Edeka Adventures, Unrat & Weltruf

How do you surprise a Dane? Take him to a german supermarket, place him in front of the beer-shelf and say: "Decide!" ... That´s like a mental breakdown that lasts until you have left the shop;->. Matthias, me, Connor and Morten ("I can´t decide.") needed one hour to leave Edeka again, but in the end we had a fridge - full to bursting with different kinds of beer.
We reactivated the "bar" in our Living Room and waited for Ralf who came from Odense in the evening. Unmentionable that it´s quite hard to motivate three or four people to move on to another place, it´s even harder to motivate an Irish and a Dane ("Oh, we want to leave? The Vodka is not empty [full bottle], give me 15 seconds!")! But with some patience we arrived in the Schrevenpark almost in time to meet a friend of Matthias, just interrupted by Morten, explaining his way of imitating a horde of screaming chimps while jumping around :P ... Morten was surprised that there were still so many people in the park, i guess just because it´s not common in Danmark to be in a park when it gets dark.
Later on we met Julian & Mathis, two friends of mine, and went to a pub called "Unrat" where you can get Astra for 1,50 ... stayed for two beers and went on to Harry´s birthday party a few streets further to the center. Julian and me lost the guys on the way, arrived at the party while seeing the police already leaving again (no reason to worry, they came back two or three times) and stayed until 4 a.m. Lots of people on three floors, already wasted international people dropping 6 beers in ten minutes on the floor and lots of known faces. But no visit in Kiel without going to Weltruf:D, so we entered this bar lying next next to my flat for a last beer! But while Connor and Morten were trying to combine sleeping and dancing, Matthias, Ann-Kristin and me got a last Beck´s and went home at 5 a.m.

Morten shortly before starting to explain the "chimp way" ...

From the left: Matthias, Connor, Morten and Ralf;->

Julian, Matthias and Morten in "Unrat" drinking Astra and Carlsberg

Connor & Ralf

4:32 a.m. The Dane is sleeping ...
4:33 a.m. The Germans are still on standby:-D
A Shawarma for breakfast near the harbour...
Socks, Frisbee and Chillout in another park.
... and thanx to Ralf for the box of Odense Classic!!

Interrail-Trip, August 2006 (Ende)

And on the next morning i was already leaving Odense again. After 32 days of travelling i really wanted my own bed back, my tv, my fridge, a frozen pizza, to sleep as long as i want and no huge backpack to carry around all day;->

But i really enjoyed these four and a half weeks, it was great to see you guys&girls again, to go out together and have all the fun we had! Thanx a lot for showing me around and making all the efforts you did ... I know that Kiel is not really on the way to somewhere, but you are always welcome to stay here if you are around!

Smagløse & Fisherman for free

[30.8.-1.9. Odense] And finally: Odense. I slept one night in my flat and took a train with the last day of my interrail-ticket to Danmark. It was a pretty strange feeling going to Odense again, stepping out of the trainstation, knowing all the good places where to go ... but not having a flat anymore was weird!
I made an appointment with Mark, Mathias and Ralf to meet in the evening in Smagløse (of course ;->) but still had a couple of hours left. So i did the good old approved programm: Piccolo-Pizza (en pepperoni, tak!), SuperBrugsen (6er Odense Classic) and Rådhus-Plads and later on Smagløse and waited for the guys. Some known faces never change: the italians and some danish-kicker-addicted people were there as usual... But i missed some faces that i have seen the weeks before - would have been nice to spend a whole night with Odense Classic, Fisherman and you folks there! Luckily Matthias and Ralf arrived and later on Mark as well, who had to work until 12 p.m.
After some "store classic", a weird conversation with a danish guy ("Isch spresche deütsch") and some people almost fighting in front of the bar (never seen before in this place) Mark and me made some danish bike experiences on the way home to his flat... The next day i drew some money and spent all of it :D ... 1500,- Krones just shopping in town - i bought all the stuff i had no money for when i left, that was great! One time beeing rich in Danmark!
In the evening Mark showed me another place in town called Viggos, where (Thomas, jetzt aufpassen!) you can order 10x0,5 liter of Odense Classic or Pilsner and if you´re able to drink it and you still can stand, your name will be engraved in a glass and hung up at the ceiling! And this was the first time, that the barkeeper offered us a drink for free ... First i thought he´s insane or something (Danmark - something for free = impossible) but he just wanted to be nice. Amazing. In between Mark started to play with a gambling-machine and lost some krones before we decided to move further on to Boogies. But we didn´t go inside (Hej Mark, they are crazy, they want 20,- Krones to get in) which was a decision we regretted the next morning (Eh Jochen, it was only 20,- Krones, why didn´t we enter?). But we took a taxi home instead, so we weren´t supposed to walk again.



Matthias & Ralf
In the meantime Ralf got kicker-addicted btw ...

