Bamberg, methinks the wine can compete with the beer
Volume 2, Days 74-75
I ended up hanging out in the Airbnb until midday, mostly because I was waiting for the one kid to wake up because I had hung up some laundry in on the rack in his bedroom. It was pretty nice to have the entire morning to myself with a desk and a newfound motivation to study German. I got quite a bit done, but by midday as the sun shined brightly, I was eager to find my way on to the next destination.
I dutifully purchased my overpriced train ticket and kicked myself when we arrived in Bamberg and no one had bothered to check it. I could have bought a really nice meal for that kind of money. I’m not sure if it was the shortness of the route or the fact that it was Sunday, but there it was.
River Town
As things should be, the hostel I booked was a fairly short walk from the train station in the direction of the old town, the entirety of which is apparently a UNESCO World Heritage site. I had to call a phone number to get in touch with the hostel management in order to check in, but was rewarded by getting an entire dorm room to myself. It is so strange that despite the hostel being fully booked on Saturday night, come Sunday afternoon it was almost entirely empty. In fact, there were basically just three residents (apart from myself) for the two days I spent there: the aforementioned manager (who was orginaly from Greece), a Turkish-German college student cramming for a test, and a British girl on a world ramble.
There was a fully stocked kitchen with attached living room and an upstairs deck where I could have hung some laundry if I hadn’t just washed everything. I really liked the hostel because it had free coffee, tea, and cereal. It was too bad I arrived on a Sunday so I didn’t really have the option to cook for myself.
I kept studying for a stretch of the afternoon before going out into the town to have a bit of a look around. Bamberg is quite special with several rivers and canals creating islands within islands, while each hill is topped with a cathedral or monastery. In my hoppy bias, the town might be most famous for its “smoked” beer made with a deeply roasted malt. The city hall is on an artificially created island (reportedly because the prince bishop refused to cede any land for a public building).
City Hall
Though I was tempted by many cafes and gelaterias, I decided to stop for a smoked beer at Schenkerla, a brewery that has been in business since 1405. Though I could have popped in for a full dinner, it seemed the thing to do is order a beer through a small window and stand in the street drinking it. I was worried that the beer would be too smoky (I’ve certainly been burned by American style craft beer makers who pour liquid smoke into beers and cocktails), but it was a full bodied, rich black beer. Quite nice.
After the beer, I headed back in the direction of the hostel to find something cheap to eat, eventually backtracking all the way to a cheap looking Chinese restaurant. There was a bit of a line and it was indeed quite cheap, especially when I decided against ordering a 5 euro meat dish. Despite ordering in Chinese, they gave me a fork and I burned the roof of my mouth, which is something that would never happen with chopsticks.
I returned to the hostel and hung out in the kitchen space, chatting a bit with the characters introduced above and getting some insight into their interpersonal dynamics. Considering most people zip by Bamberg on a day trip, they would all count as long term residents. I played a few rounds of Rummikub with the British girl before going to bed.
Falling off the wagon sometimes hurts. My body, unaccustomed to processing alcohol, woke me up in the middle of the night and left me unable to fall back asleep. So I laid in bed and tried not to disturb any of the peacefully snoring folks around me. At 7 am, I figured it was a reasonable hour to go ahead and get up, but as I was heading to shower someone slipped into the shower room ahead of me and locked the door. I stood in the hallway in my towel waiting twenty minutes for that asshole to finish washing. To be fair, I hadn’t even realized that the door shut, let alone locked, and had been hopping in and out of the showers on previous afternoons on full display to anyone who would happen to walk by. But the key fact is that it was a room with two showers.
I enjoyed the breakfast buffet and tried to eat my money’s worth, going so far as to be unpleasantly stuffed. Though, it was really hard to tell if the upset stomach later was a consequence of the hangover, the overeating, or the bus journey to Würzburg. I had plenty of time in the morning to eat, turn in my recycling, pack, and checkout for the 11am bus departure.
I hadn’t really read up on Würzburg, but was excited to be staying in a hostel called Babelfish, after the universal translator in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. The hostel did not disappoint. Located across the street from the small town train station on two floors of an office building, the handpainted decor captured the classic aesthetics of an old backpackers hostel. I was luckily able to check right in, despite being a bit early and plopped down on the bed to take a nap.
After waking up, I made myself a coffee in the shared kitchen and tried to work on my computer a bit. The weather was rainy so I wasn’t in a rush to go look around town. Despite being only like 3 in the afternoon, a Korean traveler was already starting on beers from the hostel bar. Looking at the activity board advertising a beer tasting at 8:30, I figured it would be better to wait. We chatted a bit, and J was just starting a 3 week vacation and trying to learn a bit of German. I encouraged him to practice with me.
It was a pretty lazy afternoon and other than going on a supermarket run for dinner, I didn’t have much on the docket. I watched another episode of Babylon Berlin back in the room, finishing up about the time a motorcyclist checked in. He had driven 200 km in the rain to attend some punk concert in the town that night. I wasn’t even tempted to join, but expressed consolation that he would miss the free beer.
