Salzburg

Apart from Dachau, I also daytripped to Neuschwanstein from Munich; you can see those pics here. I didn't go inside it because when I was there they weren't running a tour for like another hour.

I also left my jacket in the bar overnight and when I checked with them and lost property in the morning - no dice. Guess someone pinched it. Even though I only bought it like a week before I left, this didn't annoy me until I realised I'd have to go clothes shopping to replace it, which is a giant pain.

I got into Salzburg yesterday and am staying in another really good hostel (I'm seeing a pattern here. Doing your research and booking in advance pays). It's a town of about 150,000 people right on the edge of Austria. Today I went to see the worlds largest ice cave, where water dripping through limestone creates ice sculptures in a cave inside a mountain. This is located in the Austrian Alps. Photography inside the cave was verboten, but there are some pics from the top of the alps here. There's also a castle in Salzburg, which I never got around to checking out, but that's OK. Plenty of castles to go yet.

Tomorrow morning I'm catching the train to Nuremberg, or Nürnberg as the Germans call it, for the 3 day rock festival Rock Im Park. The lineup is here. I want to catch Korn, The Used, Linkin Park, The White Stripes, Evanescence and Smashing Pumpkins. I'll probably end up seeing more than that since I'll be hanging out with Maria and her friends. I would have seen Machine Head if they didn't clash with Smashing Pumpkins, but don't particularly care. I like that Smashing Pumpkins are closing the festival, since seeing other bands after that would be anticlimactic.

Dachau

Munich

I've arrived at Munich and am settling into the Wombat City Hostel, which seems like yet another good hostel. Tonight I went out and ate a traditional Bavarian dish, I can't remember what it's called but it's basically just sliced roast pork with gravy and a sort of cake thing called knödel. Pretty nice, though I'm not looking forward to over a week of food from a country whose idea of vegetables is sauerkraut.

Last night in Interlaken I met a Canadian girl called Maria who's travelling alone. She happened to mention she was going to a "three day rock festival in Nuremburg" and my jaw dropped. Not only is she going to Rock Im Park, but she was also heading to Munich today, so we did the train trip together and are hanging out here tonight. I grabbed a little downtime to write this post on the computers in the lobby, but we're about to hit the hostel bar. Probably going to Dachau tomorrow and then Neuschwanstein, or whatever its called, the next day. After that I'm going to Salzburg for a couple of days, but the plan is to meet Maria and her friends in Nuremburg, where we can pool resources and divide our time between my hotel room and her tent at Zeppelinfeld, plus maybe finally drink the wine I've been hauling around with me since Beaune. I'm excited.

Hiking Near Interlaken

Yesterday we assembled a group of guys mostly from my room - from left above, a guy from Ireland, one from Boston and two brothers from Arizona - and went hiking near Interlaken. The brothers had hired a car, which made things easy. We drove to a nearby town called Lauterbrunnen, then hiked up to a higher town called Mürrer. The hike took about 3 hours and we climbed 800 vertical metres. The picture above was taken at the top of our hike. After we reached Mürrer we caught the cable car up to the top of a high peak called Schilthorn.

I have a ton of pics from the hike and from Beaune, plus a few from Paris, and it would be way too time consuming to put them on the blog, so instead I've created some Picasa albums. Go here and you can see all the photos. I've captioned a few of the more obscure ones. Here's a couple of pics for the blog though. The hostel I'm staying in in Interlaken:



And my hang gliding takeoff point:



Since I combined hiking and going to the top of the alps into one day, I just wandered around Interlaken today. Items on sale included a watch costing a mere CHF 47,210 ($A 46,750). Tomorrow I'm off to Munich. It's been fun here but I'm ready to move on and keen to get into Germany.

Extreme Sports

I went hang gliding yesterday. The operator, Bernie, was extremely Australian. We journeyed to the takeoff point with AC/DC's "Back In Black" pounding out at top volume. The takeoff was a little hairy, but after that things were smooth and I had an awesome flight. Hang gliding is much better than paragliding because you get to do dives, stalls and sharp turns. The dives were unbelievable. You basically go into freefall for a few seconds, pointed straight towards the ground, then as the pilot pulls it out of the dive, it feels like an invisible hand wrenches the glider skyward, with you attached.

Then today, canyoning. I was a little leery of this since the last thing I want to do at this early point in the trip is break a leg or something. Having talked to people who did it, I decided I'd be OK and signed up for the all day trip, the same canyon Stu did when he was here (but not the same as the canyon of the 1999 canyoning disaster, which is closer to Interlaken). It was a pretty fun experience, and didn't seem too dangerous as long as you listened to what the guides said. Nobody on my trip got injured at all, unless you count one girl who had a recurrence of an ongoing injury and did the last half of the canyon (skipping the jumps and so forth) with a dislocated knee!

Interlaken is in amazing country. The town is surrounded by imposing mountains, with snow-covered alps towering over the top. You tend to walk everywhere gazing off into the distance in random directions, admiring one or other of the huge mountains. I like mountains, and it makes a nice change from the Netherlands, which was inhumanly flat. I have two more days here. I think I'm done with extreme sports. The plan is probably to journey to the top of some nearby mountain called Jungfraujoch, by train, and also to go on a 4 hour hike available near Interlaken. On the 27th I'm on the move again, with a 6 hour train ride to Munich.

Interlaken

I've arrived in Interlaken and am about to go to bed. I just spent some time in the bar here which was fun. People seem pretty friendly. Tomorrow I have a tandem hang gliding session booked for 3pm (11pm ACST).

Wowowow

That one meal redefined French food for me. I can't believe the difference between a main in a random place in Beaune for 22 euro and a main at the one-star place I went to tonight for like 30 euro. It just defies description.

It probably helped that I went really French for my food choices, with escargot for entree and pigeon for main. Also, having decoded some of the secret code of Burgundy, I knew that "Montrachet 1er Cru" is code for "incredibly good chardonnay", so I ordered a half bottle of the Domaine Hubert Chavy Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru Hameau De Blagny. For the uninitiated, wines in France always have names like that. I could tell you what it means, but then I'd have to kill you.

The lesson here for those coming after me in France is what I've always suspected: there's no room for the middle class. In Australia there's a smooth progression of food quality between cheap/poor and expensive/good. In France, the shift between bad and good food/wine is both very sudden and very steep. Don't try to do France on the cheap. You're much better off with one week of good quality stuff than you are trying to do two weeks of average quality.

Also, I ignored any worries about the amount of the bill by simply not looking at the amount when signing for my credit card. It's great - I feel like I didn't pay anything at all.

Wine Tour

I just got back from my all day wine tour today. The operators, David and Lynne, confirmed my suspicions that the cellars I visited yesterday are tourist traps. They stopped recommending both of them to clients some 5 years ago. I tasted some pretty good stuff today and the tour was educational. I feel like I have a real understanding of the Burgundy region now. I also met some nice people from Seattle and had a couple beers with them in Beaune afterwards.

I just stopped typing this post for like 45 minutes while I had a beer bought for me by some very friendly tourists from Atlanta who just joined the hotel. I gave the blog address to them, so if you get around to reading this, hi!

Tonight is my last night in France, so I had my hotel reserve a table for me tonight at Le Bénaton, a Michelin one star rated restaurant. One star might not sound like a lot, but it's quite hard to get even that - there are only two one-star rated restaurants in Beaune. This one was recommended by the tour operators today.

Am having more fun now, and looking forward to Interlaken, where I have reserved a tandem hang gliding flight.

Beaune

I'm currently in the small town of Beaune, 20 minutes south of Dijon by train, in the French region of Burgundy (French: Bourgogne). I'm here basically to taste wine - Beaune is the wine capital of Burgundy, which produces France's chardonnay and pinot noir wines - but it doesn't hurt that Beaune is a pretty little medieval town, complete with fortified city walls and stunning, perfectly preserved buildings from the 1400s.

I'm staying in a hotel and should be having a relaxing time, but I'm not. There's a few reasons for this. Firstly, almost nobody here speaks English. I was expecting it to be packed with English-speaking tourists, but in fact it's packed with FRENCH tourists. This tends to reduce the experience of tasting wine to similar to drinking wine by yourself, at home.

Secondly, on the way out of Beaune station, I caught the edge of my shoe on one of the stairs and fell heavily to the landing below, with my heavy pack strapped to my back. I was frankly lucky not to break any bones, but I'm undamaged. I can't say t he same for my laptop, though. The screen "broke", by which I mean that it (or possibly just the touchscreen stuff on top) cracked but still works completely fine. I'm not sure about the wireless, though. When I try to connect to the hotel network, or a couple other nearby networks, it simply ignores the connection attempt. I did easily connect to (but didn't have the key for, so no IP) another nearby network, suggesting that the wireless card still works. The rest of the computer is fine, so it would be weird for the wireless to break in such a limited way. I'm thinking it's probably a protocols problem. The only computer in here is a Mac, which would fit with that theory. If anyone knows what the problem might be, drop me a line. In the meantime I'm forced to use this French keyboard, which in typical iconoclastic French style, has several important letters moved around, including "a" and "m", slowing my usual fast paced typing to a crawl.

ANYWAY...

The third thing is that the wine has so far been pretty average and wildly overpriced. I'm hoping this is because I've hit the tourist traps. The all day tour I'm doing tomorrow - with an English couple as guides - will hopefully both deal with the no-English problem and reveal the hidden wine secrets of Burgundy. We'll see. In any case, the day after that I'm off to Interlaken, which will definitely cure any problems with boredom.

Paris Megapost

Hi! I have a cold, so I've decided to stay in the hostel today and get some downtime... blog a little and maybe play some poker.

I like Paris. The people here are way friendlier than the stereotype. If you put a little effort in (just a "Bonjour, parlez vous Anglais?" and a "Merci" afterwards are fine) then nobody gets annoyed at the language barrier at all. The city is a bit dirty, but it's easy to get around and easy to get what you want. I love that there are little fruit shops dotted all around the city. You can buy fresh fruit like one street away from the Eiffel Tower.

The hostel is a little cramped, but the location is nice and everyone here is very friendly. The tiny common area almost forces people to interact. I've been hanging out with an Australian girl called Keira, who's just been on exchange for 6 months in Montreal and can speak a little French, and two young English girls (both 18, I think) called Lindsey and Kathryn, who are a lot of fun. But really everyone in the hostel is happy to hang out with everyone else. This is the common room:



Notable things that happened so far: I ran into a couple of guys from Canada who play poker for a living (small stakes NL) and recognised my nick from 2+2. We then tried very hard to not talk about poker for the rest of the night. Also, at a karaoke bar near here I paid 8 euro ($A 16) for a pint of Heineken, which would have to be the most I've ever paid for a beer.

Here's Paris so far in photos. The first place I went was the Arc de Triomphe. It's hard to get a sense of scale in the photos, but if you look closely at the top, there are people standing up there which will give you a idea of the size of it. I've just learnt via Wikipedia that it's large enough that at the celebrations for the end of WW1, someone flew a biplane through it:






To get to the top of the Arc, you have to climb a ton of stairs. I believe this is in order to keep fat Americans off their national monument:



From the top of the Arc, I got my first look at the Eiffel Tower:



This is looking out towards Montmartre, where I'm staying. The large building is the Sacre Coeur.



Out along the Champs Elysee... the big building at the end is the Louvre.




The Champs Elysee continues on the other side of the Arc, but is then called the Avenue de la Grand Armee. It actually leads away from central Paris, despite Paris's big high-rise district, called La Defense, which is located at the end.




Next up was the Eiffel Tower:







This photo should need no caption. This is only a few streets from the hostel:



Yesterday I went to the Louvre. Here's some photos of the complex. I don't have any photos from the inside, because most of the things you want to take photos of, you aren't allowed to. I think the painting I enjoyed most was Raft of the Medusa by Gericault, thanks to the extensive discussion of it in a book Stu loaned me. The girl to the left of shot in the last pic is Keira:






After spending a lot of time in the Louvre, we wandered a little way down the Champs Elysee:




That's all I got. Now I'm going to try to book my ticket to Dijon and then play some poker.

Paris

I'm in Paris, but pretty busy. This hostel is super friendly so there's lots of people to hang out with. I went to see the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower yesterday. Today I think I'm going to hang out with this girl Keira from Australia and go to the Louvre. More posts later, possibly not till I arrive in Beaune on the 19th.

Dutch Problem Solving

How would most countries cope with the problem of drunk and/or stoned idiots urinating on the street? Basically by prohibition - increased fines, stricter policing, cameras in problem areas, etc.

How do they cope in Amsterdam? Pretty much by legalising it:




To close out Amsterdam, here's Sean (left) and Jae, the two guys I mostly hung out with while there.

Leaving Amsterdam

I'm currently in Amsterdam Centraal Station. My first high-speed train trip in Europe starts in about half an hour. I'll be in Paris for the next 5 nights or so.

Amsterdam was a fun glimpse into a more liberal world. Just to visit this place is to see the insanity of the drugs policy in the US and elsewhere. The smell of pot is everywhere in the tourist areas of Amsterdam - drifting out of the "coffeeshops" and hostel lobbies. But there aren't legions of crazy people wandering the streets. Violence and crime both seemed low. There are plenty of people on the streets wanting to sell tourists baking soda or sugar, but little in the way of actual hard drugs. The ubiquity of pot has not led to a single negative consequence that I can see.

The kicker is that pot is ubiquitous only in the tourist areas of Amsterdam. In The Netherlands as a whole, use is low. Over twice as many people per capita use pot in the US than in the Netherlands.

Meanwhile, the US has spent some 19 billion dollars at the state and federal level so far this year on the war on drugs. It's hard to tell exactly how much of this was spent targeting cannabis, but given that nearly 300,000 people have been arrested for cannabis offences so far this year (> 40% of all arrests) you'd assume it's a lot. "Crazy" is the only word for this.

I didn't smoke any pot in Amsterdam myself, although at times I suspected I was getting a little stoned via passive smoking.

Anyway enough ranting. I have one more photo from Amsterdam which I think neatly sums up the way the Dutch deal with social problems, but it'll have to wait till I get back on my laptop. Right now I have a train to catch.

Amsterdam Photos

Having a laptop and wifi sure makes it easy to blog fast. Here's a bunch of photos I took earlier today. Dam Square:




Amsterdam is a city of bikes. LOTS of bikes:



This is an example of the scary tilting buildings I mentioned earlier:



Here's the Bulldog, inside and out:




And some random shots of stuff in Amsterdam: