Justin and Hazel Around the World

Castle in the park

After a very full day of seeing Denmark we made it back to Copenhagen and headed to our hostel. We didn’t have any trouble finding it and quickly got settled in. The place was called Generator Hostel and I have to say that I had some mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it was very clean, very new, had wonderful comfortable beds, only 4 people per room, a bathroom for each dorm room, some of the beds were not bunk beds, and it was decorated really nicely. Those are some pretty big positives. But there was a strange vibe to it. They didn’t allow you to bring in any outside food and there was no kitchen facility. In a country where a sandwich routinely costs about $10, it was very annoying to not be able to stock up at a cheaper grocery store and eat in. The hostel of course had a bar that sold food ($11 for breakfast!), and they were doing their very best to get you to spend money there. The other thing was that they advertised wi-fi, but in reality, the only place you could access it was in this same bar area. It made me feel as though they were quite desperate for me to spend money there. But all in all, the comfy bed made up for a lot.

Hostel in Copenhagen (my bed!)

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This was a really exciting time for us, as we were about to embark on a type of journey that neither of us had experienced before: a sleeper train. With our Eurail ticket, the train fare was included but unfortunately not the bed reservation, which can be very expensive! Our ticket, being first class, allowed us to get 1st class beds – one bunk each in a 2 bunk room – but there were two reasons we decided not to get that. First, those beds cost over 100 euros EACH! Of course we were not going to purchase those tickets at that price. Second, we could not have reserved beds in the same room! They were single-sex only. These two things completely convinced us to downgrade to a 2nd class sleeper car which cost 26 euros each and was 2 bunks in the same room with 6 bunks total. That’s right, we were able to book bunks together in 2nd class. How strange!

Sleeper Car

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We had another lucky fabric find in Amsterdam. The person we stayed with, Joel, happened to live just across the canal from a very big market. As we were waiting for our laundry to finish we thought we’d take a little walk, sit by the canal and write some postcards, and wander through the market. This proved to be an awesome idea. We got our postcards written and then set off through the market.

There were all types of stalls in the market. Clothing, food, and fabric! Justin was able to get some things he needed for our upcoming dance camp and then we took a look in the fabric shop. There weren’t too many choices of fabric suitable for quilt-making, but we were really happy with the one we selected. It’s a little whimsical, just like Amsterdam.

We also had success finding a post office and mailing our recent fabric purchases (and the postcards)!

Fabric from the Netherlands

My brother really came through for us in Amsterdam. Of all of the places we were looking at going we were the least satisfied with hostel options in Amsterdam. They were very expensive and very poorly rated. It’s one thing to pay for quality, and a totally different thing to pay 30 euros each per night for something that gets a really bad rating! So, my very kind brother got in touch with his friends and found us a place to stay! One of his friends lives in Amsterdam with her husband in a nice apartment close to the center of town. She was away while we were there, but her husband, Joel, was amazing and let us stay with him. You can imagine that we were feeling a bit shy about all of this, especially since Joel had not even met my brother, but it turned out so well and we enjoyed both Amsterdam and Joel’s company.

It was an easy train ride from Bonn to Amsterdam, with just one quick change in Cologne. The scenery was nice, and we got to see first-hand just how flat the Netherlands are. Once in Amsterdam we followed Joel’s very detailed directions and had an easy time finding his apartment. We chatted for a little and agreed to meet up for dinner after Justin and I had a few hours to walk around the city and see the sights.

The center of Amsterdam is a really nice size for walking around. We walked for about 3 hours and saw most of the central city. We especially liked seeing all of the canals and houseboats. It is a very pretty city and absolutely chock full of bikes, boats and other unique modes of transportation, like the mini car we saw! Because we were only spending one night in the city we just wanted to take in the atmosphere and get a sense of the place. Amsterdam has a really unique feel to it.

Justin with a mini car

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See previous editions starting here!

In our post on Strasbourg I mentioned that we had bought some fancy cheese to have for dinner one night.  This turned out to be a giant stroke of luck since on our way to find some bread for the cheese we happened to walk right past a shop with little bits of fabric in the window!  We took a look and the designs in this shop were really awesome.  There were many of the fabrics which I would have liked to take and include!  However, we wanted one that was at least plausibly French and there was a clear winner:

France Fabric

This may be one of my favorite bits collected so far.  I absolutely love the colors, the daisy pattern reminds me of a different Daisy, and every time I look at it I will get to think about delicious cheese!

We ended up having a whirlwind tour of Germany – only 2 nights were planned for the country and we wanted to meet up with two different sets of people – my cousin Jeremy, his wife Sarah and child Liam (which I learned is my 1st cousin once removed) and our friends Andre and Amy whom we met in New Zealand on a boat!