J and I went out into the town to find an open supermarket, which was not easy as there was some Christian holiday involving Mary flying up into heaven. Würzburg was basically a ghost town. Even on Sundays, though most shops are open, the plazas and squares are still full of life with people enjoying a coffee or a drink, but there were hardly any people around and even the bakeries were all closed up. A few of the foreign snack bars (Chinese noodles, Turkish doner) were still open for the day, so one wouldn’t starve to death.
The train station was another story with all of its businesses open, including a drug store, two bakeries, and a quasi-convenience store. I didn’t buy anything at the moment since it would all be ready eat and I wasn’t ready for dinner yet, but I headed back some time later after there was a critical mass people hanging out in the common areas with beers, including an old American, a young American, and an Australian. I wasn’t too keen to be buying 2.5-3.5 euro beers from the hostel, but was able to sample a local Würzburger Hofbrau with a good sized bratwurst for the same price.
I had a long, somewhat contentious talk with the Australian who insisted that I had to have a hometown.
I popped down to the train station one more time that night to grab a canned Paulaner hefeweizen and stretch the time before the beer tasting. I was surprised by how many people had disappeared by that point, but the hostel bartender literally included one of each of the beers they sold (including a radler and an alcohol free beer) in the tasting. So there were about a dozen beers sampled by only 4 or 5 people. And its a crime to waste beer in Germany so it had to all be finished.
When that task was finished, the young American guy, who originally wanted to go out to a bar to spend 60 bucks his dad had sent him to have a good time in Würzburg because his dad had lived here in the 80s, wanted food so a couple of us went over to the Turkish place to find that they were already closed for the night…leaving just McDonalds as an option. It didn’t take much effort to talk me into a McFlurry and it was interesting how long and complicated the ordering process became with a typical American blazing ahead with English.
The Flixbus stop in Bonn is a fair distance from the center, down by the museum mile. Because my bus wasn’t scheduled to depart until roughly 12:30 and the hostel checkout was 11am, I had an awkward hour to kill. I took a S-bahn over to the bus stop, and just hung out on the street corner near the isolated office parks. Though gray clouds built up overhead, I did not get pummeled by rain while stuck outside and exposed.
It was a nice ride to Frankfurt with the road following the Rhine river valley for some distance and then as if by magic turning east along the Main river. We pulled up along the south side of the train station and alighted amidst a lot of cops armed to the teeth with military weapons. Something must have happened to bring in the special forces, but everything seemed normal.
My hostel was in the train station area, which also happened to be the red light district. Compared to Hamburg, Amsterdam, or Antwerp, it was really just some casinos, pornography shops, and the odd club advertising American-style table dances. It wasn’t really much and didn’t bother me quite so much as the sheer concentration of junkies on the streets living in their own bubbles.
The hostel was an oasis, or fortress, amidst the outside world and I was able to check straight in as it was nearly 5 pm at this point. I was a bit shocked by how expensive the tourist tax was, but it was offset by a chip for one free breakfast. It’s weird how several cities in Germany have a 1-2 euro per night visitors tax, which is waved if you are on a legitimate business trip. Wouldn’t it make more sense to tax the business people whose companies are paying the tab anyways? I helped myself to some free coffee (and tea available all day), then changed into running clothes to take a jog along the riverside park and see a bit of town.
On the way back, I swung by the Rewe around the corner to pick up some stuff to cook (finally! it’s been a while since I had kitchen access), but I was surprised to find the smallish location didn’t stock their store brand mineral water. I guess it is too cheap for the location. While I was shopping, all hell had broken loose and cats and dogs were falling from the skies in buckets. Mixed metaphors aside, I and a dozen people huddled in the entrance way pondering how long the downpour would last and if it was worth making a break for it.
After a while, I decided to just run the 100 meters to the hostel and got completely drenched in the process. I went straight in to shower and prepared some pasta and salad afterwards for my dinner. I used up the last of the pasta I had purchased in Ghent and had been carrying around with me for nearly two weeks. The small kitchen/laundry room is in the basement of the hostel, where there is also a pool table and foosball table, so I went up to the main room to eat my meal.
I’m not sure if there was an organized event happening, but several people were playing chess in a row of three boards while another table had a poker game going. After finishing my meal and cleaning up after myself, I grabbed a chessboard and waited for an opponent. It was nice to stretch some different mental muscles.
I decided to save my free breakfast for my last morning, but it did look like a pretty decent spread. I enjoyed a couple cups of coffee and tried to get a bit of work done in the morning.
Late morning, I finally decided to go out and see a bit of the town. I wasn’t aiming for any particular museum as none of them sounded too enticing from the descriptions, but there were plenty of landmarks and old buildings to pass by, including the Nikolaikirche, the Dom, and the Rathaus, which is called the Römer for some reason. The old town basically just consists of two squares and the alleyway connecting them, but is delightfully German looking.
