BEER!

The beer started getting really good roundabouts Prague. There started to be more body to the beer, more flavor, and a hell of a lot more options. I'm no beer snob: I drank Hite, Cass, and Max for two years. But after two and a half years of quantity in Asia, a guy can need some quality in his life.

I had some beer in Brno at the gothstel I stayed at, but I don't remember what it was or how good it was. Like I said, I'm not picky. I have neither the palate or terminology to discriminate a whole lot between beer.

My second day in Prague I went to the Czech Beer Festival with Paul and Brian. To be honest, I thought it would be a bit more showy and built up considering it was one of the biggest beer festivals in a country famous for beer.

There were four or five huge tents set up behind a small amusement park at the end of the red line. There were families, people with dogs, cover bands that sounded exactly like The Shark, and groups of rowdy Brits, but a lot of the tables were empty. It was also mid-afternoon.

The beer was substantial, and there were plenty of selections. Each tent had about a dozen on tap.

In Hannover, I think I mainly drank sparkling wine and juice that I was fed by a clutch of drunk Finnish students in town for a wood-technology exposition. Not what you'd expect in Germany, but hey, it was free. Besides, Belgium is supposed to be the beer country. Unless you ask the Polish, the Czechs, or the Germans.

Holland actually had some pretty good beer. It certainly wasn't Heineken or the generic Beer brand beer that was special, but Andy and I did get some good stuff.

I drank the zatte and the struis at the de Gooyer windmill brewpub. In Alkmaar, our CouchSurfer host Martine brought us to a pub with a big selection of Dutch craft beer. The pub, pictured at top, is underneath a beer museum. Andy and I went in during the day, but after being handed a ring of pages with translated captions and explanations, I couldn't bring myself to look at all the dioramas and photos and gave up and got my money back.

Belgian beer is indeed a thing to be cherished. Even an amateur palate such as mine can tell. We were taken out by Mieke, another host, to an interesting trio of bars in Antwerp.

First was Pelgrom, a cozy dungeon with low curving brick ceilings where I drank a Westmalle Tripel.

Next up was The 11th Commandment, bar that was fucking jam-packed with statues of Jesus, Mary, saints, and the rest of the crew. I was tickled by so many people getting drunk surrounded by so many religious images. The Rochefort 8 tasted especially good with an atmosphere of sacrilege. The 11th commandment, by the way, was to have fun. This is according to the bar, and basically contrary to the general idea of the first ten as far as I'm concerned.

Last was a more run-of-the-mill pub whose name translated to The Monk's Little Keg. Come to think of it, drinking very strong beer in the presence of piety might not be so sacrilegious considering monks make the best beer. This bar certainly had the largest beer list of the places we went.

The bad news is that it may be all downhill from Belgium. The good news is that I'm still in Belgium.

Amsterdam

I was in Amsterdam for a night about seven years ago. I ate the best steak I've ever had at an Argentinian place I wandered into, watched Germany and Holland tie in the Euro tournament, and wandered into a coffee shop bored, and out high as a kite.

I walked in one direction until I was out of the insanity of the city and sat on a park bench, awake, until the sun came up. I ate breakfast, and took a train back to Berlin.

I was looking forward to actually getting a feel for the city on this trip. I met my brother in a hostel, and we walked around the city. The central area is a true tourist hell-hole, the Khao San Road of Europe, but with astronomically inflated prices.

How do people who aren't filthy rich enjoy places like this? A slice of pizza is about five bucks. A bottle of water is about two, and a beer at a "cheap" bar is about six. Sleeping in a bunk bed in a crowded dorm is like thirty bucks.

I took my brother out for a birthday dinner at an Argentinian steak restaurant, hoping to relive the meal of seven years ago that still makes my mouth water when I recall it. I spent $100 on a pile of meat I could've bought in any grocery store and grilled up in my backyard.

We tried seeing some non-weed/sex attractions. The Anne Frank house had a line that snaked out of the door and around three or four buildings. The Van Gogh museum wasn't much better.

