All Aboard! And we were off for about five minutes…. yah it wasn’t really far at all. We got off in the “main” part of town, really you could walk from one side to the other in like 45 minutes, this was indeed the smallest town we had been to yet and so didn’t really have a main part? Our guide told us he had lived in this town his whole life, like his father and grandfather before him. He had worked in town his whole life and knew everyone. Literally, he said hello by first name with everyone we passed. He took us about and pointed out, like we had seen in previous towns, the high water marks as well as carvings on the outsides of many buildings that told us what the profession of the person who built it was and the year it was built. So we saw old signs for baker or butcher or general town silly person, that last one we weren’t able to find which soon in a talk down by the river became much clearer as to why, there are no silly billies in Germany.

It’s really amazing the ideals to hold onto the culture and past so much that they keep these old buildings and don’t update them and replace parts, especially as they get flooded every few years, something we wouldn’t bother with in the USA, as even where my parents live in Florida, when it flooded so much everyone now is required to build higher up; crazy old Floridians and their tradition be damned! There is a small problem however with holding onto old ideals. We had another uncomfortable conversation about the past and this towns history. So our guide, whom up to this point was just lovely and a sweet little roundish old man, began taking about how this town didn’t sustain much damage back in the war. Except, he explained a few of the bridges that were destroyed when the Americans were approaching the town by “patriotic germans.” I made a very visible face of discomfort and confusion as I knew he was talking about them there nazis. Hold on now, it picks up the brain hurt pace here pretty quick. He explained how his father was a little boy at the time and the townspeople were hiding in their basements when the American troops came into town and how this was the first time that many of them had ever seen a black man, and the soldier gave out pieces of gum to the people and children. Ah, nice right? Making friends and stuff? Well hold on, next he said how the American troops we nice and Patton wouldn’t let them misbehave and how they were respectful and then he said, “but later the “French” came and they had black soldiers, and no one kept them in line and they raped all our women.” All the while looking right at the only black man in the group, our boat and most likely the surrounding 1,000 sq miles or maybe even further. Judging from facial reactions alone, I would believe that Alex and I with our shipmate were the only people who were in shock over what we were hearing. Not even his friends in his group looked shocked but they were native Spanish speakers and I don’t believe the rest of our group didn’t care, it’s a lot to do with the way these things are said. He talks about it in the context of history, this bridge etc. but then he tangents and talks about other things and is able to leap between them because there is a common thread even though it doesn’t actually have anything to do with the actual thing he was originally telling about. Don’t play those games with me, I’m a bullshit master. Anyway people kinda get swept up into it and he’s saying everything in kind of a nice way with slight remorse for the past but also always trying to turn it to how it was bad for them, in such a way you kinda get taken away with it. Again, this is not everyone, our young guide the other day was as human as they come, a real crystal glass. But some people are little less clear and harder to see through.

So we finished the tour with plenty of time to spare, time to walk up the mountain and see the ruined castle and pop into a glass blowing studio belonging to the gentlemen who would on this very evening would come on board to perform a presentation demonstration galore! Again, anyway, we pressed up the mountain from inclined paths to stairs and winding bits we made our way up to a stair case that connected to the drawbridge. We walked around and looked at the small city below, but they wanted to charge for you to go and walk around in the ruins and had signs that pretty much said good luck you’re on your own and the risk is yours. We, with our legs like jelly from the preceding days decided to head back through town to the boat. On the way down however, Alex found a gate left open down a small path we passed. Like the curious cat we branched up the path and found ourselves in the area from which they were charging entrance fees. Thats right we cheated the system! So still tired and hurting but not pretending to be an equestrian dentist and taking the gift we were given we climbed the tower to see like the great birds see! More accurately we had to squeeze up some stairs that I could best describe as a spiral ship ladder staircase to reach the top. Hitting my head on everything as Alex skipped up the stairs with all the room in an empty sky. Finally, we made it to the top. I stood and took in the wonderful breeze, grateful for the fact that I did not become stuck and die wedged in an old staircase left to become part of the attraction. Alex tiered of the view quicker than I and headed back down from where she was apparently yelling back up so she could take my picture but atop a tower higher than heaven I could hear her not. We walked around a bit more and just as we went to leave we saw a Ford SUV in an multi century old castle in a backwood town in Germany and had a giggle, he then drove through our secret gate and it locked behind him with us inside…… So back up through the castle and back down the mountain, still with no entrance fee paid. We stopped in the glass shop and got a gift for Emma who we would be seeing later in the trip and got a little memento for our trip and honeymoon. We took the train back to the boat for another five min drive and talked about sneakers the whole way with a lady sitting next to us. Then we relaxed in the room! Until the man arrived for the glass blowing demonstration! 

A man from the town came aboard on one of the locks and put on a demonstration for us. Himself and going back five generations in his family are all glass blowers. He told us about the profession, making glass for science research projects and special items, making glass eyes and how that is a very small specialized group. He talked about how when the wall was up and he was getting started how hard it was but how glass blowers always had work because it was always needed. He talked about glass blowers back in the war and also how they have to stick together and thats why most of the glass blowing done in the whole country happens in this small town that has nearly 20,000 glass workers in the area! He, much like many of the proud and opinionated people, made some jabs at the French as well but even more at the east germans, which was a first we had heard about this but not the last as we would hear about it another three times. Specifically about a tax imposed after the wall came down to help build back up different industries, so in his case money was coming out of his paycheck to help train east germans to do his profession thus taking work from him. He was actually the first person we heard complaining about taxes, it made me feel good to know they all weren’t crazy. He had two young girls come up and help him make Christmas ornaments that he ended up giving to them. Everyone had  good fun, we laughed, we jumped a little as he kept breaking glass and we all learned a little more through awkward conversations in Germany! 

“For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return” Leonardo da Vinci

Much like in between the cities of Buda and Pest we docked under a lovely bridge, not quite as nice as the chain bridge but still lovely, between a mountain on one side and an old photogenic city on the other. After a quick breakfast we loaded a bus that wound up another road carved as if by magic into cliff face. From the top of this mountain we disembarked our bus, thanked our driver, and bid him ado as we got off in a little forested area and were left for dead and to fend for ourselves. While the others began to panic and look franticly around with cannibalistic eyes I suggested that we merely stick to the schedule and have a lovely walk through the hills as was the plan. Reason won out and we started through the trees and the path along the mountainside with the most spectacular views of the city below. 

Very shortly after the start, we came to the chapel built up on the mountain. When we went inside a service was being held, so we looked at some of the smaller rooms and the guide told us there were plans to renovate everything in three years. This was very much needed as the walls were coated in black soot from the years of candles, so much so that every hand or action brushed against the wall left the event tangible for the world to see. We took in the views and the cool breeze climbing the mountain side before we started the long hike down the mountain to the fortress off in the distance. Leading down (or up depending your direction) were landings each with statues of different saints. This location is another pilgrimage site where people will come every year and climb the steps on their knees, stopping on each step and saying a prayer. It was enough on my feet while going down, so I can only imagine the damage one could sustain going up these old jaggedly uneven cobblestone steps. Coming to the bottom we passed through some small ancient looking paths weaving in-between newer houses. We broke out of the tree-line out to a part of the city and went through a tunnel that came out in front of an old prison thats now used as a dorm for local colleges. So lucky for them they didn’t have to do any remodeling. We tucked around the new dormitory and started climbing steps carved into the hill. We went through an even older tunnel, filled with more darkness and spiders than one would care for, and came out into a vineyard grown into the hills and cliffs of the mountain leading up to the old castle.

This is when it hit us, heat, quite a bit of heat, as we worked our way up a mountainside sparse with shade. We like little ants under a magnifying glass. Much like no-one would have ever done in history, we scaled these hills and mountainous areas weaving back and forth up and down while working our way around the mountain, slowly but surely gaining ground up toward the fortress above. Toward the back side away from the river we passed through a gate into a modern parking area, yah we could have drove, but we weren’t sissys. Our guide lead us through all five, yes five, gates! This was a pretty big place. One area we were shown was, like in the last city, a filming location for the recent Three Musketeers Movie. We got to the keep and went inside an area that was used as a prison to hold 50 people at one time, which honestly struggled to fit ten of us. We crossed a drawbridge over a now dry moat and another few gates before we ended up in the heart of the castle that was built flush on the edge of the mountain top. In the middle, as you could probably see in the photos, was a large overlook area. Behind the back of the castle was a large garden with an overlook cliff porch “terrace” that overlooked the city with its judgmental railing eyes (Alex did not approve of this sentence…), this was at one time the palace for the prince bishop before he built the new palace in the city. We took in the views and took some photos, obviously. Then we walked down the other side of the mountain, which was actually set up as a path and means of ingress to the castle, we used it as means of escape. This path took quite a bit less time and we ended up back at the river. From the bridge we were able to see one of the river locks we had been passing through, but this time from an external perspective. We walked along the river till we got to the boat and had lunch after which we rested a bit before we got ready to go out again for the palace tour and city walk.

We took a bus to the Würzburg residence another unesco site and the location that Lt. Skelton saved the frescos during the war. This was another house way bigger than it could have ever needed to be built then again is wasn’t a house it was a palace. We had a tour through the place and the ceilings were really something else, I mean wow. They had all the different regions of the world represented in frescos on the ceiling, the Americas were pretty interesting; naked ladies and alligators, so not much has changed. Europe was depicted as the best of them all as you would figure, guy that pays makes it how they want and when it was painted that was mostly true as well. We weren’t able to take photos in the palace but you could look them up online I believe and I think the frescos are worth a gander. We went through a few rooms, the entertaining room, dinning, room for the soldiers when people would arrive, and bedrooms to list a few. They were gaudy as you would expect in a baroque style, again, these people really love to cover everything with gold but I’m beginning to see the appeal, if you have over nine hundred servants to clean everything for you that is (which this palace did during its functional years). We picked up a random dude through our tour also and nobody felt inclined to tell him so he just wandered along with us till the end. This is funnier because with the Viking tours we all have little ear pieces and the guide has a microphone so we can hear them so they talk very quite to not be heard by or disturb anyone else, so this guy was just walking around and was struggling to hear what was going on and just thought he was late to the English tour so he didn’t have a Quiet Vox and just kept making silly faces of surprise, happiness, confusion, and a whole bunch of awkward. We had some free time after the tour and sticking with our past we found another rose garden and chilled, this time under trees that were not in the act of sappy pissing. There was an intoxicating breeze as a storm was rolling in and the increased winds were blowing all the scents of the flowers around with the trees and leaves blowing in a lovely little nature sonnet.

Free time used up we took a guided walking tour through the town back down toward the river. We saw some weird modern art, two churches, one with carvings of the virgin marry getting impregnated with baby Jesus through the ear. Really, little baby Jesus was ridding a ribbon down on his little baby belly right into her ear. We walked through the market area right when it began to rain so we took cover under a building shortly until it calmed down a little. The guide pointed out a little bit of this and a little bit of that and then we came to the oldest bar in town with a picturesque courtyard something straight from a film almost. We headed back down the Main Street toward the river where we found a wine store with a local wine made from the grapes we passed earlier on our walk. This wine is not exported and is put in a belly shaped bottle and the name? Yah its called the scrotum of the goat wine, I love this place and its silly people. They gave you free tastings of any kind you like and we tried a few and then bought a few. Again we walked along the river and back to the boat and up river once again to our next stop, a town Bjorn claimed was more picturesque than this, this we would have to see about.

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not” Ralph Waldo Emerson

This town is the dictionary definition of cute and quaint. We got dropped off from the buses in front of an old inn just a stones throw from where things were getting ready to happen it would seem. It was early and all the towns in this part of Europe, much like Erroll’s lifestyle, don’t really get moving until around noon. So it was, when we first arrived, a definition of a cute ghost town. As we did our walking tour of the town everywhere on every street were stages and tents for markets set up, and like the other towns and in the effort to get use of the pleasant weather months they were having a festival! We just arrived a bit early for the shindig, a continued theme for us; arrive too early or too late. The town was beyond cute and in the middle part of the old center there was a fountain of Poseidon. Our guide made sure to tell us if we got lost or later in the day we could ask any where the fountain was but not to describe it as the Poseidon fountain as no-one would know what the hell we were talking about. She told us everyone just calls him the forks man and in the German it apparently is spoken as (I’m typing the phonetic not the actually spelling) “gobble-môw.”

This small town not having too much to do in the war only saw 4% damage and so almost none of it had to be rebuilt and what we saw was mostly the original structures from medieval times. One of the buildings that did get bombed they never rebuilt and turned into a fountain, with parts higher and lower like the stones as they would have fallen. Its odd to look at something thats so soothing and such a lovely aesthetic both for the town and to just look at and think it came from such a destructive force. We made our way stumbling on cobblestone after cobblestone to the river that ran through town. Here we saw a few things, the town hall with a funny story, a butcher shop next to houses so prized they pass through families and haven’t had a sale in centuries and street performers and rafting river rapids. The town hall was built in the water, as the story goes, because the land owner of the town, the prince bishop, said they could build one but not on his land… As he owned all the land they built it in the water on the little island between the rivers as this was technically not his land. Yah, tricky little guys these old Germans. The butcher shop was built on the river and had trap doors where they would just dump all the waste right down the holes and into the river. There was a row of houses falling behind this butcher shop down the river and down stream. This lead to horrible smells as one could image.

Fast forward a few hundred years and now these fishing houses are the most prized in all the town, so much so that one hasn’t been sold and they are passed down through the generations. The guide recommend our best chance to get one would be to marry into the family but we would have to hurry as we were only in town for the day. In the middle of the bridge there was a girl street performer playing when the saints go marching in, yup. Over the bridge there were sticks suspended from wires spanning different areas for rafter and kayakers to run speed courses but unfortunately we didn’t see any in the times we were passing over the bridge. We pressed ahead, again fighting our reoccurring enemy the cobble stones, and made our way up the hill to the palace, another church, and the rose garden overlooking the city. The church had some interesting carvings on its exterior. On the right side there was a carving of a jewish person having his eyes plucked out by the devil because of their blind faith in the wrong god. Kinda went from 0-60 there pretty quick. In my last post I talked about some of the odd use of langue when some of the Germans have talked about the countries past, you know what I’m talking about. Anyway I’m doubling down because today our guide was exactly what you would have thought someone would have talked like. She was incredible and was also very young so I think there is a thought difference trailing on the curve with age. She explained the carvings on the church and then like many of the cities we had been to previously talked about the “Crystal Night” and the destruction of synagogues and the persecution of the Jews. She went on further and talked about how this was not the first time in their history this had even happen. In fact, the complete kicking-out of the jewish community had happened on several occasions. She, unlike previous persons, was upset in the repetition of history. She had a “normal” reaction when talking about these events and I understood even further what was missing from the other people when they talked about these events; conviction. I’m glad to see that there are people who understand the events and the gravity they hold and I’m glad it’s the newest generation I’m just surprised that the older one hasn’t seemed to have learned from the past or a better way of hiding how they didn’t really dislike it.

We found our way into a courtyard that was used as the scene for the large sword fight in “The Three Musketeers” with Orlando Bloom a really cool courtyard for a not so cool movie. We passed through the gate of the palace on our way to the rose garden and the floor was made of wood with such a cool pattern that it really drew my attention. The floor was made out of wood so as to absorb the sound better when the carriages came in the wood would absorb the sound and they would make less noise. We walked out to the rose garden and let me say, I want a garden. The gardens here are by far the best thing, Alex and I both find ourselves having travel thousands of mile to just find and sit in these gardens. Thats just what we did too. We sat and looked out over the city and got pissed on with sap by the trees we were sitting under. We thought it was a drizzle if rain, nope, sap. Still it didn’t detract too much we just had a bit of time to clean all it off our hands cameras and phones. With a few more full lung fulls of the sweet smells that surrounded us we decided to head back to the bus as the day before we were told stories of people that nearly got left behind as they didn’t make it back in time.