A hidden oldtown
I continued heading east until reaching the remains of the old Jewish cemetery, the wall of which is covered in names. I took a pass on the adjacent Jewish museum and turned back into town.
For lunch, I stopped in the kleinmarkthalle, which had a nice assortment of delicatessens and eateries. I stood in the queue of the only counter with a line, where they were selling wurst by weight with mustard and brotchen on the side. I still don’t like mustard, but the flavor is not as offensive as it used to be. Finishing that “light” meal, I promptly drooled over the brightly light glass of a bakery counter, choosing a giant piece of a coffee cake like construction with poppy seed paste in it. While I ate the fleischwurst at a half counter sticking out of the wall of the market hall, I took the hefty chunk of cake out on to the streets and all the way back to the Römerplatz to find a bench.
I headed north from the old town into downtown, which certainly has its share of office buildings, but mostly appears to be just a giant strip mall. Still, being Europe, the atmosphere was lively with buskers plying their trade and endless fountains and statues to look at. I went out of my way to find the Börse, i.e. Frankfurt’s stock exchange, which is in a classical, but otherwise nondescript building.
Stock market can’t make up its mind
On one of the squares, there appeared to a somewhat temporary set up of food carts. Given the high concentration of apfelwein vendors, it could be assumed that it was part of a festival celebrating Frankfurt’s local specialty drink.
I had barely spent 2 hours and already covered the entire city on foot. I was tired and thirsty, and after swinging by the hostel I went out to track down a decent sized grocery store so I could buy cheap bottled water. There was one in a shopping mall north of the train station. The mall also had a Chipotle, but why anyone would pay 9 euros for a burrito is beyond me.
I chilled back in the hostel the rest of the afternoon, working on the computer at times and also watching another chapter of Babylon Berlin up in the room. Around the time it started picking up with the wave of check ins, I figured it would be good to clear out of the room on another jog. This time I followed the green band which marks where the old city walls used to be. An entire loop around the city was a mere 6 kilometers.
After spending possibly too much time in Cologne, I was off to Bonn for the weekend, or in other words…probably too much time. I hung out at my hostel in Cologne for most of the day because there was no sense in arriving in Bonn before 4pm when the hostel reception would be staffed.
The Bonn train station looked like it had seen better days and was a little difficult to navigate the platform with construction machinery blocking most of it and rain streaming through holes in the roof. The bad weather was continuing and I hung out at the underground entrance of the train station for a few minutes debating whether I wanted to hop on the underground street car or walk the mile across town to the hostel.
The rain was barely a drizzle to begin with and after a few moments it seemed to taper off, so I set out to walk it. It turned out to be no problem at all other than having to avoid some puddles. Bonn hardly qualifies as a town, it conveys such a sense of quaintness that I can hardly imagine it ever serving as the capital of west Germany.
The Master himself
The hostel was nice enough, though a bit overpriced in my opinion. I was the first to check in to the 8-bed dorm room with an en suite bathroom and windows facing the main street. It was spacious and clean.
Thinking that the rain was done for the day, I changed into my running clothes and cut the two blocks over to the Rhine, where I jogged a decent stretch up to a bridge and back again. As my jogging path cut through a section of the old town, the skies opened up and started raining. I popped under an awning to check the map then decided to just power through the last stretch since I was going to shower anyways.
I cleaned up in the room and made a dinner from the leftover sandwich materials from lunch (after a week of trying to be healthy with salads and whatnot, I finally caved into cold cuts and bread).
I chatted a bit with one roommate, a German guy who was in town for some event involving computers and university students. Another traveler showed up, dripping from the rain. He turned out to be part of the same event and the two of them conversed on their own.
It turned out there was a bar across the street that is quite popular on the weekends. It noisy for most of the night.
Before checking out of the A&O Hostel to head to Cologne, I needed to run to the supermarket to cash in my collection of empty water bottles. Though I did my best to cash them in for a yogurt and some q-tips, I ended up getting some cash back. It still feels weird to me to go up to a register, hand the cashier a slip of paper, and receive money. It’s a complete inversion of the script, but I didn’t want to spend money just for the sake of spending money.
Though the regional train was more expensive than a Flixbus from Aachen to Cologne, it was still the better choice as both hostels were train station adjacent while the bus stops were some distance away. It was a pleasant ride and not very crowded. As soon as we were out of town, the conductor came by to check tickets. I noticed he gave all the foreign-looking students a lot of extra scrutiny.
Heaven is so far away
As soon as you step out of the central Cologne station, you are confronted by the city’s enormous cathedral, which was reportedly the tallest structure in Europe prior to the erection of the Eiffel Tower. I glanced at it, but hurried over to the hostel to pay for my reservation though I was too early to check in. Its not a bad hostel. They gave me a discount off the list price and there are good perks like a secure luggage room and free padlock rentals.
After stowing my luggage, I had some time to kill and wondered a bit around the old town to learn the layout. Central Cologne is not too big and mostly very commercial and touristy. When my stomach started growling, I began looking for some cheap German street food, eventually trying a frikadella (small hamburger patty) with potatoes and a vendor outside a food court attached to a supermarket.
Needing a coffee, I wondered over to the Starbucks in the train station. Like the Starbucks in England and Belgium, they do give a small discount for using your own tumbler, which brings the coffee price more in line with the standard (though Starbucks portions are significantly larger). It wasn’t a great environment to hang out in, so I was back at the hostel promptly at 2pm to check in and even took a quick nap.
Roman arch
In the late afternoon, I decided to walk around town a bit and check out the cathedral. The plaza in front of the cathedral is always swarmed by tons of tourists to the point that one sometimes has to even queue to enter that church. There is neither a fee for admission nor any charges for taking photos, which is surprising as that seems to be the standard in Germany. The inside was awe inspiring, and my timing was perfect to enjoy the stained glass with the bright afternoon sun. After making a circuit around the cathedral and popping down into the crowded crypt (with nothing to see), I went around the corner from the entrance of the church to buy a ticket to go up the tower. It was a good climb, and I stopped on the way up (and down) to look at the bells with perfect timing to hear their thunderous roars. While I would definitely recommend paying the money for the stair climbing session, I couldn’t help being annoyed by so many people who don’t seem to understand how to move in narrow spaces.
Flying buttresses
After visiting the church, I changed into exercise clothes and enjoyed a short (6km) jog along the Rhine as far south as the Chocolate and Sports museums, before showering, and going to the Penny discount supermarket to source a healthy dinner. In order to fill myself up, I bought two bags of salad and sprung for a package of “salad seeds” which contain a mixture of sunflower, pumpkin and pine nuts. I walked over to a small green space between the terrace cafes and the Rhine to eat my meal with a backdrop of a million street buskers.
In the morning, I decided to spring the for hostel’s “small breakfast,” which included a bowl of muesli and yogurt and one cup of coffee at a third the price of the all-you-can-eat deal. I hung around the hostel most of the morning working on stuff before eventually deciding to go out to one of the city’s many museums. Taking the scenic route, I decided on the fly to grab a small sandwich in a pretzel-y bun from one of hundreds of always crowded bakeries.
Arriving in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, I was stopped from buying a 9 euro single ticket by the advertisement for a 18 euro City Museum Pass. Stopping to look up the terms and conditions, I discovered that the Museum Card was a really good deal, covering the handful of museums which had caught my eye and being valid for two days. Having already wasted half the day, I needed to shift all my museum going to the following two days in order to extract maximum value.
The Rathausplatz is an archaeological dig and future Jewish history museum
So, I headed back to the hostel to hang out and rest and work and what not. At one point, I went out of my way to go to a fancy little espresso shop that made really good coffee (and sold a wide range of espresso machines in retail). In the late afternoon, I went for a longer run (8 km), cross two bridges across the Rhine. It rained slightly after I finished, so although I bought a pair of salads from the Penny, I decided to eat in the dorm room rather than outside. I feel its a real crummy move to eat food in a shared space like that, but one of my roommates had brought in takeout the previous night.
Actually the living situation is quite weird. It appears that my five roommates are all long term residents. Two of them are around the room most of the day, watching videos or playing games on their mobile devices. The others only show up to sleep, one of whom comes and goes dressed for business. Another one made the strangest sounds in the middle of the night–a loud, rhythmic rubber squeaking. Being awoken by the loud sounds, I was a little freaked out that some kinky shit was happening, but I could never figure out exactly what caused it. It would come and go.
Aachen is a small city that few people are familiar with. It came onto my radar via the German language podcast “Warum Nicht” in which the first 2 series of the radio play style learning show are set in Aachen. The city is strongly associated with Charlemagne who made it is capital (and is buried there), but has roots going past Roman times and is a spa town with natural hot mineral springs. The name Aachen derives from the old Germanic “ahha,” which doesn’t take a linguist to connect to “aqua,” i.e. water.
From prehistory to the middle ages in one dig
Having cracked open the Pandora’s box of a project, I find myself unable to shut the lid on my obsession. So the few days I spent in Aachen were more involved with manipulating data, writing scripts, and application development than any proper tourism. As the travel section of the blog, I needn’t get into any details of what I am working on, but I did manage to get out of the hostel everyday to look around town.
On Friday morning, my desire to hang out in the hostel lobby was slightly thwarted by the malfunction of the hot water dispenser (coin operated coffee machine), so I had to go to a bakery to get a caffeine (and sugar) fix. There was a small Asian boy helping out behind the counter with the two middle aged German ladies. The bakeries are definitely a highlight in Germany, but I feel I gain weight just by looking at the sweets.
Rathause
Midday I set out into town again, taking a wider loop that brought my closer to the historical old town. Craving something cheap for lunch, I looked at a couple of doner restaurants before finding a shopping mall and grabbing Indian curry from the food court. Since I was at the mall, I went ahead and checked off the shopping that I needed to do: deodorant from DM (the drugstore) and a cheap pair of earphones from Saturn (the electronics store).