The city redeemed itself the next day! Mainly because we got the hell out of the central area. There is a brewery and pub affixed to an old windmill that had great beer we drank. The neighborhood was quiet and uncrowded. There was space. We ate sandwiches that we made from a local supermarket, and scoped out a little library and record shop.

Then the best part of Amsterdam came early in the morning of our last day. I got to watch live hockey on a real TV, from a real TV channel. We woke up at 2AM to watch hockey in the hostel bar, and the Bruins FUCKING KILLED the Canucks. It was glorious.

Photos!

I've uploaded more photos! I added an album of the few photos I took while I was hitchhiking. Mostly it's just boring photos of random roads, but there's a few of some crazy drunken Finnish wood-engineering students I met in Hannover.

That photo above is my final destination on the hitchhiking trip, Sean and Helen's place in The Hague. I made it, after a ridiculous series of local train mix-ups, but that's another story, and not a very interesting one.




I also added an album when I was in and around Prague. There I got to hang out with my good homeys Maggie from NH and Paul from Korea. He's not really from Korea, that's just where I know him from.

As always, the link will go on the right-hand sidebar. I'm not bothering to put one for the hitchhiking on the side, because most of the pictures are dull, and it would ruin my list of countries visited.

Too Easy To Enjoy?

I guess it's just the masochist in me.

I planned this trip overland to make things a little more interesting, to get a real sense of the size of this planet, and to challenge myself a bit. After all, backpacking isn't the hardest thing to do. You just need a bit of apathy and a bit of adventure directed correctly.

The original plan was to make it to western Europe via land. Check.

But when I was leaving Turkey and decided to hitchhike, it was partly out of frugality, and partly out of adventure. I did make it entirely across Asia by bus, train, and boat. Why bother making myself do the same through Europe?

It'd probably be like hiking the Appalachian trail north to south. You get the hard part out of the way immediately, so you just coast through the rest.

So I decided to hitchhike. That's harder than taking trains. And now I'm thinking about cycling through France and Spain to Morocco. That's harder than hitchhiking. And after that, maybe finding a boat across the Atlantic back to the States. At this point, taking a plane for any reason just seems too easy. That's probably harder than hitchhiking, finding a boat that will take me on as crew.

Too easy to enjoy? I doubt it, but a little extra challenge never hurt anyone.

What all this has to do with a baby mannequin in a stroller with a laptop? Well, I don't think I need to state the obvious.

Hitching Complete!

All in all, it took only six days to hitchhike through eight countries across the entire European continent, from Turkey to the Netherlands. It went much faster than I thought it would.

Everyone that picked me up was super nice. The Polish truck driver that brought me most of the way to the Netherlands yesterday even insisted I try some Polish beer as we were driving, since I casually mentioned that I'd heard good things about it. He also bought me a salad and a lemon-yogurt drink.

Road hospitality is a great thing.

Hitchhiking has a bad reputation, but after this trip, I'm convinced it's only those super rare stories of rape, murder, and general mayhem that sully its reputation. Case in point: I wasn't murdered even a single time.

Hitching Istanbul to Prague: Day 4

I was only a few hours from Prague in Brno, and took my time getting out. A questionably gay Syrian man served me a kebap for breakfast, and I took the tram to a bus to get out of the city.

I got way lost finding the highway from the last bus stop. I thought I was in the wrong place. Turns out I was just disoriented and spent an hour looking in the wrong direction before I had to push my way through a bunch of bushes and wet grass on the side of the highway for twenty minutes, in between the road and the industrial businesses, to get to a roadside gas station.

A woman and her little boy stopped to give me a lift. She had just come back from some new age philosophical retreat in Arizona. Some weird Flower of Life thing. Anyway, she got me to a larger gas station with a McDonald's, ensuring more cars. A young abdominal surgeon picked me up and we drove off through the countryside to pick up his wife before setting off toward Prague.

