Homeward Bound

Due to some stuff at home I am leaving Europe. It has been great but with all that stuff on my mind it was kind of clouding the experience... Europe will stay here.

So today I took a train ride from Budapest to Dresden. It was 550am to 245pm. Now I had the bright idea that since it was Thursday I should still go out. And I did. And since I went out... why go to sleep? It actually worked out well. I got back at like 4am which gave me enough time to pack, make sure everything was in place, and get to the train station and figure out what was up. When I got to Dresden I headed straight for Jeff's apartment. Now he is in Heidelberg so I thought I would be camping in the hallway til 11pm for his roomate to get home. But both Jeff and Rene were awesome and talked to the building manager so he let me in to Jeff's room.

Now, Saturday morning I have plans to catch a train to Berlin around 7am so I can arrive around 1030am. But it is already 215am. I think I am going to stay up and take the 5am. That will give me an extra two hours to get from the Berlin Hauptbahnof to the Berlin-Tegel Airport. Cause I have a flight to Heathrow at 445pm. I need to box my bike so I want to get there early so I can get all my shit packed in case they do not have the box for me to buy.

Once I get to Heathrow I get to spend 2 whole nights in the terminal waiting to fly back to Dulles... Monday night 530pm to 850pm. (7 hour flight, flying back in time zones though). So yeah, I am going to be that bum who shaves in the airport terminal and lives there for 2 days. Unless I can somehow get bumped up which would be amazinggggggggg!

Wish me luck.

See you all soon.

Thanks to everyone in Europe who has been amazing.


Love
Frank

Leaving for Budapest tomorrow

So tomorrow I leave for Budapest. A nice long 12 hour train ride.

Krakow
Krakow has been an amazing city. I think I like it more than Prague. It rivals it in beauty and gains points in the fact that there are less tourists. The first night I was here I met some people from the states, Australia, and Canada and headed out for some drinks. We met two local Polish guys in the bar and they told us they were going to take us out for a good time. They took us to one of the underground bars/dance clubs. What is interesting is that in Krakow, and other cities in Poland, during WWII whole underground networks were built for the resistance. These places were used as places of planning and discussion and what not. The layouts are neat in that the walls are completely rock and you get the feel that you ARE in a top secret bar. So that was really cool. Then we headed out to get some Doners. Not as good as in Germany, but cheaper. Yeah, Krakow is also a lot cheaper than all of the other places I have been. We called it a night after taking shots to the Aussies 24th birthday. The next day I spent all day touristing. I checked out all the monuments and Krakow castle. They were extraordinary. When I was walking through Old Town Square I saw two guys sitting down drinking with maps next to their touring bikes. I stopped and asked what they were up to and about their tour. I wound up sitting with them for an hour and a half drinking beer and talking about their crazy biking experiences. The older gentleman has biked in 45 countries throughout Eastern Europe, Central Europe, and Asia. He gave me some suggestions for places to see, about teaching abroad programs, and even bought my beers. It was a good talk. I got back to the hostel and a bunch of us decided to go out to the Jewish Quarters and get food. We wound up getting some typical Polish meal and Polish beer. It was a semi-nice restaurant and surprisingly my portion of the bill including beer was only 20 zloty (about $7.25). A guy got a beer with red syrup/juice in it so I asked him what it was. He only spoke Polish but was very eager to communicate so started yelling across the restaurant to get his girlfriend to come over. She told me it was in fact a juice and grenadine with the Lech beer. The point here is how helpful people are - and thats a theme. Next we decided to bar hop. We started out at a bar with cool music icons and lyrics over the wall. This inspired the ladies to want to find karaoke. They stopped and asked a man in the bar if he knew where one was. He, also, only spoke Polish. But eagerly he ran around asking people in Polish. Even though he was unsuccessful, again someone went out of their way to help. We went to a Hoola bar. We ordered a bucket of vodka and fruit juices (orange, pineapple, grenadine). It was delicious and the bar was chill. The DJ let one of the girls in our group choose all the music so it was fun. There was also a stag party there so they were goin kind of crazy and the bachelor was dancing provocatively. Hah! Again we decided to bar hop and found our next destination at some Spanish bar. They played a lot of spanish music obviously and included the bartender dancing on the bar. He was quite humorous. There was also an old man who was really fond of one of the girls in the group. Also very humorous. We left again and at this point the group split. Two went home and me and one of the girls kept going. It was only 2 am! So we found a club and danced and drank more and eventually got home. The walk wasn't bad and the club was fun. Went to bed around 3 or 330 cause we had big plans for the next day.

