Paris, Munich, and everything in between!

Wow, I have to close my eyes and think back in time to when we were in Paris. It seems like so long ago! We have been on the road in Europe for almost a month now and everywhere we have been we have met amazing people, one experience after another!

We drove into Paris late at night, thankfully, as driving on the roads in this enormous city is something else, and since Chris had been drinking a lot of the Belgian ‘best beer in the world’, I had the pleasure of navigating the streets! For an old historic city it is insane how wide the streets are.  There are no marked lanes and you find yourself in this free-for-all trying to fight your way through each intersection and in and out of roundabouts.  It was surreal when the GPS guided us past the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiiffel Tower as we headed towards our friend’s place in downtown Paris.  We met Cecile in Cambodia and spent a couple of evenings having drinks and chatting with a big group of travelers during our time there.  She totally hooked us up.  Literally a 10 minute walk from the Eiffel Tower, the funky apartment she lives in is in the heart of Paris.  Paris is the most-visited city in the world and you can imagine why.  Everyone’s heard of the infamous Eiffel tower, Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, Louvre, Champs Elysees, Moulin Rouge, I’m sure the list goes on. We spent a couple of days checking out the sights.  Chris was absolutely blown away by the size and detail of the Louvre both inside and out.  We lost ourselves in the endless rooms of the museum, specifically the sculptures sections. Incredible!

Many people may have cheesy pictures in front of the Eiffel Tower, but how many do you know of who also have said picture when there is a disco ball hanging in the middle of the tower?? Yeah!

In case you're wondering, we're in from of Notre Dame... get it?

This absolutely cracks me up! We took way more photos than we should have under, on, in front of and beside La Tour Eiffel! Glad the sun showed up for that day!

I will never be able to see this pyramid and not think of the Da Vinci Code!

By far the coolest thing that we did in Paris was completely by accident.  We happened to be there during “La Fete Nationale”, France’s equivalent of Canada Day.  Cecile’s friends were throwing a Mojito Party, so we learned the art of mojito-making and then snuck up onto the roof of a nearby apartment building to watch the fireworks.  I don’t see how we will ever be able to top that firework experience.  It sets the bar at a whole other level when the beautiful Eiffel Tower is included in the fireworks display. It was a pretty perfect moment we won’t soon forget!

The Eiffel Tower was fully part of this fireworks show.  Still working on capturing the scene properly on the camera, but you get the idea!

The Parisiens definitely have a distinctive personality.  Luckily the people we spent our time with were exceptions to the rule! Many people in the tourism industry were amusingly Parisien: very to the point and not overly friendly. There is also barely any English signage anywhere in this city that is the top tourist destination in the world.  I think that also says something about the pride of the citizens of Paris and their French culture.  It’s clearly their city and you are very much only a (often unwanted) visitor.  My mom pointed out to us an article that came out in the Vancouver Sun recently stating that there is currently a push to encourage friendliness of the Parisiens towards tourists because the city’s economy is strongly supported by the tourism industry. P****

We left Paris and hit the road, headed toward Munich (our next big city). On the way we traveled through the Champagne region, enjoying scenic vineyards and tasting the specialty of the region – Champagne, of course! The problem with driving is the same reason why it’s so great.  It’s awesome because you get to see so many small towns and different places that you wouldn’t otherwise get to see; on the other hand, every place is new and you can’t do it all so it’s hard when you pass so many places you’d like to stop at but don’t have the time for.  C’est la vie!

Chris with his refined look.  Ha ha, love it!

Couchsurfing has been an absolute blessing! I am sure I will go on about it as we continue our trip because it has absolutely made our experiences in Europe! We stayed in a small village of less than 300 people with a family of 9 (7 kids!!) who took us out for dinner, treated us like part of the family and helped us to learn about the area.  This was right on the border of France and Germany.  We hope to stay with them again on our way back to Dusseldorf and have a bit more time to see the area! Next, we carried on to Wurzburg, where we met Sara! Sara was awesome because we she has a great place, and she made us feel at home right away.  Sara entertained us with her love of American television and I now have a newfound love for Modern Family! We learned some key German words that we don’t really have equivalent replacements for in English. In the couchsurfing community it really seems like you are constantly sharing and learning from one another.

We didn't get a pic with Sara, so we took a picture in her apartment instead..!

What is it with famous places to see and them being under construction when you’ve traveled a long distance to see them? My immediate thoughts are of me and my friend Marie when we went to see the Acropolis in Athens and it was covered in scaffolding.. you can no doubt guess where this is leading. Chris and I spent almost two days driving south towards Neuschwanstein, the German castle that most would recognize as being the Disney logo.  We camped overnight next to a lake about 200ks away from the castle.  As we neared our destination the anticipation was building. Each time we turned a new corner we would check to see if we could see the castle nestled into the mountains.  We turned a final corner and saw… scaffolding. It covered the whole face of the castle. At first we thought it must’ve been a different castle because it didn’t look anything like the one we were expecting. No such luck! This was the castle we’d been waiting to see! We then proceeded to get in line for an hour amongst the other hordes of tourists.  We got to the front of the line at around 1300h (that’s how they write times here) and were told the next English tour was at 1620h. What?! Seriously, a three-hour wait for a tour? We even asked if we could go on a tour that was any language, but no, they were all sold out! Naturally, we weren’t going to wait that long, so we enjoyed as much of the non-scaffolded outside as we could. It was definitely one of those days where we felt like luck wasn’t on our side, but even then it was still pretty damn impressive!

The part that looks blurred is the beautiful scaffolding!

The best party night we have had so far hands down was in Munich. I guess we shouldn’t have expected anything less, seeing as it’s the Beer Garden capital of the world. Peter definitely contributed to our adventures though! He was our host in Munich and he showed us such an awesome time! We went on a walking tour of Munich and it was even more amazing than the one in Amsterdam! I’ll use pictures to explain some of the stories we heard from our hilarious Texan (??) tour guide.

This Opera house caught fire during the winter hundreds of years ago.  The sprinkler system was completely frozen so the owner ran down to the beer house to ask to use beer to put out the fire.  After much hesitation they created a human chain, passing barrels of beer down to the opera house to pour onto the fire.  Unfortunately the citizens were beer-lovers and by the time the barrel reached the end of the line it was nearly empty from the people taking sneaky sips along the way. The opera house burned to the ground as a result, and in its wake was a line of drunken men leading to the Hofbrauhaus!

Only in Munich would you be on a guided tour that has ‘break time’ during which you don’t grab a coffee but rather a bottle of beer.  We walked around in a group of around fifty people with beers in hand.  Even the tour guide was using his beer to point out different sights along the way!

The Hofbrauhaus used to be a gentleman’s club – no women allowed! The story goes that it didn’t used to have toilet facilities, so men would have to go outside to relieve themselves in the street.  This posed a problem though, because going for a pee would mean giving up your seat and quite possibly your beer. This was unacceptable!! What to do? Make a v-shaped trough under each table! This way no man would ever need to leave his seat or more importantly his beer.  Crazy, eh?! To extend this one step further, each man would bring in his own “waterslide” as they called it- a long tube used to prevent splashing and poor aim as a result of drunkenness. To this day there remains a small amount of chauvinism – only the men’s bathroom is outfitted with a vomitorium, based on the assumption that women are sophisticated and never drink beyond reason!

After the tour, we headed to get some food,.. and some beer.  And then we went to a beer garden for some more beer.  The night continued like this until we ended up at the Haufbrauhaus, the mother-of-all beer gardens!!! We met a crew there and had a ton of fun shooting the shit and listening to the authentic accordion music.

Apparently in order to be a waitress during Oktoberfest, women have to be able to carry 12 of these bad boys. Guess I won't be doing that any time soon (but seriously there are 5 you just can't see the one behind the others!!

Chris and Peter, our Finnish-but-lives-in-Munich host!

 We had spoken with my dad on skype several days before and he told us about how when he had visited the place, he and his 10 buddies had managed to smuggle 8 glass jugs out as souvenirs.  Thus sprung a challenge to which Chris was whole-heartedly dedicated: how many jugs can you manage? Well, as the night wore on Chris applied his liquid courage not to sweet-talking the ladies but rather mug-smuggling. We discovered that our camera bag (though bulky and somewhat inconvenient on a daily basis) was the perfect size to fit a 1-litre mug, in order to slip out of the Haufbrauhaus unnoticed.  Peter also kindly allowed us to slide one mug down the sleeve of his jacket that he was carrying out of the building. Success! Two glasses! I thought: ‘Great! Check! Now we can head home’.  Chris thought: ‘That was so easy I’d be an idiot not to go and try to get more!’ This time he got one at a time, and after two trips we had 4 glasses! This more than beat the ratio required to fulfill the challenge!  We went to unwrap the glass from Peter’s jacket and, horror of horrors, one of the glasses tumbled to the ground and smashed. We all looked at each other for only a moment before Chris said ‘we have to replace that!’. He and Peter went back in and sure enough came out with one stein each.  This lead to a grand total of 6 stolen Hofbrauhaus mugs: 5 to take home and one giant pile of glass.  It was pretty hilarious! We spent the rest of the night toting around 5 1-litre beer mugs, with nods of approval from locals who knew exactly where those mugs came from. 

Proudly showing off his winnings!

 We woke up in the late morning with strong headaches, beer breath, and two fistfuls of glass souvenirs which will add quite a bit of weight to our luggage on the flight home.  A successful night out in Munich! We had such a great time with Peter, we just don’t know how we could top that night if he comes to visit us in Van!

Well, our next stop is Austria and then we’re headed west through Liechtenstein, Switzerland and then on to Southern France. We’re looking forward to some mountains and some time away from the big cities for a while!

September 2^nd is creeping closer and closer, we can’t believe it! We have been so lucky so far with the experiences that we’ve had and we’re looking forward to seeing what other adventures lie ahead!