The Epic Eurotrip--Chapter 9: The Dragon on the Wooden Bridge (Switzerland-- Lucerne, Mt. Pilatus.)

Today's journey starts in Lucerne. Lucerne, unlike many cities we've been to, is not known for the largest population or as capital of a nation or whatever. True, it's a large city, but what's famous about this city is the scenery and culture. The wooden bridge is one of the most famous tourist attraction. With the bridge, the lake, and the water tower at the middle, a very picture worthy view is created. Besides the city, we also went up to the Pilatus Mountain. It's high up there that requires either train or gondola lift to get up. Since it's really high, you can still see snow, even though it was the end of May when we visited.

"To the loyalty and bravery of Swiss"

The first stop was the Lion Monument. This is a monument created by Bertel Thorvaldsen for French Revolution. This is done directly on a giant rock (big enough to show the grandness, but not too big so to make the statue too small.) Apparently it took this guy a long time before choosing this rock to sculpt. I urge you guys to zoom in this picture to see the detail. The first thing you'll see is the title on top: "Helvetiorum Fidei ac Virtuti," which means "To the loyalty and bravery of Swiss." This monument tells the story of the Swiss army during French Revolution. At the time, Swiss people can go out and be mercenaries (nowadays they would be jailed,) and some of the Swiss fought for French, or the French Monarchy. Now if you look closely, you can see that this lion is in pain and has a broken spear stabbed into its body. Next to the lion, you can see some weapons with the Swiss symbol. You might wonder, "why is the lion not holding the Swiss weapon if it's supposed to represent the Swiss army?" This monument is showing the loyalty, but not the loyalty to Switzerland, but to whoever hired them to fight. In this case, it's the French. Even when the lion's dying, it's holding a shield with the French Symbol. This monument's message is as followed: "Even to death, we Swiss fight, with our honor, for the ones we serve." Instead of guarding their own symbol, they protected the French symbol instead. In history, these people were all killed by the revolutionists in really brutal ways (cutting into pieces, breaking skulls, or some of the Saw ways you can remember.) Now, the Pope only uses Swiss soldiers because of their loyalty. I believe you can see why now. This monument is very well done. Unlike majorities of the monuments that are just one obelisk, this one tells a great story. You can really see the struggle on the lion face. I really recommend going there to see it yourself. It's definitely worth the trip.

After visiting the monument, we traveled toward the center of the city. It's not too far from this place. The city is a lot like Zurich, where it's built where the lake meets the river. This time, the lake is Lucerne Lake, and the river is Reuss River. It looks like this. The top left part is the river, and the bottom right is the lake.

The Chapel Bridge and the water tower.

At the middle of the map, you can see a bridge that looks different from the rest of the bridges. This one is the famous wooden bridge called the Chapel Bridge. Its name is just Chapel since there's a chapel right at the end of it. This bridge is built in 14th century, and it's kept until today. When walking on the bridge, you can see many painting on top of the bridge, and the water tower is convert into a souvenir shop.......it's pretty crappy. It didn't even have many selections of magnet, something I actually buy. The bridge was once burnt partially actually. Some idiot drove his boat straight into the bridge. many paintings were destroyed because of this incident, so you actually don't see as many paintings as before. Good thing is that they at least preserved 2 or 3 so that you have an idea what they look like.

There are many swans in the river/lake, so many that they make the lake look very crowded. Many people were just feeding them bread or cookies. I'm not sure if that's legal (it isn't here.) Anyway, coming here as a tourist, of course I had to try it as well:

It's quite fun, but they'll get mad if you to trick them. This one almost came up to land to chase me (that's how I felt......)

Jesuit Church, farmers' market, and restaurants.

There are many other buildings around the lake/river, including the Jesuit Church, the train station (the only place in Switzerland where I saw hobos,) and many restaurants and farmers' market. The environment was very lively, and people were nice here. The only problem? Stuff is expensive here! I got a cup of mocha, and it cost me 8 bucks!! 8 FUCKING BUCKS!!!!!! In US I could get 2 or more cups with this money. No wonder their average salary is higher than other countries. They have to have higher salary to live!