On the way back we seemed to have given the town enough time to wake up and things were really stirring. The previous empty streets were bustling and we retraced our steps back through the town passing all the now-filled shops and stages. Many of the stages had gypsy performers and I would love more than anything to say they were amazing! Unfortunately, I cannot say that… they were… meh. Now we didn’t linger too long at any one stage so I’ll withhold judgement but I’ll just say what we saw didn’t make us want to linger. The tents and shops however had flowers and food galore and this was right up my ally! We got back to the location where the bus was to pick us up, and the walk that we thought would have taken a while we made with 40 min to spare…. So, we walked back and got pastries and coffee. On the way back we stumbled across another stumbling stone, something we saw a few days before in Regensburg. There is a man that if you pay a small amount to and tell him the address of any Jews that were removed from their homes during the holocaust he will go to the address and place these stones out front of the property as a reminder of the past and the lives effected or lost. He calls them stumble stones because he wants you to stumble across them and to cause you to stumble mentally and remember the past.

Not more than 200 yards from the stumble stones we popped a squat and ate our pastries before boarding the bus and going back to the boat. This time we had to go just out of town in kind of an industrial area and so, because I think the view in the very “dock” looking area was rather unappealing (as we heard many people on the bus grumbling “they don’t show this in the brochure”) they greeted us with ice cream with waffle cones! As we walked back on the boat we got our pick from four different flavors and they gave us a healthy scoop in a cone coming off the gangplank.

“History is a vast early warning system” Norman Cousins

“I like the dreams of the future better than the histories of the past” Thomas Jefferson

SO IT BEGINS! Much to our displeasure the sun stayed constant as always and rose, well… it sat still and we continued to rotate around it, while turning on our axis, thus giving us the appearance of it rising over the horizon. Potatoes, tomatoes, however you look at it, it got too damn bright outside and put gears a turning and actions into motion. The world continued to move and we had moved right alone with it. We had to force ourselves up early so we could get some breakfast to gain energy for our long travel across the land to the new ship, less we would grow weak and get lost in the back country of Germany and starve. This shouldn’t have been as difficult as it was but due to mine and Alex’s inability to be normal adults and go to bed at a reasonable time we ended up staying up until around 3:00 AM watching films on demand in our room. We watched The Shape of Water and while we had heard lots of good things about it we both really didn’t care for it; tons of plot holes and non sensible story lines, it kinda seemed like a college film with a overblown budget. We then lucked out and watched two other films that were totally incredible; Three Billboards and The Greatest Showman. Three Billboards was very interesting and followed several characters in a pretty different way. The Greatest Showman was just lovely and was a musical, tons of fun to watch! Anyway, moving off my tangent, after breakfast we loaded up all of our stuff again, clothes and all, back into our bags and the whole boat loaded onto the buses. Through this process Alex’s bag sustained irreversible damage (the handle tore apart on two sides when she picked it up) but it still has a job to do so until we are able to find a suitable replacement it will continue to be used in its current and torn state, much like a zombie following the last thing on its mind before death, this bag will bag until it can’t bag any longer. The whole boat loaded onto six buses and we were off, burning rubber and heading for the new ship, as that ship I assume was doing the same and heading to our ship, it was a ship swap shuffle juggle, it would seem. As we left the whole ship lined up to wish us off and we had some moments with some of the staff that we had come to really enjoy. It was sad and sweet all at the same time but we stole away their program director, Bjorn, as he was in too deep with us and we gave him the Stockholm Syndrome something fierce. The bus went pretty quick, and with only one stop on the way for stretching our legs and a bathroom break, we made it to the new ship even earlier than was expected. We climbed on board and they greeted us with champagne, mimosas, shots, and little snacks! They told us “welcome home” and told us they were excited to have us finally boarding our original ship. Viking crews really know how to make you feel welcomed! Shortly after arriving on board we were able to go to our new rooms, which were the same as our old rooms, it was actually kinda tripy as these are sister ships and the only things different are the staff and the paintings on the wall. Anyway, we were on the boat long enough to eat lunch, and then it was back onto a bus… off the boat again and into Nuremberg this time…. Yah, nazi party headquarters back in the war on your honeymoon, we play for them romance keeps y’all (also the reason for the change from travel quotes to history quotes for today). We started with a bus tour that took us around to a few big ticket items, so to speak, of Nuremberg which were mostly related to the city in its most well known point of history, WW2. We saw the zeppelin fields, the parade grounds and the coliseum hitler built but never finished. We also saw the old medieval walls, opera house, the SS barracks that US forces took over and a huge old train station thats now a shopping center.

“Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all” – George Washington

From here we were dropped off at the castle on top of the hill and started our descent through the old town down to the city center. From up at the castle we had a stunning view of the city. The guide had photos that were taken after the war and the way it looked made you take pause, you could see the streets and how it was obviously was the same place, while at the same time you couldn’t believe that it could possibly be the same place after looking like it did. We crossed the now dry moat and walked through the tunnel to the gate beneath the murder holes that now acted like lights shining brightly into the dark tunnel as its only true source of light. Passing through the gate at the top we moved through a few different types of courtyards spanning different time periods with slight differences in style and architecture. In the center at the tallest point of the whole place sprouted a tall tower reaching high above everything with an unobstructed view as far as anyone could ever hope to see. True to the historic fashion there was no staircase or means of entering the tower, in the event that the castle was overrun it would be your last hope to climb a rope into the tower and pull it up after you. There would have been a source of water and food so one could have sustained for a while until a surrender could be reached or in more common the case they burned down the tower with you still inside.

“We are not makers of history. We are made by history” – Martin Luther King

We worked down a multitude of stairs and small winding alleys from time to time popping out into courtyards with a statue or art piece there to catch you unawares. We saw the house of a famous artist that the tour guide was really all proud of but no-one in the group had really ever known although after seeing a few of his paintings we agreed we had seen them before but never knew much of him and the most famous piece we all recognized was actually only a sketch; the praying hands. We kept moving down the hill and boom there was another statue, of the artist no one knew and the guide told us all about him again, we listened as walking backwards to the sweet sounds of music and laughter and as she finished she took the lead once more and lead us to the courtyard in the old square where a festival was going on; that means that almost every city we have been to had a party of some sort going on while we were there. It was here our tour ended and we had some free time, so Alex and I got a pastry and coffee in a little shop overlooking the square where the workers in the time we were there broke several plates or glasses and had a good giggle about it. We walked a large horseshoe path over an old bridge, yelled at some ducks, and looped back around through an open air market going on. Here we saw a statue of what we think was remembering the exodus of people leaving the country from the holocaust, but we were not sure as it was a little odd and abstract with not a bit of English on it. We continued walking back into the square where we rubber necked around the shopping stalls and set up by the golden fountain to listen to some of the bands play before we had to meet and get back to the bus. On the bus ride back to the boat the weight of the day caught up to us quickly and we found ourselves nodding in and out. When we got back we ate and passed right out for one of the best nights of sleep we had, mostly do to the days of lack of sleep we forced ourselves to endure.

“History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man” – Percy Bysshe Shelly

A small reflection on the few and be aware it has been few interactions on discussions pertaining to Germany and the actions of the 1930-1945. In the few occasions where the topic has fallen to WW2 and events that occurred, when Hitler has been mentioned, these things have been spoken of with an odd kind of ease. Slightly similar if you were playing a board game or a sport against a team and caught them cheating, and then the next time you played you mentioned, “hey asshole you cheated last time we played, that was fucked messed up” and they simply replied “yah the coach cheated in that game last time and he is maybe the most hated coach in the world, maybe, and it was, you know, a dark point in our history and yah we used to have lots of players and they had play houses they called synagogues and those jew players were good German jew players but they all left and immigrated to America or were sent to camps and most were killed there, which is bad. Now we remember that bad part of our history, because it is import to remember.” Now change coach with Hitler and remove players and thats a verbatim talk we had with one of the guides. To look at this in a mirror, in the States we have deep seeded racism amongst other things and our own demons with which we struggle, I don’t want to say anything offensive and I’m not making the assumption that Germans are like this, but I kinda feel like some of the people in these cases we’ve talked with don’t really look at the past in that time or the history of it all that badly. The German pride is a real thing it would seem and it is both impressive and beautiful and also terrifying because of what lies just beneath the skin of history. A history that is still visible and incredibly tangible here today.

