Oktoberfest / Autobahnding

Being in Europe in the fall can kind of suck sometimes. All of the beautiful places you're told to go see and all of the walks, markets, etc., are definitely warm-weather friendly. However one big perk about Europe in the fall, apart from fewer tourists (and yes, I consider living in the Netherlands for 3.5 months enough to make me not a tourist, shut up) is.. OKTOBERFEST!

I actually had only a little interest in going to Oktoberfest. For one, I don't drink beer. For two, it sounded like a great party, but I was sort of picturing a bunch of massive, dingy tents filled with loud Aussi dudes getting completely wasted and vomiting everywhere. While this was certainly one aspect of it, it ended up being much, much cooler than I expected.

One thing I've heard said time and time again about Oktoberfest is that if you don't book everything months and months in advance there's really no point in going as transport there will be massively expensive, there will be no accommodation available, and if you don't have a reservation you're not getting into the good tents. None of these things ended up being issues despite lack of planning, but I won't say I wasn't lucky.

First of all, the way to get around either booking way in advance or paying hundreds of Euro for a flight or train ticket is:

Rent a car!

This was our sweet ride for 4 days! It was supposed to be 3, but events transpired. For 4 people, gas and everything, it ended up being about 70 Euro a piece which we all thought was super reasonable. The only problem with rental cars is they have to be driven.

My friend Richard kindly volunteered to drive the entire way, as he's the only one of us who knows how to drive standard. This was much more of a commitment than any of us could have ever known. Being a fool, I trusted Google Maps' time estimate and thought we could do the journey in 7.5 hours:

Note the longest possible route is said to be 7 hours and 42 minutes.

Or maybe, realistically, like 9.5 to 10 hours taking into account traffic, stopping to grab some food, etc. We were in the rental car by 12.30pm, and pulled up to my friend's place in Munich at 2am, roughly, and the guys were at their hostel by 3. If you're good at math, you'll see that's more than 7.5 hours. Even our return journey, with us having a slightly better understanding of where we were going, how German roads work, and no traffic, still took us about 11 hours.

Driving was an experience. It took about 20 minutes on the highway trying to figure out what the speed limit was before we understood there wasn't one. We were going a solid 160 km/h for long stretches and getting passed by cars as if we were going about 30. After a confusing delay in Utrecht and 5 hours on the road we decided it was time to pull over and find some food, as well as figure out where the hell we were as we were trying to get to Munich without the help of GPS or a map, living off Josh's optimistic credo of "there's gonna be signs!". All of us in the car were used to American, and to a lesser extent Canadian, highways which have well-marked exits with food and rest-stops at basically every one. We drove for an extremely long time with no signs, save for numbers with big X's through them (indicating what's not the speed limit?) or crossed-out names of cities. Finally we decided to choose a random Ausfahrt (the German name for exit. It never got old. At least not for me) and see if we could find anything. After completing 5 or 6 spirals on random roads we ended up here:

I have literally never been happier to arrive at a KFC in my life. The food was still sub-par, of course, but it meant pseudo-nourishment and not running out of gas and dying on the autobahn. We got directions to Munich from a kindly German man and his iPad, and he estimated we were about "500 - 700 km away". After 5 hours on the road this was not good news, but we were losing light and had no choice but to keep going.

Suffice it to say the journey was long but we all managed to keep each other awake and amused, if semi-delieriously. When we all finally got to our destinations there was no option but to crash and rest up for a big day of drinking.

The second key to having an inexpensive and last-minute Oktoberfest adventure is having an amazing friend with a lovely apartment in Munich that she'll vacate and let you live in for 3 days. Caitlin, you're a champion. The minute I have respectable, adult living accommodations like you you're welcome to stay there any day of the year, I promise.

So, Oktoberfest. What to say. It reminded me a lot of Disneyland. There were tons and tons of rides,

I didn't go on any rides but if I had, it would have been a parkour-themed one.

there was lots of music and happiness, and people were dressed like this:

Honestly, the dirndl (girls' outfit) is the cutest/hottest/most flattering thing ever invented. I was very drunk and very very convinced I needed to buy one on my first night, but on waking the next morning realized it probably wouldn't be the most solid investment as I'd likely never be at Oktoberfest again. But seriously, it's an outfit that cinches in your waist, shows a ton of cleavage and can be adjusted leg or arm-wise to cover up any possible body part one might be self-conscious of. Every girl wearing one looked absolutely adorable. Clearly I'm still pretty jealous/choked I didn't get one.