I gotta say, even if the stuff is expensive here, this place is still the best place for retirement. When you have money (hopefully you have money by the time you retire) and want to choose a foreign country to live in, choose this place. Life is chill and comfortable here. Best for old people.

Hofkirche St. Leodegar

Another famous building here is Hofkirche St. Leodegar (hofkirche means the Court Church. You can see this name pretty often around Europe.). This one has a long history too. Apparently they have organ performance here from time to time. I had some luck to catch about 20 minutes of the performance. It was pretty fantastic, especially in a church. It makes the church feel really dignified. There weren't many people in the church. For a while, I was the only one (besides the people playing organ upstairs.) It felt really weird, like I was disconnected from the world and completed isolated in an unknown place (with awesome music, though.) it's not something you would experience everyday (not for me at least.)

View from the boat.

During the day, we went on the lake tour. The boat was going very slow, so we had a good view of everything. With the snowy mountain in the back and water and buildings in the front, it's only a view you can see in posters or canvas. We also had a nice lunch while touring. It was kinda bleh though. The pasta was too dry and the sausage was just whatever. The soup was rich and creamy though. Still, the view trumps the bad experience of the meal. I guess I can accept that.

Oh, again Chinese workers show up in the biggest souvenir shop here. As we all know Switzerland is known for making watches (and their bank, but you can't buy banks as souvenirs.) This place has SOOOOOO many Chinese. By this time I was over this hate of "Chinese owning the best spot of the city" idea. I guess they're very good at picking their spots.

Talking about chill life......

In the afternoon, we went onto Mt. Pilatus to see the Alpine Mountains. This place is pretty high (around 7000 ft) and would require either train or gondola to take you up. We took the train up there and gondola down. Pretty cool experience. The symbol for this mountain is a dragon. The story is that people in the past had seen dragons flying into this mountain multiple times. Of course the search has gone fruitless, but the legend remained. In fact, there are many legends about this mountain. Besides the dragon's nest, it also has "the Home of the Giants," "the Tomb of the Emperor," "the Weather Creator," and many others. I guess it's because this mountain is the tallest around here (again, around 7,000 ft) so it's easy for people to fit myths into this mountain. It sure is one of the mountains with many stories.

The Symbol of this place is a dragon.

The train ride was pretty smooth, and we were all excited to see snow. The train has a weird shape. it's slanted. There are supposed mountain goats around, but we didn't see any.

What the train looks like.

The train viewed from outside

We arrived at a building with a good view, but it's not the highest point yet. You can climb for another few hundred feet to get to higher spot (which is still not the highest. The highest spot is used for weather forecast and observatory.) The picture below gives a good idea what it looks like:

The trail leads to higher spots.

Behind the mountains, you can see the entire Lucerne and surrounding cities, but it was pretty foggy that day (below the mountain. As you can see the weather was pretty good up there that day.) so i couldn't get any decent photo, unfortunately.

We stayed for around an hour. There's not much to do up here. You could walk up the trails and take pictures, or sit down there and drink some coffee. Some did the first one while the others decided to sit there and drink some nice coffee, both are very nice.

View of the gondola from the mountain top.

We took the gondola down the mountain. The experience was equally exciting. The view changed from white to green as we headed down. Since they only fit 4 in the cart, 4 of us talked about our background and our view of this trip. I learned a lot about the other 3 people in this 15-minute ride. Oh, someone who lived there mowed the lawn in front of his house into the shape of weed. I think he's an amazing guy, lol.

After we got down from the mountain, we checked into the hotel in downtown. It's only a 5-minute walk from the center of town. We had fondue (apparently it's famous here) next to the lake. It was not good at all. They only served bread and potatoes, and they didn't even offer different flavors. Also it was very bitter, even for me. I'm glad I got my own dish. My friends complained about it and I felt sorry for them. It wasn't cheap, either. I guess the majority of the money comes from the view. I mean it's RIGHT next to the lake. If you straightened your legs, you could touch the water. That was how close we were to the lake (I was glad that the swans didn't come to beg for food, like some ducks/pigeons do in US......)

The night view of this place is even more beautiful than day time. This is one of the moment when I felt I wanted a better camera and a tripod to capture the beauty of this place. Too bad, I had neither, so this is the best i could do:

Night view of the city.

