Interlaken. Extreme Sports in Switzerland

So yeah... it's bean a while again, but here I go!

We woke up very early on our last day in Munich to start our way to Interlaken. We got on the first train at about 6:09 am. We had to go to Zurich first and from Zurich catch another train to Interlaken. It was a very long way but it was worth it. We got to Interlaken at about 3:00 pm and from there we walked to "Balmers", our hostel in Interlaken.

First I'm going to talk about Interlaken. Interlaken is a little town (I wouldn't call it a city) in the middle of the Swiss Alps. It was beautiful!!!! I have no words to describe it (actually I don't have a lot of words to describe the best things of our trip to Interlaken) so you're going to have to see the pictures.

When we got to the hostel they told us that they were overbooked, so they gave us a private room for the same prize as a room with 8 beds. That was cool. Once everything was ready we proceeded to book the extreme sports!

I went skydiving!!! and canyoning!! I was soooo excited!!! that day we just walked around the city, met a lot of people (I was really surprised because there were a lot more women than men at the hostel), and that night we went to the most famous discotheque/club in Interlaken which happened to be right below our hostel (and was very small).

The next morning I woke up early because the skydive people were going to pick me up at 9 am. We left the hostel and drove for about 15 min to the "airport". Now the hard part to describe... Skydiving!!! I can only describe as the MOST AMAZING EXPERIENCE of my life. Really I have no words about it. It was SOOOOOO AMAZING. I can't write anything about it... I'm sorry... but you could at least see my stupid faces if you ask me about it in person! I'm also leaving some pictures here so you have an idea. It was really amazing. I jumped from a plain at over 4000 meters from the floor and I did a free fall of 55 seconds before we opened the parachute. It was amazing!

I went back to the hostel and an hour later I left to do Canyoning. Canyoning was very cool. The water was sooo cold! at the end of it I couldn't feel my hands. The rest of my body was good because they gave us special suits for the temperature of the water.

Once again... I think is better if you see pictures than if you read about it... so... here are some pics.

That night we went to the same club with some girls we met during the day and the next morning we left to Venice.

I'll write later about Italy!

cheers!

Amsterdam

Read written post after this one!





These are some pictures from Amsterdam.

It's been a lot of kilometers...

So yeah, I've been kind of lost. Sorry... but we're trying to take as much advantage as we can from this. At the same time I apologize because since I haven't written in a while then I have a lot of things to say; hence this is going to be a long post.

So we got to Brussels. Originally we didn't include Brussels in our itinerary, but hey! that's the backpackers way! I didn't know what to expect from this place. I had heard it's beautiful but when we got there it didn't really seem that big of a deal.

At first we got on the subway and went to our hostel. Here we had a private room with a bathroom in it (not because we chose this but because it was the only thing they had available) which was very nice. We dropped our stuff and as usual we started to walk.

We walked for a bit and it really didn't seem that interesting. I was kind of happy that we were only staying one night. Then we got off the big street where we were walking and got into a very little one. Suddenly I started to hear this beautiful sound.

We ran into a family that was playing in the street. Music! I love music!!!! (as all of you should know by now...) After this point I couldn't hide the smile under my beard. Of course I stayed there for like 10 min listening to the guys. Then we walked for another block and we saw a string quartet playing on the street. At this point my smile got even bigger. I stayed watching them for like 15 min and I was loving Brussels. These guys were amazing! at this point I decided to that I had to go to a classical music concert that night! unfortunately I couldn't do it...

We kept walking and we got to this HUGE plaza with amazing buildings all around it. The architecture was beautiful! and guess what?? no!!! there wasn't a band there... there were 2 of them!!! one was a big band with horns, piano, upright bass, drums, and a singer sometimes. They played for a while and then the other more classical chamber orchestra started playing. I was loving Brussels! so much music! and so good! and the place was so beautiful.

We walked all day and I never lost the big ass smile on my face. Really, as you're going to see in some of the pictures, the place is amazing. It's been the most beautiful city I've seen on this trip. At about 9 pm we went back to the Hotel to grab a sweater and go find a club or a pub.

