Our time in Hamburg was actually an underrated stop (since we just looked at the map to find a good place to stop between Copenhagen & Brussels), and each day was well spent exploring the city. This may be due to Hamburg being the Richest city in Germany, as well as its biggest port city. The first day we arrived after our train/ferry ride to find our hostel after a solid 20minutes of walking in circles. This was only our third hostel where we stayed in a 6 bed room, so we weren’t sure what to expect. The hostel turned out to be pretty decent and we only had one roommate on our first night there, Sebastian. Sebastian was a tall German fellow from south Germany who was in town to host a presentation in order to get a job, which he did. We talked with him for a short while after we first arrived, and then went out to eat in a cool section of town that was a good mix between record/book stores, and good eateries. After dinner and some walking around the area, we called it a night.
Our second day included a walking tour with the same company we have been taking them with, New Europe, which was easily the most boring of all of our tours. Our guide was pretty decent, but unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of buildings left after WWII that have much historical meaning. There are several “Counting Houses” remaining for some reason, which the tour thought were pretty important. Unfortunately, they are not, and are big buildings that were used by the shipping companies to count things, we assumed money. Also, our tour included some obnoxious Spaniards from the Canary Islands. They decided to cut out of the tour during our lunch break to go up to the top of an old church that our tour guide pointed out. Those leaving didn’t seem to really bother anyone except our guide, who looked betrayed and butt hurt since he had taken a liking to the loudest Spaniard. Not to worry, the group showed up at the end of the tour, where our guide tried his best to entertain us by having a group participatory play about the most famous German pirate. Unfortunately, nobody cared.
After our tour we went back to the hostel where Sebastian had left, and we were greeted by 3 college students from Munich. They were all very nice as we had a nice 20 minute conversation. After that, they spoke to each other only in German and the only words between us and them were “hello” and “goodbye” when entering and leaving the room. After a little while we decided to go to eat at the area we had the night before. After that, we made our way to the Raper Bahn, which just happens to be the largest Red Light District in all of Europe. It was pretty impressive, but it didn’t have the special feel of the Moulin Rouge in Paris unfortunately. While we were there, we also happened to see the house that The Beatles used to live in, and apparently formed at. There was also a cool square with cutouts of The Beatles playing their instruments, with the lonely forgotten 5th Beatle by himself away from the group. We thought it neat that he was remembered because none of us really knew about him. After a full night of neon lights and a few beers we called it quits.
Our 3rd full day in Hamburg consisted of us finding a cool botanical gardens where we hung out for a large part of the day. It was a very nice day and the garden/park was the nicest we had been to so far. It may be due to flowers blooming and the European spring finally showing up, but regardless, it was nice. After some reading, digging in the dirt, and admiring the large pond that zig zagged through the park, we decided to go back to the hostel to hang out for a bit. After a while we returned to our favorite part of town for another delicious lunch and then called it a today in preparation for our trip to Brussels.
We took the train to Brussels, and went through some amazing countryside, with hills and rivers and everything, Belgian. We took literally 2 hours finding our hostel. We finally cracked and had to take a tram into immigrant village, and make our way from there. Wearing the bags is exhausting but walking for hours in them is somewhere between getting bamboo shoots in your fingernails and catching on fire. We got there and it was actually a hotel, and almost pretty nice, just in a bad part of town. The shops around didn’t seem to allow women into the stores. That night we just gave in and ate at the train station not feeling brave enough to explore at night time. The room then got so hot, we had to open all the windows and listen to the loudest people in the world all night long. We could have been anywhere in suburban Istanbul for all we knew. In our room however, we got 2 English channels and were very happy. Arrested Development came on randomly at midnight. The next day we made our way through town to the town centre that was quite spectacular. We proceeded to mannequin piss, a little tiny infant statue that pees into a fountain of water, and were surprised when this little baby peeing was such an attraction for everyone. We got some tastes of Belgian chocolate, and now we were on to find out about Belgian beer. We went to a little beer museum, that consisted of 2 rooms, with a video playing in one of them in French or Flemish, or something. Very interesting, but we just went to sample the beer. We all got a Belgian special kriek beer, which is cherry beer, and it was pretty good. Belgian beer has nothing on munich in quantity or quality we decided. After that we went to a super nice park right beside the E.U. and spent the rest of the day throwing sticks and having a blasty blast. We ate some dinner at…. The train station again! I got some exciting wok that tasted like ammonia. The sign “wok-a-way” was meant to be interpreted literally. On our way back we got assaulted by a six year old Belgian girl who caught us off guard with a “bonjour” and then pulled out a gun. (Water gun) We ran for our lives as she chased us laughing shooting water all over us. She then slipped and landed flat on her back, ha! Another night in the bazaar of turkey or wherever Aladdin was from and we were done with Belgium. Chocolate, beer, but no waffles; almost a complete trip. (We later got waffles on a layover from Amsterdam to London in the train station. We said it counts!) We then hopped on the train to AMSTERDAM!
Amsterdam: One of the most beautiful cities we have been to. We arrived to the worst hostel that we had ever stayed at. 16 people to share 1 tiny bathroom and 1 tiny shower. Plus renovations. Perfect. But that was not going to ruin our trip in the most liberal city in Europe. The first day we took a city tour that taught us about the Nazi occupation, leaning houses, the canal, tulips, wooden shoes, and windmills. Don’t worry though the tour also included facts about coffee shops, working girls (prostitutes), and smart shops. Did you know that the red light district will be completely closed by 2012? That is including all of the coffee shops. In the past 9 months over half of coffee shops have been made to close and more than half of the window space for working girls has been bought and sold for advertising space. The EU is pushing for Amsterdam to clean up its act and cater more towards old people that don’t like to have any fun. So basically there is only about 3 more years to enjoy Amsterdam before it becomes just another European city and everything has to go underground. SUPER depressing. After our tour we decided to visit some coffee shops and head over to the red light district and see the actual red lights. To our enjoyment we got to see the A team at work, which meant more attractive girls. We ended the night at our stinky hostel. The next day we went to the Van Gogh museum and luckily got to see quite a few famous paintings (around 200) including The Starry Night. We finished the day by exploring the city, seeing the Anne Frank House, and visiting a huge park. The next day we had an early train back to Brussels, to catch the EuroStar train to London.
Disclaimer: Obviously we had A LOT of fun in Amsterdam. Due to nature of our fun we have decided to omit it. PLEASE ask us about it! We have many fun facts and stories about our experience here!
All and all we had a ton of fun on this trip, some might say the time of our lives. We traveled through a lot of Europe (as stated in the title), but there are obviously places we missed we hope to go to some day in the future. I hope any of adventure that we posted might have brought a smile to some of your faces or perhaps gave you a good idea of where to go/not go. We’ll put a final post up once we get the rest of our pictures uploaded onto flickr. We head home from London tomorrow. Cheers.
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