how this worked for us......

i will add my final post now, as the summer winds down, as i soon begin a formal german class in a few weeks, and as i host my first hospitality club folks........
i am often amazed thinking back to how we, four goofy not quite grown up footy enthusiasts, managed as well as we did as we traversed a country none of us had been to or really knew the language of (i am discounting our efforts matt, but not because we didn't try, certainly we put in work). as i have hospitality club kids with me currently i realize just how good we were at being house guests, at taking care of ourselves, asking the right questions, cleaning up after ourselves as if we knew how nice it is to not clean up after other people, offering to cook dinners, treat to a night out, requiring nothing more than floor space and a smile. i am sad to say my current guests are reinforcing the hit or miss of hosp.club. (air ball)
so i want to allow myself this opportunity to wonder about when we four can travel again next. certainly something worked about our odd combination, the fact that matt and andy had never met mike before seemed trivial, a mere speck of dust passing in the wind.....and most of all i want to thank everyone, matt, andy, mike, the hosp.club(ers) that we stayed with and the friends we made (little miss fourty percent comes to mind, she's doing well by the way, i think she's in azerbijan).... you all made this trip so worth it.......
until the next time my friends :)

insert cliche ending moral thingy here

well..........


that happened.


having had what might be described as an afternoon to recover i think maybe that's just how it feels and i don't know if i'm really a fan of using the word recover as if i were sick or just came home from the hospital and not one of the most amazing journeys i've ever been on no actually thanks but i'd rather not recover.
andy will post some pictures to be sure, i will keep thinking for now about the trip and maybe later shall i post something

und osterreich auch!

austria is awesome!
great idea andy to check out salzburg for a couple days. and the food is killer.

in the shadows of churches

holy smokes i need a shower......
this is kermit the frog here reporting to you live from vienna austria.....where they have almost successfully roped all the big old things into one main area, finally somebody was thinking.
arriving here yesterday just in time to walk right through a film shoot, consider asking for work and then meet my host florian and a few of his flatmates near the donau kanal not the neue donau (danube for the straight english volks). i thought i was learning german but i must say this is austrian and while it bares a slight bit of resemblence to standard german it is not. but this is a beautiful city and the internet here is wicked cheap so this may be another long rambling post from the kevateria.......
i think one of my initial comments to florian was how many young people i apparently thought i saw here which i think he proceeded to chuckle at saying that was funny since wien is notable or was up until about 10 years ago for how many old people lived there. i guess they all died since then though i have to admit to seeing many more older people today but it was still early and maybe the youngins were sleeping....but matt would enjoy the churches here for sure there being two gothic churches completely under construction so not worth the pictures fellas no worries but only half the size of the koelner dom so all in all except that they were beautiful to look at you´ve seen the koelner dom and that takes the cake and the icing too.....in fact i don´t hesitate to say i´ve found the biggest construction site yet of the entire trip if ever there was one the whole Fing city is under construction or at least most of the churches and city center buildings and monuments seemingly a push to facilitate what was started maybe 15 years ago as florian explained it to me - not the construction sites but what follows about the mayor - about 15 or so years ago wien got a new mayor who was leaning social democrat in a previously staunch conservative christian state and since then things such as nightlife have made their way into the commonplace things like street cafes and biergartens were previously unheard of but i asked if this continued today with the current mayor and he replied yes but he had a funny theory that he attributed to a professor of his from muenchen that maybe it is possible that the current mayor in fact does not exist in reality explaining further that he is rarely if ever seen publicly or on television and is sometimes shown in pictures but always drinking a bier and looking almost as a stereotype of the austrian kitchen meaning Fleisch und Bier amost every day and having the shape of a slightly older man meaning what we might refer to as a beer gut and so i found this komisch and asked if florian believed this also and he says maybe yes this mayor doesn´t exist in reality......imagine Bloomberg.......hmmm....but anyway my own theory has developed into that this physical construction is maybe a near last step in faciliting the demographic change the city here has been undergoing the last whatever some years......
and somebody think about this the best restaurant i have ever personally been privy to called 'all you can eat pay what you want' and cut my tongue off if i am joking excellent indian food self-service eat as much as you want and then estimate what you think you want to owe free water mostly vegetarian vegan amazing interior space off the main street and didn´t seem to be people there to take advantage of it and i don´t mean take advantage of the experience i mean take advantage of the establishment and eat them out of house and home which i pictured happening if we tried something like this in nyc everyone feeling they are most deserving....and the city bikes are clunky and old and don´t go very fast but are most certainly free to use for the first hour and everywhere in wien is accessible within less than one hour easy go to the closest u-bahn station swipe your card pick your bike ride wherever you are going find the closest u-bahn station and return the bike do your thing go back to the station repeat never pay for public transport and get exercise daily take two of these and call me in the morning.
i´ll see you shortly in salzburg fellas mike boogie down geneva birthday in stuttgart.............love you all

fahrraederinen

so suess.
sowieso,
in muenchen jetzt, a most interesting atmosphere. i´m not sure i´ve ever seen so much big old stuff just pop up out of nowhere before. oops there´s another big ass old thinger oh and wait turn your head the other way and there´s a lot more but don´t trip over the cute bike girls and watch out for andy´s head as the tram comes.....
yesterday i took off for a little walk of my own as the other fellas went ahead on this bike tour thingy and had a few thoughts come to mind. first off i was reminded a bit of san francisco, the buildings being built about as tall and spread out in a similar fashion...meaning 20-30 stories lower than manhattan buildings and space to breath air and not exhaust such a novel concept that is...i also began thinking about what it would be like to ride a bike here..as an avid maybe a little less than avid rider in the city i began to think about how flat muenchen is and how possible it would be to ride a single gear, fixed or otherwise...then began to realize that many people back in nyc ride this kind of bike for the image it portrays and surely i am just as much a part of that yet it also means much less maintanence if only i could spell..but riding the aforementioned bike also denotes a style in which many people in nyc ride that being rough, abrasive, nearly combative competing for space with cars who pay little to no attention talk on their mobiles abuse turn signals and stop lights alike...the near exact opposite of here with bike lanes built into and marked as part of the sidewalk or street they go everywhere, very few people ride in the street if a bike lane is present and not many people seem caught up in the style of their bike or their riding everyone has thicker than racing tires mostly cyclecross or all terain tires and the bikes correspond....cryptonite locks don´t exist and since everyone already has and uses a bike probably don´t need to bikes remain locked either to themselves or quickly to some nearby post or one of the absurdly abundant bike parking thingies....so then i began to think about riding my bike here as it is now, single gear free wheel racing tires seat over the handlebars and how would i ride put into this situation (insert beginning of metaphor here) and figured i´d just be out vying with traffic watching out for the tram tracks and trying not to get into an accident because i was looking at the cute girl on the bike and not the road.......and wouldn´t that just be damned american of me to introduce our agressive riding style into an already long established pacifist perfectly viable system. chameleons we should all be when entering a proven system it is certainly not mine (ours) to change most likely for the worse....so i decided i would keep my bike because it offers me the most comfort riding but would most likely end up on the designated paths......
i shall continue
briefly to mention that the public transport systems here also appear to run much smoother comparitively with nyc with multiple systems available, the s-bahn, u-bahn, tram and bus and this being just the local transport so this is not to mention the smoothness of travel we´ve experienced with the regional and ICE trains....more thoughts vielleicht spaeter i think i´ve used up my thought processes

München

münchen.

i remarked to kev how if feels like we finally made it to our destination. here at the start of our 'extended' (5-dayish) stay in münchen, the previous couple weeks seem like we've been in transit. it's all just anticipation for a slower paced next several days.

as for the previous few cities, hamburg and leipzig lived fully up to the expectations i had for them. the weather was a bit cold and dreary in hamburg, but otherwise it was a real nice town.

we all wished we could have spent another day there to see more of the city, but there were other towns to be visited. like leipzig. we had about 4 days there so slowed things down a bit. enough for liesurely activities like a game of football, cooking a meal ourselves, and canoeing. speaking of which, 'canoeing' seems to be kayaking over here, we found out as we got in the boats. not as fun, but the river was certainly nice. mike and i perfected floating with the current.

then köln. köln is fucking amazing. we had the perfect introduction - stepping out of the train station to the foot of the kölner dom. the dom is the greatest man-made structure i have ever seen. and my theory is that such a magnificent cathedral towering always over a city has to have an awesome impact on it. because köln is just about perfect. remnants of medieval and even roman towers and gates all over the city, striking cathedrals, inventive modern architecture. i certainly had a splendid time anyway.



then down the rhein to bacharach. what an amazing follow-up. medieval castles speckled among quaint cities and vineyard-covered mountain sides. all on a gorgeous river so rich with history. biking alongside it was breathtaking (well, until it started raining).



so it's münchen now. and after a pair of nights this city looks like it has everything.

oh, we did stop in dortmund for several hours before köln. and, if anyone is ever thinking of going to dormund, talk to one of us for suggestions on what to do. like don't go there.

i am a canoe

such a shame for mexico yesterday, but i couldn´t say that argentina didn´t play well.....after a few games of footy in the park yesterday we were able to watch the germany game in a cozy biergarten with one of our amazing hosts, steffie and a few of her friends. the kicker table in the back was on about an 80 degree slant but a few canadians joined in the game and with enough rotating around of players i think everyone had a jolly old time....
leipzig being a part of the former east germany has shaped the environment in an astounding way, at some points resembling a run down east-southeast cleveland with very litte money outside of what we have seen of the city center. gutted buildings stand vacant with windows broken and surrounding property completely grown over with weeds and untamed foliage...not a whole lot of people around but it could be that it´s the weekend. maybe something different tomorrow.
again we have had the luck of amazing hosts, they allow us whatever space we might happen to take up and have this rad bathroom with 2 showers and 4 sinks all in a row like a hostel. it´s a beautiful flat and relaxed inhabitants. they set up the footy game the other day with their downstairs neighbors, even though no one from our flat was playing that day....who will be first in the river tomorrow when we go canoing?