Pretty blurry, right? behind the bridge were the restaurants, the only places that were still open at that time (8 pm, I mean, seriously, this is a major city and they close shit up at 7.......) I'm glad I chose to walk around after dinner as some of the people decided to call it a day. I walked into an accordion performance and an alpen horn performance. i liked the alpen horn one more as this instrument is not very common in the US. Someone (also a tourist, judging from the fancy camera he had) was invited to try blowing the horn and making a sound. He couldn't. You really need to train for this thing.

I was gonna write something about Vaduz as well, but I guess I'm too tired for that. Next time.

Next stop: Vaduz, Liechtenstein.

The Epic Eurotrip--Chapter 8: Cheese, Chocolate, and Things That Can Make You Fat (Switzerland-- Rhine Fall, Zurich)

I was going to include Lucerne in this post as well, but figure to leave it out so I can combine it with Mt. Pilatus for the next post. There are so many good pictures for Lucerne, so I don't want to miss any of those to keep this post concise.

This was Day 5 of my trip (yes, after so many posts, it's only day 5. 11 more days to go!) We've crossed 4 countries so far and entering the fifth. Switzerland is a beautiful country, and the average income is one of the highest in Europe. Being so high up there, Swiss people refused to join the European Union (which is probably a good idea knowing how much of a crisis EU is in right now.) They don't use Euro because of this. It gave me a lot of trouble because I had to use my credit for everything. If a place doesn't accept credit card (like those cheap Chinese restaurants) I would've been screwed.

The island at middle (the one with Swiss flag) is climbable.
You can see the waterfall from top.

The trip started at Rhine Fall, one of the largest waterfalls in Europe. If you have been to Niagara Falls, then this is nothing to you. Although they claim that the water volume that goes through this fall is very large, it doesn't look that amazing in real life. Still, since I've never been to Niagara Falls, this will do. Probably because everyone in the group has been to Niagara Falls already, no one wanted to go up to the island with me. They only charge you 7 Euros (you can either use euro or swiss francs here) for going up. To me, it's a no-brainer. I still don't understand why people don't want to spend a little more to enjoy the trip fully.

The son from the Italian family,
with the Swiss flag.

The used a boat to take us up there. On that boat, there are two more families besides me. One is from India and the other is from Italy. I talked to the Italian family about their trip. They are not really from a famous city in Italy, so I don't remember the name of the city. However, it's pretty close to the boarder of Italy (north) and they drove all the way here (across Switzerland.) I told them that I was in a group going around Europe. I also told them that Italy is one of our destinations and we will be going to several cities in Italy. The son was the only one whose English is good enough to communicate, so I was talking to him most of the time. For one moment, the conversation went like this:
Me: "we'll be going to Italy in a week."
Son:" Ah, let me guess... Roma, Firenze, Venecia, and Pisa?"
Me:" Wow! You're dead on! We're also going to Vatican City."
Son:" Yea, that's another country, and it's inside Roma. Tourists always go to these places."
Me:" Well, and I'm a tourist."
Son:" Nothing is really fun besides Roma. No point going to other cities."

He reminded me of those times when my friends from Taiwan were asking about San Francisco and LA. All I told them was "nothing is really worth mentioning. It's just SF and LA." I guess the local Italians feel the same way about their cities. They're proud to have such incredible cities that everyone wants to go. At the same time they don't really care about going themselves. To me, LA only has bad traffics and SF only has hobos and hippies (and weed, but that's everywhere.)

Rhine Fall from top of the island.

We then move onto Zurich, where we stayed for a night. I gotta say, Swiss people, out of all Europeans, are the most chill. We arrived on a Monday afternoon, and this is what Zurich looked like:

Chill life at Lake Zurich

A little background about Zurich. Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and is one of the biggest financial centers in the world. You get to see many banks around here. If this is the only information I had, I would imagine people in Zurich acting like New Yorkers who are always busy and have piss-drunk face all the time. I was wrong, very wrong. Look at the picture once again. This is a Monday afternoon, a little before 5 pm. I would never imagine seeing this. People are just sitting around eating, chatting, and listening to music. Some were even feeding the swans (there are a lot of these. Lucerne has a lot, too.) This place is like the center of the city, where River Limmat meets Lake Zurich. It was very lively, but not the way I imagined. Well, good for them, I guess.

A good view of Grossmunster

Besides the lake and the river, there are several important buildings around this area. The picture on right shows Grossmünster, or Great Minster. It's a Romanesque style church built in 1100. It is one of the 3 largest churches in Zurich. The other two being Fraumunster (Women's church or Out Lady's Church) and St. Peterskirche (St. Peter's Church.) I did not walk into any of them due to time constrain, but I assume it's a lot similar to all the churches I've seen so far. The view outside was way more attractive than the inside of the church. I'm sure.

Another good view of Zurich and River Limmat.
The green pointy building is Fraumunster and
the other pointy one is St. Peter's. The bridge on the right
is the Minster Bridge.

One of the members in the group mentioned that he has seen postal stamps having the same image as the postal stamps. I couldn't find the exact one he showed, but I guess this will do the job. 

Okay, I'm sure busy people still exist in Zurich since I've only seen a little bit of this city. We didn't go to the famous shopping district or any of the spots that could look busier. Still, life here seems chill.

Hm......to be honest, that's all I can share with you for this city. Feel free to go online and wiki to learn more about this city. Since I didn't go to many places here, I couldn't really tell you how I felt about this. There's one thing I know though. I'm definitely coming back to Switzerland. This place is so beautiful and so clean. I heard it's one of the countries that don't have many crimes as well. Life here can be peaceful and wonderful. I'll just share one more picture of this place.

A closer look of the chill life in Zurich

Oh, say what? You don't like my posts? Well, you can.....

Next stop: Lucerne, Switzerland.

The Epic Eurotrip--Chapter 7: Mein Kampf II (Germany--Heidelberg, Titi See)

The journey continued south. We went to Heidelberg first to visit the old castle (or the remaining of it.) This castle is called Heidelberg Schloss, or Heidelberg Castle. This castle went through natural disasters and human destruction in the old time. Lightning struck it twice, and wars happened which damaged the castle as well. People in the old time tried to repair it, but more shit happened and the repair was never completed. Poor castle. Therefore, whatever we saw was only part of it. They only tried to keep the main building (King's room?) in tact so that they at least have something to show. It was raining when we went there, so a lot of pictures don't have good quality. However, walking in the rain gave us another type of experience, especially in an old town like this. Still, it was a little annoying when you had to worry about rain getting into your camera or destroying your lenses.

A view of the castle. See all those reparation sites?

The footprint. There's only one of them. This soldier must be
really strong to land with one foot.

For old places like this one, there are of course many stories to be told. One of the famous one was when the castle was on fire, a soldier jumped down from the watch tower with his armor. He didn't die, surprisingly, but his footprint (only one, for some reason) was left on the floor. True, this story makes no sense, but it's fun to know legends like this. Although the outside of the castle is old, they actually converted some of the structures into offices and restaurants. In the castle, the ceiling still has the feeling from 16th century or something, but the functionality is completely modern. We saw bars that serve beer and fresh coffee. Air conditioning also exists in the castle.

One of the coffee shops in the castle.

Giant keg in the castle. The king who made
this must love drinking. Then again, who doesn't?

Okay, time to rant again. I promise this will be short. Same topic: tourist causing damage. Remember all the graffiti and signatures on the walls of Cologne Cathedral? This happens here as well. Check out this picture:

I saw this on one of the kegs and couldn't help to snap a picture just so I can complain here. This keg was apparently made in 1751, and now you fucking destroyed it. Fuck you, Andy Shack from US. Fuck you, Jason Vaughan from Michigan. Fuck you!

Heidelberg was also known for its university here. Many famous/powerful people are alumni of this school. The town also gives out an old feeling. Its use of color and style really make you feel "this is how old Europe looked like."

View of the city from the castle 

In the afternoon, we moved to Titi See, or Titi Lake. This place is deep into the black forest in the mountains. Black forest used to have dense woods and leaves, so dense that you could barely see sunlight. Today, of course, it's not like that due to human development and logging too much. This town is very small. Population is only a little over 3000. Most of the business here is for tourists. Like the town near Loreley, this place only operates for half a year every year due to the cold weather in winters.

Plaza at the middle of the town.

The name Titi came from the emperor named Titus. It's said that Titus found this place when he was on the way to conquer Israel. He saw the lake and was like "damn this is beautiful!" So, to kiss his ass, people named this place after him. This guy is best known for completing the Colosseum. His family has overthrown Emperor Nero, and, to cover Nero's legacy, they brought down Nero's golden statue and covered the blood lake created from killing thousands of people (Nero's order) by building Colosseum at the spot (covering blood through with more blood. Don't know if that's smart or not.) I'll probably go into more detail when we get to Italy. European countries are in general not big, so there are many stories in different countries that share the same names.

The largest(?) cuckoo clock in the world.

Probably because of the low population, the town seems very peaceful. Not dead, just peaceful. You would think: "well, since this town is so far away from rest of the world, that means there shouldn't be many Chinese here, right?" WRONG! Titi See is known for its cuckoo clocks (because of the wood they use,) and the biggest cuckoo clock store is FULL OF CHINESE WORKERS!! They also have Chinese signs and words all over the store. 3,000 population......yet there's a Chinese store......Chinese really know how to make money.

I talked to one of the workers in a shop about tourism here (she was cute. That's the main reason. German girls are really cute. I'm having white girl crush because of them.) She said that tourists normally started showing up around April time frame. More will come during summer time, and the crowd dies down in late September. Stores close around early October (less crowd, and the lake is freezing up.) During summer vacation, many students would come from other towns to work here for some extra money to finish school. School tuition in Germany is getting highly every year. Well, I guess not only US has this problem.

This place is a nice getaway place if you live around this area. You can bike, boat, or just lie on the beach here. Life can be really chill if there weren't so many tourists, me being one of them.

One of the local shops selling meat product and pastry.
I was so full so I didn't try any.

Black Forest ham.

Titi Lake

Feel free to check out the history of these places. I didn't write a lot because it'll be boring. If you're interested, though, you should learn more. Next stop: Rhine Fall, Zurich, and Lucerne, Switzerland.

*derp

The Epic Eurotrip--Chapter 6: Mein Kampf (Germany--Cologne, Rhine River, Loreley)

Sadly, we didn't get to go to Berlin. It's located way too far to the east (then again, we went to Vienna......) The first stop in Germany was Cologne. Cologne is known for the famous Cologne Cathedral. This Gothic style cathedral was built in 1248......or I should say they started building this in 1248, stopped at around 1473, and restarted in 19th century. It took them over 600 years to finish this. Chinese people would laugh at them ("We Chinese so good. We finish build in 20 days. Europeans stupid.") Okay I'm just joking here.

One of the churches you have to see
when going to Europe.

When I saw this building, the first thing that came across my mind was: "You. Are. Fucking. Beautiful." Seriously, it's such an awesome building. It looked very majestic and holy. We should get one of these in California. Due to my crappy camera (and space between me and the cathedral) and the height of this building, I couldn't snap a photo that covers the entire facade of the building. Nonetheless, this picture should give you an idea what this thing looks like. We got there on a Sunday, which is church day. Local people came to church for service while the tourists took pictures in the back. I mean, wtf?! They actually allow people to do that. I would be really pissed if I were actually attending the service. In the cathedral, you can donate (every church has donation boxes around. Some even charge you for going into the church.), take pictures, walk around, stand there and enjoy the service, or buy some postcards (again, every major church has this.) I stayed inside for around 20 minutes only. Couldn't help. After a while it got really crowded inside, and I felt like there was not enough air.

This is a shopping center for local people.
They can buy H&M here......

The plaza in front of the cathedral is pretty big, and there are apparently many pickpockets around (although I didn't see any.) I heard many stories about pick-pocketing on the bus. Many of our members were paranoid (we actually got robbed in France. Europe is dangerous. Make sure you look like a poor student and hide your important belongings when you go.) You would think this place is full of ancient stuff, judging from the look of this place, but no, it's not true. The street next to it has all the modern stores, like Gamestops and H&M (again, Europeans fucking love H&M. It's everywhere.) It's a very modern looking street with a lot of people. Normally, many stores wouldn't open on Sunday in Europe, but almost all the stores were open here. I guess it's the difference between a shopping center and a normal, suburb town (thinking of San Francisco vs. Fremont.) On this street, I found one of the things I must try while in Germany, the wurst!!!!!!

