You're Doing It Wrong

We flew into Amsterdam and took a train to Dusseldorf.

The next day we flew from Dusseldorf to Munich and then took a train to Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

There was a huge snowfall and our flight was delayed so by the time we finally arrived at the Munich train station we were starving. We ran through one of the food shops grabbing everything that wasn’t nailed down.

I discovered this ingenious food product. It’s a little cup with a dollop of Nutella in one half and little bread-like sticks on the other.

At first it was too cold and the Nutella too hard so my sticks kept breaking. I put the cup on the heater in the train car and a few minutes later it was melty delicious. And the stick-to-Nutella ratio was perfect.

I wish I could buy this here and take it in my lunch. I guess it wouldn’t be that hard to make myself but that wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.

Main Train Station in Hamburg

I’ve been trying to finish a story. This is the same story that I’ve been pulling my hair out over for the last 100 years. I think it’s coming together I’m just impatient.

Meanwhile, I’m still working on photos along with a bunch of stupid administrivia.

I’m back in the real world tomorrow.

We passed this creepy ad when were were on the train. “Did I just see a little blonde children-of-the-corn girl flipping me off?” I asked Bob. Later we saw it again in the train station and I grabbed a photo.

I stayed awake until about 2 minutes past 8pm last night. I got two solicitation phone calls in the evening and I was afraid the phone was going to wake me if I went to bed too early. One call wanted to know if I wanted to send letters to all my neighbors asking them to donate money to some cause that I guess I’ve supported in the past. How many ways can I say No?

Now I’m up and completely overwhelmed by all the photos. I have about 400 of mine plus 300 of Bob’s (from just the first few days). I don’t know where to start.

I’m enjoying my souvenir chest cold which is no doubt thanks to running around wet with cold feet and hours spent in public transportation. I hate getting coughs because they tend to stick around for weeks.

I made sure to cough on all the horrible children running around on the flight yesterday.

There’s a bus from the Portland International terminal to the regular terminal and there were three men who got on and sat by me. One of them said the flight wasn’t so bad and I must have made a face because another one said: You look like you don’t agree. Were you sitting near all the children?

Today’s plan is to drink peppermint tea and continue re-acclimation. Also do some writing and yoga since I just took two weeks off and I need to get my groove back.

Have I explained that Bob is staying in Europe for another week? Here are two posts from Bob’s first day without me. Haarlem Part I and Harrlem Part II.

Berliner Tor Hamburg Subway Station. In case you can’t tell: I’m sitting in the subway car taking a photo out the window of the station name on the wall.

I’m home. I’m tired but happy. I’m going to eat some soup and watch some Gilmore Girls and then stagger off to bed.

Sadly, I haven’t secured a job as a towel girl for one of the Dutch soccer teams so I’m coming home tomorrow.

Another action packed day. I’m so tired I can hardly see straight. The hotel said that the airport shuttle will only take me if I bought the ticket in advance. That’s a stupid system for a hotel shuttle. I’m taking the train instead which is cheaper but I have to haul my bag over to the train station and now that it’s stuffed with candy I’d rather minimize the amount of humping it around.

Almost done.

Today we went to the History Museum. The guidebook didn’t make it sound like much but it turned out to be awesome AND not filled with squirrely teenagers. Every museum has been overflowing with squirrely teenagers and their skinny jeans and loud whispers and obliviousness.

I’m going to run upstairs and charge my iPod and try to stuff the rest of my goodies into my bag.

Many photos when I get home.

There can’t possibly be any tort law in this country.

The entire transportation system is an accident waiting to happen. Cars, pedestrians, bikes, trams, trucks in total anarchy. I get the feeling that anything goes although I did see a guy get busted today after zooming his motorcycle through a pedestrian area.

Today there was a crew tearing up the street which was just one lane. The Dutch don’t pay someone $30 an hour to hold a flag and wave everyone around. The cars just drove up on the sidewalk to get around it. And the people and bikes just got out of their way.

Bob and I both had to watch for a minute to make sure we were understanding what was happening.

Also every restaurant has the bathroom in the basement and the stairway is practically a ladder.

A great day although a tad long and food deprived. It was sunny! And probably hit 45 degrees! All the Dutch people were sitting in the sun smoking cigarettes and smiling.

* * *
More on the hotel. It’s like a design experiment. It’s called citizenM. The first floor is like a giant lounge with all kinds of tables, chairs, couches, TVs, work areas and food/bar. We’ve spent our evenings there before going to bed and it’s nice. I guess it’s not so much a tourist hotel as a business traveler hotel.

The room has it’s own computer thing where you can set up your lighting, music, window shade and so forth.

Last night at midnight the alarm went off. All the lights came on and the sound of stampeding elephants. I’m not making this up. I woke up and was thinking: what the hell? It can’t be morning yet. I waited for Bob to deal with it and finally elbowed him because he was sleeping through it. This morning I figured out how to turn it off so there won’t be a repeat performance tonight.

Also you can pick the color you want for the toilet and shower pods. It is the world’s tiniest room but we like this place.

One more big day tomorrow. More museums and I’m sure lots of wandering around completely lost.

We practically sprained our arms patting ourselves on the back for picking such great hotels on the Internet and then we arrived in Amsterdam.

