[Galemp]

Hi! I'm heading off to Ye Olde Fatherland for a few weeks and will be blogging it in this here thread. Things will kick off with HLP London VII and go from there. EDIT: Final itinerary:

LONDON April 17-18

BRUSSELS April 19-21

BRUGGE En Route

AMSTERDAM April 22-24

COLOGNE April 25-26

HANOVER April 27

AMSTERDAM April 28-May 7

PARIS May 8-10

If there's anyone who will be available in these places at these times, for goodness' sake, post here!
If there's any other seasoned travelers who have some must-see places, or tourist traps to avoid, I'd like that too!

[The E]

That's an impressive schedule, that is.
*Checks Dates* Hmmm....I could be in Cologne on those dates....

[Col. Fishguts]

That's an enormous schedule you have there, as pretty much every citiy on that list could easily keep you occupied for a week or more just to cover the basics Is this one of those organized see-Europe-in-3-weeks-trips, or are you planning this yourself?

As for tips:

Hamburg: The harbour is probably where you will end up. Take a round trip with one of the many tourist boats through the "Speicherstadt" to see most of the harbour area, the container docks and the Blohm+Voss yards (where usually a frigate of the German navy is in the swim dock).
Go for diner in of of the many fish restaurants, it's worth it
If you're not prude, the red light district "Reeperbahn" is the place to be at nighttime, a walk through the "Herbertstrasse" is practically a must, even if you don't plan on getting laid

Prague: Often said to be the nicest city in Europe, and it's hard to disagree. It's the "city of a hundred spires", and you'll see why. The Prague castle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Castle) is an absolute must see, it's the largest castle in the world and also houses a cathedral of which you can climb up the tower to get a stunning view of the city. Also, you really should visit a few of the many historical Cafés, where you get excellent coffee&cake in a unique ambience.
Drink&Food is excellent and cheap. Try to avoid the "touristy" resaurants near the tourist attractions, instead try to find small restaurants where the locals go to eat. You can get excellent multi-course menues with beer for 5-10$ in the most inconspicious of places.

Munich: Too many historical buildings/places to list, seriously you can't throw a stone in the city center without hitting something that's several centuries old. I probably would avoid the "Hofbräuhaus", as it's basically a tourist trap and you can get large beers pretty much everywhere in the city.
What I would recommend however, is a visit the "English Garden" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Garden_(Munich)). A huge park with beautiful lakes, rivers and beer gardens and lots of lawns to just lie down and relax. If the weather is nice, this is the perfect place to spend the day.

[Narvi]

Weird-ass place to put a travel blog.

For a few seconds I thought it was the name of a campaign and I was all like  .

[Galemp]

Thanks, Fishguts. I'll be doing all this myself, with a backpack and a copy of Let's Go: Europe. This isn't my first trip (I've been around the British Isles, London, Paris, Italy, Switzerland, and Austria)  but it is my first traveling alone.

And yeah, this is a weird place to blog it, but hey, you all know me here.

[Galemp]

Well, off I go. See you all next week.

[Dilmah G]

Woah, is he going alone?

I concur, impressive itinerary

[Ole]

That's an enormous schedule you have there, as pretty much every citiy on that list could easily keep you occupied for a week or more just to cover the basics Is this one of those organized see-Europe-in-3-weeks-trips, or are you planning this yourself?

As for tips:

Hamburg: The harbour is probably where you will end up. Take a round trip with one of the many tourist boats through the "Speicherstadt" to see most of the harbour area, the container docks and the Blohm+Voss yards (where usually a frigate of the German navy is in the swim dock).
Go for diner in of of the many fish restaurants, it's worth it
If you're not prude, the red light district "Reeperbahn" is the place to be at nighttime, a walk through the "Herbertstrasse" is practically a must, even if you don't plan on getting laid

Also noteworthy would be the "Alster" (quite a big lake at the middle of the city), especially if the weather in two weeks is still as good as it was for the last few weeks (only sunshine, no rain whatsoever).

But I agree - impressive schedule. Should be nice though.

[Mobius]

No Italy?

[Galemp]

Right, first week was spent with my grandparents (my grandmother broke her hip, which left her incapacitated and my grandfather very stressed) so I sought to make myself useful for them. They are very very English, especially as they're on the other side of the great 1960s cultural divide. Seriously, the Rolling Stones came on the TV and they actually muted it until they went away. The Stones. I love then to bits, but sometimes...



