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photos to come…

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I spent a little more time hanging with family, including some time with my cousin and his family as a working bee was launched to beautify their courtyard. Well let’s just call him my cousin, technically he’s my mum’s cousin’s son but that just gets too convoluted. Anyway he and his wife have a gorgeous 2 year old son who spent the day keeping us women busy as the guys were outside working in the rain. Little Colin was learning how to ride his walking bike and apparently the day after I saw him managed to do it all on his own. By all accounts he was as proud as punch. He reminded me that the best sound in the world is the gurgling laugh of a happy child. The second best sound in the world is the clink of ice cubes in a gin and tonic on a hot and sunny afternoon. Before leaving I also spent a day hanging out with some family friends who have twice done long trips around Australia and visited us both times. The first time was with motorbikes and the second with a campervan and kids in tow. They can’t believe an Australian wants to move to Germany when all they want to do is move to where I’m leaving. Funny how that works.

From Stetten I headed back to Munich to pick up some stuff I’d left at the hostel and discovered one of the inexplicable phenomena of backpacking: if you have a full bag, take some stuff out and leave it behind for a while then pick it up again, there is little chance that the left behind stuff will fit back into the bag you originally took it out of. Admittedly, some stuff was bits and pieces Brett left behind for me to carry, but that doesn’t account for the whole problem. I swear there could be a PhD thesis dedicated to the quirks of living out of a backpack and it would probably involve some quantum physics, elementary particles or other seriously complicated sounding scientific words. Anyway, I was left with an extra bag as well as my big backpack and daypack. I feel like a fool.

Thankfully my lift from Munich up north to Muenster had lots of luggage space. I’ve become a fan of a German lift-sharing website called mitfahrgelegenheit (all you non-Germans try saying that one fast 3 times…). Basically people post when they’re driving from point A to point B and if you’re trying to do the same journey at the same time you can ask for a seat in their car. It’s much cheaper than any other form of transport and the driver (who was making the trip anyway) gets some petrol money. On the way up to Muenster I drove with 3 girls and seeing as we got in late I crashed on the driver’s couch for the night.

The next day was my presentation at the local Pecha Kucha night. Presenters show 20 slides for 20 seconds each and it’s a good way to see a variety of artists/designers/architects work. If it’s something you’re not interested in then it’s over in just over 6.5 minutes. It’s a concept that started in Tokyo and I presented twice while living there, so it was cool to see the same idea replicated somewhere else. Anyway, I showed some of my travel photos from the past year or so, presented in English and think I did an OK job. I got laughs when I expected them, but also when I put a photo of yet another country up. I guess we have been to lots of pretty amazing places over the past 61 weeks. After the other presentations I hung out with my couchsurfing host and some of his university friends. They took me to a typical student bar, full of rock music, smoke, cheap beer and the occasional man falling off the table he was dancing on. It was awesome!

Waking up a few hours after we made it home I got on the train to Amsterdam, met my friend Jen and her boyfriend Mark, and proceeded to drive back into Germany. In fact we drove down to southern Germany, not far from Stetten. I never said this was a well planned trip… It was a long weekend in the Netherlands so they were headed down to Rheinland Pfalz for some rock climbing. The three of us drove 6 or so hours in Fred, their campervan, who is fantastic! We got in to the campsite in the dark so waking up the next morning to see a narrow valley surrounded by forested hills and the occasional sandstone crag was really nice. The sun was shining, the picnic blanket was out and life was good.

The next two days were spent rock-climbing; mostly Jen and Mark but I also had a try. I’m not sure if they’re just saying it but apparently I did OK for a first timer. It helped that I don’t really have a fear of heights (as long as I don’t fall off them) and have done some abseiling before so I’m a little used to trusting ropes to hold me. Anyway the first climb I did was cool and not too difficult but I had a little more trouble on the second. It had a section of almost vertical flat rock which I only managed to pass by pulling on gear (bad form, bad form) and hauling myself up in a most undignified and unladylike manner. Apparently it can be an elegant sport, just not when I do it. They were both 4s in case anyone out there knows what that means?

On our last day we checked out a pretty cool medieval castle near Dahn. Well 3 separate castles actually. They were all built right next to each other along a narrow sandstone ridge and passed through several owners over the hundreds of years. Even though most of the buildings have been destroyed there’s still plenty to see, and the fact that we were allowed to wander around almost unimpeded added to the excitement. The first of the castles was built in the 12th century and all of them have made great use of the natural fortifications, building on top of the crags and reinforcing the surrounding area. After exploring all three castles we headed back to Amsterdam, where I am now.

I’ll stay a few more days here then head back to Munich on Friday. If all goes to plan with Brett’s work I’ll spend 2 weeks or so in Munich (with probably a weekend trip to Prague) then head to London. Uzbekistan is still scheduled for our next destination together.

Tags: Amsterdam, Munich, Pecha Kucha, Pfalz, rock climbing, Stetten