This the most tragically tiny hotel room in the world. I’m trying to take photos but it’s so small I can’t get back far enough. It doesn’t have a closet, it has a towel-rack thing where you can hang your coats. There is one shelf that’s big enough for three of Grandma’s knickknacks. There’s a drawer under the bed where Bob could fit his suitcase after he took out the extra pillows and towels.

At one point Bob was trying to find something in his suitcase and I had to sit on the toilet to get out of the way.

However all was forgiven when Bob discovered the giant TV screen above the bed with about 100 channels of free grown-up movies. We already saw a clip that involved two girls frolicking on a speed boat. So yeah, the world’s smallest hotel room with the giantest TV.

The trip is still going great. We had a great time in Hamburg and got lots of time with Tante Irmgard.

One of our cab drivers asked about our trip and we explained what we were doing and he said: Oh the relatives tour.

The relatives tour ended this morning.

We arrived in Amsterdam at 3pm and found the hotel, ditched our stuff and then went into town and got our local public transportation passes and some museum tickets. We found a fantastic meal and have returned to the hotel.

The only bummer is the weather. The weather is wearing me down. I knew we wouldn’t have great weather on this trip at this time of year but I didn’t anticipate that we’d be lucky if it hit 40 for a high during the day. I’m always cold. My feet are cold. My hands are cold. We’ve been lucky on precipitation. We’ve missed a lot of the worst of it until today. Cold hard rain. I had to wring my hat out. Yahoo weather tells me that the rain stops after today. Yay.

This hotel has free terminals so I might check in again but we have two full days in Amsterdam and then I go to the airport first thing Thursday morning.

Bob is waiting for turn so I’m off for now.

Happy Birthday Mom.

Every time we get over-confident that we know what we’re doing we screw up.

We took a train from GAP to Munich. An ICE train from Munich to Würzberg. Our itinerary said Würzberg to Bad K. Except I guess we were in the wrong car and the train did a saucer separation and we were on our way to East Germany. Bob asked the conductor and he sent us on another train back the way we came and then we transferred to another regional train. What’s that? 5 trains?

We arrived and took a taxi to Tante Hilla’s. Since we were late she had rounded up a neighbor to drive to the train station to look for us. The cab driver pulled over and she came over and told him where he should park. He pulled to a different spot and he unloaded us and she came over and showed him where she wanted him to park.

I was intentionally vague with Hilla about where we were staying but by the end she had to find out and had already phoned them and informed them she was local and her niece was coming and to prepare the best room and so forth. I should have recognized the look on the guy’s face when I told him my name.

We have a lovely room and I slept through the night for the second time since we arrived. My dysfunctional sleeping has made the jump over to the new time zone perfectly.

We’ve had a great time so far and I am well fed and drink a half gallon of beer a day. I bought some Prinzen Rolle and put them in mz hat and then got crumbs in my hair. The drawback to packing a small bag is I don’t have room to carry all the cookies and candy I want.

Hilla asked if we wanted to go to dinner or if we wanted Rouladen at her house. Of course I wanted her cooking but I didn’t want to be too much trouble. “I already made it,” she said.

We’re taking a break here and then a rest at the hotel and then over to Hilla’s. She wrote down the instructions for the bus including writing a note we can give to the bus driver so he knows what to do with us.

Tomorrow we’re off to Hamburg.

Current Weather Conditions.

The German keyboard is laid out all different and I’ve had a few liters of bier and it took about 15 minutes to type that URL so there will be no more URLs in this post.

We arrived at Schiphol Airport Friday morning and waited a few hours before catching the train to Düsseldorf. At the time I was mad at myself because this was supposed to be a big money saver and now we were wasting so much time sitting around. But it turned out okay. We had good adventures and were forced to stay awake and stand on breezy train platforms

I forgot the first thing we do everytime we get off the train in a new city: get completelz lost.

It was the train station’s fault. They had a giant map with a red dot that said you are here. It should have said: turn around and go out the other door and you are here.

We finally found our hotel and the desk guy directed us to a fabulous restaurant and we ate our weight in wurst and potatoes and returned to our room and I fell asleep at 7:15 and when I finally woke up it was light outside and I got up to check my watch and it was 8:10. Our plane was taking off at 10am.

Team Pam and Bob sprang to action, shampooed, packed and were at the front desk in 30 minutes. The cab arrived 5 minutes later and we were in the terminal about 20 minutes later. We zoomed through check in and then to airport security.

This is the most organized, efficient country except for local airport security. The weekday business travelers at PDX would eat these people for lunch. We could have gotten 100 passengers through in the same time it took 2 dozen to get through in Düsseldorf. And we didn’t even have to take our shoes off.

Flight was delayed 1 hr 40 because of huge snowfall in Munich. Then we got out of the gate and had to turn back because of technical problems. Then the technical problems were fixed. Actually the Captain’s exact words were: hopefully the problem is fixed. Just the confident speech I want to hear before take-off. Then we had to get back in line for take off. Then there was a delay unloading the luggage.

We finally got to the train station and then another 45 minutes for our regional train.

But we got here finally. yay. All the Neuner girls are taller than me now. Luis nicely pointed out that he wasn’t but I’m sure when I see him in August that will have changed. There’s lots of snow and it’s pretty.

This rearranged keyboard has reduced my typing to about 15 words a minute so I will stop here. Possibly more later.

Fox Tower, downtown Portland.