Monday 16th, some month
Okay this was not what G and I had planned. Today morning we would have embarked on our real backpack travel and our first destination was Amsterdam.
Before arriving on this Continent, we had carefully chosen a convenient Eurail pass (1st class travel in a network of trains across all the countries we were wanting to visit, barring a couple) This pass is really economical and we need not have any reservations on the trains.
But then... yesterday when the family came to know that we had no train reservations, and just some stupid pass, we got an earful and I mean an earful. The family I know was concerned but along with the walkathon an earful is really not what one is looking forward too (more grumble). We were given a lecture on how unsafe Amsterdam is and how we will be quickly swindled of our passport, cash and belongings, the ignorant traveler that we are. And how the train staff will throw us off the trains as we have no reservations. And the least we can do is get the train reservation done. We had to give in, so finally our plan of Amsterdam on Monday was canceled.
We woke up to some steaming tea (I made) and a repeat of yesterdays breakfast. My sil offered to take us to the central train station to get our reservations done. After an exchange of a few paragraphs in German between sil and the person at the counter, we shelled out quite an amount from our budgeted back pack travels (which we realised later was of no use, with our passes we could have travelled anyways) I think that amount was the single most worthless expense that we incurred (besides the ones we were swindled in Paris, more on that later). Anyways like they say the fool and his moneys are soon parted, in this case the precious euros. We got the reservation for next day (well why wouldn't we, the train was empty)
After the walkathon, earful and the flying euros we settled in to eat at the McD (the only time we ate in the McD in our travels) We had some nice hot nuggets and fillet of fish. The afternoon was about to end when we headed back to the city market Zentrum, for some loitering, shopping and to meet brother. G bought a poster, I bought some trinkets and sil bought some more trinkets. We decided to wait at the Pizza Hut for brother to hop in from work. While we sipped some strong espresso, we watched the world was go by. The chatter, the noise, the fragrant air, the pigeon, all was something else. By the time brother came in it was time for dinner and we hopped to an Australian diner in the neighborhood.
The place offered some exotic Australian cuisine. While I settled in for some rubbery chewy crocodile meat, G had a hot buttered corn on the cob, brother and sil decided to have a Kangaroo steak and Emu burger respectively with some beer. Well my fork and knife did hop to everybody else plates. Grin grin.
We called in for a cab and went home. All in all the day was a relaxed speed breaker to the start of the next phase of our journey.
Next day we were travelling to Amsterdam in the wee hours of the morning :-)
Okay this was not what G and I had planned. Today morning we would have embarked on our real backpack travel and our first destination was Amsterdam.
Before arriving on this Continent, we had carefully chosen a convenient Eurail pass (1st class travel in a network of trains across all the countries we were wanting to visit, barring a couple) This pass is really economical and we need not have any reservations on the trains.
But then... yesterday when the family came to know that we had no train reservations, and just some stupid pass, we got an earful and I mean an earful. The family I know was concerned but along with the walkathon an earful is really not what one is looking forward too (more grumble). We were given a lecture on how unsafe Amsterdam is and how we will be quickly swindled of our passport, cash and belongings, the ignorant traveler that we are. And how the train staff will throw us off the trains as we have no reservations. And the least we can do is get the train reservation done. We had to give in, so finally our plan of Amsterdam on Monday was canceled.
We woke up to some steaming tea (I made) and a repeat of yesterdays breakfast. My sil offered to take us to the central train station to get our reservations done. After an exchange of a few paragraphs in German between sil and the person at the counter, we shelled out quite an amount from our budgeted back pack travels (which we realised later was of no use, with our passes we could have travelled anyways) I think that amount was the single most worthless expense that we incurred (besides the ones we were swindled in Paris, more on that later). Anyways like they say the fool and his moneys are soon parted, in this case the precious euros. We got the reservation for next day (well why wouldn't we, the train was empty)
After the walkathon, earful and the flying euros we settled in to eat at the McD (the only time we ate in the McD in our travels) We had some nice hot nuggets and fillet of fish. The afternoon was about to end when we headed back to the city market Zentrum, for some loitering, shopping and to meet brother. G bought a poster, I bought some trinkets and sil bought some more trinkets. We decided to wait at the Pizza Hut for brother to hop in from work. While we sipped some strong espresso, we watched the world was go by. The chatter, the noise, the fragrant air, the pigeon, all was something else. By the time brother came in it was time for dinner and we hopped to an Australian diner in the neighborhood.
The place offered some exotic Australian cuisine. While I settled in for some rubbery chewy crocodile meat, G had a hot buttered corn on the cob, brother and sil decided to have a Kangaroo steak and Emu burger respectively with some beer. Well my fork and knife did hop to everybody else plates. Grin grin.
We called in for a cab and went home. All in all the day was a relaxed speed breaker to the start of the next phase of our journey.
Next day we were travelling to Amsterdam in the wee hours of the morning :-)
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