"Work Will Set You Free"
Or "Work Brings Freedom" or "Work Liberates" or whatever ironic statement they wanted to choose. We took a tour of Auschwitz, today. It had to be one of the most appalling shocking things I have ever seen. We read about it in school. We hear about it a lot. But to see the grand scale of the operation is amazing. You really do not grasp how large it is until you go there. And the conditions. Just wow. This day really made me question humanity. I have thought of it before... but to run an operation like this how did people not know? And how do so many people get convinced to treat people like animals? Killing and genocide is one thing. Killing and genocide and systematic torture is another. You can see the ruins from when the Nazis were evacuating. The stables (they lived in wooden horse stables essentially) all burned down and what was left remainaing were the brick fireplaces. So a large percentage burned down but when you look out into the camp (as far as the eyes can see) you just see a bunch of chimneys. We walked through the gas chambers and crematoriums and its just hard to imagine what was going through either parties minds. Another thing that surprised me was how bad the Polish citizens were treated. Krakow got lucky because it was treated as a vacation spot for the Nazis in Auschwitz... but Warsaw got leveled. Polish people were also systematically dehumanized. If ever in the vicinity of Central Europe I suggest going.

Moving Away from that Depressing Bit....
I leave for Budapest tomorrow. Its a 12 hour overnight train. I read in a travel tip book much like frommers that they highly discourage night trains from Krakow or Warsaw to Prague or Budapest. Why? Oh because of the gangs of theives who come on the trains with sleeping gas cannisters to mug you OF COURSE! Well, wish me luck. If I don't get sleep cannistered hopefully I will at least get a gay Italian man with a moustaches to accost me like in EuroTrip. Hah!

Peaceeeeeeeeee!
Frank

To Krakow, Poland

Tomorrow I leave all normalcy. But I am getting ahead of myself!

Happy July 4th
We just wound up drinking a lot. We boiled hot dogs, ate nacho tortilla chips, and watched youtube videos of the star spangled banner, America the beautiful, and Team America World Police. It was amazingly American. We then headed out to an Indy club. It was called Katy's Garage. They had good music (played Muse, Forward Russia!, Nirvana, etc). We made a German friend named Patrick and got his information. We played foosball a lot and lost a lot. All in all good times, as we got kicked out at bar closing... at 4am. Everyone wanted Doners and they got them, we walked home and eventually got to bed around 5am. Alex had to leave early... sucks.

I dont feel like updating
I leave Dresden tomorrow for Krakow, Poland. I guess that fulfills my obligation to let people know where I am in case of accidental death. I changed my mind from Prague cause I have already been there. So we will see how this goes. I might let you all know.


Peace. Hope you are all having a great summer, by the way.

Dresden and Praha

We last left off with our main characters arriving in Dresden and getting escorted to the International Guest House.

First Night in Dresden
Jeff decided that it would be a good idea for us to all try Heroine. Sort of. It is like heroine... but it is called "Doner." Now as I found out German's don't really have much of a special delicacy. Enter the Turks. Now there are Doner shops everywhere. It is kind of like a gyro, but much better. It's hard to explain the amazingness... I suggest you wikipedia it to get a better idea. Jeff and Jess took us to Neustadt for this German specialty, which is like the young person hip part of town. There were a punch of punks throwing beer over each other singing happy birthday in english (because english is hip) in the middle of the street. It was a funny sight. The night commenced with us sitting on the Elbe looking across at Alstadt (I think) drinking some "good" German beer. It's alright. But the view was pretty!

Arrival of Alex
Jeff's brother Alex came to hang out with us. Before his arrival me, Greg, and Jeff took a 20 mile bike ride to Pirna to get a Doner. And then came immediately back. We met up with Alex. This called for Chinese food. Jeff doesn't know of any places.... We got Indian. We also made plans to meet up with Emily. So me, Jeff, Alex, Greg, and Jess departed on our 45 minute walk to the Indian place in Neustadt. We met up with Emily. I got chicken biryani which was delicious. Dinner was fun because as Americans we laugh hearty and enjoy ourselves. A quick look around the room reminded us we were in Germany... everyone was quiet and serious... boring. After Indian we all went back home and crashed.