How can you not try this when you're in Germany?

I don't know how legit that wurst was, but it was tasty. I got it in a small wurst shop (using the Chinese logic: the smaller and dirtier a restaurant is, the tastier the food is. It's true in Asia.) They served in hot dog style, with ketchup and mustard. It doesn't look that big in the picture, but it was gigantic. This one wurst actually got me full for six hours (it's bigger than a Costco hot dog, just for comparison.) There's something they added in this wurst that created a tea-type smell (only a hint.) I gotta say, whoever thought of this was a genius. I tried to ask what they put in this wurst, but they wouldn't tell me. I'm not sure if it's their secret ingredient or they simply didn't understand what I was saying (sorry I don't speak German.)

Side view of the cathedral.

After lunch, I headed back to the church, and I saw the side view of this place. Again, really beautiful. In Europe, you see several things everywhere--church, painting, sculpture, and castles. These 4 things are what tour guides would take you to see. Since there are SO MANY of them, you started losing the feel after a while. If you only want to see 2 or 3 churches, this one should be one of them (another being St. Peters in Vatican City. Even the Notre Dame in Paris is kinda whatever.) Then I realized that there's something else around the church. i went downstairs and saw a museum of when and how this place was built. There was also a ticket booth that grands you entrance to the bell tower (one of the two tall, pointy towers) for 3 euros. Of course, I went up.

The climb wasn't pretty, though. The stairs were very narrow and very steep. They also winds up (the diameter of the tower wasn't really big. The one is Pisa was much bigger.) What was worse was that going up and down share the same stairs. Wow, it was pretty insane that they didn't do crowd control for this place. People could have tripped and died.

The damage tourists have done.

There's something I want to talk about here. I've seen it throughout my trip. I got really pissed seeing these things. Tourists bring in money, and they also bring destruction of a place. This cathedral cane be dated all the way back to 1200. That's hitting the 800 year mark. Yet this is what happens when tourists show up--leaving traces and signs that show they were here. I've seen some Smiths, some Browns, some Lee's, some Tanaka's, and some European names that I couldn't read. I mean, come on, people! This is history! This is something that shows the past, and you're destroying it like this? This is a blurry picture because I took it in a hurry (people were behind me) but it really shows what kind of damage tourists can do. It's a dilemma. Do you want money, or do you want to preserve the history? It's really hard to do both, or else this wall wouldn't look like this. People, please don't be assholes when you go on trip. You can take pictures of a place, and that already shows that you were here. You don't need to draw or write something on the wall like "xxx was here" or "love this place! -xxx" No one cares if you love this place or not, and no one cares if your name is Samantha Love Brown (seriously, love is your middle name!?) Speaking of taking photos, some places forbid you from using flash, including Louvre and Notre Dame. Unfortunately, TOURISTS DON'T GIVE TWO SHITS!!!!!! There was a big sign in front of the gate of Notre Dame that says "no flash" with a giant picture of a camera with flash being crossed out. Now if you start counting from 1 after you see flash. You will never get to 5. That's how ignorant tourists are. You can't even use "I don't understand local language" as an excuse. The sign has a picture, and it has messages written in multiple languages (including Japanese and Chinese.)

Okay, enough of the rant. The tower took me 15 minutes to climb up, and, being so out of shape, I was so tired when I get to the top. You don't really get a view from the top since everything is pretty much enclosed, and you can only see things through small windows. Still, I climbed this. It makes me feel awesome.

After Cologne Cathedral, we went for the tour on Rhine River. This one was in the mountains, and the weather changed so frequently. It literally went from sunny to rainy (pouring) to sunny (few clouds) again within a hour. It made taking photos really hard. I managed to take some though. Rhine River is really long. It goes across multiple countries and is considered one of the most important rivers in Europe (river brings food and nutrients, which bring people to build villages, which then become cities and nations.)

The river tour took about an hour and only traveled in one section of the river. This river has its wide parts and narrow parts, and we went through the narrowest part of the river. The reason it's so narrow (it actually is still pretty wide, in my opinion.) is because of this giant rock called Loreley. This rock blocks the majority of the water and made the river narrow. Because it's narrow, the water speed goes up. Back in the old time, many accidents happened at this spot. Therefore, people started telling legends and myths. One of them is that there are seven girls who got turned into stone, and apparently you can see 7 stones lying near this rock when the tide is low. Also, when the wave hits the stones, you can hear 7 echoes. Thus people say these echoes are from the 7 girls. We didn't see the 7 stones, and of course didn't hear the 7 echoes. The second one is that there used to be a blonde girl standing on this rock singing, and people would get distracted and crash (much like a Siren story). This band called Blackmore's Night even made a song for this lady (for crashing the ships.....? I gotta say it's really catchy......).

Loreley statue

The actual "Loreley"

A painting that shows the story of Loreley

One of the castles. I think this one is Cats castle

Besides the Loreley, we also saw many castles on the hills. These castles used to be the watch place for the outposts or customs for the ships (collecting taxes and stuff.) This river is known as the main river for traveling around countries, so many merchants used to use this river. For the landlords, it means income. Throughout the hour we were on the boat, we saw at least 4 castles. The names of the castles are pretty weird. There's a Cat Castle, and there's a Mouse Castle. This is one of those trips that make you feel "Oh man! I wish I had a better camera or at least a better lens!" Too bad, this is the best I could do.

It's not that great.....lol

The day didn't end there. We then went to the restaurant right across from Loreley. They served pork knuckles!!!!!! Another must-have thing in Germany. We also had German Beer here. Honestly the knuckle was not that great. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be cooked this way, but the skin is way to tough. You couldn't even bite it off with one bite. Also, since there was no salad to go with it (there was only some kind of pickled veggies) it got really dry after a few bite. Beer definitely helped.


Next stop: Heidelberg, Germany, and we're entering Switzerland soon!

The Epic Eurotrip--Chapter 5: Channeling the Hearts (Netherlands--Amsterdam)

After Belgium, we entered Amsterdam. Amsterdam is a city full of islands. They have over 160 canals separating the lands into small islands. These islands are connected by bridges, and these Mokummers often travel by bikes (as roads are narrow and bridges might not be able to handle the weight of cars.)

We first got to the rendezvous point for the cruise......fine, it's just on a small boat, nothing fancy. This boat took us through different canals. This city is called the "Venice of the North" for a reason. There are so many canals......too many canals...... It's nice for them to introduce the story of each different canal, but.......they all looked the same after a while...... plus it was raining, so I lost interest pretty fast.

Map of Amsterdam. Look at all the blue "lines."
These are the canals.

This is not the boat we rode, but it's the same size.
Check out all the bikes on top. This gives an idea of how many bikes
there are in this city.

An example of a "boat house."

There ARE some interesting things I learned from this cruise. For example, there are people living on boats. These boats have house numbers like our houses. People have to apply for living on a boat, and the government will have to check if the boat is qualified (Is it safe? How is the waste going to be disposed? Is there enough air flow? Things like these.) This is something I don't normally see in the US (or in California, at least.)  I don't know if these boats can move around freely, but it would be awesome if they can move wherever they want. Imagine your distant relatives are coming to your place to live for a week, and you feel obligated to accept because your parents asked you. Well, guess what? Now you don't have to say "I won't be home." You can say "my house will not be here" and just move your boat so that no one can find you. Dude, living on a boat is pretty awesome. Some boats have flowers planted, and some even have a nice balcony on top of the boat. I guess this is also a way to spread the population. Even though Amsterdam is not as densely populated as many major city in the world, the city itself is quite small. Therefore it still feels crowded in the city. With the boats, they created more living space. An effective way to use the water space.

