Oiy the people!

So there are possibly a few of you out there that may have been wondering why has Aaron not posted recently? Well to answer simply...people beat me to it, besides I am lazy when it comes to posting anyways. But have no fear I´ll update you a little on what I have been doing.

Its only been a few days (well maybe a week now) since we all broke off for our own adventures. Mike and I went to some campsite outside of Amsterdam on a lake for 2 days and let me tell you that place was right out of the 70´s. Tiny little campers, stereotypical 70´s furniture, and the ugliest heart patterened sheet set. Mike has the pictures, ask him.

Anyways, after 2 days there we headed to Brussels to the worst\ok hostel I have stayed at. I say both for these reasons, the beds were nice, the bar was decent, it was clean, except the showers were the worst thing I have ever seen in my entire life. It was one of those showers where you had to constantly hold down the button to get water and there was no temperature guage. Only scalding hot. But the hostel made up for itself since we met some pretty cool people there. The first night we were there we were out on the porch having a beer talking to an American named John and an Austrian named (why the hell do I have to be so terrible with names! I completely forgot her name :( lets call her Maria) Maria. All of a sudden 9 Irish girls walked if with like 4 bottles of Smirnoff to share between them. Mike and John approached them while I was talking to Maria.

Things went pretty well from there, all of us ended up going out to a bar\club. It was 9 18-19 year old Irish girls, 1 Austrian girl, plus us 3 guys. When we got there the girls started to dance while every guy in the place tried to join them. It was rather amusing. One of the girls even told one guy that Mike was her boyfriend so that he would stop bothering her. It was at this point that John turned into kind of a creep and started to make most of the girls uncomfortable. Ah well, it was still a fun night.

The next night and the last one we spent in Brussles (which by the way was a boring city and the only 2 sites I found of interest I didn´t go to since I found out about them after I left) we ended up hanging out with the Irish girls again. This time they didn´t go out but they got just as crazy. One decided to bring out a can of Veet (that really discusting mousse stuff that disintegrates your body hair) and proceeded to take off various hair off some of the guys there. An English guy lost half his chest hair and got a nice Smiley face on the other half while a german lost a nice chunk off the back of the head. The girls then wanted to take off Mike´s eyebrows after he went to bed but luckily they threw the can away before that could happen. Instead they put toothpaste all over his and stuffed a Mars bar down his pant which apparently I get to look forward to retaliation since I let them in the room. Hey it was pretty funny at the time :).

Anyways, the next day Mike and I split off. He went to Normandy and I ended up getting a ticket to Koln. If anyone ever gets the chance to go, I highly recomend it. There is so much to see and do and a lot of it was for free. There were even about 3 different festivals the night before I left. The first night I was just hanging out at the hostel bar meeting a few people and met 2 lovely sisters from England named Claire and Kathrine (I assume Kat is with a K because of the e-mail address but I don´t know, so if you are reading this and its a C I appologize!). It was a pretty laid back night but we ended up making plans to go out to see the town the next night.

The next night I showed up downstairs a little early and ran into 2 aspiring doctors. One was from Idaho (Noel was his name) who I believe and was working on his Soil Chemistry doctorate while the Irishman, Niles, was working on his Statistics doctorate. I guess smart people travel too. Anyways, the 5 of us headed out to see what Koln had to offer. The place we went wasn´t terribly exciting but it was still fun. We went to a few bars and ended up in an Irish bar just hanging out talking, messing with the bartenders, and listening to music. While they were closing down we requested Queen´s Bohemian Rhapsody and proceeded to sing along loudly (how can you not with that song?). I guess we impressed the older German guy drinking at the end of the bar because he came down to shake our hands. After that we went to get food where a very drunk Moroccan looking guy asked if we wanted a cab. We told him yes but not that second then for some reason he felt that just for him asking us to offer his help getting a cab (though we were standing right next to a cab stand) he deserved 50 cents. He repeated his demand over and over with a group of Germans looking at us and of course we kept refusing. The German told us to stop being so nice and to tell the guy to Fuck off (pardon the French). After that the guy got all sorts of mad and started to yell at us and flick us off with his pinky which apparently is an equivilent to our middle finger. But he eventually wondered off and we went back to the hostel to crash.

The last night wasn´t too special so no need to write about it. But the next day I got a ticket to Freiburg. In Germany they have this Weekend Ticket you can get for 30 euros that allows you to ride on any regional train for the day. So I got that and 9 hours later and 5 trains later I arrived. I finally found a place to stay (they have these really cool kiosks here that lists a few hotels and their rates along with a free phone to call them with) and I proceeded to work my way down there. It took me 2 hours. What should have been an easy hop on the tram and get off near the hotel ended up being me riding back and forth trying to figure out the right stop (the one I was told was the right stop wasn´t even a stop). I eventually got off close to where I thought I was going and ran into a guy from Iceland (first Icelander I have met to date and his name was Anotop) and walked with him towards his place to possibly use his map at his host families house. On the way I saw a sign to where I thought I needed to go so we split off and I headed that way.

Of course this was not a direct route. I ended up walking through a forest on a trail and got to a clearing where I saw a lady walking her pit bull. I asked her where I needed to go (She spoke absolutly no English) and I bent down to pet her dog as she was trying to put him on his leash. She said something to me that I interpretted as don´t touch the dog right as he snapped at my hand. Now he didn´t growl or anything, he just moved his head and tried to bite my hand. Kind of weird, he seemed like a nice enough dog. Anyways, I got the point across of where I needed to go and she beckoned me to follow her. She took me about 150 meters or so and pointed me in the right direction. Keep in mind this whole thing from when I got off the tram occured at night so I could not really see that much. I got extremely lucky on finding these people or I probably would still be roaming the forests, heh. Well I made it in record time, about 2 hours after I first made the booking. Not bad eh?

So now I am here in Freiburg, Germany for 2 more nights staying with a friend I met 2 months ago in Granada, Spain. Its always nice to have someone who knows the area to show you around. So I meet her in about 6 hours and hopefully there are some cool things to see here. All I know about right now is something called the Black Forest thats supposed to be really cool but thats it. I guess I´ll find out. Well its time for me to go wander the city. Talk to you guys later and soon the Trippers will reunite in Prague!

Aaron