Tour de Schwarmstedt

Isn't this first picture here just a beaut?! haha

So, for all of you who don't know yet, I've moved from southern Germany to the north. I'm now living in the little village of Schwarmstedt. Population: 6000. Oh yeah. It's a good thing I'm not a big city girl, because Schwarmstedt is not a big city. But I really really like it here - it's cute, quiet and super friendly.

Plus, the surroundings are just fabulous! I'm living in farm country really. Head 5 minutes in any direction and you've hit a field. So I've taken advantage of the fact that I only work 12 hours a week to check out the local bike trails and nordic walking paths. Here's one below - nice and smooth and flat. And you can't see it, but it runs alongside a river too. When the sun's shining, there's nothing more fun than a jaunt in the countryside!



My first day back from my teacher's orientation course I decided to bike to Walsrode visit a new friend. Now, there are a few facts that you should know. First of all, I haven't biked more than 15 minutes ever. Secondly, Walsrode is 25 km away from Schwarmstedt. Thirdly, my bike is stuck on one gear - hard. But I decided all these factors were completely... well they didn't matter.

So off I went to Walsrode. Now it was a fairly leisurely trip - I stopped to take pictures all over the place. But when I finally reached Walsrode after about an hour I was royally pooched! And as I stood on the side of the road pondering the fact that I couldn't feel my legs, was only halfway through the journey, and didn't actually know where my friend lived in Walsrode... I came to the conclusion that I was in waaaaay over my head.

But what could I do? Other than turn around and bike back home, of course. Which is exactly what I did. At a snails pace too, I'm sure. But now I can say, I've sucessfully biked 50km! Go me!



Here's the windmill I passed about 15 minutes into my 2.5 hour journey.

And I also passed through the little town of Gilten about 20 minutes into my journey. The houses here are just incredible. The older ones are like something right out of a story. I have absolutely no idea what we call this style of house in English, but in German it's a "Fachwerk" house.

Well that was trip number one. A couple days later the sun was still shining and I figured it was high time for another excursion - ie. I could feel my legs again. So I grabbed my bike and hopped onto the nordic walking trail. I felt like I was back in Canada in the middle of a forest :)

I just love this picture... Not the most flattering maybe, but an excellent example of what happens when you tinker with the self-timer on a camera. I'm clearly quite puzzled.

Now, I know it said it was a walking trail, but it went through the woods and I wanted to check it out! I soon found out why a bike wasn't a good idea. As you can see below, the trails are all sand. Incredibly difficult on a bike.

So I went back a few days later to walk them. Much more fun - except for the fact that sand got in my shoes and I quickly developed blisters. Shoot.

But it certainly felt good to cool them in the water. I've found a couple beaches near me - the picture below is from Alhden (a town only 12km away). Give me a book and I could sit here all day! Which I did.

My lonesome purse chilling on the beach. See - it proves I was really there!

This next picture is me having "assumed the position" as my mom likes to say. After soaking my blisters, I sat on down and started reading my book. The best part of it all is that this beach is only a 5 minute walk from my house!

Aaahhhh

Back again on another day - I just can't stay away from the water when it's so nice out.

And, just in case you're starting to forget what my face looks like - one last shot in the woods before I say goodbye for now.

Hi all!

And now:

Bye all!

Checking out the land of clogs and cheese

Ta da!! I'm in Tilburg, Netherlands!

I spent the weekend in Holland visiting a friend of mine from Waterloo. Carrie is currently doing a semester abroad at the University of Tilburg. Since she was on the same continent as me, I thought it would be a super-de-duper idea to visit her. Turns out that whole "same continent" thing still meant a 6 hour train ride... It's a good thing I can read on the train!



Carrie and I spent the first evening wandering around downtown Tilburg checking out the local sights. First we ate dinner - at a pub which had a random rotating bar. It took a "are you seeing what I think I'm seeing?" question to be sure that it really was moving. There were also a couple really pretty churches (that played creepy bell music - think Tim Burton), a castle that no one actually lived in (he died first), and a statue of a Scotsman playing the bagpipes! That one made me chuckle.



Before we went back to Carrie's place, we stopped in at a local cafe for some spiffy hot chocolate - like you can see, it was a glass of hot milk with a block of chocolate on a stick. You stirred the milk with the chocolate, thus turning your milk chocolate-y! Mmm



We were up bright and early the next day to catch the train to Amsterdam. This time the train ride was only an hour! Phew. We wandered slowly from the train station, through the tourist district, to our hotel. Below you can see us hanging out in the central square. We saw Batman there - he fit right in with the old architecture. I mean, if you didn't look really hard, you couldn't even tell he was there...

Unfortunately, the weather wasn't so great that Saturday morning... The rain was on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again, on-ag... well, you get the picture. But we killed some time during the on-again parts by walking through some stores. Most of them were very touristy, but then we found the flower shops.

Yep, that's me standing infront of about a bazillion different types of tulips.

