Europe Wrap-Up

Now that I've been home for a few days and have had some time to reflect on my trip to Europe, I thought I should write an entry about it before too much time passes and other more blog-worthy things start happening to me and I never get around to writing anything about Europe. I'm also trying to put together a Google Map showing our route and some highlights and whatnot, but no promises...

So, to make a long story short, it was a great trip. After booking the airfare both my dad and I confided in each other that Germany was actually nowhere near the top of either of our travel wish-lists and that we both would have probably preferred to go somewhere else. Despite that, we both loved Germany and the other places we went as well. I was actually surprised at how much I enjoyed Germany. Here are some of the things I liked about Germany in general:

• Carbon Conscious - One of the very first things I saw after arriving in Germany was vast fields of flaxseed and windmills. Flaxseed is used to produce biodiesel and Germany is one of the world's leaders in biodiesel production and consumption. I think I read somewhere that most (all?) diesel sold in Germany has some blend of biodiesel and higher blends are readily available. In our few days driving around in the car we saw many gas stations offering biodiesel, and it was always the cheapest offering too (probably thanks to government subsidies). Gasoline in general is quite expensive though (approximately $5/gallon) which I actually think is a good thing because I think it probably makes people drive less. But expensive gas isn't the only thing that helps remind Germans of the carbon their cars emit; new cars sold in Europe all seem to include a carbon-emissions figure on the sticker right along with the gas mileage and the horsepower. In general Germans and other Europeans just seem to be more aware of the impact their activities have on the planet and I like that very much.
  
• Cars - Because it is expensive to own a car and difficult to park it, there just don't seem to be quite as many cars as in the US, but there are a lot more cool cars. I think per-capita there are more Bimmers, Benzes, Audis, and Porsches there than there are Fords, Chevys, and Toyotas here. On this trip I also saw several very special cars which I will probably never see again for the rest of my life. So the car-watching is quite a bit better there, but even the more plain-jane cars there are better. Small and efficient is the name of the game rather than big and bulky like here.
  
• Public Transportation - As cool as the cars are, Dad and I were happy to return our rental car and go back to the fantastic public transportation. Between the trains, trams, buses, and subways we easily, cheaply, and comfortably got everywhere we needed to go. Actually, it was the 3-hour trek between DIA and Dad's house in Berthoud that was the hardest part. On a slightly unrelated note, German tram drivers have some pretty good bus-driver waves, but since they don't have to steer they seem to have a broader range of wave possibilities, but that's another blog...
  
• Laissez-Faire - I've written and re-written this bullet three times now and I just don't know how to articulate it, but the basic idea is that Germans are pretty laid-back. Yeah, I'll just leave it at that.

And now for the highlights of the trip, in no particular order:

• Berlin - I loved Berlin and if I only spoke German I would love to live there for awhile. It is a pretty big city, but it has lots of neat little old neighborhoods scattered throughout the city, each with its own distinct flavor. Although the wall came down nearly 2 decades ago and the city has for the most part integrated itself back together pretty seamlessly, I still found the history and the legacy of the wall to be quite fascinating. I'm not sure if I liked Berlin or Munich better, but Berlin might be the favorite by just the slimmest margin. I do think though that where I would describe Munich with words like "lovely" and "laid-back," I would describe Berlin with words like "interesting" and "vibrant."
  
• Munich - With its attractive old town, English Garden, efficient public transportation, pretty Isar River, and most important, its fantastic beer gardens, Munich is a real gem. And its proximity to the Alps means skiing probably isn't too far away from here either. Hmm, maybe I'll have to re-think putting Berlin in first place.
  
• Budapest - Budapest certainly lacked the aesthetic beauty of Munich and the vibrancy of Berlin, but it had a character all its own which I enjoyed. I wrote in a previous entry that Budapest was "gritty" and had sort of an Eastern-Bloc feel to it, and I guess still haven't thought of a better way to describe it. I guess none of those descriptors make it sound very good, but somehow I really liked it. I also felt like the Hungarians were some of the nicer people that we came across on the whole trip, and I was also pretty intrigued by the Hungarian language which is a pretty crazy language with no close linguistic relatives. Finally, Budapest has several big thermal pools, one of which we visited and it was very pleasant. It was sort of like Glenwood Springs pool, only less stinky, more elegant, and with slightly more good-looking people.
  