The Weekdays Mean Jeff Works
Our first Monday. Me, Greg, and Alex slept til like noon. There is something awesome about going to another country and just doing what you would have done at home. Change of scenery, ya know. Jeff came back and took us to the Mensa, where we would meet his Canadian (read: American) friend Terry. The mensa is interesting... its a cheap cafeteria where you get 5 preset options to choose from along with a few a la carte items. BUT part of the payment process involves the language barrier showdown. The language barrier showdown is when one person who is entitled to the discount brings 3 friends to also get the discount. These four people only speak english and the cash register person only speaks German. You cross your fingers and hope for the best. We got through! Score: 1-0. The next day, we were in a deadlock. She spoke German at us, we kept shoving student cards in her face until she caved. We won again! 2-0. As far as what we did in Dresden, we got drunk in hallways of socialist buildings. We went into socialist construction sites and climbed to the top of buildings. We got ice cream. We got doners. We drank German beer in massive quantities. We got cheap wine. I mean that pretty much sums up the week without going into boring details. We also listened to German metal in Saturn, the electronics store. That was awesome.

Skipping to the best part... the best city in America: Prague
We, as good Americans, got drunk on the train to Prague. Greg had some very alcoholic rum with his coke. Me and Jeff had some knock off jager with OJ. We arrived in great shape. After some minor confusion in the city some Brits pointed us towards our hostel. We got there and had just enough time to meet Alex at his hostel. The first night we went out to "Nebe" which was a neat little dance club/bar. It was fun. Time flies when you are having fun. The next day we of course touristed. Alex found out about some Indy show for like 90 kroner (22kroner = $1). The Prostitutes headlined and they are good. Look them up on Myspace Music or something. Road Side Mary also played... they were decent. The show was good. The beers semi-cheap with a good taste of American Lager (yes, I like American beer over German beer. I must be defected). A good night overall. The next day we touristed more and read in a park that was an island in the middle of the river. Twas cool again. Jeff introduced me more thoroughly to Forward Russia!, they are awesome. We got Bohemia Bagel, which is an awesome food place in Prague. It screams American. That night we followed our guide (Alex) to the outskirts of town to go to a "grungy expat bar" called Blind Eye. It was relaxed. We met an awesome guy named Big Rock. Ask me about him typed words can not do him justice. People in other countries are weird... they do not get started til like 2am. Well eventually someone brought up the fact that it was 4am so we headed home. It was already getting light out. We decided to stay an extra day cause we never got to go the spots in the mostly touristy areas. So we went to M1 and Chateau. They were meh... it WAS a Sunday. They were also more expensive which sucked! Anyways... that was pretty much it. We picked up some wine for our train ride home on Monday and got tipsy for the ride back.

Back to Dresden
Well I got back and took a nap around 1pm ish. Woke up with a massive headache. We grabbed Jess and got some beers and headed out to the Aquarium. We also grabbed Jeffs friend Navin. They had some cool live jazz music that really helped the setting. We just drank casually and talked and headed back for the night. Surprisingly, we did not get a Doner that night. Possibly because we got one as soon as we arrived in Dresden. Oh yeah... they recognize us. We got high fives upon entering. Tuesday meant Alex's arrival. He got here, Terry, Jess, Emily and her friend Steve all came over. We listened to some music, drank some beers, and headed out to Neustadt. The goal was to show Alex a good part of Dresden before he left... on a Tuesday night... during exam week. We got chinese food/doners and headed into a place called "Katy's Garage." One of the first songs we heard was by Forward Russia!, so needless to say Jeff was excited. They continued to play good music by Muse, Nirvana, Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, etc. Overall it was a good night full of beer, dancing, foosball, and meeting cool people. Once again... we realized it was 4am and got home around 430am.

Best Day in the World
It is now the 4th of July. I have finally caught up on the blog by cutting it really short. We plan to be very American today. I plan to head back to Prague on Friday I think. I think I am starting to see that much of Europe is similar so the travel effect is losing its effect on me... hence me reading news back home, talking on AIM, etc. Maybe 3 months was overzealous. We will see.

From Darmstadt to Dresden

Ok, so long time no update. Right now I feel like I am back in College Park in a good ol' freshman dorm. Why, you ask? Because after going to the school cafeteria with Jeff where I picked from 5 preset meals, me and Greg went to get a train ticket, and are now chilling in a bedroom listening to 90s American pop writing on the internet. I came to Europe to pretend I am in America. But I am getting ahead of myself...