“I travel light, I think the most important thing is to be in a good mood and enjoy life, wherever you are.” Diane Von FurstenbergWe traveled back, back to the past…. well more so than we have yet on this trip. Up and over the hills surrounding the town of Passau and out into the country past fields of maize, wheat, and barley as we ventured with a bus driver that spoke no English, nor German, nor any tongue spoken by anyone aboard. This led to some interesting happenings. Some passes in the road we took would barley fit the bus and yet were two lanes of traffic, there was a lot of chicken going on, as a result you could probably pull Alex’s finger prints off my arm until the new skin grows in. In a convoy of buses the cotton army arrived and us along with it. We walked up the hill toward town and to the famous stone bridge which they said was just finished being rebuilt, although they were still working on it, a theme here is that everything is always being worked on. This town really was something else, due to its size it was never completely destroyed even though it was captured in several wars including by Napoleon and thus stayed consistent with the medieval architecture. Another cool thing we passed on our way in to town was a retirement home I wouldn’t mind landing in myself in my cotton years, they had their own private beer garden and get beer with every dinner!

While we thought the roads and ally’s were small up till now, we knew nothing. Apparently in medieval times you would build your house practically inside your neighbors house. I’ll put it this way, some alleys I’d find hard to even pass with a horse, let alone mobs of people and buses! One such ally we were squeezing through and while my face was pressed against the glass of a small shop, letting some old ladies pass, I happen to see inside and a lady was sitting at a sewing machine and making clothes, little kids clothes and this dark back ally was her shop! The clothes were sooooo cute! They had little wooden buttons and very unique patterns, little booties and hats. Looking through the small window reminded me when I was young at Disney in the part where you could go into Mickey and Minnie’s house and see all the little items as they were small houses, if anyone else remembers that. It was like looking in the window at a theme park exhibit of an ancient times taking place in 2018. At the end of the ally I found a hat shop full of the types of hats everyone told me not to bring and wear as “Europeans don’t wear hats like that Erroll, you’ll stick out” well guess what everyone, I stick out anyway, Europeans are like little people, I feel like Dorothy in the munchkin village half the time, high little voices and all. At the end of the ally we found another church and the guide said something about tax and how tax goes to the church from the state? I don’t fully remember but, totally different than the U.S. That’s for sure. I think there was something about 8% and the elected officials. We went into the old church and holy darkness in the bat cave Batman! I used the low light function on my camera so I could see because in real life it was like walking into a closet with the light off. The center piece of this church was a solid silver alter. Yup you read that right.

We walked around the town checking out little nooks and crannies, adorable little courtyards with gardens and unbelievable old structures as we made our way to a restaurant in a building dating back to the 13th century. We had a lovely meal with pork and potatoes, gravy, apple strudel and ice cream and many beers, Alex didn’t care for the beer which is ok because it preferred my belly anyway. After lunch we stuck around the restaurant because we were taking part in a traditional white sausage making class. We went back to one of the old store rooms where they had tables set up and had to place workshop lights around the room as there was no lighting in the stone and plaster ceiling or walls. We watched the butcher as he explained the ingredients and procedure with his tricks of the trade in how to make this well known meal. Well known here I suppose because I had never heard of white sausage before. He explained the importance of keeping the temperatures right, because of the high fat content, and about the spices, one of which was called mace. It was an interesting smelling spice and I was unfamiliar with it but apparently it is a coating that is found on the outside of nutmegs. It kinda smelled like a peppery nutmeg I guess? He prepped some of the ingredients and mixed them in a chopper/mixing machine that bellowed against the stone walls when he turned it on. Everyone partook and helped with different aspects and then some even filled the casings. More weird than that, some of these crazy people tried the raw filling after it was mixed! I guess they like to spend more time seeing their toilet than seeing the sights. After the class was finished we went back to the dinning room and again had more food! Sausages, pretzels, and beer this time and the ones we made none the less! They had a local mustard they used in this town for their pretzels, it was a lot like honey mustard but with lots more mustard seed. I really enjoyed it but it didn’t really cut the mustard for Alex.(wink, wink) That’s been an interesting reoccurrence on this trip so far I’ve been trying so many different types of foods and for anyone that knows me I eat like a five year old, so very picky, but apparently I’m in my element out here, weird meats and starches with sauces and gravies galore!