We walked a lot looking for a place, but since it was Sunday the city was kind of dead in the nightlife sense. We went to an Irish pub for a while and then we walked a lot to find a club where we can dance but by the time we got there I was dead already so we went home.

During that day we ate Greek food, chocolates, waffles, and everything was amazing.

The next day we had planned to check out the rest of the stuff we hadn't seen yet, but we had a little problem... We woke up in the morning, we organized all our stuff to check out but Lance couldn't find his passport... He think someone pick pocketed him the night before (stole it from his pocket), but maybe he just lost it... We walked to the American Embassy where he spent about 4 hours while I was in a bookstore across the street (they didn't let me in the U.S. embassy...) Luckily for us they gave him a temporary passport so we were able to leave to Amsterdam that day.

It sucked that we couldn't see the huge atom and other stuff we wanted to see in Brussels, but it could have been a lot worse.

We got on our train on our way to Amsterdam. We got there a lot later than what we had told to the hostel, so by the time we got there they had given our beds to someone else... We talked to the guys at the reception and they told us they could give us some mattresses for us to sleep on the floor that night and we agreed. We walked for a bit and by the time we went back to the hostel to get our mattresses they told us someone else had canceled so they had bed for us.

This place was the worse one we had been at so far. The reception was a bar at the same time, so we got there to check in and there was a lot of people smoking marihuana and drunk to their butts. The place also smelled horrible. We went to our room on a street behind. The room was a mess. There were other 4 people in the room that made sure it smelled even worse. The sheets were a little dirty, there was a lot of food, a sign on the door warning about rats, etc. but anyway... it was our only night in Amsterdam so of course we had to go to the Red Light District.

This place was wild. Of course we had heard all the stories about Amsterdam, but being there was very interesting. Both sides of the street main street on the Red Light District is separated by a river (this is very usual there). in both sides you can find a lot of prostitutes in their rooms with windows so you can see them and with a red light on the top. They could also be on the door. If you ever go to Amsterdam and you're interested on sharing your love with one of these women I give you an advice: if you see a blue light in the room also you might wanna keep walking because that means your social worker is a shemale (a guy dressed as a women). You can also find a lot of porn movie theaters, sex shops, strip clubs (with normal strippers, live sex shows and a lot of more bizarre things), and a lot more things. Obviously I didn't get involved with any of these women. I'm not that kind of person and at the same time I don't feel attracted by the idea of paying someone for transmitting me a disease.

Later on in the night we went to a club where we met Johansen, a guy from Germany, He was very cool. We talked for a long time, then he went back to his hotel and we continued our night walk in Amsterdam (outside of the Red Light District). We walked for a very long time but everything was closed so at about 4 am we decided it was time to walk back to that shit-hole (I apologize for the word but it really deserves it...) Once in the room I realized that one of the bunch beds was broken and the only thing avoiding for it to fall to a side was my bunch bed so yeah... It was a rough night... a lot of noise, a lot of smells, and the dirty sheets didn't make it any easier. I was positive that I was going to wake up with a rash or something like that, but my guard angel is amazing.

The morning after we woke up early to take a shower and check out. When we got to the reception to check out we saw a bunch of people past out on the couches with bottles of beer and gongs on the table. We gave them out keys and got our free breakfast which was good (is hard to screw up boiled eggs and a loaf of bread).

We started a very long walk on the city. We went back to the Red Light District to take some photos of the area (you're not allowed to do it but it would be easy to do during the daylight). It was about 8:30 am and there were girls working already. We took some pictures and then we proceeded to walk a lot more. We basically walked the whole city. At about 12:30 pm we were very hungry and tired so we ate something and then we went to a hookah bar.

The place was very cool. We got a hookah with peach flavor (without marihuana because I didn't want any). In this bar we met a girl called Olga from Poland. We talked to her for a long time. She was really amazing. After we met her we regretted that we weren't staying for longer. We also met some guys from Morocco and Paris, but its better to leave that part of the story out.

We hung out there for about 4 hours and then we left our bags there (Olga works there and she told us we could leave them there) and went for a final walk. On our way back we brought Olga and the other girl that works there a small "thank you" present and we stayed talking to them for a while. After another 45min with at the place we decided to walk to the train station to catch our night train to Munich, Germany. By the way... in case you're wondering... no, I didn't try marihuana in Amsterdam...

On the train we met with Johansen (we already knew he was catching the same train). We dropped our stuff in our seats and then we went to the bar where we stayed for about 3 hours talking to him and drinking something. Later on we went to sleep. Lance and I didn't get beds because it was a little more expensive and we're saving as much money as we can. It was a 11 hours train ride and the seats even though they could recline weren't very comfortable (at least not after 5 hours in them).

We woke up in Munich at 7:20 am and our first experience when we got of the train was a guy yelling at us something in German. We didn't understand so we kept walking and he showed us a gun. That pretty much woke us up and caught our attention... I told him we didn't speak German and he told us in English he was a police officer. He showed us an ID but since we don't understand German it could have been a fake one. I thought the guy was gonna rob us but he actually was a undercover police officer looking for drugs coming from Amsterdam. He checked our bags and then let us go.

We walked to our hostel and this place is great! is on the top 10 hostels from the world.
It has a huge bar, a lunge with hamacas and puffs, and the rooms are very nice. We're staying in a room with 6 beds. Jeff (Canada) is one of the guys in the other beds. We've been hanging out with him all the time. In the bar they have "Happy Hour" from 6pm to 8pm and then from midnight to 6am. In the first happy hour we met Dario (Argentina), Rio (Australia), and Greg (Canada). We stayed there until like 10 pm and then we decided to go a some other bars and pubs. We went to 3 different bars and came back to the hostel to go to the bar again jeje. On the way back we had the best kababs I've ever had. Everybody is pretty cool.

Yesterday other than the bars we walked a lot around Munich. Today we woke up early and we went to the first concentration camp in Germany called Dachau. It was huge. The whole experience was very intense. We went with Jeff and Dario. We were there for about 4 hours walking around. After that we came back to central Munich, we ate some kababs and then Jeff, Lance and I went to the Olympizentrum (where they had the Olympic Games. This place was beautiful. We couldn't get into any of the stadiums because they were closed, but we walked around the whole place.

Now we're back at the hostel. I think they're going out but honestly I'm dead, really dead, so I might stay here just listening to music, or reading, or something like that, but at the end who knows...

I think this is long enough. I let a lot of things out because as you can see this is long enough...

Thanks to all of you whom read to the end.

Tomorrow we're leaving to Interlaken in Switzerland. Interlaken is a small town in the Alps. it looks beautiful. The reason why I'm going there is because I need to go back to the nature and do some extreme sports and this is the place for that. If I can I'm going to do Sky Diving (if I can means if its not too expensive), otherwise I'll do canyoning (check this website to see what it is http://www.outdoor-interlaken.ch/en/summer/canyoning/#).

I'll talk to all of you soon.

By the way. the pics in this post are from brussels. After this I'm doing a post for pics from Amsterdam and another one for pics from Munich

Good Bye London, Hello Brussels

So yeah. This one is going to be short.

Yesterday we went to Melissa's hotel and we got our passes! Then in the night we went to a pub with live bands. One of the bands was OK, the other band sucked! but well, that's life.

Today was our last day in London. In the morning we woke up early to check out of the hostel. From there we went to some friend's house where we're staying tonight.

We dropped our stuff at their flat and then we for a long walk to a market. It was Lance, myself and 3 girls... so as you can imagine they stopped in every single store on the market to look. We walked for almost 5 hours... After that we came back to the apartment where they cooked for us for being so patient and because we're so cool.

After dinner we went to this club in Central London. The club was very nice. We were about 13 people and we danced for hours. After this we went to another club near the girls apartment, but once there we decided to go home and just relax.

It's been a very long day and we leave tomorrow at 10:30am to Brussels.

London was great. I definitely could leave here. The only problem is that is very expensive so I guess it won't happen for a while.

Hello Hello London

So yeah... on September 6th we woke up in dublin, went to the Guinness Storehouse where a lot of old women gave us their beers for free (I really think they were trying to get us drunk). Lance was very happy about it, so I also offered him my beer jejeje. After the Guinness Storehouse we headed to the airport.

Once in the airport we proceeded to look for our tickets and our adventures started… The prices we saw on the internet weren’t valid if we were buying the tickets on the same day… we started looking for options and we couldn’t find anything cheap so we started getting a little stressed. We asked around and this lady recommended us to go to the BMI stand. This line was a lot cheaper than the other ones, so we bought those tickets.

The flight was OK. I had a little 2 years old kid sitting right in front of me and another 2 years old kid sitting right behind me kicking me during the entire flight. I was starting to get a little mad, but then I thought: Hey! Let’s spread the love! Kids know how to love, so if the kid behind me is kicking me, then maybe I should kick the kid in front of me to show him that even though he’s crying all the time I still love him!!” luckily for me the flight attendant announced that we were starting our landing (I say luckily because later on that night I found out that hitting kids while on the airplane is a crime… jejeje). Anyway…

We got to London at 11:30 pm. Once there we asked a bunch of people how to get to Central London and each person told us something different… they all agreed though that the subway and the train were closing in at 1:00am… we thought that wouldn’t be a problem, we still have an hour and a half. Lance and I literally ran for one hour and fifteen minutes with our very heavy bags. After running for the third time (I swear! The third time!) in front of these workers they asked us of we were lost, still with a little of sarcasm I told them that not at all, that I just love the airport so much that there’s where I go out to run. They kindly told us that we were screwed… yet they told us where the subway was just in case. These guys actually knew what they were saying! We ran over there and the police officer in the entrance told us that the last train had left 20 seconds ago… 20 seconds!!!!! We were ready to sleep in the airport. But no!


As we are walking away they officer tells us that we can either get a cab, or maybe a bus. He told us how to get to the bus station and after a 30 minutes wait we finally got in the bus. It took us about an hour and a half to get to Central London. You guys know that I’m smart, so yeah, in Dublin I made reservations for a hostel in London, so we had a place where to crash.

We made it to the hostel a little after 2:00 am. We checked in, they gave us our blankets for the beds and we went to the rooms. In the room we found these 2 girls sleeping (remember we rent beds, not rooms). We dropped our stuff and went out for a walk and to get something to eat. We got back to the hotel at about 4:00am.

The day after we woke up a little late, took a shower and left the stinky place. We walked for a while and then we decided to pay for one of those tour busses. We rode the bus for a while and then we came back to the hotel to check out if our Eurail tickets were at Melissa Nobile’s house (a friend from back home). DHL delivered the tickets, but Meli wasn’t home, so they didn’t leave them. After talking to Meli for a while she told me not to worry (like ten thousand times), that she would call early in the morning to have them bring them first thing in the day, or else she would go pick them up. Please everybody, a big big applause to Melissa Nobile for saving our butts! Thank you once again Meli! We went to our room to get some stuff and we found 2 new girls (the other ones had left early in the morning) sleeping.

In the night we went to a pub in South Kensington with a girl Lance knows from Boston and her friends. The pub was nice and there was live music, but there was a problem. All the girls were Americans and all the guys were Irish. I’m cool with them, but this is London! Where are the British accents?? Anyway, even with all the wasted people I had a good time.

We came back to the area where we’re staying, had a delicious dinner at Mc Donald’s at 2 am, we walked around for a bit and then we went back to the hostel. Here we stayed downstairs talking to a lot of people that we met on our way in. When we finally made it upstairs we found the 2 girls awake. We introduced ourselves, talked for a bit and then I left to call my lovely parents and my beautiful girlfriend. What a great son and boyfriend I am!

Today we woke up early to take advantage of the day. We got into the bus again (we had a 24 hour pass) and we hopped off and on depending on what we wanted to see. Then we had a short cruise along the Thames River that was included with our tour.

