Blogs from Europe - page 11710

After a 7 hour flight full of crying babies, a neverending sunrise,and a decently boring movie I landed at London Heathrow at 6:30 am. That was promptly followed by being semi yelled at by the customs agent about the matter of my trip which woke me up. I got a crash course on the tube system, the London Underground. I found out three things. first, its hot down there. Two, It seems like you'll never reach your destination, and three they charge different prices for the same place on different lines. I rode from Heathrow to King's Cross where I planned to store my luggage. They said it would be cheaper to store at Earl's Court, which because of his accent I thought was Ascort, and sent me there. When I arrived I lugged my bags ... read more

... ich war nun gestern mit Wencke beim Sommar-Rea ... es ist jetzt nicht unbedingt mit dem dt. Sommer- oder Winterschlussverkauf zu vergleichen ... es gab nicht soviele "Krabbeltische" (? wie schreibt man das eigentlich) und die Leute waren auch nicht alle Hartz-IV-Empfänger und haben sich auch nicht so penetrant darauf gestürzt ... wo es gesenkte Preise gab, hat man sich dezent wühlend gezeigt ... ;-) ... ansonsten hätte ich mehr erwartet ... entweder die Stockholmer standen alle ab 10 Uhr (Beginn des Rea) vor den Kaufhaustüren und als wir nach 17 Uhr gegangen sind, haben sie das meiste schon weggekauft oder aber die Unternehmen halten sich damit eher zurück ... naja, egal ... ... ich habe mir übrigens auch sagen lassen (auf meine Kritik am Wetter), dass wir uns im Moment noch im Frühling befinden ... read more

The first time I visited Berlin it was in early February 1990, a scant 2 months after the Berlin Wall had fallen. The city was still divided except for a a few cement panels that had been sledge hammered down to make a short passage way for people to crawl through. All along the wall there were ' maul peckers' - people with hammers, chisels and any other instrument they could whack at the hated wall. Students and kids were clammering all over the wall. The German friends I was with looked panic stricken as several uniformed guards approached the youngsters and told them to get down. One remarked that only a few months prior those students would have been shot by the same guards. They still couldn't believe the wall was actually coming down. Even ... read more

Today was our day trip to Kutna Hora to see Kostnice, the bone church in Sedlec (next to Kutna Hora). Since we had purchased our train tickets yesterday and familiarized ourselves with the train station a bit, the morning was a lot less stressful than it probably would have been had we not been prepared. Almost everything in the train station is only written in Czech, but there is an international information station that is very useful to help you find your way to the right place. It is also a good idea to print the train schedule ahead of time so you know which destination to look for on the board (it only shows the last stop for each train). A handy website with train schedules is IDOS. We located our train and headed ... read more

When I first came to Europe... I took a shower. I felt gross, leave me alone! But anyway, the point of declaring that was that the bathroom I was in was a little weird. The tub was raised up and right in front of the door and very clear. So, it was a little weird taking a shower looking straight at the door, haha. And, instead of the knobs I'm used to, there was this box...thing. With smaller knobs for the temperature and force of the water. I didn't think much of it because it was an old building and I figured that they probably just added it after the building had been built...or whatever. No biggie. Bathrooms in Wales were normalish...In London, that was the first time I stayed at a hostel and that was ... read more