It's amazing the number of people you'll meet while you travel; not only locals, but people from back home. It's good to keep in touch with other tourists - they can give you tips about where to go, what to do, how much it'll cost you, and most importantly, where not to go, what not to do, and how much not to spend. If you don't have planned for a place to stay, just look for people at the train station, etc. You'll get around.

The nice thing about 'living' in Europe for a bit of time is you get to do things that the people who live there do. The trip to Renesse is an example of this - most likely a visitor just wants to see the touristy stuff and not much else. Renesse was a chance to get the heck out with a bunch of people, act like a bunch of kids, and get plastered until our fingers turned into raisins. Man, I love this!

If you want to skip the email, you can go straight to the Tips and Gallery section.

What my Friends Heard

Approximate message date: June 6, 1994

hallo leute, wie gehts? this is the edmeister reporting live from Aachen, Germany!!!!

So far this past two weeks have been full of things to do and places to go to.. all in all, they have been pretty fun with moderate highs and lows...

Marc and I have been planning our trip to Paris which should be happening around the 17th of next month... we looked into different traveling options:

• Luthfansa (which just became a private company) has some sweet deals for traveling around Europe, and they just so happen to have a 341 DM special for three days / two nights in Paris with hotel, tour, room and breakfast included.. that comes to about $213.
• The local travel agency (Reiseburo) has a special by bus for 250 DM including hotel, breakfast, and tour... better deal: ~$156.
• Europcar can rent us a car for 110 DM + 140 DM gas + 60 DM tolls + 120 DM room and 30 DM breakfast, comes to a grand total of 460 DM, or 230 DM each which is sweet: $144.. but no tour... we make it ourselves..

and then, SCHWIING!!!

• Roundtrip train ticket costs 134 DM + 60 DM room + 15 DM breakfast for a totally excellent 209 DM or $130.. no tour either.

So that's that.. can't get any better .. most likely we'll be staying in one of five hostels (which are supposed to be awesome in Paris - open 24hrs) or the local Bambi motel (econolodge-like)...

German classes are still wiping the floor with my butt.. nothing new... this is the most ridiculous language I have ever seen.. the grammar is just monstrous (I think)... the sentence structure is more like Martian than anything else...

If you say can I speak with Frank?, in Spanish is very much the same: puedo hablar con Franco?, but in German you get: kann ich mit Franz sprechen? (can I with Frank speaking?).. NICE!!! a few other annoyances include the fact that you capitalize EVERY NOUN!!!! who came up with this PAIN IN THE BALLS rule ANYWAYS?!?!?! every first Letter of every Noun that you write on Paper with a Pencil or Pen on any Day of the Week must be capitalized!!! geez... forget this crap... I'm sticking to good ol' span-glish...

a few neat things that I have learned, though, include (and write them down, kids!):

komm lass uns Rohre verlegen!

The UF-ever-so-popular let's lay pipe!, and I found out they actually USE IT here!!! you likee?

das Werkzeug ist in der Werkzeugkiste

I'm sure you guys can figure out, but I'll tell you anyways: the tool is in the toolbox!

So, I can say I learned some useful everyday sentences at least...

Ok.. so what's next? starting from about 2 weeks ago, the architecture party that I mentioned to you guys: the cops came (there's something new) and it was so out of control that the people stole the freaking hubcaps from the PATROL CAR!!! they also took along the way the LICENSE plate.. and managed to stab the TIRES!!!! what the heck????!?!?! I think we should try that in Gainesville sometime... sounds fun!

A couple of days later, there was a big festival here.. you guys might have heard about this, but Norway just elected a woman president (good quality, eh?) and she was to receive some big price here in Aachen given to her by the president of Germany... so all these Norwegians came and they had all the traditional Norwegian food (which is mostly seafood - no thanks), and dances, and clothing.. it was pretty neat... I decided to stick to the ever-so-popular German bratwurst..

One thing I don't understand is how these Germans stay alive.. in festivals like these, they sell tons of different types of sausages, with curry or mustard... and to accompany them, these people buy fries and they PILE gallons of mayonnaise on top!! chase all this with beer, and you have a well balanced meal with all the food groups in it: grease, lard, fat, and alcohol!! what the heck?