But tulips weren't the only flower we saw there. They actually had Venus Flytraps... crazy!

And the best part about these stores was that although the store fronts were on a street, the majority of the store was actually floating on barges tied up to the side of the road. Check it out:

Amsterdam also had these really random elephant statues ALL over the city. And they all looked different. I think one of my favourites was the elephant covered with tomatoes... How random is that?! But we also like the Elephant of Many Faces. Can you find mine?? It's gonna be tricky...

Well, I'm either one of the faces, or the elephant is trying to eat me alive...

Once we checked into our unbelievably fabulous hotel (Carries boyfriend was super awesome and booked us a hotel - instead of having to stay in a hostel. Not only did we each get a double bed with more pillows than we knew what to do with, but there was a bathtub!! Bliss, absolute bliss :)

But getting back to the story. Once we checked into the hotel, we walked over to the Heineken Brewery for the grand tour. It was pretty sweet - you learned about the founders, the brewing process, saw the huge old copper vats, did a taste test and saw a whole lot of Heineken merchandise.

We're making beer!

One of the super cool exhibits they had was a "bottles throughout the ages" - they showed how the bottle design had changed since the beginning and had examples there. The coolest by far, was the WOBO (World Bottle). After it was empty, it could be used to build houses. I have no idea how many were actually built, but it was a pretty crazy recycling idea.

Oooh... green! It's like being under the sea!

Yep, Amsterdam, city of many many many many canals. Sure are pretty.

And here we see the oh-so-famous Holland clog. Built for a giant. I would hate to hear someone dance in that shoe!

The next stop on our self-guided city tour, was the Anne Frank House. Not the most uplifting place I've ever visited, but totally worth visiting. It was both incredible and awful. You get to walk through the entire house - starting in the workshop and offices on the first two floors. You also get to see scale models of what the secret annex looked like while they were hiding there. There are also random artifacts - like Margot's latin workbook, and the pictures that Anne glued to the walls.

I can't even describe to you, though, what it was like to walk out of the offices and see the bookcase that hid the door to the annex. And then to climb the stairs and walk through the rooms where they hid. It was really intense. One of the biggest things for me was realizing that they had to have blacklight curtains on the windows at all times. They lived without natural sunlight for 2 years. It broke my heart.

But I think it's incredible how her legacy - her courage and hope and passion for freedom - have lived on.

Here's a beautiful view of an Amsterdam canal at night:

We certainly appreciated this view. But about 10 minutes later, when we discovered we were lost, we were not longer concerned with how pretty the city was. We had to stop at a gas station to figure out where on the map we were. As luck would have it, we managed to get lost taking a short cut!

Over the course of the weekend, not only did we see shoes everywhere we looked (and I mean everywhere!), but you could find a cheese store every 10 steps. Oh I do love cheese...

Say "Cheese"!

We had some time to kill before the train home, so we wandered around what we thought was the shopping district. What we found instead, was a park and the "I Amsterdam" sign.

Carrie is Amsterdam!

And my initials were hiding within too...

I am ST!

Home again Sunday night. Neither one of us felt like cooking, so we ordered up a wonderfully north american pizza and wandered around the Tilburg University campus. It was quite nice - lots of green.

Carrie on the Tilburg campus

Then it was a peaceful nights sleep before a 6 hour train ride home. What a wonderful trip it was :) But boy was it nice to get back to Germany. Not only was the cost of living in the Netherlands quite expensive, but listening to Dutch was driving me CRAZY! I felt like I was listening to German underwater or something. The languages are just similar enough that I can pick out a few words here and there, but not enough to really understand anything. Bah! Although it did make watching "So you think you can dance - Netherland Edition" really interesting. I kept trying to interpret what the judges were saying.

But now I'm back in Germany, and I've only got a week left until my orientation course for my new job! eep!

Sandy

A taste of Bohemia

But probably not the Bohemia you're thinking of. Despite it's connections to hippies and unconventional living, the word is also the old name for the Czech Republic. Boy did that explain a lot of shop names...

Last week I spent 3 rather fabulous days in the capital of the Czech Republic - Prague! Now, let me fill you in on all my adventures :)

My friend Zach and I took off last Wednesday for Prague on a double decker bus - they're doing construction east of Bamberg and a lot of train routes have been replaced by bus routes for the time being - and it was fun to travel that high up. Once we reached Prague, we checked into our hostel and headed out to wander around the city. First stop, Old Town Square:

Please ignore the funny look from the passerby... Despite what you're thinking, doing the YMCA in the middle of a square really is a cool thing to do!

After buying lunch - including the first tasty Czech beer - we noticed the large crowd standing on the other side of the square.

So we moseyed on over to see what the big deal was. Turns out everyone was standing infront of the Astronomical Clock - the most visited tourist attraction in Prague. When the clock strikes the hour, Death rings a bell, the 12 Apostles do a parade, and at the end a rooster crows. Sounds pretty cool, huh?

All I can say is... junior burger.