In the evening, I went out to find a Rewe hidden inside a courtyard containing a cineplex and lots of outdoor bars. I picked up a salad mix and a package of mixed olives, feta, and roasted red pepper/sun-dried tomato sauce to fancy up the salad.
In the morning, I had passed a church advertising a free organ concert in the evening, so I headed out that way after dinner. However, as I was walking up to the church, I saw some people getting turned away at the door because it was already completely full. On second thought, as it was a modern evangelical church, maybe it was for the best. On the way back, after passing the same gelato/frozen yogurt shop for the umpteenth time, I caved in and bought two scoops. It started raining on me when I was a block away from the hostel.
Well, that was a fun month seeing a few countries and a lot of friends, but let’s not forget that my main goal of going to Europe was to gain fluency in German.
Volume 2, Day 57
My one travel hack is to always try to arrange my connections according to the schedules of hostel check-in/checkout while also prioritizing location to minimize the amount of time I have to be lugging my suitcase around. Flixbus has two terminals in Brussels, one of which was a stone’s throw from my hostel, but it made sense–both economically and in terms of departure time–to book the bus leaving from the north train station. Even counting the cost of public transportation, it was a couple euro cheaper, and I was able to stay in the hostel until a few minutes before the 10am checkout time.
With an 11:35 bus departure, I had plenty of time. In an alternate universe where I was traveling light, I would have even considered walking the less than 3 km distance across town, but I certainly got an adventure out of the Brussels subway system. The ticket machines only accepted credit card or coins, and it turns out I was about 40 cents short of 2.10 single ride ticket. So, I hauled my suitcase back up the flight of stairs and up the block to the first fruit seller, where I bought a can of (lemon) Fanta in order to break a 5 euro note.
When I got back to the machine and purchased my ticket (with exact change), I noticed there was a handful of coins in the coin return tray. More than a handful, really. I didn’t count, but there was at least a dozen 5 and 10 cent pieces. In other words, the fates had provided me a way to avoid the little side trip, but I wasn’t paying attention. I felt guilty about pocketing the windfall, so I popped halfway up the stairs and deposited the coins in the paper cup of the beggar who had been sitting there all along, also blissfully ignorant of the old practice of checking public telephones for loose change.
What decade is this?
The subway system was laid out just like a streetcar system, but moved underground with the minimal amount of architecture to keep the roof from caving in. To get from one platform to the other, one simply crossed the tracks at the provided crosswalk, looking both ways down the spacious tunnels.
I alighted at Gare Nord (Fr: north station) and looked around for somewhere to eat an early lunch. The KFC was still serving breakfast, and the other dozen eateries were basically just selling croissants or sandwiches. I wanted something a bit heartier, but by the time I made a full loop, the KFC had already switched over to the lunch menu. I’ve been craving fried chicken for a while, so it was nice to scratch that itch with a box meal. One interesting quirk worthy of some Tarantino dialogue is that you have to buy the sauce separately for something like 20-30 cents for a standard sized packet. It’s so unamerican.
The bus left from just outside the station and it was a fairly uneventful ride. I passed through Liege (for the second time) and I still think it is a spiffy looking train station (with a giant Rubik’s cube in front), but harbor no regrets about otherwise skipping it. After a 20 minute break at a highway rest stop with one of those restaurants that span the highway, the driver asked us to ready our passports for a border control check that ultimately did not exist. For some reason, the driving route detoured through a section of the Netherlands in order to enter Germany instead of just heading due east from Liege.
When I got dropped off in Aachen, it felt like I was in the middle of nowhere, and again I was a 2+ km distance from my destination, exactly on the opposite side of the otherwise small town. I walked two blocks to the west station to catch a RE train to the Hauptbahnhof, from which my hostel was only 50 meters away.
This was my first time staying at an A&O Hostel, an ultracorporate budget chain whose motto is “Travel for All.” It was significantly better than the Generator Hostels. Though they sold snacks and drinks, they didn’t ban outside food and it was more cosmopolitan than a full on party hostel. Of course, I had to pay extra for sheets. I wonder if this is a Germany only thing. I didn’t stay at too many hostels over the last month, but none of them had charged for sheets.
It was a pleasant surprise to find myself in a four bed dorm (when I was expecting 10) with en suite bathroom (including a small foot towel with the shower). The elevator advertised a guest kitchen in the basement, but I found just a locked room. So, I won’t be cooking for myself these days. One other interesting thing about the A&O hostels is that the prices are always changing, as can be seen from the television monitor above the reception. Not just an uptick for the weekend, but a real time adjustment based on occupancy rates (I infer from seeing it change throughout the day).
Having checked in and changed to more comfortable clothing, I headed over to the nearest supermarket — a discount place, but not a brand I am familiar with — to get a bottle of mineral water. I almost cried from joy at the sight of the prices in Germany, so much more affordable than Benelux, France, or England. You seriously can’t beat 19 cents for a 1.5 liter bottle of sparkling mineral water.
