Frankfurt!

Ok, I will do a more complete update now. We are in Darmstradt, Germany now, which is just a bit south of Frankfurt, Germany. We took a train here from Eindhoven, Netherlands last night to make a few biking days into a few hang out in a city with a friend days. Our time in the Netherlands was very fun and interesting, most of it was spent in Amsterdam. We camped at Camp Zeeburg (zay-berg), which was outside of the city center and had decent accomodations. I don't remember the day to day stuff, but we went into the city everyday and wandered around looking at stuff. The city is very biker friendly, with bike paths next to or on every road, lights for bikes to cross busy streets, and laws that give bikes right of way over everyone else for the most part. This bike friendlyness was a common trend even outside of the city, as we saw when we left 3 days ago to head for Germany. In the country, there are clearly marked bike paths with directions and distances to various cities, some paths were completely separated from roads, some of the paths were actually on the roads, similar to a small 2 lane road at home, but the way the roads are marked is a bike lane on each side and a single lane down the middle for cars. Back to Camp Zeeburg. We met a few interesting people at the campsite over the 4 or 5 days we were there. There was a group of 4 Finnish guys who were in town for cheap and legal drugs, a couple from Germany who was in town for a music festival (the Roots festival), and a guy who actually lived down the street from the camp and just hung out there to meet people traveling. We hung out with the Finns for a few days, doing the sights of A'dam, playing some card games, drinking cheap store brand Pilsner, etc. Pekka, one of the Finns, will be in Prague later and we might meet up with him there. When we were leaving, we picked up a tent that someone left, presumably because of the rain that left everything soaked the morning he left. It is a little more weight and we had to get a groundcloth and stakes for it, but it is in good shape and a nice 3 person tent.
We left Amsterdam and started riding toward Frankfurt, Germany using a combination of 3 maps, one of the city, one of all of the Netherlands, and a third that had all of Europe, but only showed cities that had lots of hostels in them, which was somewhat sporadic. We had to guess which streets leaving the city matched to streets on the big Netherlands map, while using the hostel map for going in the general direction of Frankfurt. Thanks to the numerous bike signs showing us which direction to go to get to a bunch of different cities/towns and the big map that had most of those towns labeled, it wasn't hard to keep moving and make good time. We covered almost 70 miles the day we left Amsterdam, and ended up in a small town near Waardenburg. Looking for a place to camp for the night, we saw a man walking down his driveway on what appeared to be a farm house, so we pulled over to ask if we could pitch our tent in his yard. He was very nice, showed us where we could camp, showed us the water, asked if we needed anything, etc. He ended up coming back out to talk twice, the first time bringing hot tea which was very good with the pasta and tomato sauce we had for dinner, and the second time bringing out a bowl of fresh cherries. He is a real estate agent (not a farmer), but lived in an old farmhouse and had a slice of land that used to be part of the farm that his neighbor owns. It was a very nice night overall and representative of how nice people are in general over here. The next day we continued on towards Frankfurt, about 30 or 40 miles in, we decided to see if we could train to here to save a few days and spend more time visiting friends. We found the train station, got tickets, missed the first train since Frank was making a call, expecting trains to run a couple minutes late like back home, ran back about 30 seconds after the departure time and the train was gone. Apparently trains are on time enough you can set your watch to them. We talked to an attendent at the station, who used her cool pda to check the schedule and told us we could catch the next train that came in an hour, and our next connection also was on a regular hourly schedule, so we would be ok for that as well, but was unsure about the last connection, since it would be in Germany. We were ok after that, making all our connections without much trouble, and on the last 3 hour ride, we got in the bike car (they have special cars with large empty areas for bikes to use), and it was packed with bikes and a group of 8 ex-german military guys, all drunk and still drinking...Needless to say, it made the ride quite fun as we talked to them, they shared the rum and coke with us, we shared some apples with peanut butter and nutella with them, etc. It was somewhat disapointing when they all got off about an hour and a half before we did but fun overall in the end. When we finally got to Frankfurt, all we had was an address in Dramstradt of Frank's friend, and since it was so late at night, our only option was to take a taxi. The driver was nice, talked to us about the city and stuff, made the ride enjoyable. Apparently the Frankfurt airport is the second largest in the world after JFK, since Frankfurt is the financial center of Germany. Anyway, we made it to Dramstradt very late and just crashed after locking our bikes up. Yesterday we spent some time wandering the city while Laura (our host) was in her classes. I started writing this post and did some other online stuff, we saw some of the castle (not so impressive since they ran out of money while building it...), and just enjoyed ourselves. I like it here, the city is small enough you feel like you can see it all but big enough there are lots of things to see. There supposively is a huge chess set in the park with several foot tall pieces, I am looking forward to finding that and playing a match (sounds like something Hrabrowski would put in the quad back at UMBC). Theres also some theatre in town that I want to take a look at before leaving. After class, we met up with Laura for some good food at a local restaurant and picked up some drinks to start the night with. We headed out to party at a club/bar in town called 603 and partied till 4am I think. The party was still going after we left and continues until everyone leaves I think. We had picked up some chocolate at the store witht the drinks and it is wonderful and cheap, I am going to miss it back home. I really need to upload some pictures soon. I am growing out my beard again, mostly since it is easier then trying to keep it tame in any way while camping half the time. I emailed my Uncle Chris about the pain in my hand and he helped me figure out that it probably is trigger finger caused by putting pressure on my palm while riding. Nothing too serious, I am just going to watch how I am holding my hand, take some ibprofen, and ice it a bit. Thanks Chris! I am enjoying myself and meeting lots of cool people. Okay, this is all I've got for now. Hope to have pictures next time, along with more consistant entries. bye!

Amsterdam

Still hanging around Amsterdam. Fun city...met some interesting Finnish guys from the campgrounds (camping Zeeburg) we are staying at, spent last night wandering the town with them. The weather here is odd, everyday it seems that it will pour rain at some point, but also have periods of incredibly nice weather that makes it all dry again. I am feeling a bit lazy about writing right now, so you should continue reading the stories frank is posting to get all the details.

Amsterdam

So, change of plans...We decided to switch it up and take a ferry from Newcastle to Amsterdam yesterday for a change of pace and weather. So far it is going well, much warmer, flatter, drier, etc. here. :) For those of you who haven't heard, I went to a hospital a few days ago after having some knee pain. The doctor said it wasn't too bad, but he could feel a channel forming in the cartiledge between my leg bones and kneecap. He told me to get ibprofen and paracetamol from the supermarket and take it as I needed, and so far it has helped a lot. Thanks for all your wishes. It looks like we will probably be camping tonite for cheap somewhere kinda nearby, some guy showed Frank where it was. Other stuff has happened, I assume Frank is writing more than myself, so if you want the details, follow the link to his world. A few things I have noticed here is the abundance of wind turbines scattered around and an impressive bike route system. I will post pictures of things like this at some point, maybe when we meet up with Jeff in Dresden or my relatives in Forchheim. Hope all is well back home.

Newcastle

Only a couple minutes left of internet here. My knee is bothering me, painkillers help some of the time. Rain sucks, cold sucks. Keep reading Frank's blog for more details.

Middlesbrough

Another short update, this time from The Dickens Inn in Middlesbrough, England. We got here last night after about 59 miles of riding and a short touristy stop in York. More pictures will be uploaded soon, check the pictures link if you haven't yet to see what we've been seeing.

The Last Few Days...

I am losing some sense of time. With no set schedule, it gets hard to tell wether its weekday or weekend. The last few days have been interesting and fun, Frank has once again gone into details over at his blog, so I will just write what comes to my head and hope he has filled in all the rest. We left london 3 days ago, riding all day and camping in open fields at night. The riding has been alright, a few hills but nothing impossible. I can tell I am getting stronger already. Food has been alright, although somewhat bland on the road. Usually we will stop at a Tesco or Waitrose or Sainsbury's near lunchtime and pickup some fresh bread, cheese, maybe meat, and some fresh fruit (esp. bananas, apples, and carrots). Peanut butter isn't so easy to find here, but we managed to go through a can and a half of it already. From what we hear, it is going to be harder to find in other countries. For dinner, we usually will cook up some pasta, put some seasoning on it and have some more fruit or bread, depending on what we have at that point. (this is where I fell asleep) We stopped at a Fish and Chips shop one night and picked up a feast of fried food - double cheeseburgers, chips (fries), battered (deep-fried) sausage, and pukka pie (odd little pie thing with several choices of filling - chicken/mushroom, beef/onion, steak/kidney beans). It was very delicious and filling after the long day of riding. The last 2 nights we have been in Sheffield with our friend Sally (who we met in Canada), and she has been awesome with providing us with a place to sleep, food, taking us to Alton Towers (the biggest amusement park in the UK) - which was awesome since it was a weekday while younger kids are still in school, so there were virtually no lines anywhere, and it was hot enough that it was refreshing to ride all the water rides. Interestingly they allow you to bring food into the park, and the food they sell inside the park wasn't marked up much at all, compared with how bad it is every place back home. We ate some more Fish and Chips last night. This post was truncated and posted a bit late. sorry.

Small update - see frank for details

As the title says, this is going to be short. Frank wrote a fairly detailed entry so I don't need to retype that with internet time so expensive (50p for 30 min here, which converts to about US$1). Things are ok overall, some small mishaps, a few misdirections and wrong turns made the day interesting. A nice touristy couple gave us an extra map they had 2 days ago which has been amazingly helpful at finding our way. Streets here are poorly labeled, have multiple names [similar to rt45/york road back home, but usually labeled as one in directions, another by signs, and sometimes (if we are lucky) by both on the map] , change names many times, and have crazy intersections. We are getting used to the riding on the left well enough, but once a day or so I have to yell at Frank to stay left... :-0

We have stayed at 2 hostels so far, Hostel 639 for Frank's first and second (his second was my first), then at the Globetrotter Inn London for a night (639 was booked up) but back here (at the 639) last night and maybe tonite...They both have been good, I like the 639 a little better (better price, similar atmospheres, plus we've become friends with a few of the staff/long term people here and been hanging out with them alot.

It is a small world. Yesterday we met people from Frederick being touristy in London, then last night when we were hanging out in one of the staff's rooms, one of the other roommates, "the american one" came back, and we found out she (Erin Baxter) just graduated from Maryland in December, as a technical theatre major. She not only knew my older sister (Maribeth), but she was the one who got her into stage managing. Then this morning at breakfast, one of the kids next to us was wearing a Maryland Day shirt and we found out the group of 3 guys just graduated from Maryland and lived 2 streets over from Frank. Sometimes I forget how far from home I really am.

Sorry to everyone I said I would email, I am working on it still, too much to do in such limited time. Leave a comment if you want a postcard from somewhere!

That's all for now, read up on Frank's for touristy details.