We hit a Chinese restaurant that night.  Scope out number SP1 2 and see how that sounds to you.  I almost went for it but ultimately decided against it due to preexisting conditions.

That evening we made it to a lovely little cottage in Schwangau.  The reason I say lovely is because it turned out to be a lovers retreat and spa so we didn’t exactly fit in with the high brows.  I tried lifting my eyebrows higher but I strained my forehead and had to spend a few hours in the browery.  We had a pretty sweet view of king ludwigs castles, one of which was supposedly modeled after the Disney castle, who knew Disneyland was that old??? 

Our last night in Schulsee we ate at the hotel restaurant where we had a few bottles of wine and a nice German beer.  This is where we met Mario our waiter.  Apparently he thought we were good people because he invited us all out to the local pub to watch Frieberg vs Munich.  In the last minute or so Frieberg scored and won making the rest of the night very high spirited.  A few rounds of guiness later and we had made a few German friends who were all pretty entertaining.  Mario didn’t speak much English but I found the more guiness I drank the better I could understand him.  Needless to say we had a slow start the next day and my mom was set on getting a cuckoo clock so we spent most the day watching her shop in Titisee, although I can’t complain since it was a very nice setting. 

We made tacos!

Fortunately that night was the low point of the trip and it got a lot better from there.  We woke up and drove to the southwestern town of Frieberg, gateway to the black forest.  We got some baked goods and coffee and finally got into some really cool mountains, lakes, and forest.  It was very nice to get out of large cities as well.  We had lunch at a little lodge on a lake that served up a mean schnitzel.  We almost stayed here but something further down the road was calling us.  We found a little town called Schulsee right on a big lake (see means lake) and managed to stir up some decent sleeping quarters.  We were hitting a little ski village in the off season so we got a legit two story 4 bed apartment for about forty euro a night.  The town had lots of hiking nearby so we ended up staying for two nights.  The next day we mostly just hiked and then rode a free train to some other little town called Titisee.  Little did I know we had just entered the epicenter of cuckoo clocks…

The next day we hopped in my uncles car with the intention of seeing some German countryside goodness.  We drove down through Frankfurt to a place call rheingau which was a big white wine producing area.  We had lunch there which was ridiculously good and then we started the journey of looking for a place to stay the night.  This might seem like a simple task but we managed to make it into quite the adventure.  We stopped in every large town south of Frankfurt and each time every single hotel was booked.  The first few towns were booked because of a mechanic convention in Frankfurt.  Once we got far enough away by Mannheim everything was booked due to congress meeting.  We then found the French border town of Strasbourg which had availability at a hotel called ibis (sort of a European best western).  We followed the directions and ended up a huge rundown burnt to a crisp ibis.  About half of it was still standing.  We sort of drove aimlessly for a bit and just as we were turning around I saw a second, open, ibis.  By this point it was about 2 am and everyone had grown a bit weary.  We had a nice dinner of two German wines with some pretzels in nutella and fell asleep.

From Amsterdam we headed over to Dortmund where my uncle lives and my parents were visiting.  We met up and watched a street orchestra countdown for a few minutes until they reached zero.  At that point nothing happened and the crowd just kind of dispersed.  The lifestyle change of staying with my family for a few days hit me at dinner when instead of my usual bread and cheese I found a nice German meal infant of me.  That coupled with a nice bed at my uncles house made the next few days appear quite luxurious. 

The following day we woke up relatively early and went to the Anne Frank house.  That was probably the coolest museum/historic site I have visited.  It is tough to explain the feeling of stepping through the same hidden doorway behind a bookcase as the 8 people hiding there did during WWII.  It is pretty crazy walking around in the same rooms that they all lived in for so long.  Definitely a sweet experience.  After that neima and I rented a paddle boat and tore up the canals raising hell and getting honked at by all the big boats.  At this point we were pretty beat from walking all over the city and little sleep so we took a nap for about an hour.  Afterwards we met up with a friend Ruzil and had a tiny expensive Indian food dinner.  We made friends with the host at the restaurant so he took us to his favorite pub later that night.  Despite being a more laid back night we still didn’t manage sleep until somewhere around 4 am. 

Our last day in Amsterdam we woke to a nice pouring rain with strong gust winds.  We decided to hit up the Van Gogh museum which was pretty cool but I got a little burned after an hour or so…After that we didn’t really want to stay inside so we went to a dutch pancake house.  Despite claiming to have pancakes they were really just funky crepes.  We stayed there for a while watching cyclists outside struggle with the huge puddle lake that had formed.  It was entertaining mostly thanks to a city worker posted by the puddle who would just warn the bikers to lift their feet and every time they did he would start clapping and busting up laughing.  Shortly thereafter we ninja styled back to the train station and headed back to Germany.

That night we were both really tired, sore, and beat…so we decided a pub crawl was in order!  For 17 euro we were promised free drinks basically all night and free entrance to the pubs.  What those damn Aussies didn’t tell us was that the free drinks were limited to one type…a shady looking bottle of about twenty percent vodka and eighty percent gnarly fruit drink.  After a few of those and the stomach ache was going full steam.  I decided I should just focus and keep my eyes on the prize…The free t shirt promised if we lasted all night.  The night was a long one, but in the end, the t shirt truly was worth it.  Who wouldn’t want a plain white shirt plastered in advertisements?  Colin 1 Amsterdam 0.

We bounced out of the hostel real quick like and headed over to the heineken hq for a nice tour.  The tour was mostly a big marketing expo but we got three free beers which is tough to argue with.  After that we tried to go see the movie grown ups dubbed in dutch but they were only showing it with subtitles so it was a no go.  We found a random festival going on with some live big band action going on which was cool.  Not quite as cool however, as the dutch urinals which are basically just plastic walls they put on the sidewalk for all to see.