So anyway, first day in London I went up to the financial district and got a firsthand look at Richard Rogers' Lloyd's Building and Norman Foster's 30 St. Mary Axe (The Gherkin.) Two wildly different but tremendously inventive buildings by Britain's top architects.




From there through the rain to Covent Garden and Trafalgar Square, then a quick tour of the National Gallery. I've had it up to here with renaissance and baroque European art, though, so I didn't spend much time in there.




Then HLP London! Huzzah! From left to right: McCall, Terran Emperor (above), Admiral Wolf (below), Galemp, Karajorma. Colonel Dekker's holding the camera.



Today (Saturday) I'm spending on the South Bank. The Dali Museum is just under the London Eye and holds lots of bronzes of his sculptures, and the original Mae West Lips sofa.




Then I spent a good few hours at the Imperial War Museum, covering all of Britain's wars since 1912. Fantastic collection. You can see a Sopwith Camel, and the V1 and V2 bombs launched at London. Interestingly the museum in housed in the old Bethlehem Insane Asylum (Bedam.) The interior is totally unrecognizable, of course.



So, now I'm off to the Tate Modern. Tomorrow, Madame Tussaud's and thence to Belgium! Huzzah!

[Dilmah G]

@ Wolf & Galemp's shirts, well done

Grats on pictures btw, they look amazing

[Mongoose]

I can only imagine what sorts of wonderful innuendo that "Gherkin" generates.

[Redstreblo]

@ Wolf & Galemp's shirts, well done

Grats on pictures btw, they look amazing

Thanks to my Nikon 8.0 megapixel camera!

These are my grandparents too, Galemps my brother. 

Grandma looks like she is doing fine.

Those are some pretty weird looking buildings in London, the new skyscraper (the one under construction) is the weirdest in my opinion. Can't say that i like them, too out of place.

[Galemp]

Hi Graham, nice to see you here.

OK, so, next up. Tate Modern was kind of meh... many of the exhibitions, including the one in the Turbine Hall, were being either installed or uninstalled, and I was disappointed that there was no Andres Serrano on display. Still, they had lots of Pollack, Warhol, Rothko, Picasso, Klee and Miro, plus my favorite pop artist of all time, Claes Oldenberg.



The Tate is about the only place open late on weekends so I took a sunset stroll along the Thames. Here's St. Paul's and the Millennium Bridge from the seventh floor.



From left to right, the Tower of London, HMS Belfast, Canary Wharf (hard to see), and Tower Bridge.



And crossing Tower Bridge, on the left is Norman Foster's new City Hall, and in the distance you can just make out the BT Tower, and the dome of St. Paul's again.



I've just made a lunch date with DaBrain in Hanover, Germany, for next week, so expect another set of photos of HLP members. I know there's more Germans here somewhere...

[Ole]

Nice pictures, really. Makes me want to go to London/the UK sometimes soon. Guess that's my next holiday trip then. Seems you got lucky with the weather too - I mean, british weather isn't exactly famous for its sun, isn't it (but then again, Hamburg/northern germany here is probably not better off). Sorry to see that you dropped Hamburg, but then again, your schedule seems to be rather tight, so it's probably not a bad idea to drop something - and the other german cities are well worth visiting.

Anyway, I hope to read more of your trip and wish you some nice days around here.

[Galemp]

Sorry for the long wait, guys. Wireless at the Brussels hostel didn't work, and I had too much trouble finding any hotspots in Belgium to bother lugging my backpack around. Anyway, here's a couple updates for you.

Sunday was my last day in London, so I hit Madame Tussaud's. Sammy J is obviously sick and tired of these motherf***ing Shivans on his motherf***ing plane.



The National Portrait Gallery was, in my opinion, far more interesting than the National Gallery (photo is taken from the front steps.) They had THE portraits of all of Britain's monarchs from Henry VII on, as well as famous portaits of everyone from William Shakespeare to George Washington to Thomas Hobbes to Mary Shelley to T.S. Eliot. It really was a phenomenal collection.



The Eurostar left from St. Pancras International. The station is of particular interest to me as I've studied it in school; it's a Victorian Gothic Revival building that combines aspects of English, French, Flemish, German, Spanish, and Italian Gothic all in one style.



Then off to Brussels! The city is a very strange blend of the old and the new, moreso than most European cities. Its commercial district (Little Manhattan) is almost at the center of town, and the streets are a haphazard jumble of centuries-old hotels and 21st century offices. Brussels is the capital of the EU so there's more new buildings centrally located than usual.



After checking in I met a cute American named Stephanie who teaches English in Aix-de-Provence, and was on her school break touring. We hooked up for the evening and hit the town. I think I can safely say that, unless you have actually been to Belgium, you've never really had a Belgian waffle. They are AMAZING. There's so much sugar baked right into it that when it's heated, the crust caramelizes. It's like eating a big piece of candy.



We accidentally stumbled across the Mannekin Pis... it's a tiny fountain in the form of a small boy continuously peeing, which has for some reason become an internationally known symbol of Brussels. As my guidebook said, it seems appropriate for a country which is also very small and absurd.



Stephanie and I had dinner at the Rue des Bouchers (Street of the Eaters) which is lined with restaurants, where the waiters stand outside and attempt to guess your nationality and get you to come in. It's a bit like Morocco, with the hawkers of their street goods. I bought us a fantastic meal with a bottle of French wine.



Bizarrely, on the way back, we almost tripped over a thoroughly drunk Belgian housewife, whom we picked up and ordered some water for. She gave us her sad story of how she is torn between her obligations to her husband and her disabled brother, and the difficulty of her home life. It was somewhat strange. Anyway, Stephanie was leaving the next day, and she rewarded me for a wonderful evening filled with friendly company and chivalrous behaviour with... well, a peck on the cheek. Oh well, I've had worse dates. 0/1.

[Galemp]

Next day in Belgium was spent doing something I'd wanted to do for a long time--see the Atomium, built for the 1958 Brussels World Fair and recently completely renovated and re-clad for its 50th anniversary. It is in the shape of an iron molecule magnified one hundred billion times. The former fairgrounds are now parkland.



Six spheres are habitable, with a combination of stairs, escalators and elevators taking you through them. Each one has two floors, with uses rangin from a permanent exhibit on the fair, temporary galleries, private meeting rooms, a small cafe, or (at the very top) a restaurant.



The day after, I found a group of three in the hostel lounge, and we all set off for the nearby town of Brugges. Far more traditional, the entire city is listed as an UNESCO world heritage site.



The main square has the typical mixed assortment of late Medieval-early Renaissance buildings including the town hall, the town cathedral, and the governor's palace. Here's the tower the former photo was taken from. The foundations are made from centuries old wood and leather, so the whole thing leans slightly to one side.



We head back to Brussels, and naturally over the course of the day we pair off. Caroline (French, pronounced caro-LEEN) hooked up with the Brazilian guy next to her. Lynda (Vietnamese-American) decided she didn't like drinking, or dancing, or chatting... so we spent most of the late evening watching the other two enjoying themselves. This was a significantly more frustrating evening for my libido. 0/3.



This morning I packed up and before I left, made one last stop at the Beligian Comic Strip Museum. You probably don't know this but Belgian comics are world-famous (I can't stand America sometimes.) There's a bust of Tintin, and originals of some Japanese Manga like Akira. At least you've all heard of the Smurfs, right?



The museum is in an old warehouse by Victor Horta, the undisputed master of Art Nouveau. He's done lots of work in Brussels, but this was the only building actually accessible and open to the public so I made the most of it. THe gorgeous organic tendrils of stone, glass, and wrought iron make Horta a national hero; there's even a metro stop named after him.



So, here I finally am, in the world capital of sex and drugs--Amsterdam. I found a hostel right in the middle of the red light district, that's clean and friendly and inexpensive! How was this possible, you ask? Well, you have to put up with a few things...



Hm. I probably won't get lucky with anyone staying here, then. But there's no curfew, so I'll just have to go out and find my own company in the coffeeshops. The next few days ought to be a lot of fun.

See you all in a few days...

[FreeSpaceFreak]

I think I can safely say that, unless you have actually been to Belgium, you've never really had a Belgian waffle. They are AMAZING. There's so much sugar baked right into it that when it's heated, the crust caramelizes. It's like eating a big piece of candy.

Oh yes, I know exactly what you mean.

We accidentally stumbled across the Mannekin Pis...

Psst. It's Manneken

it's a tiny fountain in the form of a small boy continuously peeing, which has for some reason become an internationally known symbol of Brussels. As my guidebook said, it seems appropriate for a country which is also very small and absurd.

Never heard that one before

[Goober5000]

an iron molecule

wat

So, here I finally am, in the world capital of sex and drugs--Amsterdam. I found a hostel right in the middle of the red light district, that's clean and friendly and inexpensive! How was this possible, you ask? Well, you have to put up with a few things...

News flash: you have to put up with Jesus being Lord whether or not you're in Amsterdam.

[colecampbell666]