Or Frankfurt or Amsterdam. That's right, I'm in the middle of my trip to Europe. The plan is to arrive in Frankfurt, where my friend lives. From Frankfurt, take a train to Amsterdam and stay there two nights. Go back to Frankfurt to stay one night then take a flight to Rome where we'll stay two nights. We'll stay one last night in Frankfurt before heading back to the great city of Dallas.
I am currently at an internet cafe in Amsterdam where we have one more night to stay. I've decided to keep some sort of journal of my trip just for the purpose of documentation, and what better place than right here. So here's what I've got up until this point.
We departed Dallas Thursday evening to catch a connecting flight from Chicago to Frankfurt. There was a little drama because of a flight delay that almost caused us to miss our connecting flight to Frankfurt (the next flight was 24 hours later!!), however we made it.
We arrived in Frankfurt where we took a taxi to my friend's apartment. I nearly soiled myself during the cab ride because, in case you haven't heard, the Germans drive pretty freaking fast on the highway. We arrived at my friend's place around noon Frankfurt time. We ate lunch at this local place where we had pizza. I then took a nap at my friend's apartment while he finished up some things at the office.
That night we went and ate at this other local place (when I say "local" I just mean it's not touristy and you need someone who speaks German to get you around). I ate something called "Jaegerspitzel" (sp?) which was absolutely amazing. At dinner everyone around us was friendly and eager to strike up a conversation with us (maybe they just liked practicing their English).
We hit a few pubs, sampling the various German beers (bier), and we ended up at this Irish pub called O'Reillys. This place was so much fun for several reasons. First of all, they have a karaoke stage. Naturally I had to grace the fine people of Germany with my singing talents (I sang Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," which was a huge hit that night). Secondly, everybody there was very positive, friendly, and wanted to have a good time. Thirdly, there was a very international mix there. We met people from Germany (obviously), England, Spain, and Israel.
My favorite was this group from Ireland. After talking with them for a bit, we told them, "wait a minute. You guys travel from Ireland to Frankfurt for vacation, and you come to an Irish Pub." Also I got to do an Irish dance with one of them because apparently she's been doing that since she was a little girl. I sucked compared to her, but it was still really cool.
The next day we took a 4 hour train to Amsterdam. The train we took is similar to the one at the end of "Mission Impossible." Man could this thing haul. So we arrived in Amsterdam around 5 PM and got checked into our hotel when it started snowing. We found this pretty good Dim Sum restaurant, then we went bar hopping from there.
There are a lot more tourists in Amsterdam than there were in Frankfurt for obvious reasons. The majority of the tourists here are from England...by the way, British people crack me up when they're drunk. I don't know why that is, but they just do. God bless them. I must say, it is nice walking around Amsterdam and hearing the various languages being spoken by all the tourists.
I guess this pretty much brings me up to right now. There's definitely more to come - we still have one more night in Amsterdam, then we have Frankfurt and Rome. But here are some general observations I've made:
-British people are loud when they drink, but funny loud as opposed to annoying loud (you know the difference, right?
-Everybody in Amsterdam speaks English
-The Dutch are not very friendly to the Germans - similar to French's attitude towards Americans.
-Beer comes in much larger portions over here.
-Everyone we've met has been very friendly towards us. I notice the American media paints this picture that the Europeans hate us, which could not be further from the truth. What I gather so far, is that they do not like the American President because of the war. However when it comes to the American tourist visiting their country, they are very open and friendly.