Darmstadt, the nice lil' city below Frankfurt am Main
I really liked Darmstadt. It was a real small city... only about 100,000 people. But beyond that I really liked how it was relatively untouched by people trying to make a buck off of the history the city had. They really did have a lot of pretty buildings and monuments. As I always promise... I will post some pictures when we can get them up. Considering we haven't updated since Sheffield, England don't hold your breath. But yeah, it was real cool... when you walk into the zentrum of the city its all tram tracks and pedestrian walkways. The whole center of the city is pretty much what makes the city liveable. It is all the local shops, eateries, bakeries, corporate stores, etc. But it is not done in a Greenbelt plaza kind of way... it is done very well. So me and Greg walked around there quite a bit. We also used the internet to contact Jeff being as we were fully intending to mooch off of him. And then Laura was awesome and bought us food at some nice lil cafe joint. The food was pretty good. I got an interesting salad with some bad "yoghurt" dressing and Greg and Laura got a vegetarian pizza with ham. Makes sense, right? And of course because beer is cheaper than water we got beer to wash it all down.

We got to experience a good bit of the night life in Darmstadt I think. I also realized I was way in over my head. We went to a club, I forget the name of it, and met some of Lauras friends. Some people from Virginia Tech and other random schools. The beers were fairly priced and came with a 50 cent refund if you returned the bottle. By this time I had already pregamed a lot so wasn't drinking much. But the business man in me decided to make back my cover charge by returning some random bottles. I also got a falaffel (this is the beginning of an addiction you will be hearing about). I got real tired and sat down... cause it was friggen 3am. I asked when the bar/club closed and was told once the last person left. I made it obvious I wanted to go home and we left a little after 4am I think.... the club was still pretty packed. I hand it to the Germans.... they party harder than I could handle.

Laura had a Rhine river boat cruise the whole next day so once again Greg and I walked around the city. We took some pictures and dodged into buildings to avoid the rain all day. When Laura got back we met up with her and some other friends in the park. The park has one of those life size chess boards too, which was pretty cool. We just got wine and drank in front of some student building til he told us to leave. We then went to a Turkish hooka place so the other kids could do their hooka. Got a beer (apparently you have to since the hooka is so cheap). We got a doner. Remember I said the start of an addiction last night? Well after one, we couldn't help but get a second literally 15 minutes later. We had two German kids our age take us to "Doner land" and then run off to catch a tram so her dad wouldn't be pissed at him.

That was our last day in Darmstadt, overall it was a really nice city and I had fun. I would go back and try to visit some more of the history and get a better feel for the city if I could... but alas Jeff awaits!

The train ride to Dresden
The train ride was supposed to be 8 hours with 3 transfers or so. Needless to say train rides are always fun. First train as we were sitting there... a few girls in cop uniforms made their way through and made an announcement over the trains intercom. It was in gibberish (German) so we didn't understand but the other people were laughing. A few minutes later two others came back and made an announcement in English. APPARENTLY they were the FBI (beer in hand) and transporting a prisoner. We laughed. At this time I went to find the bathroom to clean out my nalgene so I could make a mixed drink. Well a few cars back I run into the root of the previous episode. A car full of thirty girls in cop uniforms. I must of froze out of surprise because by the time I knew what was happening two of the cops dragged me in. They gave me some German beer. They told me their friend was getting married (the one dressed like Paris Hilton) and they were going to create crazy all night. Me and Greg were invited. We had a train transfer in literally 2 minutes though so we had to go. It was quite funny, though.

The transfer went fine. We met two bikers who were biking all across Germany. They were cool. AND AGAIN a bachelorette party got on. Much smaller and tame though. They were selling beer, lollipops, kisses, hugs, etc to help pay for the wedding. They got off pretty quickly and we mainly talked to the biker guys. They were pretty cool and were into a lot of good bands like NOFX, Less than Jake, Reel Big Fish, etc. I was getting pretty drunk as I had brought a bottle of Jager for myself. A group of four older women who were touring got on the train. We helped them load their bikes. We just talked about our individual tours. Exchanged candy, drinks, etc. They gave us a sandwich as they left. Score.