So yeah, it's like Disneyland, but with excessive amounts of alcohol and signing songs and stamping on tables. Our gang from the car ride was reunited at a smaller beer hall, the name of which escapes me (hardly surprising).

Reunited! It was raining out pretty heavily, hence the wetness.

They had wine! This is me (mis)representing Canada.

After paying 6.50 Euro for a .2L glass I decided it would be smarter/cheaper to pay 20 for .75L and proceeded to do that.

The picture above is the last I took for 4.5 hours. Those 4.5 hours exist nowhere either in my memory or on film. Some snippets of memories I have are:

• Meeting a guy who ran a website where you could murder sheep over the internet. Or at least that was my interpretation of it;
• Meeting someone named Romeo;
• Losing my cellphone but not really caring;
• Miraculously finding my cellphone when the girl who had picked it up was attempting to barge into the same tent I was barging into and I saw her waving it saying "I have to find the owner!";
• Cutting in line to a tent claiming we had friends inside when we didn't, only to be pulled inside by an old man who said "they are with me";
• Eating some kind of meat sandwich. No clue where I obtained said sandwich or how it was paid for;
• Drinking beer (not a real memory, but I was informed this happened).

And that's about it. I started taking pictures again when we were inside the Hippodrome, apparently in some VIP section that I have no idea how we got into but where I randomly ran into my friend Caitlin and found Josh and his buddies who had a reserved table.

Hippodrome!

The Hippodrome is big and overwhelming and looks like a circus, and it was a really good time. However, the excess that was our afternoon caused both Sarah and I to be ready for bed at about 6:30pm, and I think we were both probably asleep before 9 on day one. Personally, I think that's how Oktoberfest should be done, as it allows you to wake up the next day and do interesting things like go on a guided walking tour of Munich! I'm not going to post the pictures here, but I've created a Munich photoset that any interested parties can look at here.

After the tour there was more tent-drinking in the Hacker Festvelsomething:

My first ever beer in life! I drank the whole thing, though I did keep cutting it with Sprite.

Overall the trip was awesome, and Oktoberfest is a spectacle everyone should witness at least once in their lifetime. My recommendations would be: rent a car, get a friend who lives in Munich or book accommodation well in advance, barge your way into tents rather than make reservations, and pace yourself (at least a little) or risk forgetting about 1/4 of your time in Munich.

My next stop is Cinque Terre from Saturday - Wednesday. I'm completely pumped. Think sunny thoughts, people!

mijn dagelijks leven

I've been living in the Netherlands for nearly 3 weeks now. It feels like I've been here for months. Not that it's been bad or anything, I'm just feeling so settled (and restless to get out and travel) that I can't believe I was in Vancouver 23 days ago. Insanity.

I'm living in a student housing complex called Uilenstede, in a building colloquially referred to as "the guesthouse" but which would be perhaps more properly termed "prison" or "temporary refugee housing" or something along those lines. No, I kid, it's really not too terrible, I'm just not happy sharing a kitchen or bathroom with an entire floor of people at the best of times.

This is my room:

It's decent, and I'm very happy for the sink. I was a little confused/frustrated when I moved in as there was only a very skinny closet and nothing else in terms of a place to store clothes or any other belongings. I invested in some wicker baskets that are doing the trick, but it still seemed like a bit of an oversight. Also, on moving in there was a tv on the desk in the corner of my room, which Josh informed me came with free Dutch cable. I thought this was a pretty cool little perk, but when I turned the tv on I realized the cable was plugged into nothing. I looked around the wall by the tv and there was no cable jack, it took me a few minutes to realize it was located by the door, completely on the other side of the room. There was absolutely no way the cable could reach the tv, and the desk the tv was resting on is nailed to the wall, so I had to move the tv to a chair across from my bed where it now lives. Another issue is whenever I plug the cable in (or my internet cable, which is essentially plugged in all the time), it blocks the door to the wardrobe so that I can't open it. Anyway. A few structural deficiencies but it's clean and is really all I need for the next couple of months.