• Driving - The driving portion of our trip was fun not just for the actual driving (curvy narrow roads and fast-paced autobahn), but also for all the quaint German countryside that we got to see.
  
• M.C. Escher Museum (The Hague) - I knew that I liked Escher before going to this museum in The Hague, Netherlands (who doesn't like Escher?), but I gained a new appreciation for his art after seeing this museum. I hadn't realized that much of his work was done with wood block carvings, which kind of blew my mind. I also got to see a lot of his pieces which I had never seen before. He must have been a real genius. I bet he was good at puzzles too. I bet he kicked ass at scrabble too. We also went to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam which also made me better appreciate Van Gogh, but not as much as Escher.
  
• Mercedes-Benz Museum (Stuttgart) - I'm not really a big fan of Mercedes-Benz because I'm pretty sure they haven't sold a car with a manual transmission in the United States for several decades now, but despite that I loved their huge, fancy museum full of millions of dollars of old, rare, and one-of-a-kind cars. Dad and I went about two hours before closing when we got to Stuttgart and only managed to see about half of it, so I had to go back the next day to finish it. The best part, however, was the buses on display. They had a big fancy new one, but you couldn't sit in the driver's seat unfortunately. Luckily they had another older bus in which you COULD sit in the drivers seat. So I waited for all the other little kids to hurry up and get out of it so I could have my turn at the helm and boy was it worth it. They also had a sweet video of a bus doing 360's on a sheet of ice doing ABS brake testing or something. It looked so fun, I hope I don't accidentally try it someday...
  
• Audi Factory (Ingolstadt) - Audi also had a museum that looked suspiciously similar to the Mercedes museum, but it wasn't nearly as good. Audi DID have a factory tour though which was very interesting despite our lackluster tour guide. It was neat to see the whole process of assembling the car and seeing the big robots deftly maneuver themselves through their confined workspaces, not seeming to care about all the things that they almost collide with as they run through their programmed motions. I think the most important thing that I got from the tour, however, was the realization that everything is infinitely connected. When you go buy a car from a car dealer, it seems very simple, but then you get thinking of every single part on that car, thousands of parts, each of which had to be assembled with the other parts, each of which were produced using tools which were constructed of many other thousands of parts which were made from materials which were produced in some other factory which had more tools to produce the materials which are used to produce the... well I could go on and on.
  

And finally, a few disappointments:

• BMW Museum - Under renovation, they only have a temporary exhibit which I didn't even bother going to. But hopefully the renovated one should be fantastic when it is finished, supposedly in just a few months.
  
• Porsche Museum - Under construction, the current museum is pretty underwhelming. At least it was free though, and it did feature a Porsche Cayman cut in half... Rumor has it the new Porsche Museum will also be big, fancy, and amazing like the Mercedes one... I guess I'll have to go back and see it.
  
• Nürburgring - The only disappointment with this was that I didn't do my homework and so I ended up showing up there and having no way to get a ride around this public race track. So I just stood at the entrance/exit point and watched all the Porsches and sport bikes and stuff go in and out from the long, curvy track dubbed "The Green Hell." I'll just have to plan on going back after I turn 25 and rent a car and drive on it myself I guess...
  
• Stuttgart - Home to Porsche and Mercedes-Benz, I was hoping for a lot from Stuttgart, but this ended up being probably my least favorite German city. That's okay though because Germany seems to have more than its fair share of charming cities, so if it has a mediocre one here and there I guess it is only fair.
  
• Amsterdam - As I mentioned previously, A'dam was just too debaucherous for my taste. I guess some people like it though. Good for them.
  

Ok, I guess that's it! It was a good trip! Hopefully I'll do that map thing... eventually... maybe... but we'll see I guess.