Of course we couldn’t go to Germany without tasting some German wine.   So we got out our train map and looked up the wine regions in Germany, trying to come up with a route which would take us to my cousin’s house.  We came up with a train to Cochem (via Luxembourg… again…) which would allow us 4 hours in Cochem to tour and taste and still get us to Cologne early enough for Jer and Sarah to still be awake.

Cochem Castle

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We left Luxembourg in the morning and had a rather slow train ride to Strasbourg, in France.  I’m not sure if there was something wrong with the train, but about every 20 minutes we would stop for five or ten minutes before continuing on.  And not at a station either, just in the middle of nowhere.  Still, it was pretty countryside and we were not in too much of a hurry.

Once we got to Strasbourg it about noon and we headed straight to the information desk in the train station.  They were very helpful and explained how to get the tram to the hotel we had booked, and what the best transportation options are.  Strasbourg has a really good tram system that runs at most hours of the day and it is possible to get a ticket (for about 5 Euros) that lets up to three people travel on the trams as much as they want for 24 hours.  This was so, so good.  We were able to see so much of the city and had no problems at all getting around.

Our hotel was called Cerise Hotel and was a big success.  Inexpensive, really clean, internet in the rooms (important because we still had a lot of planning we needed to do) and even had a fridge and microwave in the room so that you could eat in a bit.  We took pretty full advantage of that!

Our plan was to do a few hours of planning and work on updating the (very out of date) blog and then to get out and see something of the city in the evening.  Despite having a small setback with our internet not working, the hotel sent someone up immediately to fix it, and we were able to get a few days of plans finalized.  This calmed us down substantially and as we set out to see the city we were feeling so happy and positive!

We took the tram to the central area and then walked around taking it in.

Canal and "Petite France"

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Because of the stress we encountered upon entering Europe, we decided to remedy our poor planning as soon as possible and reserve 1 week or more of our upcoming accomodation and transportation.  Of course, nothing is that simple – our hotel, being the cheapest in Luxembourg, did not have internet available (but, interestingly, it did have an ashtray in the shared bathroom), so we went on a quest to find some cheap or free wifi in town.  This also afforded us a chance to sightsee along the way into town!

Valley and Bridge

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I haven’t been looking forward to writing this post.  To be honest, we hit a pretty low point in our trip and it threw both of us for pretty ugly loops.  I don’t want to dwell on it, but I think there are some traveling lessons to be learned, and we’ve had to adjust recently.  We got very accustomed to being able to plan a day or two ahead of time and just show up places and have things work out.  This is not the way that Europe works.  Especially in the summer.  Especially if you’re trying to save money.

We discovered this in a dramatic fashion.  The night before we left London I booked us a bus from London to Paris (which is really kind of cool – they put the bus on a train and take the train through the chunnel!) and then started trying to look for a place to stay.  It was late and we may have had a drink or two with our friends and we just wanted to go to sleep since we had to get up early for our bus.  But we couldn’t find a single hotel or hostel online in Paris for the next night for less than 200 Euros.  Total panic ensued.  And we still didn’t have a place to stay when we left the next morning.  We also didn’t have our bus ticket printed, but that was easily solved with an internet cafe across the street from London Victoria Coach Station.

By the time we got to Paris in the evening we were worried, tired, stressed out and figured we had two choices.  We could jump right into our Eurail pass and take a train to somewhere smaller where we thought we could get cheaper accommodation, or we could wander the streets of Paris fairly randomly until we found a place to stay.  We flipped through the train timetable (which we have since become very well acquainted with) and picked Strasbourg since we wanted very much to go there and there was a train leaving soon and it was only a two hour trip by TGV.

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I just have to start this post by saying that I completely neglected my camera for this part of the trip. I think it was because we were staying with friends and family and were so busy enjoying their company that I didn’t even think to get it out! So this post will be light on the photos. I’ll try to make the writing extra descriptive, but I’m not sure that will make up for it!

We had an easy bus trip from Durham to Oxford and even though it was raining when we arrived we had no trouble finding another bus to my aunt’s house. She has always been very encouraging to me and on several occasions has had chats with me that have very much helped me figure things out or see things more clearly, so I was really, really happy to see her.

She took us to a high table dinner at Brasenose College (Oxford University) and we had a wonderful time! Before she mentioned it to us, I did not even know what this event was, or even that it existed, so I’ll try to explain and people can chime in on the comments if I have it wrong. The colleges at the university serve dinners for the students and staff and it is an opportunity for everyone to meet up and share a meal. The high table is at the end of the hall and is where the professors and lecturers and their guests get to sit. There is a formal seating arrangement and they serve you amazing food and wine and you get to meet all kinds of people who you might not otherwise meet.

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