The countryside alone was worth the four days of hitching. It was a bit rainy, so the rolling fields were extra green, and we curved past airy pine woods and rain-slick hamlets.

They dropped me right off at a metro station, and were a super nice couple. We'd talked a lot about traveling, their bike trips through eastern Europe, and beer. Someone's a good photographer too.

I met Paul at a cafe near his apartment, the waiter called us little girls for only having one beer, and that's where all the fun began.

Hitching Istanbul to Prague: Day 3

I was up even earlier than I thought since I hadn't factored the time change into my clocks. I don't know where exactly the time changed, but I was up, out of town on the metro and buses, and standing on the side of the highway, something I did because it was small and there was a huge pull-off area, but don't normally recommend, at 7:30AM.

One sure advantage of overland travel is the absence of jet lag.

I was hoping to make it to Budapest, but made it way farther. In about 12 hours, I made it 700KM to Brno, Czech Republic.

I got a ride past Novi Sad instantly when I stepped onto the highway outside of Belgrade. After about 45 minutes of waiting, a kid about my age named Dusan picked me up and brought me all the way to a rest stop just before Budapest. He spoke great English, and we talked about motorcycles, American gas prices, local history. I briefly thought he was lulling me into a sense of comfort just to take off with all my stuff when he took a suspiciously long time in the bathroom at a gas station, and I was waiting inside at a table, but that was unfounded. We continued on our way towards Budapest.

After he dropped me off outside the city, before the roads split into ring roads and through roads, I waited for about 15 minutes until a Romanian trucker picked me up. His name was Dieman, and he understood more English than he spoke. He did speak Spanish well though, and after I tried to use my poor, rusty Spanish skills, he told me just to speak in English, and he'd speak in Spanish. We managed to understand each other. He gave me an energy drink, but I still managed to nod off a bit.

He dropped me off at another rest area, still in Hungary, and after 10 minutes a Turkish trucker picked me up and brought me across the border. He did some paperwork, and I played my guitar on the curb at the border. I was a bit confused since there were no passport checks, but just went with it. Welcome to Europe, I suppose. It's a drastic change from the harrowing visa processes and waiting times in parts of central and eastern Asia.

It was a little past five when I got dropped at another rest stop outside Bratislava. I thought I'd try to get into the Czech Republic, though I knew I could get a bed and relax in the city. Another Romanian driver picked me up. He wasn't sure if he could get me to Prague, due to distance and time regulations on truck drivers, but Brno was a likely place for me.

His name was Daniel and he spoke great English, and drove a brand new tractor without a trailer. He delivered chemicals all over Europe, and was on his way to Germany to pick up yet another truck. I played my guitar again as he dealt with border paperwork, and we talked about driving. He liked his job, and it seemed to me that driving down roads, with plenty of time to think and listen to music might be a nice job. I saw myself driving through the Outback, or south-western America, philosophizing and enjoying the open spaces.

"Everything is nice until you have to do it every day," he reminded me. Very true. I'll hold off on the trucking career for now.

I scampered off the highway, walking on the safe side of the guard rail up the exit ramp and into some suburbs of Brno. It was early evening, and kids with souped up cars overran a parking lot. Someone was doing doughnuts in a shitty compact car, screeching around in a circle, sending foul smelling rubber smoke into the air. Others were standing around their cars, generally loitering and socializing.

It was a hassle to find an ATM and get cash, but there was a tram going right into the city center, and I found a hostel online while I ate dinner. The place was a goth dream: faded red carpets, pale-skinned staff with stringy black hair and heavy boots, dim antique hallways and polished stone stairs and tiled walls. I had a room to myself, drank beer down in the bar, and did some serious Internetting for the first time in three or four days.

I relaxed, knowing that Prague was only a few hours away. I watched GoldenEye in my bed and reminisced about playing Nintendo 64 before fading off to sleep with my ears plugged against the life outside the big open windows.