This is where Uilenstede is located:

It's not in Amsterdam. In fact, it's quite far from Amsterdam, about 40 minutes by tram into the city centre. It's slightly quicker my metro, but you have to pay for the metro, and as I'm still on my Chipkaart boycott that doesn't really work out for me so well.

The fastest way to the city, and indeed anywhere is by bike. Those of you who know me well know that I don't ride bikes. I never learned to ride a bike. And I thought the days of that being an issue (i.e. - girl guide biking trips) were over for me. Sadly, not so. EVERYONE here rides a bike, it's basically a requirement to live in the city. For the first few days I thought I could get by without one but as more and more of my friends from the Guesthouse started buying them and the group of us who actually took the tram to school or into town dwindled, I realized it was something I should probably invest in. So this is my bike:

I bought it off a sketchy man downtown, who could clearly tell I knew nothing about bikes and was in fact terrified of them, so I think he sold me a bit of a lemon. The handlebars can be twisted around with minimal effort (as I realized after a minor incident involving me and a parked car) and the gears slip all the time when I'm riding. But, apart from that, I'm actually starting to love my bike and enjoy riding it.

This wasn't the case for the first few days. Learning to ride a bike at age 24 is embarrassing. Learning to ride a bike at age 24 in a country where people have been riding bikes since they were conceived is far, far worse. I think riding a bike is like walking to these people, as I saw a baby riding a bike the other day. A literal baby. Like if that kid could say more than a couple of words I would be extremely surprised, but he still zoomed past me on his bike, following his handsome Dutch father who apparently saw no problem with his tiny baby riding a bicycle.

Needless to say, the Dutch aren't used to seeing an adult woman travelling at a low speed along a paved bike path suddenly swerve and crash, screaming, into a pile of bushes. I've had a lot of very concerned "is everything all right??" inquiries from cyclists/pedestrians thinking I've just had some sort of seizure. It's not fun. But I am slowly getting the hang of it, and while I haven't and may never attempt a trip into Amterdam I have successfully ridden to school and to the grocery store, both of which are big wins for me. I really enjoy riding, actually, I just prefer to do it on deserted country paths rather than anywhere where others can see me, cause me to panic and crash into things. I realize I have no survival instinct in terms of feeding off adrenaline or handling crises well. My natural instinct when I feel myself getting into any kind of dangerous situation is to cover my eyes and give up any control I may have had over my own destiny. This was my approach to driving, as well, which is likely why I failed my road test in under 10 minutes and haven't gotten behind a wheel since.

School is extremely slack and not worth mentioning. I've met some very nice people here, mostly through living in the Guesthouse, so that alone is enough to make it worthwhile.

I've started a Flickr photostream for any pictures I've taken and will take in my time in Amsterdam/Amstelveen, you can check it out here.

A lot of my time has also been spent planning trips for the next couple months, and so far it's looking like I'll manage to hit Munich (Oktoberfest this weekend!!), Cinque Terre, Prague, Berlin, Hamburg, Valencia, Madrid, Lisbon, Budapest and Krakow. That's still about 1/8 of what I'd actually like to see while I'm here, but my debt and limited time are becoming serious issues. Plus I might become the first person to fail exchange.

Next post when I'm back from Munich! If I survive the 8-hour ride in a rental car on the Autobahn. Happy thoughts, people.

Maastricht Mid-Week

My class schedule for September - October is brilliant, as I have 1.5 hours of class Thursday evening and 1.5 Friday morning, which equates to basically a 6-day weekend. So last week I thought I should take advantage of this and travel somewhere close-by, but not as... well.. Dutch as Amsterdam. I looked on a map and Maasticht seemed pretty damn far away so I booked a train ticket.

Josh decided to come with me so we took the 2+ hour train and ended up in a really pretty, and fairly non-Dutch seeming city. It's right on the Belgian and German border, and Josh had read that the people in Maastricht were more friendly and lighthearted due to the proximity to Germany (... actually). Maastricht is a really beautiful city, with lots of medieval structures and some gorgeous buildings, and as there's a University in Maastricht there were lots of cool restaurants and student bars as well. We ended up at a British-style Quiz Night with some Canadian and US army guys on the first night, which was pretty fantastic.

