Whirlwind
What a crazy couple of days it's been. I arrived on Thursday morning in Amsterdam and had to wait about a half an hour before they figured out where our baggage claim pick-up belt was going to be. Luckily for me, my bags were one of the very first ones off the plane, so it was off to find Ricardo outside of customs. Once I found him, we needed to figure out where to pick up our car or where to meet the people who were supposed to pick us up to take us to our car.
Wow, were we in for a huge surprise...the "guy" who picked us up had grape-purple hair that it looked like he put in an entire bottle of hairspray before blowdrying it to look as if he were riding a motorcycle all day. He stank like stale cigarettes...but that was the "normal" part. He had a low-cut blouse on...yes, I said blouse. He had pink high-heels and a purple faux leather jacket with crazy bracelets and necklaces. I wasn't fooled though, becuase the 5 o'clock shadow gave "him" away. But, it was definately a scary beginning to the trip.
He picked us up in a 9-person van, and we thought we were alright when they picked us and 2 others up...that's 5...then he told us to wait 5 minutes and came back with another 6 Brazilians. It was a bit of cramped quarters, but we finally made it to the car pick-up place. An office...no, a TRAILER with a desk in it! Well, as the first couple were signing their documents, I chatted with the Brazilians.
We drove about 7.5 hours from Amsterdam to our apartment here in Weimar. I called my boo as soon as I got in to tell her that I didn't forget about her and that I was alright. Then I went straight to bed because we were getting up at 6 on Friday morning to start the drive down to Munich. We got on the road at 8 and got to the stadium at about noon. On the way down, there were pockets of back-ups and traffic jams. Nothing major, but the one that I found particularly interesting was a stretch of construction along the major interstate/autobahn (the A9) connecting the northest Germany to Munich. In this construction zone, they shut down one whole side of the highway and diverted everyone over to the other side, so there were cement barriers separating the two opposing directions of traffic. All of the sudden, we started getting backed up...as we approached the problem, we could see the cars in front of us swerving as if there was something in the road. Sure enough, there was a momma duck and about 10 chicks running down the highway along the cement barriers in the middle. Because the cars were passing on the right, they couldn't get off to the side of the road and the chicks weren't old enough to fly. I don't know what happened to them after we passed them, but I can honestly say that that has been the most interesting reason for a traffic back-up that I've ever been involved in.
We finally arrived in Munich about 3 hours before we were supposed to meet our friends, so we decided to go downtown to get some food and hit the ATM for me. We grabbed some Turkish Doener kababs for lunch, which were edible, but nothing special. We saw a couple of really old buildings, but yesterday was not the day for sightseeing, it was a day for football. Here is the mass of people getting off the train at the stadium 3 HOURS BEFORE THE MATCH BEGAN (and it looked like this many people for over an hour):
On our way down to Munich, we knew it was going to be too long of a drive to head back last night, so we got off the autobahn at a random exit about 20 minutes north of the stadium to look for a room. We stayed at the Strasshof Pension, which is a house that the owners live in but rent out the rooms. We both got our own room, and each room had a single bed and a full bath (shower, toilet, sink). Cost: 27 Euros each...which is pretty darn cheap, because it also included breakfast. Here's a picture of the house and our rooms:
This morning, we drove back here to our apartment in Weimar and crashed out tired. Took a nap or two. I watched the England-Paraguay match, then we went to Aldi to pick up some groceries since the stores are closed tomorrow. After getting some food, we went to the town center where they have a big-screen TV set up with a bunch of benches and picnic tables to watch every match that it being televised. We ended up watching the Argentina-Ivory Coast match there this evening, and what perfect weather we had for an outdoor viewing. I would guess it's in the upper 60's and no clouds in the sky. It was still a bit light at 9:50 in the evening! I'll have to take my camera this week when we go back down there.
In case you're not aware, Weimar is in the former East Germany, and it was where Hitler called the first gather of the Nazi congress together. It is also the city where Goethe's career really took off. It's a city with alot of history, but there is graffiti everywhere downtown. Entire buildings in a row are painted with nasty looking graffiti. As we were driving to our apartment, I was a bit worried as to what type of place we had gotten because the part of town we drove through looked pretty bad, but it turns out that our apartment is in a very nice neighborhood, at least our street is very nice!
Because we pretty much drove to Munich yesterday and back today, here is the map log of our travels over the last two days:
Tomorrow, we are off to stay in Dusseldorf, but go to the Portugal-Angola match in Cologne tomorrow, then to the US-Czech Republic match in Gelsenkirchen on Monday. Looking forward to see our boys take on the Czechs!
Catch ya tomorrow.
Cheers,
Rocco
Wow, were we in for a huge surprise...the "guy" who picked us up had grape-purple hair that it looked like he put in an entire bottle of hairspray before blowdrying it to look as if he were riding a motorcycle all day. He stank like stale cigarettes...but that was the "normal" part. He had a low-cut blouse on...yes, I said blouse. He had pink high-heels and a purple faux leather jacket with crazy bracelets and necklaces. I wasn't fooled though, becuase the 5 o'clock shadow gave "him" away. But, it was definately a scary beginning to the trip.
He picked us up in a 9-person van, and we thought we were alright when they picked us and 2 others up...that's 5...then he told us to wait 5 minutes and came back with another 6 Brazilians. It was a bit of cramped quarters, but we finally made it to the car pick-up place. An office...no, a TRAILER with a desk in it! Well, as the first couple were signing their documents, I chatted with the Brazilians.
We drove about 7.5 hours from Amsterdam to our apartment here in Weimar. I called my boo as soon as I got in to tell her that I didn't forget about her and that I was alright. Then I went straight to bed because we were getting up at 6 on Friday morning to start the drive down to Munich. We got on the road at 8 and got to the stadium at about noon. On the way down, there were pockets of back-ups and traffic jams. Nothing major, but the one that I found particularly interesting was a stretch of construction along the major interstate/autobahn (the A9) connecting the northest Germany to Munich. In this construction zone, they shut down one whole side of the highway and diverted everyone over to the other side, so there were cement barriers separating the two opposing directions of traffic. All of the sudden, we started getting backed up...as we approached the problem, we could see the cars in front of us swerving as if there was something in the road. Sure enough, there was a momma duck and about 10 chicks running down the highway along the cement barriers in the middle. Because the cars were passing on the right, they couldn't get off to the side of the road and the chicks weren't old enough to fly. I don't know what happened to them after we passed them, but I can honestly say that that has been the most interesting reason for a traffic back-up that I've ever been involved in.
We finally arrived in Munich about 3 hours before we were supposed to meet our friends, so we decided to go downtown to get some food and hit the ATM for me. We grabbed some Turkish Doener kababs for lunch, which were edible, but nothing special. We saw a couple of really old buildings, but yesterday was not the day for sightseeing, it was a day for football. Here is the mass of people getting off the train at the stadium 3 HOURS BEFORE THE MATCH BEGAN (and it looked like this many people for over an hour):
On our way down to Munich, we knew it was going to be too long of a drive to head back last night, so we got off the autobahn at a random exit about 20 minutes north of the stadium to look for a room. We stayed at the Strasshof Pension, which is a house that the owners live in but rent out the rooms. We both got our own room, and each room had a single bed and a full bath (shower, toilet, sink). Cost: 27 Euros each...which is pretty darn cheap, because it also included breakfast. Here's a picture of the house and our rooms:
This morning, we drove back here to our apartment in Weimar and crashed out tired. Took a nap or two. I watched the England-Paraguay match, then we went to Aldi to pick up some groceries since the stores are closed tomorrow. After getting some food, we went to the town center where they have a big-screen TV set up with a bunch of benches and picnic tables to watch every match that it being televised. We ended up watching the Argentina-Ivory Coast match there this evening, and what perfect weather we had for an outdoor viewing. I would guess it's in the upper 60's and no clouds in the sky. It was still a bit light at 9:50 in the evening! I'll have to take my camera this week when we go back down there.
In case you're not aware, Weimar is in the former East Germany, and it was where Hitler called the first gather of the Nazi congress together. It is also the city where Goethe's career really took off. It's a city with alot of history, but there is graffiti everywhere downtown. Entire buildings in a row are painted with nasty looking graffiti. As we were driving to our apartment, I was a bit worried as to what type of place we had gotten because the part of town we drove through looked pretty bad, but it turns out that our apartment is in a very nice neighborhood, at least our street is very nice!
Because we pretty much drove to Munich yesterday and back today, here is the map log of our travels over the last two days:
Tomorrow, we are off to stay in Dusseldorf, but go to the Portugal-Angola match in Cologne tomorrow, then to the US-Czech Republic match in Gelsenkirchen on Monday. Looking forward to see our boys take on the Czechs!
Catch ya tomorrow.
Cheers,
Rocco
posted by Rocco at 2:57 PM
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