After working on my computer for a bit and making a cup of coffee (using the free hot water from the otherwise paid coffee vending machine), I went out to a shopping part of town to look around a bit. I have a bit of shopping to do (deodorant and earphones), but I wanted to do some comparison pricing. At an Aldi Sud, I picked up a salad mix, loaf of bread, and a bottle of balsamic vinegar (to commit to eating more salads), then returned to the hostel to eat my simple meal.
In my dorm, there were two kids from Central Asia (Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, respectively) who were in German for a monthlong summer program. What was interesting is that we chatted to each other through German. It can be easier, especially if you are not so advanced, to communicate with other non-native speakers, who are more likely to use the canned “standard” textbook phrases.
I settled into my top bunk and picked my entertainment option for the next week or so–I’m finally going to watch “Freaks and Geeks”–and tried to go to bed early. It is definitely late summer, and I am moving south again because the sun was setting around 9pm.
I still had a full day in Bremen, but it was going to be my last day in Germany. As it was a Monday, I had a very limited choice of tourist activities to choose from. Ideally, I would have signed up for a tour of Beck’s Brewery, but the tours only happen if there are at least 20 people signed up. A quick check of the availability of said tour online quickly dispelled any hopes for that. So, I had an intention of taking a walk around old town to soak in more of the charming atmosphere.
However, I spent most of the morning doing my regular routine and working on something. I sent in my resume to a company on my first day in Hamburg. There had been a quick reply, but I had been delaying on looking at it because … reasons. It would be a good job, but it may mean I’d have to cut my travels short and settle somewhere less than ideal. Well, I had finally gotten around to looking at the response and it was a test, so I took some time in the morning to look it over carefully.
I took a brisk walk through the park to clear my head and on my way back, swung by the supermarket to look at the local beer. If I couldn’t take a tour of the brewery, I could still have some Beck’s beer in the town where it is brewed. I ended up grabbing a six-pack and a bag of cookies (planning ahead for afternoon tea), then headed back to the hostel to prepare my lunch–grilled cheese and tomato soup.
After lunch, I took a short nap and as I was gearing up to get some work done, the internet stopped working. That was rather unfortunate. Rather than take it as a sign to go out into town for a long walk, I decided to put on a movie. It’s been so long since I just spent an afternoon watching a movie (not counting a new release in a theater), that it felt somewhat subversive to be so idle. How did I get so caught up in the cult of productivity when I am on a permanent vacation? The real killer is that I consumed the entire package of cookies when I wanted to save at least half for the bus ride tomorrow.
Anyways, I basically wasted the whole day, but let’s call it a valuable R&R. In the late afternoon (and without completing all the items on my to-do list), I packed up my picnic bag and invited my Malaysian roommate to go hang out in the park. We drank the beers and I finished the last of the remaining salad. It was pleasant in the sun though a bit windy. The temperature was quickly dropping again after the passing of the heat wave, so when the sun started to dip behind the trees, it was a good time to go.
I insisted we swing by the train station so I could satisfy that compulsion to eat one last German sausage before leaving the country and we popped into the supermarket to get a couple more beers to drink back at the hostel. Like always, the hostel had the hush of a library over it with barely any signs of life. After sitting in the lounge for a bit, I threw on a plotless movie so we could have something to focus on and talk about. Another guest who was cooking up in the kitchen sat down to eat at 9:55. One minute later, we were all kicked out again.
Some people had checked into the hostel between 8:30 and 10:00 pm and were already passed out on the beds in the dorm snoring louder than the roar of a Harley Davidson. This is so ridiculous. I have go sit in the dark and listen to people snore because sitting quietly on a couch is “disturbing the peace.”
In the morning, my body wanted to wake up at 5 or 6 am, but I forced myself to stay in bed and managed to stay asleep until 7:30, at which I promptly got dressed and dashed to the kitchen to make my first cup of coffee. The hostel has a newspaper subscription and I flipped through the local paper only to realize just how small the town really is. The front page story was about the German team’s defeat in the World Cup and I couldn’t even find a section on news or world events.
I enjoyed a leisurely morning frying up two eggs and slathering two slices of toast with butter and mixed berry jam for a stretched out breakfast. I was about to settle down work the rest of the morning, but I realized I would be better served going out briefly to see the weekly flea market.
The flea market is held in the parking lot north of the train station and this was the most flea-ridden (?) of the markets I’ve seen so far. By which I mean that it was the most loosely organized and potentially authentic reselling of used goods. I do wonder how someone can have such a huge collection of CDs or bicycle parts to sell at a flea market, and given my aggravations of the previous day, my thoughts drifted towards how one simply needs to move stolen goods to a different city to offload them in a flea market. There was even someone selling some old luggage and I did my best to analyze how long I can expect my current luggage to last versus something of an unknown quality. In the end, I resolved to pick up a few items to attempt a more aggressive repair, but the stall selling superglue (which must have fallen off the back of a truck) mysteriously vanished.
I headed back to the hostel for a quick, early lunch of two grilled cheese sandwiches, then set off again to head into the old town to the south.