Anyways.. I had my bratwurst (I'm eating so much bratwurst that when I come back you can probably call me Abe Froman, the sausage king of Chicago), and I found some weizen beer, which I think I told you about before, it's awesome.. you have to learn how to pour this things.. if you don't do it the right way, then you either end up with mostly foam, or end up spilling most of it all over the place...

Moving on, the BWL (or business school) threw a big party at the B-9, so I headed over there with Andi, Berbel, and other people... man.. the music SUCKED!!!! geez!! what the heck? everything was pretty cool when we got there.. I got a few drinks.. danced a little.. and then dj diarrhea jumped in and played the theme from HEIDI, the freaking CARTOON!!!

WWHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!?!?!

you would think everyone got off the dance floor, right? WRONG!!! they all started yodeleying (or whatever) to this song and my mouth dropped to the ground.. unbelievable.. then John Travolta started dj-ing, so it was 50's and 60's action, starting with rama- lama-ding-dong, and ending with me leaving this place!! AALLLLLRIGHTY THEN!!!!

The weekend was the big plan: Andi, Marc, and I went grocery shopping and made the mega pot of chilli to take on our camping trip... this stuff was awesome!! AWW YEAHH!!! GOOD QWALITY!!! we bolted to Renesse, a little town on the coast of Zeeland (the Netherlands) where we met Markus and his girlfriend. they had been there since the night before saving our spot... it was pretty cool place except for one minor detail: it RAINED like it was ITS JOB!!!!! holy humidity, batman... we went ahead and set up our tent (it was just sprinkling at this time).. and then we whipped out the apple wine (another sweet drink introduced to me by Andi), started the grill (ever try this in the rain? not much fun, really), and had some chilli... I walked around the place and it was the funniest thing I had ever seen.. all the tents where like right next to each other... like woodstock or something!!! and everyone was German!! Turns out German youngsters like to do this every year (some sort of tradition, like Gator Stomping, except 250 km away) and they bring more alcohol than the weather brings rain!! geez...I found people with freaking KEGS in their tents. man.. wish I could have gotten a picture of that... Around 9pm another car arrived with 4 more people.. later on two more cars with a couple of other guys, and one other with Christina (good qwality) and her boyfriend (bad qwality) and two more people...

Now, the interesting thing about these people was that they brought a freaking REFRIGERATOR!!!! NICE!!!!! that's what I call primitive camping.. NOT!!!!

Well, the weather got worse... it rained bullets.. we spent the first night just drinking and meeting everyone.. needless to say I got pretty tanked that night, and from what they told me I was speaking almost perfect German... the next day.. well.. it rained still.. we managed to get sun for about 2 hours, so Marc and I walked to the beach which was about 2 km away.. it was pretty neat... no women sunbathing, unfortunately, but people walking around flying kites, playing with their golden retrievers.. Then I touched the water and it actually didn't feel that cold.. so we took our shoes off... BAD MISTAKE!! it was obscenely arctic!!! come to think of it, what was I expecting? It WAS the North Sea!

We headed back and told everyone about the beach.. Andi kept insisting that we should go swimming.. I kept insisting he should go stick his thumb up his butt... by now all that the other guys and gals were into was sitting and drinking all day.. Andi got wasted by 1pm and managed to fall on the tent ONLY ONCE (he did it twice the night before).. finally he passed out.. I thought to myself these people are about exciting as licking the ground.. so Marc and I stole Andi's keys (and the car too) and drove into town...

now THIS was AWESOME!!! this town was were it's at!! and the babeage.. oohh!! We walked by the town's church, were they were having air diving.. this was pretty funny.. they would strap a person and hang him/her from a rope held by a crane... then they would pull him/her up with another rope tied to another crane as high as it could go.. and then.. let go!!! it was hilarious... bungee jumpee Holland style!! except you go left-right-left-right and so on..

So anyways... pretty funny.... we hit a local cafe, where I met a Dutch girl that worked there... she was quite cute... blonde (ch-ching!), green eyes (ch-ching!), nice figure (ch-ching!)... she asked where I was from... I asked her about the town.. then she said she didn't like it when all this Germans came here.. the clubs were too packed... they were rude... they made a mess of everything.. ok... interesting.. needless to say, I didn't mention I was there with a bunch of Germans...

Then we hit the local arcade place.. and you wont believe this.. there is yet ANOTHER version of VR!! I must admit, this was the most disappointing one that I've seen.. the motion was created by air cushions (what?!?!?) yeah, I know.. it was not effective AT ALL!!! you would turn right and you would feel the cushion by your left leg push towards you.. yeah.. that was realistic.. plus you could hear the annoying PPFFSSSHHH! which was damn loud... nice...

So we drove back to the campground to change and hit the town.. we got ready.. sobered Andi up.. jumped in the car and drove as far as the GATE which was locked!!!! WWHHHHATTT???!!?? ok.. don't panic... we parked the car, flicked the guard off, and took a taxi to town.. this was crazy.. it was literally like gator stomping.. everyone on the streets going from bar to bar.. needless to say, we got obliviated again.. we went to the Snack Korner and got some fries (which they serve with curry, mayo, and ONIONS!!! great for meeting girls!)... while we were there Phillip was falling asleep when all of the sudden he just fell flat on the ground.. I thought he died or something.. anyways... the next day it rained again (for a change) so everyone decided to get back home...

Monday was a national holiday... everything was closed.. so we were bored to all hell... we thought maybe we could catch a movie.. not a bad idea.. we had gone to see What's Eating Gilbert Grape about two weeks before, which was pretty good, but unfortunately, was dubbed! but it still looked pretty good... a cool thing here, tho, is that they sell beer in the snack stand of the theater!! try that in G-ville and see if you can get the crowd under control!! here it's ok.. no one gets out of hand in the theater... also.. they have some american commercials actually DUBBED also!!! the sprite one with the family with the tickets and the pizza stuck on the ceiling.. yep.. exactly the same.. except alle sprechen deutsch.. pretty funny..

so anyways... Monday (my tangents are getting pretty bad here) we decided to ride the bus to Heerlem, which is a hop and a skip away in the Netherlands. the Dutch movies are not dubbed, but subtitled, so I likee very much... we hoped Ace Ventura was playing, but it doesn't start until next month (you wouldn't believe the lag!!) so we caught Naked Gun 33 1/3 (which also just started playing here).

For now we're chilling until Paris... we've been renting some cd's to record because we're getting quite sick of our old tapes, so I'm expanding my trance/ underground techno selection to extremely-likee ratings.. we can rent cd's anywhere from 1.5 - 5 DM / day.. not bad..

Oh.. and you likee 100%: yesterday I hit the HaupBanhof (main train station) to check out on the Paris fares.. well, I met this girl Olga who was cute, blonde, green eyes.. I give her 2 ch-chings and 2 sch-wings... she was visiting Aachen for the day, so I showed her around town.. turns out she was from the UKRAINE!!!! ok.. this is neat.. actually It's freaking awesome!!! she's studying in Utrecht for the summer (management).. and she's on her way to Düsseldorf to visit some friends. She told me she played the guitar and the bass (say.. would you marry me?) and that now she wants to start playing the drums!!! wow!! how do you likee the qualitee? At the end I walked her back to the station and we traded addresses... this was interesting: ever tried to type an address from the Ukraine? YOU CAN'T!!! It's like ENCRYPTED!!! there's all these weird symbols that I had to approximate with greek letters and tildes and what not.. I mean.. you look at her address in my organizer and you'd think the thing crashed or something!!

So that's about all that's been happening here... I will get back to you in a couple of weeks... take care

later..

Tips

• Don't miss out on International Festivals. You can get a little taste of their traditional food and drinks, and maybe even music and dancing.
• CHECK THE WEATHER!!! I guess if you are in Europe for just a few days, there's not much you can do about that. oh well.
• If you are planning on going to the movies, remember that they are dubbed in some countries. Others, like the Netherlands, do subtitle them.

Photo Gallery

• We take a walk to the beach.
  
• Getting our feet wet.
• Raining like it was its job!
• We had to keep the beer cold somehow.
• Starting to cook dinner.
• Marc tests his beer selling skills.
• We drive into town and find the wall climbing contest.
• Putting stuff away.
• Cleaning up the mess.