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!

Thursday, December 25: Mürren, Switzerland - Just arrived!

Merry Christmas!

We woke up this morning on the train, and had to transfer a couple of times to get from Interlaken to Mürren, but the view from the train for this last stretch was very scenic.

Mürren is also very pretty.  It's a little ski town (smaller than Banff), but most of the buildings are very old, and it feels way less commercial (no Starbucks right around the corner).

A cute little bird

We're staying at the Hotel Regina (http://www.regina-muerren.ch/), and the views from our bedroom balcony are unreal.  I'm glad that it was sunny when we arrived, because the mountains mostly disappeared after that.

Our Hotel

Hotel Room

The view off our balcony!

We were planning to just save money and buy groceries to eat in our hotel room, but the grocery store was closed, so we were forced to go out for some delicious cheese fondu (oh no!).  Expensive, yes, but everything here is.  Whatever, it's Christmas!

Wednesday, December 24: Amsterdam - Rijkmuseum, Windmill Brewery and Light Festival

We went to see a bit more art today, but we didn't spend nearly as long in the Rijkmuseum as we had at the Van Gogh Museum.  I guess I prefer slightly more modern art, and a lot of these portraits/landscapes/whatever, by artists I'd never heard of weren't of too much interest to me.  I did, however, enjoy seeing some of Rembrandt's early work, as well as the work of Vermeer. 

One of my favourite paintings at the gallery was:

One of Garrett's favourites was:

And of course, we were both pretty impressed by Rembrandt's Night Watch:

From the museum, we checked out a local brewery/pub, located in a windmill (non-functional), where we ate very stinky cheese and very raw sausage (cured, and it tasted like sausage, but it looked like and had the texture of raw ground beef).

The cheese was my choice, and the sausage was Garrett's.  Garrett was less than pleased with his choice, and gave up on it after one piece.  We shared the cheese, and anyone who knows me well enough, knows that I hate seeing food go to waste, and knows that I hate spending money uselessly (this sausage was €5!) probably already knows that I finished off the raw/mushy sausage like a champ! Veronica 1: Ossenfurter 0.

From "dinner" (if you can call it that), we went to do our own walking tour of the Amsterdam Light Festival.  Throughout the city centre, they have artists commissioned to do little artsy light displays with a write-up about their motive behind the work, and instructions for how to interact with the art.  The event reminded me of Winnipeg's "warming huts" along the Red/Assiniboine Rivers.  We saw some neat ones!

Right now we're on a train on our way to Basel.

Garrett's making some mad beats on his synthesizer, I'm blogging, and we bought some new mystery flavoured chips for the journey... these ones taste mostly like ham.

Tuesday, December 23: Amsterdam - Van Gogh Museum, Anne Frank House, Pizza, aimless wandering

I got to see 4 of my favourite Van Gogh paintings today! (And I took pictures of three - the other was The Potato Eaters).

 

 

The Van Gogh Museum was really well-designed and displayed over 200 of his paintings. Some of his paintings were even displayed in glass cases so that you could see both sides of the painting (he reused his canvases for a lot of his work). We even bought a cheesy Van Gogh Christmas tree ornament!

After lunch, we went to the Anne Frank House which has been converted into a museum (with most of the original layout of the "annex" intact).  It was a very interesting and humbling experience to walk through the house, imagining what it was like to live there in hiding for over 2 years.  It's hard to put into words, but we are both happy we went.

Anne Frank House at night.

Looking for a place to eat, we went for a walk through the canals, and stopped at a cute little pizzeria.

Garrett pondering how delicious his pizza will be.while I take arty photos of the surrounding area.

There was a little black cat who was hanging around right outside of the door when we got there, and then at some point he managed to sneak inside.

None of the employees seemed to notice him much, so maybe he's a regular there? I'm sure Mercedes would have done what she could have to try to get at our pizza too.

Garrett and I roamed through the Jordaan area after dinner.

Colourful cheese!

Colourful condoms!

The streets are lined with beautiful old shops and Garrett and I both acquired the habit of window shopping.  We've also applied this habit to looking into people's apartments/houseboats and commenting on how cute they are, etc etc. (Aren't they cute?!).

As we were passing by one particular apartment, however, Garrett noticed that the guy was watching a computer programming tutorial on TV and exclaimed "PHP Tutorial, I could help you with that!" Not realizing that the window was wide open.  :P

We finished off the evening by stopping a traditional Amsterdam Coffee Shop for some cake.

Monday, December 22: Amsterdam - Just arrived. Man some words are long and unpronouncable!

So we've both traveled enough, yet we made a rookie mistake.  We went to sleep when we got to Amsterdam.  Our flight arrived at about 12:30AM and our hotel let us check in early and we only slept in until about 8:30AM...Winnipeg time.  So that means that we slept from about 7:30AM until about 2:30PM.  Whoops!  We'll see how sleeping tonight goes!

We haven't actually explored Amsterdam during daylight hours yet, but we checked out some of downtown and the red-light district today.

Red Light Swan on the Canal

We also ate Stampot for dinner (mashed potatoes with kale, and sausages (just like Betty made))!

And we're now back at the hotel enjoying what we thought were Stampot flavoured Lays chips, but they're actually Stoofpotje flavoured chips (Dutch stew)!  How silly of us to have mixed up the two!  Anyway, beefy-chips, cheap Heineken (€ 0.94), and maybe some travel cribbage for tonight cause it's already late, and windy, and rainy outside.