Beer Diplomacy

All good things must come to an end. Dad and I will be flying back home to Colorado bright and early tomorrow morning. It has really been a great trip, better than I had even imagined it would be. I don't have time right now to write about my overall feelings and impressions from the whole trip, but I will write about the past few days.

Basically we did a lot of driving through some very picturesque German countryside and ended up in Stuttgart on Friday. The car was a fun adventure, but we were happy to get rid of it. We think that Dad managed to get two photo-radar tickets in a 5-minute span towards the end of our last full day of driving. And then the morning that we had to return the car our GPS system decided to freak out as we were approaching Stuttgart so we spent an extra 45 minutes and probably €15 of gas driving around lost in Stuttgart. Eventually we found the place though and we happy to go back to using public transportation.

Our first night in Stuttgart we wandered around trying to find some dinner and ended up having some beers outside at a little french restaurant. Dad and I were sitting there having a conversation about something and I noticed that this guy sitting next to us seemed to be paying a lot of attention to our conversation. After awhile he finally leans over and in some labored English asks us where we are from. It turns out he has been studying English for 3 years and was enjoying listening to our "beautiful language." I do this all the time when I sit next to people speaking other languages, so I know exactly how he feels, but I'm sure this is the first time I've ever heard anyone feel this way about English just because English is so ubiquitous. It was kind of refreshing to hear someone say that English is a beauiful language. Anyway, he obviousy just wanted to practice some English and we obliged. We had a nice little simple conversation. He said something about how the USA is "such a wonderful country." I guess that in lots of ways it is, but we told him that we feel much the same way about Germany and that we think in many ways Germany is better off than the USA. Before we knew what was going on he had paid the waitress for our bill as well as his own and left before we could even offer to buy him another drink. It was kind of a neat encounter.

The next day we had the misfortune of being stuck in Stuttgart for a huge futbol game. This is the second time I've unknowingly ended up in a European town on a futbol game day and I've decided that I don't like it. Part of me feels like it is the sort of thing that I should enjoy and a unique cultural experience or whatever, but mostly I just dislike the unruly mobliness of the whole affair.

The highlight of Stuttgart was the amazing and huge Mercedes-Benz Museum. Dad and I went inthe afternoon on the first day we got there, unfortunately in the two hours that we had we were only able to get through half of the museum, so I had to go back the next day to finish it. Today we went to Ingolstadt, home of Audi, and saw their museum which was not as good as the Mercedes museum, but we also did a factory tour which was much more interesting. We saw the automated robots and the whole assembly line for the Audi A3. It really makes you realize all of the work that goes into making a car. I was very impressed by the whole thing.

And so now we are back in Munich where the whole trip started. I wondered if I would find Munich as appealing the second time here as I did when we started here a month ago. I wondered if after seeing a bunch of other cities if Munich would still seem as cool, and in fact it does. Anyway, I only have a few hours left of daylight here before we hop on the plane in the morning so I had better to go the beer garden for the rest of the afternoon. I'll hopefully write something about my overall thoughts and impressions shortly after I get back home. Tchüss!

Driving

So, let's see... we left Amsterdam on Saturday, spent two nights in Düsseldorf which was a pleasant city. We ended up staying in a budget hotel which felt pretty luxurious compared to the dorm-style rooms we've been staying in. On Monday morning we rented a car and left Düsseldorf heading south towards the famous Nürburgring Nordschleife (we got a dorky looking Mercedes Benz A-class. I'd add a link but that would be hard on the computer I'm on so look it up yourself if you are interested). This is one of the world's longest, curviest, and most challenging racetracks, and it's open to the public. For a mere 19 Euros per lap you can take your car around this amazing track that winds its way through the trees and hills around the sleepy little town Nürburg. This track is featured in the playstation racing game Gran Turismo 4 too. One lap takes approximately 10 minutes if you are well-practiced, and maybe 9 minutes if you are real hot shit.

Anyway, you definitely can't take a rental car on the track. Apparently if you do take and rental on the track and the rental company finds out about it they will do anything from charge you $2000 for maintenance or they will ban you from future rentals. Rumor has it that rental companies even pay track employees to report rental cars being used on the track. But I had heard about a Ring Taxi where for a mere 180 euros, three people can ride around the track in an expertly-piloted BMW M5. I was under the impression that you could just sort of show up and hop a ride on this thing, but once we got there we found out that in fact you have to make prior reservations and it only runs on Sundays anyway. So I ended up just sitting at the entrance to the track watching all of the cool bikes and Porsches and other cars go on and off the track. I also found out that there are a few companies which rent cars out specifically for use on the track, but they have a minimum age limit of 25, so I'll probably have to plan a return trip for my 25th birthday or something.

This morning we hopped into the dorky Mercedes (at least it's black though. It's starting to grow on me too. I hope I don't want one when I get back home) and turned the magical GPS system towards Heidelburg for a quick lunch stop and then on to Würzburg (kind of in the middle of nowhere) where we are now. Much of the drive was done on Autobahn highways which are very nice. I think that much of the section between Heidelburg and Würzburg was no-speed limit. Dad and I still can't really figure out how to tell when there is and isn't a speed limit, so we judge it based on how fast the other cars are going. I was cruising at around 90-100 mph for much of the way and I was still just keeping up with the most of the cars and was definitely not even close to keeping up with some other cars. People really know how to drive well on the highway here; they are generally very good about staying out of the left-hand lane except for passing, it's great. I could learn to get used to it, haha.

Bongs, Blunts, and Busty Babes

We left A'dam (Amsterdam) this morning after spending two nights there. Overall, I guess I didn't like it that much. Sure, it was pretty with the canals and neat old tall narrow apartment buildings crammed together and stuff, but it seems like unless you are there for the sex and drugs then it doesn't offer a whole lot. I guess I like the "whatever goes" nature of the place, but it is just too debaucherous for my taste. We ended up staying at a Christian hostel right in the middle of the infamous Red Light District (kind of ironic?). We didn't know that it was a Christian hostel until shortly before we arrived there and had already made our reservation, but it ended up being fine. They had some Jesus stuff posted on the walls, but they didn't try to turn us into born-again christians or anything.

Since we were pretty much right in the Red Light district, we ended up walking through there a few times trying to find dinner and stuff. Basically there are just lots of sex shops, porn stores, and lots of flirty women dancing in their underwear in the window trying to get the attention of the guys (or girls) walking by on the sidewalk. Some of them were pretty good looking, but you only have to look at them for a second before they start winking and gesturing at you and it just made me think, "stop looking, and walk away quickly." I don't know, the whole thing just wasn't my cup of tea at all.

A'dam's other main attraction (of the green leafy variety) didn't bother me though. I didn't partake (yeah, I know, when in Rome do as the other tourists go to Rome to do...), but I certainly got some whiffs of it walking by the "coffeeshops."

So all in all Amsterdam seemed pricey, a little touristy, and just a little too sleazy, but don't let that stop you from going! Today we are in a smaller town called Utrecht, just a half an hour down the road from Amsterdam, then tomorrow I guess we're going to The Hague to see the M.C. Escher museum, and then we'll be going to Dusseldorf for a few nights and then hopefully renting a car for a few days...

Bugatti: Check

I found a Bugatti dealer here in Berlin and actually got to lay eyes on a real-life Bugatti Veyron yesterday. If you remember from a post or two back I listed all the cool cars I've seen in two weeks of European car watching and mentioned that the Bugatti Veyron was really the only super cool car that I had yet to see, so you can imagine how thrilled I was with this discovery. The Bugatti Veyron, as far as I know, is currently the world's fastest and most expensive street-legal production car. Unfortunately I was not allowed into the showroom to touch or drool on the Veyron, but instead had to marvel at it's beauty from a few feet away through the showroom window like a kid standing on the sidewalk looking through the candyshop window. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that for the rest of my life I will never again see another one of these cars.

