Danke Schon

It's been a (long) while...

This has been started and not finished or posted a few times, and now it has to cover the last couple of weeks or more, so it will be a bit sketchy. I'm sure you'll cope.

 

Don't ask me, I'm not German.

After our brief stay in Nuremberg we made our way down to Munich, where the best bit was seeing my cousin Chris for the first time in a million years and meeting Lyma.

Thank you so much for taking us out twice, it was great to see you both. And the kings pancake was delicious.

 

 

Munich has some great buildings and a fantastic food market. And a huge water park!! Over 10 water slides, outdoor heated pool, outdoor spas, sunlamps, massive indoor pool and much, much more. We felt rather cultured out so an afternoon spent on water slides was excellent fun. Unfortunately I wasn't allowed on the super fastest 72 km/hr one due to not being able to remove my necklace. Stupid rules. Might have saved me an injury though...

 

 

 

We also went to the Hunting and Fishing Museum. It had incredible guns (including a 273cm monster), old fly fishing gear, crossbows, bizarre stuffed animals (see above) and lots and lots of antlers. Pretty fun place.

 

Castle-y. *

Then it was off to Kempten in Bavaria for some home comforts thanks to the wonderful Thomas, Gila, Elke and Franz.

 

We drank delicious beer, ate fabulous food, visited a huge lake that borders Germany, Austria and Switzerland, popped across the border and went cross country skiing, visited castles, experienced the pleasures of a German sauna and generally had an excellent time. And we even eventually got to see the seemingly mythical mountains after days and days of cloud.

 

Skiing in Austria, as you do.

 

 

Jo de cologne.

So next it was up and up and up to Dusseldorf, with a side trip to Cologne. It's a super train ride along the Rhine, we wished we could get off and ride bikes along it. Next time.

 

Dusseldorf had some pretty funky buildings, and Cologne had a massive cathedral, but best of all Dusseldorf had Che and Eva. And Altbier.

 

It's a brilliant method for service they have in Dusseldorf, basically the waiters just bring around trays of beer brewed on site and plonk it in front of you unless you say no. They mark your coaster with the number of drinks and eventually you pay the man and leave. No need to get out of your seat or make any decisions at all. Splendid.

 

 

 

 

And now we are just leaving Amsterdam, where we headed after Dusseldorf. Amsterdam is nuts.

 

 

Quite the beer list.

 

Bikes and canals, a heady mix.

Beautiful, free, busy, old, funky, smelly (in a good way), sexy Amsterdam.

 

"Interesting" does not do it justice.

 

So many bikes, so many people, so many great wonky buildings, so many bars, so much marijuana smoke, so many canals, so many sex shops, so many boats, so much life.

 

Tiring though...

 

Next stop, Rotterdam, then on to Antwerp for some Belgian beer fun. Woohoo!

 

And in other good news it's finally decided to be spring. No more long johns, no more hats. Excellent.

 

And thank you again to all our German family and friends.

 

* editors note: this is a photo of a postcard. It was misty when we were there. Sorry.