Ok... so the next transfer is where it gets interesting. I went and got a sandwich first. I got back and sat next to our bikes and stuff while Greg went and got some food. A guy with a shaved head came up to me and started drunkenly screaming German shit at me. I stayed calm and just asked if he spoke English in German. He got irritated, and in English, told me that if I was in fuckin Deutschland I should speak Deutsch. Oh great. I shrugged not knowing how to communicate with this irate guy. And then I got it. The Steel Toe Nazi Handshake. Yup, he was a Nazi as evidenced by his 3 prong swastika belt. He kicked me a few times, I was pretty shocked. His friend stopped him and some other German guy stepped in and talked for me. The guy said white power a few times and his friend kept telling him to get on the train. Apparently my hair is not Aryan enough.

Other than that the train ride went without a hitch. The guy who helped me out was a student from Munich. His nephew was getting involved in the Nazi shit so he had to give him a talk over his break. He was real cool and we just talked about ignorance in society and some politics for a while.

Arrival in Dresden
Because we missed a transfer somewhere we were 40 minutes late. Jeff was not waiting for us. We helped all the older folk get their bikes off of the train and then we unloaded our. We went out front the train station. All we had was Jeffs address. I asked some cabbies and none of them spoke English. As karma would have it... one of the people we helped get off the train came over and asked where we were going. We showed him the address. He led us to Jeff's International Guest House and there Jeff and his friend Jess were waiting to greet us.

to be continued....

Vermutung, wer in Deutschland ist?

Guess who is in Germany? Yup, me and Greg are in Darmstadt, Germany! Got here late last night. It seems really cool thus far. Its like 30km south of Frankfurt. We are staying with Laura, a friend from Virginia Tech.

The Ride through the Netherlands

It was quite the amazing. The ride was beautiful. The people were wonderful. Bikes were everywhere. I feel like I am repeating myself, heh. But yeah, the first day we left Amsterdam we went about 110km (68ish miles). Around the end of the day right before we crossed the water I saw a man outside in his yard so we pulled over. Greg asked if she spoke English in Dutch, and he said a little. So we asked if we could camp out and he took us back into his pear/apple orchard. He let us be. Then he came out and took me inside so we could refill our water. He also offered us tea and took it out to us. And then 20 minutes later after food he offered us cherries and talked to us for an hour. He was a real estate agent with a really nice house. It used to be a farm. We got some nice pictures. But yeah, we just camped in his yard and he was awesome. It was like a five-star campground!

Something about the Netherlands... it rains every morning. Me and Greg did the normal biking thing. By the way I am taking the trailer now to take on the weight burden so we can go faster. But yeah after 40 miles and a thunderstorm forecast for the next few days... and the desire to be in Frankfurt for the weekend... we decided to check out trains...

The Train Ride into Germany
Despite missing the first train (on a scheduled ticket.. meaning you cant change it apparently) due to my making a phone call... we got on the one that came exactly an hour later. These trains come in the station and leave within 2 minutes... on the dot. Its crazy. So when the second one came we ran down the platform and loaded our bikes into the bike train. We had a transfer pretty quickly, and then another one. Thats where it got exciting. Dusseldorf to Frankfurt was the long ride (about 3 hours) and I knew it would be good immediately. As we rain down the platform to get on I saw the guys in the train cab jump to the door and help us lift them in. They were all in military fatigues. As soon as we got on David offered us some of his rum and coke. And more... and more... When the ticket guy came in they all sang at him in German. We found out they are all ex-German military and mostlz just bike ride/tour and drink. We exchanged information in case they ever come to the states or we go back to Germany. They saw us eating apples with peanut butter and nutella and they found that particularly odd. They kept giving us rum and I would say I got pretty tipsy. It definitelz made the train ride neat.

I noticed we got to Frankfurt real late. There were no more trains to Darmstadt. So we took a taxi again. We got to Lauras and went to bed.

So, Damn, We are in Germany
We got showers. We are walkign around the town/sightseeing. And this means we will be seeing Jeff very soon. And possibly going on an adventure to Prague with him!


P.S. Sorry about lack of pics... its hard to get them up and what not. I guess we will update in Dresden using Jeff's internet. And then again much later after that.


Love Frank

Man this place is crazy...

So so crazy. Bikes everywhere. Bikers get the right away. "Coffeeshops" that sell marijuana, shrooms, and other drugs. People buying them and doing them openly. No one caring. Haven't seen any crime. I don't really even know what to type in this blog... It'll take some time to absorb and find out what I want to put.