Pretty

Also quite pretty

Prettiest!

Sort of pretty I guess

I took many pictures so I've made an album on Flickr that anyone who might be slightly interested can check out:

Flickr - Maastricht

The first day we wandered around the city and became slightly obsessed with this red tower. It looked like it was painted with blood and it turns out it actually was, originally. Ox blood, not the blood of Maastricht's enemies as we had thought, but still pretty cool and while they no longer paint with real blood they make a special shade of "ox blood red" paint to retouch it with.

We decided we needed to climb it, and it turns out it is in fact climb-able but the entrance was closed by the time we got to it on day one. On day 2 we returned, bright and early in the morning ready to get up to the top, but there was a very fancy doctors-getting-called-to-the-doctor-bar ceremony going on for apparently all day, and we didn't want to crash it to attempt to find the stairs. It was a very disappointing morning, but instead of going home to cry we decided to rally, trek up a hill and go check out a system of underground tunnels we had heard were pretty cool.

We got distracted on the way to the tunnels by many cute animals.

Goats are the best ones.

They make me exceptionally happy.

Small children also like feeding animals, apparently.

We finally got to the tunnels and decided to take a tour as the lady selling tour tickets basically told us we would die cold and alone under the streets of Maastricht if we went in by ourselves. So we joined up:

Entrance to the scary cave

Spooky, scary!

A map of the tunnels

The tunnels were really cool, and apparently the second-largest network of underground tunnels after those built by the vietcong. That's about all I can tell you about them as the tour was completely in Dutch and after the first five minutes the guide basically stopped translating to English for us. Sometimes she'd remember and after giving a 10-minute speech about a certain part of the tunnels she'd say "oh.. yes this is a, uh, carving". It was fine though, we were the only two non-Dutch speakers on the tour which was actually kind of cool compared to Amsterdam where basically everyone doing anything touristy is American or British. I was able to make out the words "Napoleon", "nazis" and "Mickey Mouse", so apparently the tunnels have seen a lot of action.

After the tunnels and some other wandering on day 2 Josh and I decided to head back to the hostel to have a quick nap before heading back into town for the evening. This trip was somewhat momentous for me as until then I had never stayed in a real hostel while travelling, only hotels or "hostels" with private rooms and no other people in them. After the first day I was pretty impressed with the whole experience. I didn't take any pictures of the hostel but you can check out its website here. It was really bright and spacious with a cool bar/lounge/games area, and the rooms were clean with a private shower and toilet. At first I was surprised/disappointed there were no towels, soaps, hairdryers, etc., but quickly realized being upset about that while paying 25 euro a night would make me a complete princess/douche, so I shut up about it.

While I have no complaints about the hostel itself, I still think I'm going to stick to hotels when I travel from now on since even at the nicest hostel you can end up rooming with a sketchy random, which is preciesly what happened with us. When Josh and I got back to the hostel there was this dude standing in front of the door to our room and just staring at it. We kind of walked in front of him and went inside, and he followed us in. When I asked sketcho if he was staying in the room he kind of looked at me blankly for a minute and then said "... yeah". He proceeded to come in, stand in the middle of the room for a minute, pick up his laptop and lock himself in the shower room. The shower room is literally just a shower with a door, nowhere to sit or put a laptop or anything. He was still in there when we woke up from our nap like 2 hours later.

Josh and I went back into town for some wandering, drinking wine on the street, tapas-eating and impromptou bluegrass viewing:

A pretty Maastrichtian square

So much tapas!

I liked this statue a lot

You can't tell from the video but they were actually very talented and adorable.

It was a pretty lovely night. It was marred, however, by Sketchbag McGee at the hostel deciding to come home at about 2am, lock himself in the bathroom again and listen to music on his computer at full blast until about 5.30. He then went to bed, woke up again at like 6.45 and kept walking out of the room, slamming the door every time, then coming in and staring at his pile of luggage before repeating the process. Needless to say I didn't get any sleep and that combined with an absolute gongshow journey home in which I was forced to change trains 3 times only to end up 3.5 hours later at the destination I would have arrived at had I stayed on the first one, tainted my Maastricht memories slightly. But overall it was a really fun little trip and has definitely got me anxious to do some more travelling a bit farther afield.

I also realize I haven't yet written anything about my actual life in the Netherlands except ranting about my hatred of Chipkaarts (I forgot to swipe again last week. So much hate), so my next post will be about my actual Amsterdamian (well, Amstelveenian) student existence. Stay tuned.

Dutch Bureaucracy Rant #1

Obtaining a Monthly Transit Pass

I decided that since I would be living in Amsterdam for over 3 months it might be a good idea to invest in a monthly transit pass like the ones they have in Vancouver. Obviously, when I decided this I had still only been in Holland for a couple of days or else I would never have presumed something like an easy way to pay for and access transit would exist, let alone that it would be available to someone like me.

I asked the nice man at the hotel I was staying at where I might buy such a pass and he stared at me blankly for a minute and said "well, you should probably go down to Centraal Station and talk to someone there." I was hoping for an answer more along the lines of "the convenience store at the end of the block", but I paid my 2.60 Euro for an hour's worth of transit time and made my way to Centraal Station.

When I got there I went to the information desk where they informed me I would need to go to another building that deals with Tram passes. I walked across the road to that building, took a number and waited for good 30 minutes before my number was called and I walked up to a desk with a stern looking Dutch woman sitting behind it:

Me: Hello! I've just moved to the city for 3 and a half months and was wondering if I could buy a monthly bus pass?

Mean Lady: ... You will need to fill out these forms (hands me a very thick envelope that turns out to be filled with many complex forms, all in Dutch), provide us with a copy of your residence permit and a passport photo taken in Amsterdam. You must then mail the forms back to us and we will mail you further instructions.

Me: For a monthly transit pass??

Yes.

I was informed that I might want to invest in an OV-Chipkaart instead, which you can load with money as you go and refill at machines located at most tram/metro stops as needed. I walked back to Centraal and went to one of the Chipkaart machines, since as far as I can tell there is no way to buy a Chipkaart directly from a human being or load it with money in that manner.

The first machine I walk up to takes cards and cash. I try my Visa, and it asks for a PIN number. My Visa doesn't have a PIN number, that one's out. I try my Mastercard, ditto. I try both of by debit cards, one with a chip which seems to be ever-important in this country and one without, and both are rejected. I decide it's time to try cash, when I notice the only cash the machine will take is in coin-form. As the Chipkaart costs 7.50 Euros and you apparently need to load it up with a minimum of 20 Euros (or maybe not, the machines kept telling me different things) this was annoying but pretty par for the course. I walked to the other side of the station where there were machines that would change bills into coins, so I walked back to the Chipkaart machine, plugged in 17.50 Euros worth of coins and hoped for the best. It said I needed a minimum of 20 Euro, which confused me, but when I asked the information woman she said it wasn't necessary.

Anyway, I now apparently had a way of paying for transit. The man at the hostel had warned me that if I bought a Chipkaart I needed to make sure I swiped it both when I got on AND when I got off the train in order to not be charged an excessive amount. I did this successfully once, I believe. On my second tram ride I of course forgot to swipe my card when I got off, realizing this only as the doors closed and the train pulled away. Thankfully just a little further down the platform there were free-standing swipers, so I went and swiped at one of those assuming the Chipkaart technology would be advanced enough to understand I had gotten on a tram at point A, then swiped 10 minutes later at point B, thus indicating I had travelled by tram between those two locations. Not so. The next time I swiped to get on a tram my card was rejected, apparently my 2 tram rides had drained the 10 Euro off my card due to my forgetting to swipe off.

I was annoyed, but decided to refill the card as everyone in and around Amsterdam appears to swipe pretty religiously, and while I'd never been checked I worried that the consequences for not having paid your transit fare might be dire. I went up to the Chipkaart machine at my tram station and, lo and behold, it didn't take cash. My cards were of course again rejected.