We are about to leave Berlin and go to Amsterdam for a few days. I really liked Berlin and I am quite sure that I could move here to live for awhile. It is a pretty huge city and I didn't roam very far from the city center, but Berlin doesn't have a very centralized city center and really it seems like it's more about the numerous little neighborhoods throughout the city instead. It makes for a city with lots of pretty interesting and diverse feels and characters.

Big Bus Envy

Since becoming a bus driver back in December, I have become susceptible to varying degrees of Bus Envy. Basically it is a feeling of envy when I see bus drivers who are driving bigger buses than I ever get to drive. For example, since Grayhound buses are bigger than the buses I got to drive for the Town of Vail, I got a little twinge of bus envy when I saw Greyhound buses, but it was often neutralized by knowing that they spent most of their time just driving on the highway which is boring, and also that they had to deal with lots of crazy sorts of people. Sometimes I felt envy towards the ECO bus drivers because their buses were slightly longer than the Town of Vail buses. But nothing compares to the bus envy I've had here in Europe. Not only are there lots of big, long, beautiful buses, but also most of them have manual transmissions (extra envy), AND they get to drive them through the crazy traffic and narrow cobble-stoned streets of europe (yet more envy). I'm pretty sure that being a bus driver in Europe would be at least like 3.4 times more fun than in the USA. Every time I see one of those beautiful huge manual-transmission buses go by I imagine to myself how much fun it would be to drive.

In addition to bus-watching, I've also been doing plenty of car watching which has also been quite rewarding. Car-watching in Europe differs in three primary ways: 1) There are lots more diesel cars, 2) There are lots of small and European-brand cars which are unknown in the USA, 3) There are more expensive cars that I rarely see in the USA. In the past week and a half I have seen several different Ferarris, more Porsches, BMW's and Mercedes-Benzes than I can keep track of, an Audi R8, at least one Rolls-Royce Phantom, a Lamborghini, a few Bentlys, a few old Minis, lots of crappy old Soviet-era crap-mobiles, and several $100k VWs. Plus it is interesting just to see all the tiny econo-boxes and minivans and stuff that don't exist in the USA.

So whether it be buses or cars, it's been pretty good vehicle-watching so far. I think the only really special car that I have NOT seen yet is a Bugatti Veyron, but I'll be keeping my eyes peeled no doubt.

We just got to Berlin today after a quick spin through Leipzig and a few days in Dresden. Berlin is huge and I think I will really like it a lot! Aufwiedersehen!

European Update

I don't have much time to write, but the short of it is that Prague was neat, but it was full of tourists. We came to Dresden yesterday, but there isn't much to see here so we are hopping on the train in a few hours. We were originally going to go straight to Berlin from here, but after looking at the train schedules we have decided to take the short and fast train over to Leipzig for a few hours and then take another short and fast train from there to Berlin later today. I think Berlin is going to be pretty neat and I'm looking forward to it. We're planning to spend more time there than we have spent anywhere else yet because it looks like it's a pretty huge city with lots to see and do.

Anyway, I hate writing summary-style blogs like this. Sorry. Maybe I'll have time to write a proper entry once we get to Berlin.

Brothers?

Dad and I ended up sitting next to a table with two Spanish guys at breakfast this morning. While we were waiting for our food to come I was sitting there trying to devote at least some of my attention to my conversation with Dad, but I was also trying to eavsdrop on the Spaniards to my left. At first they were talking about the normal sorts of things, like how much this trip cost them, how it's worth it anyway, etc. But then I heard just the tail end of them talking about me and Dad. The part I heard went something like this:

1: Do you think those two are gay?
2: You mean like a couple?
1: Yeah, do you think they are a couple, or are they just father and son or something?
2: Oh, they're probably just father and son.

That's when I decided to surprise them and so I told them in Spanish that we are indeed just father and son. They got this sort of shocked/embarassed look on their face as they realized that I had heard what they thought was their secret conversation. I think it's actually the first time I've ever been able to catch someone talking about me in another language like that. It was pretty satisfying.