We met four Finnish guys last night and hung out with them. They really dislike America. And Russia. And the European Union. And the Italians. AND MOSTLY THE SWEDES. They were funny... really chill. We played cards for a while. I had some Heineken (of course), some Bavaria 86, and some Tuborg. Then we left the campgrounds and went into downtown Amsterdam. We spent forever finding an ATM. And then wandered into The Redlight District... its pretty absurd... you think it would be cool but then you realize how messed up the whole thing is. Like you want to save them but then the slag will probably go back because its good money "entertaining" old men with too much money to throw around. Oh well, to each his own, right? We went back around midnight-ish and just talked by the bar. Theres a lot I am leaving out but don't feel like blogging it. Dan this does not mean you need to fill in the gaps via comment, thanks babe :p

Me and Greg have been walking around the city a lot. That is, once it stopped raining. It is weird... it will rain for 20 minutes and then the sun will come out. A few hours later rain for 20 more minutes real hard... and then sun... and so on. During one of the rain breaks we left the camp. Lots of cool little shops and eateries. I had a shoarma pita today. First time I have ever had lamb. Wasn't too bad. Greg got what he thought was dog... but it was actually mashed potatoes or something. Language barriers... they get cha everytime. McDonalds has 35 euro cent ice cream cones so everyone is always walking around with them so we got some Mackers ice cream. If you have never looked up the city's map... do it. It is awesome with all the canals in a ring around the city. Makes for a lot of gorgeous walking routes. Also all the narrow walkways and what not.

I don't know when we are leaving Amsterdam to head to Frankfurt. But it might be tomorrow, maybe in 2 days, maybe in 3 days.... who knows! BUT Today we are going to the Roots festival I think... should be some cool music.

And Dan, you forget we also covered London to Newcastle... we are at a total of like 470 miles now. From Amsterdam to Dresden is about 480 miles :p It won't be too bad... and we are stopping halfway in Frankfurt I believe... to visit another friend! Hope you are having fun Bored in America!


Frank :)

Hallo van Amsterdam!

So...

Surprise!
After a crazy night out with Newcastle United's football fan club... I awoke on a football hooligan ferry. I asked the crazy guy with one eye where we were going and he shouted "To play Amsterdam in the football game!" Oh god, what did I get myself into... :/

Ok well actually after a night in Hadrians Lodge in Newcastle, Greg was not enjoying his trip to the maximum. We discussed it and in the end this was our solution. We would skip Scotland and Ireland (at least for now) and head straight to Amsterdam. So we took a ferry @ 50 pounds each (ouch) and got on board.

The Ferry Ride
It was long. About 17 hours long because of the strong winds. But it wasn't so bad. I actually learned a lot about myself:

1. I will not do that thing where you work for a freight company as a seaman (laugh) for free travel because I can't handle the water
2. If you want to get me drunk cheaply put me on a boat and I'll go from sober to having the spins SANS alcohol
3. Give me 1.5Liters of wine when I am on a boat and I will get amazing

So other than the wine, what did I do on the ferry? Well I saw a slot machine so for the love of my mother and father I had to play. I didn't understand the game too well. I think I spent like 2 Euros or something. I won once... I think... but then I doubled down and some card game came up and I just hit random buttons and lost. Then I saw on the ship schematic "Casino" and of course had to go. I wound up spending 20 Euros at the blackjack table. By the way, the conversion is something like 1 Euro = 70 US cents or so... I think. Dunno. Fuck it. After that I just finished some wine with Greg and watched the water. And then we headed off to bed. By the way... the toilet was in the shower, weird huh? (Maybe not for people who have been on boats before, dunno)

The Arrival in Our First Non-Native English Speaking Country
We were supposed to arrive by 10am but instead we arrived by 2pm today and got off the boat. The first shock was that they have a lot of wind turbines for alternate power generation. I think I like it already. The next thing was that I saw more bikes within 2 minutes than I have in all of England, it seems. The bike trails were clearly marked and had their own sign postings with routes and the kilometerage was different than the signs on the road... which means the trails differ. Yay! We have made it to the land of bicycle highways! They also have their own traffic lights. I love it... already... after like 20 miles :) We stopped for food and got some frites and frite sauce (french fries and mayo) and sausage w/ mayo. A ferry came from across the river with a BOATLOAD of bikers. Not kidding. A BOATLOAD... swarms of people on bicycles came off and then another swarm got on. Apparently one of the major bike trails has a river in the middle of it so they have a ferry system to get them across. Awesome. By the way, it really is flat. I was like averaging 20mph from the ferry to Amsterdam. :) My front wheel is badly out of true, I need to fix that ugh. And clean the drivetrain. Fun fun fun.

