Next week I'm heading over to Europe for about a month, so do you have any suggestions of neat stuff I can see?
I'm going to be around the UK for about 11 days (London, Liverpool, Ireland and Glasgow), then spend the rest of my time around Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium (I have a rail pass that allows me to travel around those places).
Also, if any of you guys are free, I'd rather like to catch up with you guys.
Check out the TATE Modern in London, I havent been yet but thats what i would do in such a place.
Unfortuntely I cannot afford to come meet yuo in london, but have fun anyways.
Where abouts in Ireland will you be going? There's only a small part of it in the UK.
Quote from: Rainy Day Pixie on January 11, 2011, 11:49:37 AM
Check out the TATE Modern in London, I havent been yet but thats what i would do in such a place.
Unfortuntely I cannot afford to come meet yuo in london, but have fun anyways.
That's a shame, I don't think I have time to come down south either :(
Yeah, the TATE seems like it would be cool to see, I'll have to check it out.
Quote from: Faust on January 11, 2011, 11:57:31 AM
Where abouts in Ireland will you be going? There's only a small part of it in the UK.
Actually I'm going to the Republic (I get a bit confused with my geography) and I'm spending my time in Galway and Dublin.
If you're passing through Durham at any point feel free to drop in, also, I will be in Edinburgh on the 22nd and 23rd of Jan
xx
edd
Quote from: Rumckle on January 11, 2011, 12:07:51 PM
Quote from: Faust on January 11, 2011, 11:57:31 AM
Where abouts in Ireland will you be going? There's only a small part of it in the UK.
Actually I'm going to the Republic (I get a bit confused with my geography) and I'm spending my time in Galway and Dublin.
Cool, I probably wont be around, Its been ages since I've been to either. But if you're by cork give me a shout.
Tell me when you'll be in the Netherlands, and I'll do my best to meet up with you.
Also, I'm sometimes in Germany (mostly near Cologne), so who knows (chances of that are slim though).
If you're going to Berlin, please check out my thread about when I went there for holiday, cause I can heartily recommend the Circus Hostel in Berlin Mitte, which is in Mitte (central district), is near *everything*, really cool (they just renovated last year) and also not very expensive.
Any idea where you're going in the Netherlands?
Also, depending on which big cities you're going to visit, the City Spy Map (http://www.thespymap.com/) might come in useful (or not), it's a bunch of free downloadable PDFs with maps of large cities pointing out stuff that you would otherwise normally not find (strange bars, tips on services, and whatnot). I didn't think the one for Amsterdam was that useful, though (although I didn't check any of the places on the map).
I can probably meet anywhere in or near Amsterdam, I just need to know a place and date :)
PS. I tried to post this reply 5 times before but it bugged out on me, I blame holocaust deniers.
Quote from: Roaring Biscuit! on January 11, 2011, 02:11:29 PM
If you're passing through Durham at any point feel free to drop in, also, I will be in Edinburgh on the 22nd and 23rd of Jan
I don't think I'll be passing through Durham, unfortunately, and I won't be in Scotland till the 30th.
Quote from: Triple Zero on January 11, 2011, 11:18:46 PM
If you're going to Berlin, please check out my thread about when I went there for holiday, cause I can heartily recommend the Circus Hostel in Berlin Mitte, which is in Mitte (central district), is near *everything*, really cool (they just renovated last year) and also not very expensive.
Cool, I'll remember to check that out when I head to Berlin.
Quote from: Triple Zero on January 11, 2011, 11:18:46 PM
Any idea where you're going in the Netherlands?
I have a friend at uni in Utrecht, so I'm going to visit her, plus I might travel to the other cities, because they're all pretty close. Not certain of the dates yet, but sometime around mid Feb, so I'll let you guys know when I'm certain.
Also, those spy maps seem useful, thanks :)
If you, through some freak accident or pure whim, wind up in the north of Germany (like, Hamburg and beyond... best to go beyond actually) - there's free shelter and probably free food plus other crazyness available in Flensburg.
It looks though as if you will stay in "Dunkeldeutschland". Either way, consider it an option and or emergency plan.
Quote from: planeswalker on January 12, 2011, 12:43:59 AM
If you, through some freak accident or pure whim, wind up in the north of Germany (like, Hamburg and beyond... best to go beyond actually) - there's free shelter and probably free food plus other crazyness available in Flensburg.
It looks though as if you will stay in "Dunkeldeutschland". Either way, consider it an option and or emergency plan.
Cool, thanks!
I think I'll be mostly in the south, but I may have some free time and a rail pass, I really am rather unorganised.
Utrecht, good choice! It's about just as pretty and awesome as Amsterdam, except it's not soaked in tourism as much. Plus, I actually know my way around there somewhat.
I had dinner there at http://www.pothuys.nl/ with Faust and his gf, it's a really cool restaurant not too pricey and good food, and you can sit outside at the level of the canals (a few meters below street level, the restaurant is entirely under the street/canal-bridge). Although I suppose the outside tables will be closed in February :)
Galway is really nice. If you have the time and the means and you like the countryside, head to Connemara. But if you don't, Galway City is one of my favorite places in Ireland. I haven't been over in about 3 years, miss it like hell.
Quote from: Doktor Blight on January 12, 2011, 08:17:13 PM
Galway is really nice. If you have the time and the means and you like the countryside, head to Connemara. But if you don't, Galway City is one of my favorite places in Ireland. I haven't been over in about 3 years, miss it like hell.
Galway city is a lovely place to visit and safe to wander around at night.
Quote from: Triple Zero on January 12, 2011, 01:26:54 PM
I had dinner there at http://www.pothuys.nl/ with Faust and his gf, it's a really cool restaurant not too pricey and good food, and you can sit outside at the level of the canals (a few meters below street level, the restaurant is entirely under the street/canal-bridge). Although I suppose the outside tables will be closed in February :)
That was the highlight of our holiday, cant recommend it enough.
Quote from: Faust on January 12, 2011, 10:09:34 PM
Quote from: Triple Zero on January 12, 2011, 01:26:54 PM
I had dinner there at http://www.pothuys.nl/ with Faust and his gf, it's a really cool restaurant not too pricey and good food, and you can sit outside at the level of the canals (a few meters below street level, the restaurant is entirely under the street/canal-bridge). Although I suppose the outside tables will be closed in February :)
That was the highlight of our holiday, cant recommend it enough.
:)
(still, if the outside-below-street-level-right-next-to-the-canal places that make it so special are closed, as they're bound to be in the winter months, it's kind of just another cellar/basement style restaurant, still good food, the bar's nice and they often have a band playing later in the evening as well)
That place seems pretty cool, I'll have to make sure I check it out.
I wanna go to Eurospaglandia.
So bad :sad:
Well, gf+me are coming to Amerispaglandia this summer (probably June), I'll try to radiate some europiness all over the fucking place so it's like Eurospaglandia came to you somewhat ok? I'll start a thread about this soon cause I'd really like everybody's help and advice on where to go and what to do (and maybe places to stay and/or hang out).
Yes! Please to be coating Americur in your thick sticky Eurofilm!
wait...
Quote from: Rumckle on January 12, 2011, 12:17:31 AM
Cool, I'll remember to check that out when I head to Berlin.
Definitely,
definitely be sure to spend some time in Berlin (if possible at least a week). It's probably been the coolest trip I've been on in the past couple of years. In fact if I had to pick any place in Europe to live, I might even pick Berlin over Groningen :-P Prices for most stuff range from real cheap (restaurants) to quite reasonable (when your 17oz beer is €3.50), which is very nice.
Be sure to bring a netbook or smartphone or something because nearly every restaurant, cafe, hotel, whatever has a free public open WiFi network, and even if it hasn't you can pick up the network from the cafe next door :-P (the user/password for the Circus hostel was circus/circus, so even if some of them are passworded, you can try the obvious guesses).
In fact, when you're there (or almost), shoot me a mail or bump this thread and I'll type up some of the cool/fun/ecommended places I've been to in Berlin.
So what's the deal with the rail pass you got? Free rail travel through Netherlands/Germany/Belgium??? Where the fuck did you buy that and what does it cost and how long is it valid for, etc? Cause it sounds like something that would at least cost a couple of hundred, given what you'd normally pay for tickets.
So I'm going to guess you got a reduction pass, which is still cool (and if it's valid in all three countries, I'd still like to know more about it).
However, if you're traveling to/in/from/through Germany and you want to save some $$$, you must check out this website:
http://www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de
It's a really big and popular carpooling hookup website, very well-known in Germany, a lot of young people, students and anyone really use it to share and cut costs when travelling distances through Germany.
The site is only available in German, but with Google Translate you can probably figure it out. You can register an account for free, but you only need it if you want to place offers or requests, not if you just want to search if somebody is heading the same way as you.
You can use the search form on the main page, where you can select your preferred starting and destination cities, radius ("Umkreis") in kilometers, and the preferred date of travel (plus or minus a "tolerance" number of days).
I'd select at least 10-20km for the Umkreis, just to get more hits. If they don't exactly start or end up where you want to be, you ask really nice and sometimes they'll bring you anyway [you just spent 2+ hours in a car, chatting, enough time to build some friendly rapport].
From the search results, you can click and get detail information about who's travelling and when (often the exact time of day is somewhat negotiable), it will show their email address and/or phone number so you can contact them and make arrangements. Sometimes the detail information has extra information (limited luggage space, dog in the car, or whatever) and often also mentions the compensation the driver would like for the trip. If not, be sure to ask about it before making arrangements. A fair price is usually the total cost of gas divided by the number of people in the car (including driver), rounded up to the nearest 5 euro or something. So, say the car uses 10 litres per 100km and current gas price in Germany (http://gasoline-germany.com/statistik.phtml?changeto=EN) is €1.49/L ($7.61/gal) (http://www.google.com/search?q=1.491+euro+per+liter+in+dollar+per+gallon) you'd pay about €7.50 for 100km if you split with just the driver and €5 if there's another passenger. Price of gas goes up and down a lot, €1.49 is real high for Germany in my experience, so maybe if you're lucky it'll be €1.35 or so when you get there.
If you're worried about "WTF carpooling with random strangers, is that safe???", don't be. I was at first, it's strange from a Dutch perspective as well (first time when my gf travelled from Cologne to visit me I was quite worried when she told me she'd have two people she'd never met before along for the ride ;) ), but this service is very well known in Germany, and everybody uses it. Mostly young people and students, but quite a bunch of people also have regular arrangements to travel to work. We use it every time, both as passenger and my gf also as driver, and we've never had any trouble, nor heard about any real trouble from our passengers (the worst stories I heard were about the other people in the car being obnoxious in some way or another!).
It's quite the opposite in fact, you usually get to meet some really cool people, who also like to travel, and generally are quite interested or interesting. Additionally because you're travelling with people that have some reason to travel the same route from start to destination as yourself, you're going to find more synchronicities and commonalities than you'll be able to law-of-five your head around ;-)
BTW if you're travelling from somewhere else to Germany or back, you need to select the "Ausland" ("Foreign") tab in the search form, otherwise you won't be able to select non-German cities. If you're going to do that, best to pick big cities to heighten your chances of finding a ride (Utrecht is fine, plus people travelling from Amsterdam to Germany usually list Utrecht as a between-stop as well).
So. Long story short: use mitfahrgelegenheit.de.
And you got a PM with my phone so you can let me know when you're in NL for meeting up in Utrecht.
One more thing! Depending on how long you're in Germany, it might be useful to get a prepaid SIM for your phone (if American phones accept European SIMs? I dunno?), you can buy one for about €12 or so at the German ALDI supermarkets. I think €12 is the smallest amount you can buy.
If your American phone doesn't east European SIMs (seem to recall something about different frequency bands), it should be possible to get a real basic phone for max €20-25 or so, if you look for special offers in semi-unlikely places: supermarkets, car-accessories stores, generic houseware stores, or even drug stores, esp the ones that look really "cheap"--usually NOT the small Moroccan/Turkish Mobile phone shops, they certainly have good deals, and will unlock a phone for €5-10 (haggle), but you won't find the super-cheapest low end basic phone models there.
Also, when in Germany, buy Doner Kebab. It's cheap (€2.50-3.00), delicious and you can add as much hot sauce and garlic on it as you like and goddamn I'm hungry now.
I'm up for a beer or two in or near Utrecht
Are you a cheesy quaver?
Do you like a nice bit of beep and thud?
Do you want it hard and fast in your face all night long?
If you answered YES to any of the above questions, head to Manchester UK for this:
www.illuminaughty.co.uk
Quote from: Triple Zero on January 19, 2011, 10:38:26 AM
Quote from: Rumckle on January 12, 2011, 12:17:31 AM
Cool, I'll remember to check that out when I head to Berlin.
Definitely, definitely be sure to spend some time in Berlin (if possible at least a week). It's probably been the coolest trip I've been on in the past couple of years. In fact if I had to pick any place in Europe to live, I might even pick Berlin over Groningen :-P Prices for most stuff range from real cheap (restaurants) to quite reasonable (when your 17oz beer is €3.50), which is very nice.
Be sure to bring a netbook or smartphone or something because nearly every restaurant, cafe, hotel, whatever has a free public open WiFi network, and even if it hasn't you can pick up the network from the cafe next door :-P (the user/password for the Circus hostel was circus/circus, so even if some of them are passworded, you can try the obvious guesses).
In fact, when you're there (or almost), shoot me a mail or bump this thread and I'll type up some of the cool/fun/ecommended places I've been to in Berlin.
Well, I don't think I have the time to spend a week there, but I'm hoping to spend a few days there. Some advice of what to go and see will be awesome, thanks!
Quote from: Triple Zero on January 19, 2011, 10:38:26 AM
So what's the deal with the rail pass you got? Free rail travel through Netherlands/Germany/Belgium??? Where the fuck did you buy that and what does it cost and how long is it valid for, etc? Cause it sounds like something that would at least cost a couple of hundred, given what you'd normally pay for tickets.
So I'm going to guess you got a reduction pass, which is still cool (and if it's valid in all three countries, I'd still like to know more about it).
It's some kind of pass only available to tourists, It was about €190 for 6 days of unlimited travel anywhere in Netherlands, Germany and Belgium, where I can pick any days I want. Not great for getting around a city, but really useful for traveling to and from cities. From http://www.eurail.com if you know anyone visiting Europe that may want it.
Quote from: Triple Zero on January 19, 2011, 10:38:26 AM
So. Long story short: use mitfahrgelegenheit.de.
And you got a PM with my phone so you can let me know when you're in NL for meeting up in Utrecht.
Ok, that site sounds cool, I'll check it out! Thanks.
Um, at the moment I'm thinking of coming over to Utrecht around the 15th, but I am not certain yet. I'll let you know when I know :)
Oh, and I've already tried a Doner Kebab, a bit different from back in Australia , but very awesome.
Kebab is not that special, but you just need to eat them cause they are delicious and cheap :)
Germany: I would rather stay a week in Berlin, than go to Munich for example. Munich is boring in compare to Berlin. In Berlin is sooo much going on! Espacially in the areas Prenzlauer Berg and Mitte. It´s the new Mont Matre, there's a thrilling young cultural artry vibe hanging around.
In Munich you have beer and.. beer. Shops, and a lot tourist traps with more beer. And beer in Germany is only tasty on a warm sunny day outside in the Biergarten, not in february. Skip Munich and check out the Berlin night life on http://www.alternativeberlin.com/index.html (http://www.alternativeberlin.com/index.html)
If you want to go to south Germany, be sure to travel by train along the river Rhein (and not the fast train (ICE) via Frankfurt). Beautiful and romantic scenery. Visit the city Linz am Rhein, very beautiful. In general, visit smaller towns, which are more cosy and more Bavarian than Munich, like 'Rothenburg ob der Tauber' or Regensburg.
Ireland: I have very good memories of Galway, loved it. A lot of students. Best part on my 5-week trip to Ireland. Donogal is also very beautiful. I did some hichhiking in Ireland, I was a 21 year old girl then and it´s very safe there (except in some parts of Belfast). Don't ever ever go to Kilkenny! It´s a massive tourist trap, you will only meet Americans looking for their ancesters, horrible. Even Munich is better :D
Quote from: Schwarzwälderkirschtorte on January 20, 2011, 07:41:56 PM
In Munich you have beer and.. beer. Shops, and a lot tourist traps with more beer. And beer in Germany
WHAT. THERE'S
BEER IN MUNICH? WHY DIDN'T WE GO THERE? :lulz:
Rumkle, Europe isn't really so hard. There's Italy, Germany, France, Russia, and everything else is part of Belgium.
Russia's a bummer, Italy is too fucking muggy, Germany's full of Germans. I suggest Belgium, particularly Prague.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 20, 2011, 07:55:24 PM
Rumkle, Europe isn't really so hard. There's Italy, Germany, France, Russia, and everything else is part of Belgium.
Russia's a bummer, Italy is too fucking muggy, Germany's full of Germans. I suggest Belgium, particularly Prague.
He's right except the for the fact that Belgium doesn't exist. (http://zapatopi.net/belgium/)
... and this is why it's perfectly fine that I used to believe Arizona is the capital of Texas, and Boston is a city in Providence.
Quote from: Triple Zero on January 20, 2011, 08:01:26 PM
... and this is why it's perfectly fine that I used to believe Arizona is the capital of Texas,
It IS, on any level that matters. :lulz:
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 20, 2011, 07:55:24 PM
Rumkle, Europe isn't really so hard. There's Italy, Germany, France, Russia, and everything else is part of Belgium.
Russia's a bummer, Italy is too fucking muggy, Germany's full of Germans. I suggest Belgium, particularly Prague.
Bump. Cause it records that Roger once admitted there's non-Belgian parts of Europe.
Quote from: Triple Zero on January 20, 2011, 08:01:26 PM
... and this is why it's perfectly fine that I used to believe Arizona is the capital of Texas, and Boston is a city in Providence.
Boston and Providence are the same city existing simultaneously in two different states. Except in one state it's filled with Irish and in the other state it's filled with Italians.
Also, LMNO will only have lunch with you in one of them :)
:lulz: