My travels part 2

Greetings,

I am continuing to survive my trip around Europe. The first thing I learnt about Germany is that very few Germans can speak English well enough to communicate effectively. The second thing I learnt is those who do think that everyone talks English and will always answer 'Of course.' when asked 'Sprechen Sie Englisch?' Overall the people with the best English were the beggars and the Information staff. The information staff were also the least helpful people of any given city, which makes me wonder why they couldn't give the job to the beggars.

In Germany I constantly think that I'm about to witness a car crash with the aggressiveness of the driving. Surprisingly however, they are very courteous to pedestrians, which is a good thing otherwise I might not have survived the change of driving direction. I later found in Berlin that being in a city which gets snow does not mean you learn how to drive in these conditions.

West Germany is a very nice area around the Rhine, there are friendly people, nice markets and church bells which can actually ring tunes, not just randomly ring as in England. My trip from Bonn to Köln had all the diverse fauna of the Sto Lat Planes, but was made interesting because it snowed quite heavily, the first time I saw snow on my trip. Of course by the time I got to Köln there was little to show for it.

After Kőln I headed over to Amsterdam, having no idea whether they spoke English, German, Dutch or something completely different. The first thing to notice about Amsterdam is there are bikes:
- On the bike paths all through the city
- On the road
- On the foot path
- Everywhere else they can possibly traverse

If you manage to walk around the city without being hit by a bike, you will be attacked by an endless stream of people wanted to deprive you of you money, for any goods or services they can think to sell to you. As a result I did not enjoy Amsterdam at all, it seems to be held up from falling in a heap through the exploitation of tourists alone.

I spend one day in Brussels and found it to be a very mixed experience. The area I stayed in was a bit out of the city, and people were generally rude and angry at everyone. I saw 20 cars lined up in the street leaning on horns for 15 minutes because no one was prepared to let anyone else pass. The inner part of the city was a very different experience. I spent a while wondering around the European union headquarters there, but it's essentially just a pile of office buildings and not too exciting.

My first impression of Berlin was a cyclone fence. It was some time before I managed to get anywhere at all that wasn't blocked by fencing. I found the entire city was like this. I was expecting more from Berlin, the city has lots of empty lots, run down buildings and just feels empty. There wasn't even much up by way of Christmas displays. On boxing day in started to snow heavily and I was very happy to walk around a city covered in snow. As it turned to ice in the following days the excitement was lowered significantly, but still fun.

After Christmas I attended the 22nd Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin. It was a great experience, which lots of very clever people giving a large range of talks. I took down some items of interest for uni projects and became convinced that Aibos are a very cool toy to have.

New year's eve was surrounded by 48 hours of fireworks going off in the street. Fireworks are commercially available in Berlin. As a result there were so many being let off in the street it made the official display look a bit weak. A large park was set up as a big street party, with make shift night clubs in tents every few meters. The people who had all been hiding to make Berlin seem empty came out for the event.

On new year's day I Took a train through very pretty snowy valleys in the Czech Republic. Arriving in Prague on a public holiday (and a Sunday) with no map and a 40 minute walk to my hostel was an interesting experience. Prague is a very nice city. There are lots of old Gothic buildings, and instead of replacing them people just added now buildings on to the side. This results in a strange mix of architecture and some interesting mazes inside buildings. Unlike Amsterdam, Prague is a heavily tourist infested city without someone trying to force you to buy something every 5 meters, which is nice. The other side of this however, is the tourists in Prague are many and painful. Ignoring signs requesting silence in church and not taking photos two of the most obvious issues. In many areas it becomes impossible to walk down the street without walking into some one's photo.

With only the minor hassle of a bomb threat at the main train station I managed to continue to Budapest. From here I intent to continue my journey across the bottom half of Europe.

Bruce