Another Story

I can't begin to explain why it's been such bad luck with these post. I think it's the relaxed weather here or maybe it's something in the beer. Haha well my birthday has come and gone and I spent that day with some very awesome horse farmers in Germany. Here's my cake

Thanks to the opening of beer fest I cant show you any pictures of the family I was stayin with, because I had my camera lost on my drunk walk of shame back to my camp site. Well I can see this is getting out of hand so let's talk facts...

I left my campsite in oxford, England and began my 22 hr bus ride to Munich Germany. The bus ride wasn't all that bad after I found out where the bathroom.. Scratch that where the extremely small cabinet where they placed the toilet was at inside of the bus. I was able to freely talk with all the passengers and makin good company with every body I saw, being away from home put me in the gotta make friends mood. On this bus ride I got from England to France on La tunnel I think they call it haha but it's like a tunnel with a huge train that carries busses and cars under the ocean. That was cool. (Photos in my camera, which I don't know where that is) I arrived in Munich after that long trip wanted to get a good nights rest, so I practically ran as fast as I could to the nearest train out of the city. I don't know if it was the fact that everything on the buildings was a different language or that I could speak that language but I wasn't comfortable in Germany. I was quite freaked out. After some trouble I hit up a local train and headed for a farm on the country side right next to a city called Passau. My host met me at the station and I headed off to her place. Which is huge.

The day to day routine here was that we wake up for breakfast at 8:30 everyday. 

After that we head out to the stables and pick up all the shit from the 25 different horses in the stables. 

Then we feed them hay. All the walls you see even in the first house picture were repainted white by myself. After feeding and watering the horses it's kinda like break time or we work on our own project mine was painting. Then we have a hot lunch kinda like a dinner in the middle of the day. Each day was a nice surprise of a different German cuisine. Then I take another free time and we get back to cleaning and feeding the horses around 6pm. End up eating a cold dinner at 8:30. Although they said it was very German to have a cold dinner and hot lunch, me and Michael think it's just a farm thing. He is also a workawayer. That was what I did for two weeks. Then my birthday came around and we all celebrated with that cake. But that didn't mean we stopped working that day... Every day is a working day for a farmer. To kill some time I bought this book in the local town it's such a great book.

I recommend it to anybody looking for a good story. I also had time to read Robinson Crueso.. Which took me the same amount of time it took me to read Shantaram.. Even though Shantaram is close to 1000 pages. I was going for a 7 day record and succeeded. I am looking for good books to get into so please do suggest some titles for me.

Micheal and I headed out on the same day because I had overstayed my welcome haha I think I got on her nerves not knowing where I wanted to go or how long I would stay so she kicked me out after two weeks. I took the time to go with Micheal to passau and drink the local brew.

We ended up staying in a hostel over looking the whole city.. In what seemed to be an old castle.

Oh passau is know for three rivers that connect. What a cool place, the people love sausages here and beer so we had some good fun. 

After a night we both took the train into Munich and I came face to face with the city again. Although this time around it wasn't as scary. 

Once I got there I took my time to find a campspot (not a campsite mind you, a spot) for my tent and then I began to explore, I arrived one day before Oktoberfest so the crowds at the train where intense. But I would have to say I don't like these trains better than London's, they are slower and it took me a while to get the hang of the backwards system compared to London these trains reminded me of headphones that stay in your pocket after a couple minuets and they are all tangled up. 

Found these people playing some cool games.

Some people surf on the river!!! I think they made an artificial wave.. Since there's so much water it just continuously flows all day.

Beer day!!!

These halls are full of singing, chanting, pretzels, beer, laugher, and women. Every body is dressed to the German traditions. 

The count down till the beer comes on the first day is epic almost like New Years, the beer is serve at 12oclock after the Mayer taps off the first beer and the cannons go off! Met some British guys and joined in on the fun. We ended up playing cards and telling jokes for 3 hrs before the first beer was consumed. I had a local next to me tellin me that I shouldn't drink like it's a competion because these beers are sooo strong for the festival.

After two liters of beer I was making funny faces for my camera and laughing and cheering with the rest of the guys.

I have Better pictures on my camera but shortly after this photo was taken I sauntered off into a park and never saw my camera again. I couldn't tell you if I dropped it or it was stolen. 

But enough reminiscing after I found out I had to go back and take some proper photos for you all!! 

Old and young alike dress up 

The whole place is a lot to take in but just Imagin a carnival and then add 6-9 huge beer cafeterias scattered around and that's what Oktoberfest is.

Every beer hall is dressed up with horses standing out side and bands playing inside, you can hear people singing from where I was.

And for now this is what I've been up to. In a couple of days I'm going to be going to Amsterdam on a bus and make my way to Paris on a bike then I'm off to Italy in a plane for a new program I found out called au pair. As you know I left without much  cash so, this will be one of my many jobs over seas. It includes taking care of a kid, and you get room, board, and a couple bucks all while staying in the country of your choosing. Yesterday I had some plans to go straight to Italy but I think I'll enjoy a long bike ride through France, Belgium and the Netherlands. I'll be armed with a mad and a compas plus what ever bike I find in Amsterdam... I find my self singing On the road Again every time I embark on a new journey. I've also been keeping patches from each country I visit and putting them on my backpack. Well then 

Ciao 

Till next time.

Highlights of England

     First off id like to apologize for the scarcity of my last few postings. Currently I've been camped out in Oxford, England, i'll explain why later but for the past few days ive been trying to come to terms with where i am and get a grip on my situation. So without further adieu let me begin to recount from London where i left off.

After getting off at the Airport i found my way to a very expensive train ride into the center of London. Arriving ive realized in each new place has always put me in a new country or even a new area puts me off balance. Like im having to learn every thing new for the first time. But strangely enough it has landed me in brief but interesting excursions for the first couple of hours i walked in a big circle of where i had come out of the train station hoping to come to grasp with where i am and where are the interesting places to see are. what I came across was some place called the London Museum. Which i decided to enter simply because it would cost a pretty penny to get inside so i bypassed this and took a look around.

 Here is where i sat down for a while to catch my breath from carrying such a heavy bag. I soon realized the small and steady stream of local people that are always walking about and find this place that im wondering through to be their home so i had to capture the picture. The two people sitting down seemed like two complete strangers at first. the guy had come first with his book and some kind of jug of juice and started reading away, alittle later the girl sitting across from him came to fill up those jugs, in the cart next to the red door, with water from a hose. Then they began to talk like old friends. I almost laughed at how the visual oddity came to be.

 This next set of cycles was taken after looking at the London museum it was sort of an outside expose of difernt artist views of the london bicyclist. Which let me tell you!!! There is a bunch of bikers in this town. I wanted so bad to go into the closest store and buy the nicest bike i could find to join them.

Random, Interesting art just outside the London Museum.

After the first few days of wondering around London i realized that my favorite thing was the TUBE (London's subway system) not only is it extensive throughout all of london. But how clean it is kept, the amount of people that file through. Its such a brilliantly simple system to comprehend that tourists have to try their hardest to get lost.

To begin you start by finding anyone of the many underground symbols for the tube. Enter underground and find your way past the Ticketing system.

Which allows only one person past per ticket. The Tickets are based on a couple of things. One you can buy just a plain one way ticket (expensive!!) which is judged by a zone system on the cost. Basically the less zones you pass through cheaper your ticket will end up being. Because most of the tourist attractions and shopping centers were in zone 1 and 2. I ended up spending a day getting "lost" in London.

Roughly 20 lines to choose from. To top it off each train runs in 5 min intervals or less. When you get off one train there is the easiest directions to the wayout or your next train, which is all color coded. Here are some pictures from one of my many journeys

You can say i was obsessed. Only negative was no Bikes.

Ok well ill add more stories in another post bust for now here are some of the routine photos that i took.

So much smaller than i expected

These guys were my favorite

this guy is in both photos haha...

Buckingham Palace

Hampshire Courts

I should tell people why i decided to come to Hampshire courts and what was so upsetting about the whole place at the same time. I came for the Maze which ended up being so small that i was quite upset and i paid the full admission to get into the whole palace only realy interested in the maze and it ended up that i could have acceced the maze without paying the full price of the whole Court. Which i didnt find to special, besides the fact they kept up the palace quite nicely i felt that there was way to many tourist for my liking. Get this Once i came up on the maze the asked me to pay to get into the maze.... Beyond words. I left. Kinda angry.

I guess i should add the 3 French girls. Which i happened to meet at t he hostel i was staying at in an area called Camden. Kinda like the hipster, long beach shops meet Venice beach sorta outdoor fiasco. Back to the girls which were the nicest , funniest, merry company i had so far. They were in london just to go shopping for two days and were spending their free time sight seeing while they were in town. They were originally from Lyon.

The reason they look so tired was because they had decided to sleep in when one of them had an earlier bus ride back to France that morning. So from the train station we ran for 8 blocks dodging pedestrians and cars.. all while asking for directions to this Victoria coach station. Being the gentleman that i am i offered to carry the huge shopping spree filled suitcase this girl wanted to take back with her. So if you can imagine the sight of 3 french girls being chased by a black american carrying this huge suit case through the streets of London, you too would have given a second look as to what in the world you had just witnessed.

 We spent the rest of the day just the 3 of us walking around looking at the changing of the guards, big ben, and Westminster abbey. Just having a great time.

 Some cool pictures inside this cafe call Pret a Manger, there is also one of these shops on probably every block in London Kinda like our McDonalds.

After our day was done we headed back to the same bus station with similar issues, they thought we had arrived 30 minuets early, when in actuality the bus was already headed out the station. I started laughing so hard as i ran to stop the bus with the two french girls trailing behind me. What an exit!!

The next few days were typical, just killing time. When i was headed through a park i was hit by a colossal rain storm and took shelter in the conveniently located shop.

 I was now in Oxford, England because of a promise with a guy i had met i expected to meet him here but i ended up being left behind. So in light of that i was now in a prestigious college town. So i took in the sights.

 Every thing here is like a castle so humongous. I had no intention of using the hostels in the area for 5 days s owith a little searching i found a nice quite area i could lay down my tent without being noticed.

 Ruth and Tobi enjoying some breakfast while taking in the sites of Oxford. On my search for a breath taking view they said i had found it. I had seen the area in a post card and thought it would be a nice place to enjoy the morning. It turned out that i wasn't the only one.