Now I’m at an internet place figuring out where are we going next and what’s the cheapest way to get there, but I can’t find a cheap way… We might end up staying here until the 10th (the day our train pass starts) so we can take the train from here to Brussels.

I think this is long enough. Right now I’m going to Meli’s hostel to pick up our passes, then we’re going to a show and who knows what else!

I kick you all ( in other words I share my love with you) and please once again a huge round of applause to Meli for saving my butt, to my parents because I wouldn’t be here without them and to Ari just cuz she’s pretty, right beautiful?

By the way, I ow you pictures from London because I'm at the internet place and not with Lance's computer.

Cheers mates!

Fernando

Ari do you think this one was also corny? Jejeje

Eurock 2007 - First post

Hello everybody!

So yeah, I'm finally in Europe! I created this blogspot so I can keep everybody posted with my adventures here.

I'm traveling with my friend from Berklee Lance "Romance" Riley and we're gonna be backpacking all over Western Europe during September and the first week of October.

We left Boston on September 3rd at 4:45pm to the JFK in New York and then from the JFK to Dublin, Ireland that same night. We got to Dublin at 7:35 am (Dublin time which is 5 hours later than Boston and I think Caracas, and 6 from Houston).

The first thing we did was of course changing some money. Then we took a Bus that was going to the city. We had no idea of what we were going to do, where we were going or where were we going to sleep, so yeah....

After a while in the bus with a lot of traffic we finally got to the "downtown". From here we decided to walk around the city but in direction to the Trinity College which was our first official stop. The College is beautiful! you guys can see some pictures. We spent a while walking around here.

Our next stop was the St. Stephen's Green. This is a very famous and big park here. It was beautiful. We crossed the whole park and once in the other side we decided to start looking for a place to stay that night. We walked for a bit without any luck, so we bought some snacks and went back to the park to eat something and rest for a bit (after all we've been awake for almost 48 hours or even more and we've been walking all day around the city with our very heavy backpacks).

After the park we kept walking and we ended up in a zone called Temple which is full of bars, restaurants, cafes, etc. We walked for a bit and then we sat outside of a cafe to steal their internet jeje (yeah.. we sat outside.... things are very expensive over here...). After being seated in the floor for 5 min 2 girls approached us and ask if they could take our pictures and make us some questions for a magazine called the "Dubliner", so yeah... we're famous here already. The girls left us with some recommendations of good pubs with live music. Lance and I found on the internet some places where we could spent the night and we decided to go check them out. That's how we ended in Jacob's Inn.

Jacob's Inn is a hostel not far from where we were. Once here we rented 2 beds in a 10 beds room (our cheapest option). The place was nice. It was full of young people like us that were traveling and we had the breakfast included! Once in the hostel Lance realized that he had lost an envelope he carried with him with $800.... what a way to start our first day right? He checked all his stuff and went back to the place where we met the girls, but nothing.

After cursing the heaven for a while we decided it was time to move on and also time to meet Lance's friend Mark. Mark was great! He graduated from Berklee a couple years ago and then he returned to Belfast, where he's originally from. We walked even more with him and then he took us to the Guinness Storehous and Factory, but unfortunately it was closed, so we decided to go to the Temple Bar and have a beer.

The pub was great. Irish people LOVE drinking beer. Mark even told us that they actually have a serious alcoholic problem! We had a beer at the Pub (yeah, even I had a beer! come on! is Ireland! and Mark bought it for me without asking... so I thought it would be rude not to drink it). After the Pub we went to a Indian restaurant in the same are. The food was great! and once again Mark paid for us! I'm gonna say it again: What a great guy! jeje.

After the restaurant we went back to mark's car and he drove us to the hostel. We finally made it to our room with 8 strangers and I realized I had lost my glasses... I checked everywhere, called Mark to ask if I had left them in his car, and also to the restaurant, but nothing... so yeah... once again what a great first day.... I suck!

It was almost midnight from Dublin when we died in our beds.

Today we woke up, had our free breakfast and now we're going to the Guinness Factory again. Then we're going to the airport to fly to London! or to sleep in the airport.... we'll play it by ear!

Fernando