Monday 1:04 am Köln (4:04pm YVR)
Another great day! Today we had planned to go to church for chanting, but we slept in… The good news is I’m not really jet-lagged! We decided that today was the day for graffiti hunting and sitting down and planning the rest of the week. Neither of those things really happened…. Although we did come across some cool graffiti (and a lot of shit), and dutifully reported:
Can you tell what it is?
This one’s not graffiti but I love it just the same:
Then we went home for dinner:
Then we had some delicious beers and some black currant, mandarin & gin and ended up like this:
and this:
Thanks for reading! Tell me if you think this is worth updating on a regular basis.
S
The time stamps on posts aren’t accurate because I’m not online as I write them…
Sunday 12:38am – Köln (3:39pm @ YVR)
I made it past midnight! Woot! My goal was to keep my eyes open until 10pm since I only got a couple hours of sleep on the plane. The train from Schiphol to Köln was mostly pleasant, aside from one minor upset—During a stopover at Eindhoven I REALLY had to go to the bathroom. I had 20 minutes and wasn’t 100% sure where my next train was. I sought a toilet despite this. After some misguided directions and a lot of hustling and bustling, I finally found a pay toilet—but I hadn’t gotten any cash out yet, so I had to quickly apologize to my bowels and go find my next train 
Once in Köln, Anna met me at the train station. We dropped off my stuff at her SUPER CUTE apartment and went for a walk. We grabbed some beers at a Kiosk. Delicious local beers. We then went to a pizza place and had a delicious custom thin crust pizza made for us on the spot (it took about 4 minutes). We walked with our pizza and beers to a spot by the Rhine and listened to the church bells (the timing of which doesn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason). Then we went and grabbed zwei kugel de eise (really not sure if my conjugation is correct, but roughly translated: “2 scoops of ice cream”. I had schokolade and haselnuss flavours. YUM! After some more walking, we decided to run back to Anna’s place to grab cameras because of THIS:
Apparently it’s rare to see so many birds circling around. The photos really don’t do it justice.
I took these shots with my old 4.0 MP Canon Powershot. Still truckin! I’m really hoping to get to see the inside. Unfortunately while we were taking pictures, the Polizei asked us to leave because it was “dangerous”. When Anna asked what was so dangerous (bird poop?), he said “possibly a bomb”. Apparently Osama is trying to ruin my vacation. Anyway, we got outta there, but not before I could take THIS:
I’m tired. We’re tired. We’re going to go watch some Gossip Girl (Shhhhh).
Love Sarah.
Here are some pics from Schiphol:
Saturday 13:28 - Schiphol (4:28am Vancouver)
The flight was good. My plane was named “Audrey Hepburn”. I didn’t even crack open my computer once. By the time we had reached cruising altitude, I had already finished 1/3 of my book (Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions). I decided I should save the rest ‘till later and watched a Sandra Bullock movie instead. It was pretty bad, as expected, but I was in the mood for a chick flick. Part way through, a guy behind me tapped obnoxiously on my shoulder and asked me what I was watching and how he could find it. I explained how to find the movie and advised him that he would be much better off watching Star Trek. I would have done the same, but I saw it twice in theatres and recently watched the first half again.
Half an hour later, he tapped me on the shoulder excitedly. When I took my earbuds out, he thanked me profusely and explained how much he loves Sandra Bullock. I turned the movie off out of spite.
My GPS stopped working as soon as I entered YVR airport and was “locating satellites” for 4 hours during flight until I finally gave up and turned it off. That’s a disappointment. I was excited to be able to put the time, distance and altitude from my house to Anna’s house on a map. I suppose it could be much worse. At least I have all my luggage!
There was a guy at the front of the cabin who spent a lot of time standing and staring at the back of the plane (and at ME). He had two (2) expressions. They were as follows:
&
I have just less than 2 hours before I catch my train to Koln. The weather in Amsterdam is grey. I think I’ll go sit outside for a bit to cool down. I’m really stoked that in just a few hours (5?), I’ll see Anna waiting for me at the station. I think it’s just a few blocks from her place, so beer is not far.
I hope to make it to a ‘tinterweb café at least every couple days, so feel free to email me! Much love to all. All y’all schoolies, I want to know your board results ASAP FYI KGR8THXBAI.
I got a new awesome GPS for my birthday this year, and I’ve finally started to figure out some ins n’ outs. I plan to take it with me in September for my trip to Cologne, Munich, Cape Town, Amsterdam. I’ve been trying to find a good way to post the GPS data to a blog and I may have found it. Here’s a test run using Every Trail, a free online GPS networking/travel site.
Stanley Park Loop w/ Burrard Bridge at EveryTrail
Map created by EveryTrail: GPS Community
This is a ride I did with Caroline about a week ago. It involved a lot of stops along the way (20 minutes waiting in Stanley Park for C to get off work, 3 attempted food stops on the way home).
I set my default to km but it looks like it’s showing miles. I’ll have to tinker with it a bit. I’d also like to set the default to full screen rather than with stats. You can change your view by clicking on “full”.
*EDIT: I have tinkered with it a bit. Do you like this format?*
Posted in Bike, GPS, Travel |
It has officially been FOREVER since I last posted. I’ll get started here with some photos of recent ski trips. I’ve been super fortunate– I spent last weekend in Revelstoke with Simon, Karilyn (writer of The Stoke), John Brodie and Janelle. We had an amazing weekend of powder skiing and dabbled in a little drinking/bowling/dancing/eating:
Sarah Wex, Anna Wex, Karilyn Kempton enjoying the gondy ride at RMR
Sarah, Simon, Anna Wex-- it
Anna is the ski ballerina of the family (Obvs)
Most of the trip was a little foggy, which made for slightly sub-par visibility, but the snow conditions made it MORE than worthwhile. The snow was light and fluffy– soft for falling and floating in. We even got a little sun on the last run of the last day which was just BEAUTIFUL. This past week they’ve had some really beautiful weather.
Yesterday, Caroline and I drove up to Whistler to meet up with some friends for Kathryn’s birthday. We had a short but beautiful day of skiing today after a great night of hot tubbing and beer. It was around 10°C at the top of the Whistler gondy. The runs were mostly pretty icy with some dense ice shavings which made for ok skiing. The sun was out and the visibility was great. It was a beautiful day to ride Peak 2 Peak!
Kat and Sarah riding to Blackcomb on the Peak 2 Peak
Liki Liki Long Dong doin
Yours Truly obviously going incredibly fast
Emily doing something really awesome
In summation, I’ve been incredibly lucky to have two weekends of big mountain skiing (although I gotta say, Revelstoke FTW)… If I’m even luckier, I may be going to Baker next weekend with Simon and Karilyn. Wish me much lucks! Peace.
Posted in skiski! | Tagged Anna, B-Rad, Benny, Caroline, Iain, Karilyn, Kat, Long Dong, Mingo, Revelstoke, simon, ski, thestoke.ca, Whistler |
They’re really awesome. They’re Volkl Gotamas (2005, i think?)Simon and Karilyn found them for me at the Whistler Turkey sale. They were previously rentals but they’re in awesome shape and I got ‘em with bindings for $100 due to Simon’s sweet-talkin’. I’m very pleased. Haven’t had then chance to try them out in any powpow yet (due to my recent condition), but I’m hoping to get some fresh tracks in tomorrow am (we’re getting like 15cm again tonight!!).
TATA!
This is exactly 2 weeks AFTER the original opening date
…. *shakes head*
Posted in skiski! | Tagged ski, Vancouver, weather |