Amsterdam houses are narrow and tall

Majority of houses in Amsterdam are narrow and tall, another way to effectively use space. Since there are too many people and too little space, they have to start making the buildings taller (okay,  this is considered tall in old time. They are preserving the outside look for history preservation reason, so they can't really tear everything down and build skyscrapers. Can you imagine Amsterdam full of skyscrapers? Me either, and let's keep it this way) to fit more people. I guess this is a common sight for big cities. You definitely won't see this in Fremont.

The hook on top of the building for furniture transportation. 

Another common sight here is the giant hook on top of the building. Many older houses have this. There are two reasons (that I know) for such scene. The first one is that the government used to collect tax from the people based on the size of the door. The bigger your front door is, the more tax you pay. People got mad and came up with a way to counter it. "Well, you charge us based on the size of the door, right? We'll just make it smaller. Now what? Bitch!") Voila! Small doors! But the problem came along. Now it's really hard to move big objects like furniture in and out of the house, so they built big windows and the gable with giant hooks to do it. Who said ancient people are not smart? Even though they claimed that the windows (the ones right under the hook) are bigger than the door, I still don't see it. Doors are in general bigger. The second reason, which is similar to first, is that the the houses are narrow and tall, so the stairs are often windy and narrow as well. This also creates difficulty for furniture transportation. Voila! Hooks! Too bad we didn't get to see it in action. It would be awesome!

Royal Palace at Dam Square

Oh yea, the name "Amsterdam" came from the river named "Amstel" and the word "dam." It simply means "the dam of Amstel" (another similar one is Rotterdam in Netherlands.) There's a plaza called "Dam Square." It's not gigantic, but it's supposed to be the center of Amsterdam. The Royal Palace, the central train station, and many other buildings are all located here. Not too far from Dam Square is the famous (or infamous) Red Light District. Unfortunately I did not take any picture because I was afraid that the hookers are going to charge me for that. I heard they really hunt you down. Still, I can talk about it.

Central Station. It's pretty big. The picture only covers
half of it.

As most of you know, you can pretty much do anything in Netherlands as everything is pretty much legal (not killing, of course.) You can smoke weed, sell drugs, and prostituting. You know how some places have rules like "you cannot drink in public." In Netherlands, rules like that are bull. People would think this would cause more crimes since there's no rule or regulation. Well, that's not what I saw. It might have something to do with the fact that I got there pretty early in the night (around 8 pm) so nothing has really started.  The Red Light District is more of a tourist attraction nowadays. Well yea, you see boobs and everything, but there's really nothing out of ordinary. You don't see people fighting outside of a bar (possibly because they are all high at that point), and you don't see people yelling when they're drunk (something Americans do pretty often, and it's quite annoying sometimes). It's quite peaceful, in fact. I saw 3 old Chinese tour groups passing by. They all have gray (or white) hair, and they, with an expression of disgust, took many photos (I know, wtf right?) Compare to those people, our group was so such more awesome. They were asking where things like and what to see in Red Light District.

I talked to a local when I was in a coffee shop there. I asked if it's always been like this. He told me that recently there are more people coming , and this area is really nothing too special to local people. He said that local people see this place as a place to eat and chill, as there are many restaurants here. Many tourists come by every day, and the locals got used to it. It apparently also goes by season. Summer time is the time when most of people come. Well, that makes sense.

We stayed in Amsterdam for a night. The next day, we went to see the symbol of Netherlands, the windmill. This one on the left is in a suburb. It transforms energy from wind to kinetic for grinding wheat and other grains, usually for making flour. After that, we went to the diamond museum that shows you how they select and cut diamonds. Well, it was pretty obvious that they took us here to lure us to buy diamonds, so I lost interest pretty fast. I mean, i can't afford something that's easily over 1000 euro. They do teach you about the 4-C's for diamonds and the levels for each C. If you're interested or want your other half to buy one for you, feel free to research about it. I'm gonna end this post by showing some other pictures I took in Amsterdam, just so I can make this post longer.........

The diamond museum.

The sign outside of diamond museum. Don't have time to take a
better picture. Sorry.

Nieuwe Kerk, the royal church. Think of Westminster Abbey.

The National Monument.

Rembrandt, a Dutch artist. Too lazy to
find out what he did.

Chill life of Dutch people.

The 4C of diamonds

Next stop: Cologne, Germany