But the clock itself is really neat looking. The top dial shows 3 different times on a 24 hour clock, as well as the current zodiac sign and where the sun and the moon are in the sky.

The bottom dial shows the current date - day, month and year! Very spiffy.

If you look closely, you can see Death - he's the inside statue on the top right. Moral of the story? Clock - very cool. Striking of the hour - not so much.

Next, Zach and I (that would be Sandy - the spelling will become very important later) noticed a Starbucks around the corner. After professing a love of caramel macchiatos and frappacinos, we decided to cave and buy something very north american, despite the fact that we were in Prague. The employees were super friendly (and I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that they were being evaluated...) and after taking our orders, asked for our first names. Quality service!


Boy did we laugh when we got outside and checked our drinks.

Look ma, I've got a new name!

No Sandy, "Henie" is just how the cool kids are spelling it these days.

At least I got a real name. They weren't too sure about "Zec"...

Next we snuck a peek of the old Jewish quarters from the road,

and saw the best parallel parking job ever:

Having concluded our tour of the old town (including a reprimand from a priest - apparently you're not supposed to take pictures in the churches without asking permission... boy was that awkward. Especially when he asked if we were catholic...), we headed into the park. We had some time to kill before dinner and wanted to check out the mini-Eifel-tower-looking-structure-thingy... But we got distracted by pear trees along the way.

Mmm mm tasty!

Nothing like wild pears before eating at a restaurant with a large statue of a goat-devil. And Zach had no idea!

But we ate like kings - Zach had duck, and I tried the rabbit.

Another one of the popular tourist attractions in Prague is Charles Bridge. It's a pedestrian bridge - lots of people selling knick knacks and you can usually find a group of people playing music. We ran across a great jazz group while crossing. Although nice by day - like our tour guide said a little later on: The city is much prettier by night. Don't you agree?

Charles Bridge by moonlight

The following morning we decided to take up the offer on our city map: "Present this map at our office and recieve a free walking tour of the city, or half price for any other tour offered"

We got a super enthusiastic and informative tour guide to show us around the old city. Starting by this lovely statue of Wenceslas in front of the National Museum. Ta da!

We got lots of history - including the fact that "King" Wenceslas of the Christmas carol was in reality only a duke. And for some odd reason, someone decided to create a statue of him riding a dead horse. Upside down. With it's tongue sticking out. Ya... that stop was bizarre. Especially because it was in the middle of a mall.



After the tour we went to Cafe Slavia for lunch and tried some of the original Budweiser Budvar. That'd be Budějovický Budvar in Czech. Don't ask me how to say it! In addition to great beer, we also got a great view of the castle on the hill. Which turned out to be the next stop after lunch.

This lovely view looks up a street in Prague towards St. Nicholas Cathedral. We didn't go in, but we did stop on the steps so I could rest my back. Walking on cobblestones in flip flops with bad posture is a recipe for serious back pain.

But it was pretty...

It got even prettier as we walked up the hill to see the Pražský hrad (aka. the castle)

View over Prague

When we went in to buy our tickets, we were shocked to discover that there were no guided tours. But, if we wanted to, we could rent an audio guide for an exhorbitant amount of money. But, audioguide rental included line-skipping powers. Instead of waiting in the 2 hour queue outside of St. Vitus Cathedral, you just got to walk right in. We didn't bother. Best decision ever. Our wait was roughly 10 seconds - only because we weren't sure which was the entrance and which was the exit. So much for the huge crowd...

Katedrála svatého Víta

St. Vitus Cathedral

(that's all you get to see... it was too big to get into one shot!)

After our castle tour, which included visiting the house that Franz Kafka lived in, we popped into the Royal Gardens (Královská zahrada) for a nap. I thought it was a brilliant idea, since I could barely walk anymore! Besides, what could be better than sleeping in the shade of a giant tree in the summer?!

Grr... I'm a Golem too

(back in the Old Town Square)

Last event of the day: Brewery Tour. With a group of 11 other people, Zach and I went to 3 different local pubs, tried 3 different local beers, and got a traditional Czech dinner! What a blast :) We got a Pilsner Urquell, a dark Czech Budweiser Budvar, and a Pražský most from a micro-brewery. All delicious. And to top it off, I got fried cheese for dinner - much better than it sounds.


Group shot in the micro-brewery. All the pubs were not ones you would ever find by yourself. The first one was located in a back alley, and looked really sketchy - until you walked down a flight of stairs to a huge underground hall that seated 300 people.

What a blast!

Na zdraví! (That's "cheers" in Czech - sounds kinda like "nice tv" in case you were wondering)

The following morning we checked out of the hostel and hit up the National Museum. Pretty good Paleontolgy, Archeology and Minerology exhibits. I think my favourite was walking down the stairs covered in red velvet - anyone else feel like a princess?


Another 4.5 hour bus ride back (I slept most of the way this time) and yet another splendid vacation was over.


Sbohem,
Sandy