Who dis?
Bremen’s old town is the most impressive of the handful of cities I’ve visited. Every building is an architectural masterpiece and they are clustered together so tightly that photos cannot do them justice. I didn’t wonder too far because it was already noon and there was something on my secret agenda.
A group of volunteers performs a reenactment of the Bremen Town Musicians every Sunday at noon (May through September) on the plaza between the modernist Neptune fountain and the cathedral. Yes, it is for kids, but much like the flea market it is not available everyday, and therefore special and worth spending a little time. After a long introductory spiel in German, the donkey repeated it in crisp English to my surprise. Their spoken German was a little hard to understand, but I appreciated the 30 minute listening practice.
Improv in the Park
After the show, I shot over to the Bremen Kunsthalle because Sunday would be my only chance to visit a museum and of all the things listed in the Lonely Planet, art sounded the most interesting. The museum was good and I tried a new strategy of going through it twice. The modern art was very limited (thankfully, though I never thought I’d see John Cage* in a museum), and the best room was that of the French Impressionists. Nevertheless, I am starting to feel a greater understanding of German art and its superstar painters because this handful of names appears in every museum. Quite frankly, I could definitely become a fan.
The ground floor special exhibits, of course, were the most interesting with an entire gallery dedicated to the titular fairy tale. Colorful signs at eye level for short people gave children tasks to focus on the art (such as “count this” or “think about that”), but overall the exhibit was surprisingly not-child friendly. The highlight and featured work on their promotional materials was a pair of real-life recreations of the stacked musicians (donkey, dog, cat, rooster) using taxidermied animals and their skeletons. The next room had a photo series from Ukraine with nudity. The next room had a video of the artist marching down the street of his hometown in Iraq playing a harmonica. It turns into a street protest and bloody violence ensues. After finishing the loop, I found the English language pamphlet explaining the ideas behind all the works and had to give it a second pass.
Oil on Canvas (really)
Finally, there was a whole section dedicated to a contemporary artist who has a really fascinating gimmick of painting photo-realistic paintings out of focus and creating the illusion that one is viewing the scene in the painting through a lens.
Despite taking as much time as I could in the museum, I was still done relatively early. I took a brief stroll through more of the old town, admiring the section with the more bauhaus looking architecture and heroically resisting the urge to buy handmade sweets or gelato.
I wrapped up my tour of town and headed back to the hostel, where I treated myself with some coffee and toast. I killed time until the right hour for a skype call, then quickly made my dinner (which was a repeat of Saturday night). Once again, I threw a movie on the TV and watched it while eating and finishing the bottle of wine.
When I got kicked out of the lounge, I wondered to the picnic table in the front yard of the hostel, where a kid was having a smoke. I’d seen him around these days but we hadn’t really spoken yet, but we got to talking then. He was from Turkey, learning German, and about to start university classes the next day. Another fellow with dreadlocks (who had arrived that day and was in my dorm) also joined us. He was from Malaysia and on a cycling tour of Europe. It can be hard to be social, but I guess you just have to push a bit to talk to people. The conversation was really just a bit of small talk and sputtered out very quickly, but it was a welcome break from the minimal grunting of “morning” and “hello” that makes up the entirety of most conversations in a shared space.
* The John Cage installation was a large room with 32 speakers hanging from the ceiling playing different noises. I think I prefer 4’33
It was a late night for me, but an even later night for R. I got up once at 4 am to use the restroom and noticed the hall light I had left on for him was still on. When I got up for good at 8 (which is sleeping in for me) it was off. Of course, I had the luxury of a lazy morning because my bus wouldn’t be until noon, while R had a standing appointment to go to a flea market at 10am. I wouldn’t have enough time to go and get back, so when he woke up and rushed out the door half asleep at 9:59 (because a car was waiting downstairs), we said a quick goodbye and I lazily packed up my stuff.
Knowing that the train station was full of goodies, I figured I’d head over that way a full hour before my scheduled bus time. That way, although the S-bahn would take a whopping 8 minutes to travel four stops, I could grab a snack to eat and still be waiting for my bus at its departure point a full 15 minutes early per instructions (though to be fair, I have yet to see a bus arrive more than 1 minute before the scheduled departure time).
dav
I dragged my stuff around the corner to the Reeperbahn station, bought a ticket, and waited for the train. And waited. And waited. That’s funny, though there was a signboard indicating a train was only 1 minute away, the train never came. Then the signboard switches over to a “Police action — all trains canceled” notice. And the loudspeaker goes on a loop saying that some unauthorized people are on the tracks, be advised to take alternate transportation. Well, there really wasn’t much choice for alternate transportation. It’s not exactly like I was going to walk 2 km to a different staion (an U-bahn, maybe), but even worse was that I had purchased a ticket.
At one point I wandered upstairs from the platform to weigh my options and I overheard some young people talking to a station employee through the glass. No refunds for tickets. Tough luck. This is Europe. My blood pressure rises just to think of this shitty service attitude. I miss Japan.
I was plenty early for my bus, but the minutes ticked by. Do I take a taxi over there? No way. A taxi costs 12 euros, which is still more than the price I already paid for a bus ticket plus the price of a later bus. So, I waited. A train came. I looked at my watch, and the timing would work.
I flew out of the train station and hurried over to the ZOB, arriving exactly 15 minutes prior to the scheduled departure, then sat there sweating for 20 minutes because the Flixbus came late.
It wasn’t a long ride to Bremen and we were dropped off under what looks like an elevated highway near the train station. Fortunately, the independent hostel I booked in advance was not a far walk away, though it took me a minute to find. It is actually a guest house with a hotel and a hostel in separate, but essentially adjacent buildings. My first impression was that it was very nice, though I was a little taken aback when I was asked to pay.
Having booked it through Ctrip, I was under the impression I had prepaid, because that is usually the case (and sometimes the hostels make a mistake and try to charge you twice). My internet with its perfect timing decided to fail so after hesitating a minute while trying to load my booking record and double check, I just forked over the cash. When I finally logged onto the internet, I found that they had overcharged me by 2 euros. What thieves! Nevertheless, I’m so afraid of confrontation, I just let it slide.
I was pretty starving by that point, so I found a nearby Edeka to grab some sort of pastry to make do for a afternoon tea (coffee), and while I was there I grabbed a salad for dinner. I’m still struggling with my weight and always scheming about how to eat healthy. After my coffee break, in which I caught up on a bit more work on the computer, I decided to change into my exercise clothes and explore a bit of the city (by which I mean the Burgerpark).
A block north of the train station, there is a huge park that goes as far as the university (which would be rightly described as being in the suburbs). I took about an hour jog around on the gravel paths, enjoying the grass lawns, drooping trees, and sunny afternoon. Returning to the hostel, I suddenly remembered it was Saturday and that the shops would be closed tomorrow. Since this hostel had a spacious kitchen, I should take advantage of it and cook as much as possible. So, before even showering, I looked up an Aldi on the map and headed over to do some shopping.
Unfortunately, the Aldi was closed for rennovations or something like that, but it was on the north plaza of the train station and I learned that I could cut through the shopping mall like passageway of the train station. Several of the food vendors selling bratwurst, doner, pizza, ice cream looked both delicious and reasonably priced and I’m starting to realize just how little “authentic” German food I’ve eaten on this trip so far. I think 90% of my calories have been from supermarkets…not even specialty bakeries or sweets shops so much. Its a real pity, but necessary to real keep the costs down. But maybe, if/when I swing back through Germany and I am doing good on the daily spending average, I can relax the purse strings a little bit and eat more of this fast food.
I’m not a big fan of Edeka supermarkets, so I was delighted when I found an underground Rewe on the south plaza of the train station, two streets away from the hostel. I went a bit nuts with the shopping (per usual), grabbing a second salad, some antipasta mixes (olives and goat cheese) that were on sale, fresh tortellini, a loaf of sandwich bread, butter, jam, eggs, sliced cheese, tomato soup (can). Going with Italian, I can’t not drink a bit of wine, but I only “treated” myself with one Rittersport bar. I can’t trust myself with more junk food.
Later on, when I looked at the receipt, I noticed that the cashier ripped me off by about 2 euros. I got double charged for the butter and I was only given the 30% off discount on one of the olive packs. I specifically bought two because they were both on sale. Knowing how great German service is, I had to swallow my seething resentment at being robbed again. It’s funny how often I’ve wondered if the cashiers were doing some shady business on me. They usually try not to give you a receipt and you are so busy trying to put all your food in a bag quickly to really pay attention to what they are doing. There are thieves all over Germany, but they are the merchants and capitalists.
I took a shower and got cooking. After eating a large salad and half a package of tortellini (still two servings), I plugged a USB stick into the TV in the lounge and put on a movie. I had about five minutes left on the movie (which I had been fastidiously adjusting the volume so as not to disturb the one or two other people who were scrolling through their phones in the lounge), when the hostel staff kicked us out of the room.
The hostel has a rule that the kitchen and lounge are closed from 10pm to 7:30 am. Such a rule could be seen as reasonable if this was St Pauli or Friedrichshain, but it is a very quiet hostel with a handful of people sitting quietly in a room. The “neighbors” make more noise than any of the hostel guests. Most disturbing, however, is the fact that the showers are also in this section that is locked up. It is summer time and the sun hasn’t even set yet at 10 pm. Everywhere I’ve been, Germans who should otherwise being eating their dinner punctually at 7 pm are barely starting to cook at 9 or 10 pm. This rule is utter madness.
The 11pm sky
I retreated to my dorm (a spacious with six beds) to find two people snoring away in the dark. So, I was nowhere near ready to sleep, but I suddenly found myself with nowhere I could be. I started to get anxious about what is going to happen when I wake up at 5 or 6 am and can’t access hot water to make coffee. People might get murdered.
