travel

Pictures of Paris

We skipped most of the sites in Paris, having both been there before. We couldn't afford to eat in restaraunts, or go to museums, or anything, so I'm not quite sure what we did. We definitely walked around a lot and ate a lot of bread and cheese.

We traded music with Rowan, and sat around and talked a lot. We went to cafes, and spent a lot of time sitting on a bridge, watching people and boats and drinking wine.

The weather was still nice at this point, which is hard to fathom now, looking back on a trip that seemed interminably cold and grey.

We also visited Gemma's friend from high school, Barbara, who is living in Paris. We climbed up on her roof and hung out with these amazing views.

We bid Rowan adieu and headed off to Marseille. He had seen the last of us for a while... so he thought.

This Kid Is Cool

This was a window in Notre Dame, I think. Notice how the kid is fastened to the bread like a leech, but is also looking over the other one's (his older brother?) shoulder, possibly assessing whether or not anybody is approaching with designs on his food. He doesn't look particularly worried, nor does he match the cool confidence of his possibly stoned companion.

The new Probonobaker logo.

The Ugliest Church Ever

This church made my head hurt. Mostly, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, but I should mention that we went here during our Free Tour of Munich, which was an excellent 3 hour tour given by an excited and well-informed guide. I highly recommend taking this tour (it's free!) if you're in Munich. They also have tours in Berlin.

Staying with Gretchen

The Andersons have kept an apartment in Munich that is apparently a ridiculously cheap holdover from Ingrid student years. Gretchen was in town on business, and we met here and she took us to the apartment, where she told us that she would actually stay with friends so that we could sleep there. We protested to no avail.

In addition to this generosity, she took us out to a couple wonderful dinners, and spent an afternoon showing us around the 15th and 16th century Dutch wing of the Alte Pinakotech. Needless to say, we learned a lot that afternoon.

Thanks again, Gretchen.

Liederhosen & Morning Train Beer

We didn't actually wear liederhosen, or drink beer in the morning on the train, but plenty of people in Germany did. 10 am, 8 am, or 6:30 am, it didn't matter. Old men on the train would go through a pack of cigarettes and a six pack in a couple hours. It was a tough choice whether to sit in the smoking car, where the air was foul, or in the non-smoking cars, where we were invariably seated in front of a screaming kid. Usually, we would do whatever we hadn't done on the previous trip.

As soon as we got off the train from Gent in Koln, where we would transfer to our 4 hour, standing room only, ride to Munich, a train rolled in across the platform from us, complete with German men hanging out all the windows, beers in hand, swaying back and forth and singing. It was great.

We also didn't wear leiderhosen, but I did wear this hat:

Gemma is soooo jealous.

Later, in Garmisch, old men would walk around in leiderhosen and amazing feathered hats, but in Munich (where I assume this was a special Octoberfest thing) most of the people in leiderhosen seemed to be young men on the way to the office, coffee in one hand, briefcase in the other.

Impressions of Gent

There were many times on this trip when I regretted not having a digital tape recorder (digital tape?). I would have loved to recorded our friend Tommy in Scotland, because he's (a) hilarious and (b) impossible to understand after he's had a couple drinks. I would have recorded the people singing on the trains in Germany, the amazingly bad "turbo folk" music that we heard in Zagreb (I thought it was karaoke at first, but it was a live band), the constant explosions on the night of the Chinese New Year in Beijing, and the epic loogie-hocking in the same city. There were countless other things, as well, but right now I don't remember them.

Some places, though, it was my SLR with a telephoto lense that I missed. Gemma's camera is nice, and the benefits of digital photography, especially on a long trip, are huge, but there's something about my fast shutter and 50 to 180 mm zoom that, well, lets me photograph people without their knowing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it sounds creepy, and sometimes I think it's irresponsible tourism, but coming back with a gigabytes of pictures of buildings, landscapes, I feel like we've missed the most interesting photo opportunities.

Of course, there's another issue about the fetish of recording experiences and how it's stupid, and if I was so set on it, why didn't I write in my damn journal, anyway?, but I'm supposed to be talking about Gent here, so leave me alone.

The people I wanted to photograph in Gent were the people on their bikes. Our first impression of Gent was of how bike-friendly a town it is. There weren't all that many cars, but there were thousands of bikes. People ate their lunches on bikes, talked on their cell phones, and even sent SMSs while biking around town. The cars were polite and the bike lanes wide, and none of these people seemed to fear death or maiming at all. They biked in an orderly way, unlike Lucca, where the bikers weaved erraticly back and forth across the sidewalk; or Beijing, where bikes went forward, backward, and sideways, carrying two people, or a 55-gallon drum turned grill with roasting yams, or 300 gallons of water, 1200 rolls of toilet paper, or (luckily only at the acrobatics show) 11 women with demon horns and wings.

We stayed with a nice girl from Hospitality Club, in a beautiful house where our room was 97 stairs away from the toilet. We went out to a chocolate bar and had hot chocolate... I think I've mentioned all of this.

The other chocolates we purchased were disappointing-- very sweet, stuffed with weird things, and expensive enough to preclude our buying more. Now I'm straying into Gemma's domain, though.

The beer was, of course, very good. Geuze Boon may be the best beer I've had. It was the only beer we had on our entire trip, other than Palmer's IPA in Seatown near Devon in the UK, that was better than the best of our midwest microbrews. Take note, eurozymurgyphiles (I just made that word up, but if it existed it would mean "lovers of European beers") and scorners of U.S. beer, in my extensive sampling of beer around the world, the best beers are right here at home, they just aren't advertised on billboards with half-naked twins. Once you invest the slightest effort in exploring local beer, you will find that it is often just as good, and substantially fresher, than imported beers. Nothing shows ignorance about beer faster than saying "American beers are bad," except maybe saying "what's beer?" and at least then, you aren't pretending to know something.

Sorry, I know I rant about that too much. This has been the most scatterbrained post ever. I think I'm in the early stages of a head cold. What's the title again? Oh yeah, "Impressions of Gent." Ah... forget it. Here are some pictures:

Trains

I guess these train rides in Belgium were our first, since we took buses in the UK. I wonder how many hours we spent on trains altogether. Once we left the UK, all of our westward travel took place on trains, since our car rides from Zagreb to Varazdin and Varazdin to Liszo were pretty much due north, as was our bus ride from Warsaw to Tallin. That's 5050 miles if we had gone straight, and our route was erratic at best.

Brussels

We spent an afternoon in Brussels on the way to Gent. We didn't spend enough time to get much of an impression of the town, but we did eat some good falafel.

We don't get to have fun, dangerous playgrounds in the U.S. any more.

Where did we leave off?

Now that we're home, I (John) want to try again to share some memories and post some pictures. Most likely, this will take the form of short anecdotes or isolated scenes, rather than any sort of narrative. I'll try to do at least one a day, which should be easy (barring any sort of catastrophe like employment), and we'll be in Beijing in no time.

For now, though, we're just crossing the English Channel, way back in September, on a huge ship full of screaming children, unaware that the last train has already left Calais...

The white cliffs of Dover.

We don't know this man.

Location Updates

(Thom and I in his VW, Garmisch, Germany)

I have added a sidebar list to the left that chronicles where we have been so far and I will do my best to keep this up to date. Hopefully this will pique some interest and you won't forget about me. Over the next few weeks we will be traveling through Hungary, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Russia, and China. If anyone lives in these areas, it would be lovely to meet up and sample your favorite food in the area, to be made aware of wireless connections to be utilized, or if you have space, I bet we could use a couch here and there.