Der Klassiker ...
Mark and the gambling-machine ...
At Viggos ...
The glasses of the people who had survived ...
Skål!

Bordeaux Rood

[28.8.-29.8. Utrecht] In Utrecht i met Mark, one of the dutch guys i met in Montpellier, in front of the coffee shop he recommended before. He was in Amsterdam until 11 p.m. so i had to wait at least three hours by my own in town, whereof i spent, öhm, three hours in this coffeeshop... The next day my tongue felt like someone ironed it all night long, which was not the most comfortable feeling you can have. Later on Mark came with a friend, Joachim, and we went to a bar for people basically like snowboarding or surfing. But i didn´t mind, the atmosphere was really easy and the dutch girls were not that ugly;-> ... Funny was, that Mark had the same experience with the strange 60-year old guy in the youthhostel in Montpellier, so we could exchange impressions while having some beers.
I forgot completely to take pictures of Utrecht, maybe because i already had been there before this year ... but these are Mark, Joachim and a friend of them we met in this bar. Btw if i meet one more dutch guy, who is named Mark i will get confused for sure!

Ein grosses Kölsch, bitte!

[27.8.-28.8. Aachen/Aix-la-Chapelle] After a couple of weeks i was quite happy to cross the german border again - just to get back to something you know, even if i haven´t been to Aachen before. But sometimes it´s nice to listen to your own language, to know how people will probably react and to get some good german beer of course! :D I met Bernhard in town and we decided to go to Holland to get some beers and frozen pizzas because it was sunday and the shops in germany were closed. Aachen is quite close to the dutch border, so we could take a bus to get there.
There are about 35.000 students in Aachen, which means, that you have the choice between several bars and pubs. The Old Town is pretty nice, also because it was not that much destroyed in WW2.
In the evening we went to the "Molkerei", where i (typical north-german-farmer) ordered a Kölsch ("Can i have a big one, half a liter?"). The next day i was looking for a mobilephone-shop to explain my vodafone-debacle and luckily got my money back (minus 2 Euro 50 arrangement fee...) and later on i was already on my way out of germany again - i had only two days to get to danmark in time, so i had to hurry.

Paris by bike

[26.8. Guided Tour] I´ve seen once on tv that there are guided tours through Paris by bike, so i really wanted to try that. I found a flyer in the hostel and went to Notre Dame at 3 p.m., which was the meeting point.
My local, English-speaking guides were Paul (New-Zealand) and Christian (States), who have been living in paris for six and four years each. They just started their business a couple of weeks before, both had studied marketing and business and could speak french fluently. Depending on the day (rain or shine), they have like ten customers or - like this day, only me! So i got a special Paris tour by bike. Christian showed me all the important places you have to see, when you are a tourist in Paris - like the Louvre, the Latin quarter, Place de la Concorde, the Seine river, the Eiffel Tower and many more. The tour took almost three hours and in the beginning i was a bit afraid of going by bike through this town where everyone, who´s owning a car, is used to see the buzzer as something he has to touch every ten seconds. But after ten minutes you get used to it, it is neither dangerous nor insane (as the french people in Odense tried to make me believe;). And i think it´s a great way of making sightseeing...

Paul and Christian with their city-bikes
www.frenchconnectiontours.com

Montmarte & Montclair

[25.8.-27.8. Paris] My phone was still not working and i didn´t know where to sleep in Paris, because Manue was in Toulon, Cat in Barcelona, Charlie left to Poitiers that day and i had no phone numbers of Lauriane or Emilie. So i was quite lost when i arrived in Paris-Montparnasse... I bought a payphone-card (damn expensive these cards) and called Aleksis who luckily had the number of Emilie. But Emilie was stressed out because of her new job and the fact, that she had to move to her new flat exactly this weekend. So i went to Montmartre as Aleksis had told me and did sightseeing until 5 p.m. when i was supposed to call Emilie again - but she told me it´s gonna be difficult for that day to find a place to sleep. No problem - but now i was in a big hurry to find a place to sleep, it was already 5.30 p.m. and i had no idea where to find a hostel. I checked two out but no beds were free, but the guy at the reception called another hostel and told me, that there is one bed free - the last one. It was called Hotel Montclair, but it was definitely a hostel; but a hostel where you almost don´t meet someone inside, no real common room, no people around. So i went by my own to Montmarte Cathedral that evening - which was quite nice, cause lots of people were around,also some street-musicians and artists.
Next day i went to the center, to the place i always go when i am in Paris, the Centre Pompidou (Museum of Modern Art), it´s like Brandt´s Klædefabrik, just a bit bigger. Later on i went to Notre Dame to take the guided tour through Paris (ja, real tourist, non?;-).

Sorry, but i need to sleep

[24.8.-25.8. La Rochelle] From Hendaye i went straight north via Bordeaux to La Rochelle. Well, why La Rochelle? Just because i knew that there was a youth hostel and it was half the way to Paris. And i needed to sleep, i couldn´t close my eyes in the train because i had to shift three times. I arrived in the youth hostel in La Rochelle at 4 p.m., just looked for a supermarket and then went back to my room. There were as well two swiss and a french guy, who asked me to come with them to town in the evening, but my answer was just "Sorry, but i need to sleep." And that´s what i did, almost 17 hours in a row ...

Festival Week in Bilbao

[23.8. at night, Bilbao] I think i have never seen so many bars during only one evening like in this night in Bilbao. Goibel, Tomas and me went by car again and met Xabi and Zapo at the busstation. Zapo has been living in Bilbao for four years so he knew the town pretty well. You could walk across the street, maybe 25 meters to find the next bar. In town there were lots of people, pub crawling, watching the firework and celebrating the Bilbao Festival Week.
The most crazy pub was this punk bar, with the most wasted kicker-table i have seen in my life! The player were all taped, the field was warped like a banana and the ball stuck on the ground - incredible hard to play, but quite a funny experience (the balls fell out after a goal..;-)... In the next bar Zapo invited me to a typical bask drink, which tasted like ... huh, hard to describe. Try it, it´s red, but i cannot remember the name!
Late that night we ended on a big square where lots of young bask people were dancing, talking and drinking beer. We switched maybe ten times between the square and the side street, met these girls from San Sebastian, Xabi gave me two bask buttons as a present and at all, you had the feeling this night, that you were in the Bask Country and not in Spain.




Lots of people were bask, bask signs and flags were all around and as the most probably know, the Bask Country wants to get independant - and me in between... Of course we talked also about the eagerness for independance, the ETA and the relationship to the rest of spain - but for heaven´s sake, don´t ask me what i think, it´s quite a complex situation. For sure i don´t like violence (like the most people that were there i think), about the rest it´s possible to talk. But, yes, sometimes it´s good just to be a tourist!

Tomas, Zapo and Goibel ...
... and the girls


We stayed in Bilbao until seven in the morning, when we had to leave, because i needed to catch my train to France. Thanx a lot to Goibel for managing the way back and that i was possible to get to Hendaye in time!
In the train i was more than tired, wasted and still drunk, but it was a damn nice visit in San Sebastian & Bilbao - thanx a lot!

Donostia & Be Bop Bar

[22.8.-24.8. San Sebastian & Bilbao] Ok, it gets boring now if i tell you, that someone picked me up from the trainstation again, but this time it was completely different! Let me explain: Using a pre-paid-card for my mobile phone, i ran out of credit on my way from Zaragoza to San Sebastian. But in Vitoria i had an hour time before taking the next train and besides my telephone company wrote me a message, that i can even put money on my phone in spain (Lieber callya-Kunde ... blablabla). I thought: "Great, let´s do that." So i luckily found a shop in time, bought credit for 15 Euro, returned to the trainstation, got a seat and the train pulled out. Then i entered the code, worked perfect, the description was in english, i finished and waited for the response which came immediately: "Lieber callya-Kunde, vielen Dank für die Aufladung ihrer Vodafone-Karte. Wir werden ihrem Konto nun 0 Cent gutschreiben! Vielen Dank." (Do i have to translate that?) Let´s say i was pissed, a lot! I was not able to return to Vitoria, neither did i have lots of money left to buy another card. And i couldn´t tell Tomas when i will arrive ... But - to get back to the beginning - when i arrived in San Sebastian, i walked out of the trainstation and watched out for the next payphone, when suddenly a car stopped - with squeaking wheels. Tomas jumped out and said: "Hey man, sorry we are late, you tried to call me, right?" ... Öhm, no, but great!
Tomas has no drivers-license, so Goibel, a friend of him, was driving through the mountained streets of San Sebastian, which is btw called Donostia in the bask language.
The weather was great, so we decided to go to the beach (the only time i went to the beach during these 5 weeks), the water was really salty, so it´s pretty easy to swim without moving too much.
Later on we visited a small village called Deba with Tomas, Goibel and Xabi, ate some Tortilla-Baguettes and went back to San Sebastian to go to some bars. I don´t remember all places we have been, but i do pretty good remember ´Be Bop Bar´, which we left at three or four in the night (Tomas: "I need a taxi."). In the early morning Tomas´ alarmclock was quite bothering, but nobody wanted to move, until Tomas´ brother got really angry, entered the room, shaked Tomas ("Tomas! Conio!") until he switched it off...
In the afternoon Tomas and his dog showed me around in Donostia: There are three beaches, a small harbour, pretty nice Old Town and of course the fortress on Monte Urgull. We decided not to go to the Island Santa Clara, because the weather was not that good the second day, but some of Tomas friends work in bars in town, so we stopped by for a beer on the way back.


Donostia at Night
Xabi, Goibel and Tomas