Wednesday, December 31st: Amsterdam - Bitterballen, Oliebollen, Skating Rink and Fireworks

Our food missions for the evening (once we arrived in Amsterdam) were Bitterballen and Oliebollen!

Bitterballen: Little spheres of meat, cheese, and dough, deep friend and crunchy on the outside.  A classic Dutch food, often served at pubs as a snack.  We bought ours from a hot vending machine!

Weird system, but super convenient, and probably super popular for anyone who's heading home after a night of drinking and craving some greasy salty snacks.  I watched one guy chow down on three vending machine sausages in a row while I was standing here!

Oliebollen:  When we first arrived in Amsterdam on the 22nd, we noticed little seasonal food stands set up serving sweet donut-y treats with names like "Oliebollen" and "Appelflappen".  When I was in Aruba, I remember eating Oliebollen, and thinking that they reminded me a lot of Tim Horton's "Dutchies" and then it all started to make sense (Aruba was a Dutch Colony!).  Appelflappen was new to me, but equally exciting (I mostly just enjoy saying "appelflappen").  When we'd first arrived, we Googled both of these to see what the deal with them was.  Appelflappen translated to "Apple Fritter", but "Oliebollen" translated literally to "Oil Sphere".  Mmmmm!

Taking in the pre-midnight fireworks (I'll get to that in a second), we ended up wandering past an Oliebollen stand (no appelflappen, unfortunately), so we decided to try them out.  We ordered one each, but because the stand was closing right away, the fellow serving us filled up the entire bag (more than 10 for sure).  We each tried one and decided that as tasty as they were, they were also pretty true to their name - so greasy!

In looking for a nice spot to warm up and kill a bit of time waiting for the midnight countdown, we got some glühwein at the bar next to the central skating rink and then tried to pawn off our oliebollen on other customers.

Me, enjoying some glühwein in the skating rink shack

This girl had no interest in our Oliebollen

Now, New Years Eve in Amsterdam is very different from New Year's Eve in Canada, mostly because fireworks are legally set off by anyone anywhere.  Earlier that day, the sound of firecrackers could be heard occasionally, but as soon as the sun set (around 5:00pm), it was a non-stop cacophony of explosions, and we literally had to dodge some firecrackers and roman candles on the street while we were walking.  This continued until about 3:00am, but the frequency and intensity definitely increased from midnight until 1:00am.

I found a video online of this year's fireworks in Amsterdam, shot from the 20th floor of a building.  Being at ground level (and much closer to some of these fireworks) has a different vibe, but this gives a good idea of just how many were being set off at any given time.

Tomorrow we're heading back to Minneapolis.  Unless something outrageous happens, I don't think there will be any more updates.  Until our next adventure!  Thanks to everyone who commented/emailed while we were here.  

Monday, December 30th: Ghent and Bruges, Belgium

Sometimes taking the train across countries is confusing!  We got on our original train, knowing that we were getting off at "Ghent", and then as soon as we entered Belgium, the stop name changed to "Gand St.P".  I think all locations should just have one name, and that it shouldn't change with the change of languages.  At least Uwe explained the Köln/Cologne thing (Colonia was it's original name during Roman times, and those two are just variants).

Anyway...

We originally didn't plan on spending any time in Ghent, it was just going to be a more cost-effective stop on the way to Bruges. However, the hotel receptionist seemed so disappointed when we said that we were just "passing through" that we decided maybe we should check out Ghent at least for a bit in the morning before heading to Bruges.

We're happy we did!  It may not be quite AS picturesque as Bruges, but it also had hardly any tourists (especially compared with Bruges) which was lovely.

And on to Bruges!

We seem to prioritize a lot of our traveling according to foods that we want to eat.  Most countries that we've visited so far have had a list of "must eats". Because this was pretty much our only day in Belgium, we made it our mission to find: fries and mayonnaise (Flemish fries are supposed to be the best anywhere!), waffles, chocolate, and beer.  We wandered around Bruges for a good part of the afternoon: seeing pretty sights, taking pictures, and trying to check the foods off our list (It's a hard life!).

We had fries as a late lunch (to get out of the cold), picked up a box of chocolates at a fancy Belgian chocolate shop, ate waffles for dinner, and then spent the rest of our evening in a pub called Bierbrasserie Cambrinus.

Fruit topping for me, Nutella for Garrett

This pic was taken from their website.  It was a LOT more packed when we were there.

Garrett tried a flight from their selection of over 400 varieties.

Garrett convinced me to try a beer called "La Corne" that came in a curved, horn shaped glass with a fancy holder to keep it upright.  It proved a bit difficult (and silly looking) to drink out of, but the beer was pretty good.

Monday, December 29th: Köln, Germany - More Cathedral, More German Food, More Christmas Markets

We decided to take it easy today.  Had a nice at-home breakfast (which included more blood sausage!), with Uwe and Cheryl, and then just did some wandering throughout Köln.

We revisited some of the spots from yesterday, and saw the cathedral from the inside today.

We checked out the Christmas market again.  The cute paintings outside of the shops inspired me to buy a little gnome ornament for our tree next year.

We also did some shopping at a store that Garrett really liked in London, that we still don't have in Winnipeg, tried a big pretzel with Nutella and a street vendor dish called currywurst (bratwurst with bbq-type sauce and curry powder).

Our train left at 7:00pm for Ghent.

Sunday, December 28th: Köln, Germany - Cathedral, German Food, and Christmas Markets

(Veronica writing)

We left Zurich this morning on a train to Köln.  Our main plan in Zurich was to book the rest of our trip, and to solidify our plans with Cheryl (Garrett's cousin) to meet up (as we were invited to spend the night at her apartment).  The lack of wi-fi at our hotel put a damper on our plans.  We tried to find wi-fi at a couple of spots before leaving and at the train station, but all connections required a cell number to send the password via SMS.  Upon arrival, we were quite concerned that we hadn't yet gotten a hold of Cheryl, and we made a mad dash for our best chance at wi-fi, (a nearby McDonald's).  By complete coincidence, Cheryl had suggested (in an email which we'd never received) the McDonald's at the train station as a good meet-up point, so her and Uwe were waiting for us when we arrived. Amazing how well that worked out!

Walking through Köln at night, we saw the cathedral that we planned to visit tomorrow.

We also saw remnants of the Christmas markets that had been torn down since the 25th.

The four of us dined at a local brewery (restaurant). At this restaurant, beer (Kölsch) was served in the tiniest of glasses, and the glasses just kept coming until you signaled the waiter to stop bringing them. Along with the beer, we tried some authentic German food tonight!  I ordered "Himmel un Ääd" which Uwe had suggested (roasted black pudding (blood sausage) with mashed potatoes, stewed apples and fried onions) and Garrett had "Jägerschnitzel mit Bratkartoffeln und gemischten Blattsalaten".  I'm fairly certain that the last time I ate any vegetables was in Winnipeg. And there has not yet been a day on this trip when we haven't drunk beer.  Those two balance each other out, right?  I feel like Uncle Al might approve of this theory...

After dinner, much to our surprise, we found one Christmas market that was left set up until the 5th!  Shops, food, drinks, rides, music, and a huge skating rink in the middle.  It was so festive and so pretty!  I feel like I got my yearly Christmas fix all in one night!

Uwe ordered us each a mug of feuerzangenbowle which is mulled wine, served with a cone of brown sugar drenched in overproof rum and then set on fire.  Delicious!

It was so great to spend some time with Cheryl and Uwe.  They are such a lovely couple (and such great hosts!).  I hope we get to see them again very soon.  

Saturday, December 27th: Arrived in Zürich, Switzerland

(Garrett writing)

After arriving in Zürich we made our way to the tram, which we hopped on in the wrong direction. Maybe that was an omen. After correcting our mistake, we made our way to the address on our hotel's booking confirmation where we wandered around the block looking for something that looked like a hotel.

At this point it would be relevant to note that the "hotel" we had booked was new, and thus had no reviews. We soon (relatively, as wandering around in sleet makes time go by much slower) discovered that the hotel we had booked was actually a furnished apartment, and to check-in, we had to enter our pin number into a machine outside the apartment. The machine would then dispense the room key. While our room was clean (minus some mold in the corner of the ceiling), it looked nothing like any of the pictures we had seen online. We looked through the features listed on our booking confirmation:

• Free wi-fi: No wi-fi

• Mini-fridge: Had a European plug that wouldn't fit into the Swiss wall socket, so we had to use an adapter we brought to plug it in

• DVD player: Nope (not that we cared)

• Sound-proof: We could hear neighbours above us and beside us having sex at various points throughout the night

Without wi-fi, we didn't really know where in the city we were, or how to get to anything we wanted to see and the area around our hotel wasn't very inviting.

We had passed a McDonald's on the way to the hotel, where we saw that Big Macs were $14 CAD, so we opted to pick up snacks at the convenience store across the street for dinner to save money (with ample beer to drown our sorrows).

Saturday, December 27th: Murren, Switzerland - Leaving today

Veronica here again (I didn't break any fingers/arms skiing yesterday - we're just splitting the blogging).  I think Garrett might be mocking me with that action-filled movie... I swear I got at least a BIT better than that... :P

It has snowed a LOT since we arrived (over 30cm's) and everything looks quite different here!  I'm glad it was sunny on the day we arrived, or we may not have even known that there were mountains outside!

Mürren when we arrived

Mürren when we left

We're taking a train to Zurich today.  No real plans for Zurich yet, but it seemed like a nice half-way point between Mürren and Köln (Cologne).

Some pics of a snowy Interlaken from the train:

Garrett asked me what I was up to while sitting at the laptop.  When I answered "I'm bloggin'", he thought that I was speaking German...

Friday, December 26: Mürren, Switzerland - Skiing

(Garrett writing)
Today we went skiing. We quickly learned that ski runs in Europe are very different than in Canada. I tried to find an easy run for us, but ended up taking Veronica down an extremely narrow path that also had tons of traffic coming down it. Oops. She may have also taken a tumble off the edge of the path once. I don't think I'm a very good ski instructor. It ended up taking us the whole afternoon to make it down the mountain, but on a positive note, we can both claim that we have skied in The Swiss Alps.

We saw the most intense sun dogs we've ever seen.

Veronica is currently laying in bed doing ski turns in her head (she just asked which foot her weight should be on to turn right), so it couldn't have been too traumatizing an experience.

Bonus video!