Ah the train.

I pull out the rest of my Euros at an ATM and convert it all to Czech currency (I'm still not sure how to pronounce it).

We go over to Platform 26 (of 36) and discover that our train goes to Prague, and to Hof. It stops about halfway there, splits in two, and the two halves go their seperate ways.

Seeing no staff about, we take an educated guess at which half we want to be on and climb aboard.
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Okay, I gave it to him. But he was still filthy.


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On a PC with no USB ports, so no pictures this time.

Not that much has happened, and that I have taken many pictures since last post.

I went to BJJ, more spider guard. similar format to the previous night but no guard pass thing, just rolling at the end. Got one or two taps, didn't get tapped. We all worked the advanced sweep from the previous night, which I now understand is a kind of recovery from a failed De La Riva sweep, and it makes sense that it is a bit funky looking.

I took some photos but the camera started to fog up, so most of them aren't very good.

The guy I had been practicing sweeps with sat out a round during the rolling and took some photos of me being crushed under the side control of one of the big guys.
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I arrived at Hamburg and stepped off the train.

The first thing I noticed was that Hamburg smells.

And not a good smell.
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So we get back to the hostel and the British guys are sitting around in the smoking area of the bar looking a bit worse for wear. They have about an hour before they have to leave to catch their plane, and are already about 6 drinks in. I have a few drinks with them and we chat for a bit before they head off for the airport.
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This entry contains stuff about the holocaust. Not expecting anyone to be upset, but now you know...

I woke up feeling a little worse for wear and staggered down for breakfast.

Thea had met a British teacher, whose name I missed, and was having a conversation with her about what sights she seen in Berlin and about living in London. She suggested we check out the East Side Gallery and the Jewish Museum.

We wandered back down to the Holocaust Memorial and checked out the information center beneath it.

It wasn't what I'd describe as "good", but it was certainly interesting and worth seeing.

There was a section that described the events leading up to the holocaust and what was done during.

There was a dark room that had letters and documents from people who had died in white illuminated panels in the floor.


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Ken awoke early to go meet Thea at a train station and I slept in for a bit before heading off to Berlin Hauptbahnhof (the main train station) to book a ticket for Hamburg on Thursday. (Tip for new players, booking a ticket a few days in advance can save you up to half the cost of the trip).

I walked up Fredrichstrasse and around the curve north of the hostel to see what was there. After I'd had my fill of industrial estate I decided to catch the train to the station. I ended up having to catch a train back to the station near the hostel (Freidrichstrasse) and then change for a train for Berlin Hbf.

Berlin Hbf is enourmous:

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Sunday in Berlin.

We decided not to walk very far today.
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he didn't crack a smile,
though it's no laughing party, when you've been on the murder mile,
only takes one itchy trigger, one more widow, one less white nigger,
Oliver's army is here to stay, Oliver's army are on their way,

and I would rather be anywhere else than here today...

So we arrived in Berlin, and that song has been stuck in my head the entire time.

We arrived late in the evening on the train from Dusseldorf and accidentally got off at Spandau, which Ken aptly describes as Berlin's Dandenong. We wandered around "Spandau Plaza" for a bit, got some coffee, I got some new gloves (I had lost my right glove), and we caught the local train into FredrichStrasse Station. We rocked up to a Backpacker Hostel that the Lonely Planet Germany guide book recommends and got two beds. The place isn't too bad, well and truly better quality than the previous hostels, and the room isn't too much more expensive.

Ken makes his bed:

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I'd really like to post an entry, but this internet cafe is fucked.

They have a stupid system whereby you have to get stuff off external devices (Cameras, flash memory, etc) uploaded onto the PC at the front desk and access it via the network.

I suspect I will be charged for the 30 minutes I've just spent watching the idiot behind the counter try and get my pictures off my camera in various ways, and fail.

I'll post something in the next day or so hopefully once Internet competence has returned.

Lala-lalala,
Warm it up,
Lala-lalala,
The boys are waiting

So, I got drunk and threw away my luggage...


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This is the third post today, you probably want to skip down and read them in order.
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We arrived in Monschau.

We did a lap of the road winding round through town before parking the car at the car park on the outskirts and wandering into town.

Monschau is a sleepy looking little town in a mountain valley, and I have been here once before, when I was about twelve. I don't remember a great deal about the town from that time, but when I was here almost 20 years ago, this is what happened to the car my mother was driving:


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So, we walked to the station where we knew there were a few car rental places. We asked at Hertz and Eurocar, only to discover they had no cars available. We enquired at the station about Public Transport to Monschau, and discovered that we could take a train to Aachen, and then a bus to Monschau.
We decided to try our luck at the low budget looking German rental company (Siktz or something). Not wanting to disappoint Stewart I strode up to the counter and in my best German I said "We wollen ein auto meiten!". The woman behind the counter said something that was basically which one of the hundreds of cars we have available did you want to rent. Take that Hertz and Eurocar.

In the general vein of spending as little as possible that has been the norm so far, we opted for a small car, a Nissan Micra or something.

A Small car:

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We arrived in the "party city" of Dusseldorf yesterday.

Out the train window:


We caught the Hi-Speed international train and the trip from Amsterdam to Dusseldorf took about 2 hours.

Disembarking in Deutchland:( Read more... )

Today we head off to the station and will try and catch a train to Dusseldorf.
One of the most amusing things about Amsterdam is that it really is the triple X city:



No, this is not some sort of sex University, where you can earn a Bachelors degree in Applied Pornographics (although I wouldn't exactly discount that possibility), it is the University of Amsterdam's official logo in all it's XXX glory.

The city of Amsterdam's crest from ye olde times was a shield with three X's down the middle vertically, and so that XXX motif is on everything from churches to garbage trucks.

Here is a selection of things I took shots of, that have the XXX logo on them:
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Today Thea is organising to head back and do some job interviews and Chris has gone back to Utrecht to try and get some shots from the tower, cunningly avoiding his date with the waitress of destiny by doing so.
Next time gadget, next time...

That left Ken and I to go for a quick walk to get a map of Germany and figure out where we're off to next. Four hours later we arrived back with a map of Western Europe and a Lonely Planet guide that is missing the section on Dusseldorf.

I am also sporting a rather fetching five hooker coat, that I got on sale for two hookers.
(Ken has somehow aquired the information that the going rate for a hooker is 50 euro, he claims it's in the Tourist Guide book the city gives away free, the end result of which is that the hooker is now our measure of currency for large transactions in much the saame way as rockpapershotgun.com use the Peggle as a unit of download size)

See my vest, see my vest...
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Now we're back and just kicking about the hotel while we wait for Chris to get back from Utrecht.
Dinner at a certain cafe methinks...

This is the third of three entries submitted one after the other. Might want to read them in order.

Here are a few random photos I took over the last few days - enjoy

Three level bike rack:
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The Redlight District:

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Monday morning. Yesterday we got up late, maybe midday and Chris, Ken and I went for a wander to take in some culture, while Thea did some job application stuff or something.

We had a rather nice anti-pasto for lunch at a cafe. Chris later told Ken and I that he thought that a) the waitress was cute, and b) she was making eyes at him.
We soundly beat him and have press ganged him into going back today and asking her to dinner.

After that we went for a walk down to the Anne Frank Museum, passing this on the way:
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