Anyway, after they took a minute to get over their embarassment we had a nice little conversation about being in Budapest and whatnot. I'm pretty sure that they were a couple themselves, so maybe they were just looking for some more gay companionship or something, but I enjoyed just getting to speak some spanish to them. Dad thinks that they were confused because I "look mature beyond my years and because he looks gay beyond his years." Could be... hahaha.

That wasn't the first time that someone failed to immediately come to the conclusion that Dad and I are just father and son. When we got to the hostel here in Budapest, the girl that checked us in thought that we were brothers and acted all surprised and shocked to learn that we were father and son. At first I thought she was just trying to flirt with Dad or something because I don't think we look anywhere near the same age so as to be brothers. Maybe in Hungary people have really old/young siblings or something. Who knows...

Budapest is definitely a 'grittier' city than Munich and seems to have a certain 'Former Soviet State' sort of feel to it (whatever that feels like...). I think I like it though. I can't say if I like it more or less than Munich though beause really they are just different. Munich is prettier, but Dad and I have decided that the Budapest girls are prettier. Munich has more fancy cars, but Budapest has more funky old cars that I've never seen before. Munich is flatter and has more bicycles, but Budapest is hillier and might have cooler architecture. Plus, Hungarian is a crazy language which means Budapest gets some extra bonus points.

The highlight of today was probably going to one of Budapest's many thermal pools. The one we went to was in a parque just a few metro stops out of the city center. It is kind of like a fancier, classier version of the Glenwood Springs pool if you know what that's like. There was also sort of a circular lazy river thing that you could swim in and it was kind of like bumper-bodies. It was pretty fun. Anyway, tomorrow is our last day here and then we will be taking a night sleeper train to Prague. The Spaniards said that two days is enough to see Prague, but what do they know?

The Land of Good Pizza

Last night Dad and I went to an Italian restaurant for dinner. The place was hoppin' and so we got seated in a booth with a large German man who was trying unsuccesfully to get a table for one. He quickly realized that we didn't speak German, but he didn't hesitate to try conversing with us in his slightly limited English. When the waiter came to take our order I ended up ordering a pizza for some reason. When the pizza came, the portly German man said to us, "you come from the land of good pizza, and yet you order pizza in Germany." We proceeded to explain to him that pizza isn't good in all parts of the country, but anyway I just thought it was a funny comment. So from now on the United States of America shall be known as The Land of Good Pizza.

We'll be getting on a train to Budapest in a few hours.

München

I've been in Munich (München) for about two davs now and I keep typing z's when I want to type y's because the keyboard is a little different, but that aside my time in Munich has been very pleasant. Munich is a pleasant city with charming narrow winding streets, attractive architecture, and plenty of big green trees. On the first day here we went to a huge museum featuring all sorts of technology including lots of old and different kinds of engines, planes, mining equipment, computers, lasers, and the list goes on and on. Someone told us that if you were to spend 1 minute at each display, you could be there for 33 days (and I believe it). I started feeling jetlagged pretty early in the day, but I soldiered on and we decided to go to another museum which was pretty strange and quirky (but not really in the interesting way). The whole time I kept thinking that it was the sort of museum my uncle Dwight would probably enjoy; I don't know why. Lots of people ride bikes here and Dad and I took a bicycle tour today through part of town into a huge park with a beer garden in the middle. Beer doesn't grow from trees in a beer garden, but it is served in humungous mugs. I have yet to buy a really big mug of beer, but I have certainly had plenty of beer today. When we aren't seeing the sites, we've been riding around town semi-aimlessly on the plethora of trams, buses, and subways, or sitting at outdoor cafe's drinking beer and eating sausage. I am still having a hard time with the whole not being able to speak German thing since I am more accustomed to being able to speak the language when I go places, but despite that we've been able to get around fine and stuff (although we've certainlz had our fair share of confusions). We will be taking a sleeper train to Budapest tomorrow night. I'm sure Budapest will be cool, but I could almost imagine myself living here in Munich someday if I had to; it's that cool.