What this means for all my loyal readers
Nothing, really. Except Jeff. Your wish to make all our readers dreams come true and rush through the wasteland of Europe and get to Dresden quickly is coming true. We are in Amsterdam which is very close to you, Jeff. We will be there shortly :) Be ready to show us a good time buddy! Also, anyone else in the Netherlands or Germany... let me know cause we could visit you too! o0o0o00o0o

Love
Frank

Onward to Edinburgh (Scotland)!

We have arrived in Newcastle Upon Tyne! We stayed in Middlesbrough an extra day cause Greg's knee was messed up. Got some meds for him. Beef and Ness were great! Will update more. But its been raining for the past two days, which is crap. Camping in the rain wasn't fun, biking not as bad.

We are at a library in Newcastle... I felt like a hobo as I used the hand dryers to dry off my socks and shoes... go me!

We are planning our route to Edinburgh now... so will write more later... eventually.

ALSO the pictures link on the right hand side is updated up until Alton Towers. It has like 170 pictures or so I think... so check them out.

Love,
Frank

On to Newcastle Upon Tyne!

Bye Sheffield!
The last day in Sheffield was fun. Johnny and Sally went for a walk around the city. ME AND GREG (that's for you Ann mwahah) went for a bike ride through the cemetery. It was nice, historic, pleasant, and all that schnazz. It was built as a main cemetery because all of the others were overflowing ages ago. If you read the tombstones you can see a lot of the peoples stories, such as the lady who had 12 kids but all but 3 of them died before the age of 7. After the cemetery we looked for the boulder park that I saw the previous day. We found it which I think made Greg's week. He got to unpack his mountain climbing shoes and boulder for a little. There were three people climbing at the time: Lee, Haleigh, and Rob. All interesting characters. Rob, in particular, was really cool. He was older and came from America. Lived in Savannah GA for a long time, Seattle WA for 12 years before he left the US, Bermuda, and now in Sheffield EN. He was very proud that he missed all of Bush's presidency :) This of course led to a discussion between the five of us about how much Blair sucks as well. But yeah Rob is getting his masters in something about the Environment and Sustainability. So he was real interesting to talk to. Apparently since the 1960's England has cut their rail system by almost 50% BUT its still 10x better than the American railway system. Then the bus system is of course better. It's funny though, all the locals think their mass transit system sucks yet me and Greg are amazed at it. Different living though. I mean they DO pay 98 pence per litre of gas (about $7.50 a gallon)... the mass transit system has to be better. After that we went to a bike store so Greg could replace his seat, get some spares, and a new bike pump. Went to Tesco and got some bananas, chips, and a store brand 2 liter bottle of cider. Got back to Sally's and no one was home so me and Greg did what we thought best... drank on the front porch. We felt like real city-dwellers :p Sally made us some amazing tortellini and we all went to the Devonshire Cat. Let me tell you... this was an AMAZING bar. They had like over 300 different beers from a bunch of different countries as well as locals. They were delicious. Greg had some good ones, too, so I got to try a lot of beers. Had some interesting workplace convo with Katie and Jim. APPARENTLY they get 1 month holiday and after a month of working they can get 6 months paid sick leave and a further 6 months half-paid sick leave. Their work weeks are still 38 hours/week... but quite different than the US, eh? Seems much more geared towards happiness of the people. I am jealous because I know upon getting a job I will get, what? 1 week vacation, 1 week sick days, and during all of that my blackberry will make sure to keep me tied to the job? YAY. We headed on to a place called the 777 where I had some neat white German beer. The club played 60's American music all night it seems. They REALLY like old American music, apparently it's the Bees Knees. :p We finished up at a British House Party where I mainly focused on the fondue. Yum. Also talked to some guy a lot about traveling and he really peaked my interest towards Japan. Maybe one day I will get out there, I hope.