I ranted about my bad luck with transit passes a bit to a girl I met up at school who informed me that she had a friend who had the same problem with none of her cards working, and the only way to refill the Chipkaart with cash without going all the way down to Centraal Station was to get off at this one stop between school and the complex where we live, go to this one convenience store and explain the situation to the man running the store. He would then charge you a Euro and allow you to load the Chipkaart up with cash. Actually. So, desperate, I did exactly that after school. All the man did was make me pay him a Euro and the cash I wanted to put on the card, then use his bank card at the machine in his store to load up my Chipkaart. While I gave him 20 Euro he informed me that only 17 went onto the Chipkaart as I was at -3 Euro balance, I guess due to my forgetting to swipe and the tram ride which in the eyes of the Chipkaart officials was I suppose still ongoing at that point.

Needless to say, I completed about 2 successful tramrides before being distracted talking to a friend while disembarking and forgetting to swipe. I again tried swiping at the station, got the greeting message, no good. I waited for the next tram of the line I was on to come by, jumped on and attempted to swipe off, got the greeting message again. So I think at that point I was on 3 separate, endless tram rides in the eyes of the Chipkaart gods. Later that night when I attempted to use the tram my balance was of course at -2 Euro.

I realize what is set up with the Chipkaart is a workable system, if you have a credit or debit card that works in Europe and if you are a clever and aware person who is never distracted or forgetful when disembarking a tram. For me, the Chipkaart is the bane of my existence and I hate it more than words can describe. My new strategy is not paying for transit, as I've still yet to be checked. I'm sure the Dutch government is monitoring me via CCTV and my fare avoidance combined with my lackadaisical attitude towards registering with the municipality and applying for a working holiday Visa (both of which I'm sure will constitute Dutch Bureaucracy rants numbers 2 and 3 on this blog) are enough to get me deported in the coming weeks, but at this point my stubbornness and anger at falling prey to a system that exploits the forgetful and distractable make this worth it.

Wee Britain

First post from Europe! And I've only been here a week, not bad. Figured I'd start with a mostly photo-based post documenting my trip to London with my mom that began my great European adventure. I'm currently in Holland and already have WAY too much to say about the Dutch to include in this post as well, so you can all look forward to some ranting in the very near future.

So yes, my first stop was sunny Londontown with my mom. We stayed in a super gross B&B in Chelsea:

Ok so that last one I took at the Ritz Hotel but still it was really, really nice. Owned by some charming Brits and their next door neighbour was some famous tennis player whose name I've of course forgotten. But still, be impressed.

My mom and I did lots of fun mother and daughter things:

Eating fish and chips!

And chicken tikka masala! (not spicy at all, lame)

Visiting cemeteries! Which I guess is only normal for certain mothers and daughters...

Afternoon tea at Brown's hotel!

And a Shakespeare play at The Globe Theatre!

My mom loves all things British and imperial and generally stuffy and pompous, so when she decided to go to the Victoria and Albert Museum I thought it would be best to go and check out something at least a little non-English...

Like dinosaurs! RAWR!!! The Natural History Museum in London is a bit of a trip as it's in this really gorgeous old building and all the specimens in there are from like 1820 when it was still ok to shoot and stuff animals for the amusement of jerks like me.

I brought along my own stuffed animal in the form of a pig dressed as a crab named CrabPig who is from the Chinatown night market in Vancouver and I have decided should accompany me on my adventures.

CrabPig in the grand gallery.

CrabPig makes friends.

British demonstration of what a cell is? Apparently?

A knife-weidling maniac reminds us that memory is our most precious asset.

An actual Dodo! Albeit a really ratty one..

CrabPig learns about its ancestry.

I was going to take more pictures of CrabPig at the Globe, the Tate Modern, and such, but it actually gets fairly embarrassing sticking a plush pig/crab to glass surfaces and taking pictures of it out in public. I've decided my strategy if anyone asks about it is to say that it belongs to my little sister, who is a small tiny child rather than a 24-year old, and she asked me to take pictures of it at all the different places I visit. That could make me seem pseudo-respectable, right?

Overall it was a really nice trip and great spending time with my mom, though Thomas Cook travel lost her luggage for about 5 of her 7 days of vacation which was super annoying. I found British people and service slightly cold and impersonal, but at that point I had yet to try to get anything done in Holland, and I would currently give anything to encounter some of that fun, friendly and outgoing British hospitality. But more on that later.