Night in the Caravan Park
We left on Friday but with a late start since we were out so late the night before. Since Sheffield was built in the valley and our ride in was all downhill we knew the way out would be uphill. But after a few days of rest it actually wasn't too bad. We got out to a good start. We have stayed on pretty main roads, even though we meant to use the National Cycle Route. We forgot to look, though, and didn't have enough time in the morning to find the maps and what not cause Sally and Johnny were waiting to go on a walk around the Peak District :) (yes, remember we were in the city built upon the seven hills or whatever they saY...!). The mileage to Middlesbrough was about 110 miles so our goal was to do half and half, which would put us around York for the night. Other than the scenery being beautiful the day was uneventful. We probably had the same ol' lunch of bananas. We stopped at a school a little later and cooked some soup and ate it with pita bread and peanut butter. You guys take for granted cupboard space. You don't understand how AMAZING peanut butter really is. It is so versatile, hence our widespread use of it. For dinner I went into some store and got a cooked chicken and Maryland cookies for dessert. The day was really just biking We got really close and finished up right outside of Tadcaster in Oxton (3 miles outside of York). We stayed on some farmers land for £5. I made rice, threw in some spicy mint sauce, and ate it with the chicken. By the way, the "Maryland" cookies which they pronounce Mary-land are made in England and just taste like Chips Ahoy! cookies. We set up camp and hoped for the best, because as always the forecast was 50/50 for rain/good weather.

Visit to York and Arrival in Middlesbrough
Woke up early yesterday and set up our tent. The farmer came out and congratulated us on our good luck as it looked the sky was completely clear. He also told us that ONCE AGAIN we were on a piece of history. What we thought was his driveway was an old Roman road. It ran from his farm STRAIGHT (literally) to Tadcaster. You could look straight down the road into town. It also used to go STRAIGHT to York but isn't straight anymore due to the newer roads and what not. We got a picture again as this was our second farm that had links to Roman times. Awesome. Our directions originally had us taking the belt around York but I figured what idiots would we be if we just PASSED York?! So we rode in and just... wow. We knew we were entering when we went through a stone gate called the Micklegate Bar. According to the plaques... when York was under seige it was surrendered with only a few conditions, one of which was to keep the gates and wall intact. So to this day the city is still built in complete harmony with its historical surroundings. In fact, we were able to get up on the city walls and walk around. My two favorite buildings were the Clifford Tower and the York Minster. The Clifford Tower is a defensive structure built upon a manmade hill. Climbing up the stairs gave me an idea of how hard it would have been for an enemy to scale the hill sans stairs loaded down with armour. One guy could of probably taken out 20 men. It was real cool that it was still there and in great condition. The York Minster was an amazingly huge church. It was just... beautiful. Its construction was amazing, the amount of detail was amazing, just wow. What I liked most about York was just the fact that even though there were obviously a lot of tourists... it wasn't a tourist trap per se. The town/city really did seem to just be normal but had a flavor of a lot of history to it. I can't think of any other city I have been to that is much like that. After a little we headed out of the Bootham Bar onto the A19. We stopped at a Sainsburys and these two guys heard me talking to Greg and asked "Is that a Canadian accent I hear?" I of course said yes and they went on to say "Ah we like them... not slaves to the US like that there Mexico." The guy had a mullet and cut jean shorts mid-thigh high. An English redneck? I think so. But they heard we were going to Middlesbrough and warned us to move our wallets into our front pockets and to avoid the A19 and opt for a bike route and to get ready for hills. We moved the wallets, took the A19, and the hills never came (at least not enough to pose warning). It sucks, my backs been hurting. Don't know why... hopefully it'll get better with time, eh? My legs feel fine, though. We got to Middlesbrough, met up with Beef and her friends Sally, Amy, and Vanessa. I had bought a pepper so I made me and Greg rice, tikka masala sauce, sausage and peppers. was good. Other than that we just watched some talent show that was essentially American Idol complete with Simon and all. We ate some more food, got offered lots of tea, and eventually watched Hostel. Heh :P My mom mentioned that movie 50x trying to persuade me not to come here :p That was the end of the night.

Day in Middlesbrough
Today we just really lounged around. Went to a bar to get some internet access. Ate some sausage, eggs, bacon, and chips. Me and Greg plan to leave for Newcastle Upon Tyne tomorrow. Well, phew, there was another long update with more details than you cared for!
Will update when more happens, I hear Newcastle is beautiful!

Frank