Energies in Europe

Energies

Australia3225 Posts

November 28 2008 22:09 GMT

**Warning**
The following post is huge with a lot of photographs, apologies to 56k users.
I have collapsed majority of the photos into spoilers
**Warning**

I actually wrote this blog a few days after I came back from Europe, I was waiting on a friend to send me some of the last few photos from Vienna, but they never arrived. I will update those when I eventually get them.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Ketchup or mayonnaise?”
“For what?”
“For your fries sir.”
“(Silence)…..Ketchup”

Seriously Europe, mayonnaise?
--

October 31st, I flew out of Perth International Airport heading towards a final destination of Amsterdam. Journey Path: Perth –> Kuala Lumpur –> Amsterdam –> Cologne –> Amsterdam. (It was cheaper to fly through Amsterdam and take a train back then it was to fly direct to Amsterdam).

Plane to Malaysia at Perth International

I arrived in Amsterdam via KL quite early in the morning 6-7am, I had a connecting flight to Cologne within the first few hours but I had changed it to a later flight as I was meeting up with Dknight(Scott) to catch the same flight to Cologne. I spent 3-4 hours in Amsterdam airport waiting for Scott.

I had my first beer in Europe. De Koninck. Not bad, better than the alternative, Heineken.

Walked around the airport for a couple of hours and then went back to the bar and started drinking again.

I also got a seated massage, which was much needed after 20 hours in the air in crappy economy seats.

Scott finally arrives around lunch time; I immediately lead him to the bar for a beer. Few more drinks and a meal and we started feeling tired, I had remembered seeing some really comfortable chairs during my tour of the airport so I suggested we go and sleep for an hour, it was only 15:30 and our flight wasn’t until 17:00. We woke up at about 16:20, got up and started making our way to the gate, we didn’t realise you have to go through customs in Amsterdam Airport, without actually exiting Amsterdam Airport into Holland... That delayed us about 10-15 min, we still got to the gate at around 16:40 and were subsequently told that we had missed our flight. “Where were you guys? We were calling your name” We didn’t hear shit. “You have been at the airport for almost 12 hours, how did you miss your flight?” Fuck you lady, we were 20 minutes early. They wouldn’t allow us to grab our luggage and just exit Amsterdam airport and they forced us to pay a couple hundred each to catch the next plane to Cologne.

20 minutes early man, wtf.

Long story short, missed our flight, miss our connecting train in Cologne, had to stay a night and catch a train to Amsterdam the next morning, which meant we had to buy tickets again. We hadn’t even reached our destination, and already about $430(US) down between us.

Armin & Scott waiting for a second flight to Cologne, this time we waited right by the gate, all 2-3 hours of the wait.

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Night in Cologne.

Finally on the way to Amsterdam!

Amsterdam

We stayed with Erkenbrand (Frank) at his apartment for the duration of our stay in Amsterdam. He works at a local tour company so he got us a deal on some rental bikes; we pretty much rode all around Amsterdam, WHICH WAS AWESOME!

We basically went riding around during the day and hit the bars and clubs at night. We met up with an awesome group of European/Brazilians in a bar and tagged up with them for a night.

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Camera whore!

After our big night out, we were all drunk; Frank helped our friends get a bus home. We were standing at the centre of town contemplating how we would get home. Frank told us we were going to ride home in a real serious tone as if the idea of not riding home drunk hadn’t even occurred to him. By the time we got back to his apartment, we had completely sweated out all the alcohol and at this point, were pretty much sober. –Ride home drunk in Amsterdam. CHECK.

Back to Cologne for WCG!

WCG was great this year, from an organisation point of view everything went smoothly, issues were very minimal and hardly any drama. The evenings were also awesome. I chilled with the other referees every night, hit the town for dinner and drinks, usually ending up back in Frank’s hotel room, which had become a gathering node for EVERYONE. Also the very successful Teamliquid meet up. Special thanks to Naruto and MnM for organising it.

Getting to meet everyone was just an honour, finally getting to put names to faces and realising that everyone is even more awesome in person than online.

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Our two hardest working refs, intensely testing the computers, making sure they work. Weird thing about it though, they tested the same two computers all day. Hmmm…

I setup the big score-screen to one of the networked computers and asked Tasteless if he could obs the game. 3rd place finisher. Worked out well, thanks again Nick.

On the way to the TL meet-up. Seb(Baal), Petra(Ilvy), PuertoRican(Rick), Dknight(Scott), Energies(Armin) with MnM(Michelle) behind the camera.

This is one of the tables at the TL meet-up.

One of the many nights we ended up back the hotel

Liquid`Zephyr, Ret, Ghardo

Erkenbrand(Frank), Michelle, Liquid`Nazgul (Standing) Daniel, Ghardo (Standing) Draco’s head.

Choblar(Kevin), Liquid`Meat, Frank, Ret, Michelle

Draco

Poker

One of the first nights in Cologne for WCG, we were going crazy, all the referees hadn’t seen each other since 2007 in Seattle so we went out and went nuts, later we ended up back at the hotel making cocktails and mixing lots of drinks, which is something I usually don’t do. I had Beer, Jaeger, Baileys, Wine, and other Misc contraptions I was at a point where I wasn’t really drunk, but I was definitely sick. I went back to my room to lay down, Scott was already asleep, I laid down for a few minutes and felt it all coming back up, trying to hold it in, I failed. I was pretty much throwing up all the way to the bathroom, I spent an hour cleaning up as much as I could. Had to wake up early the next morning and head to the venue, I had no time to clean anything else. That night I get back to my hotel room to find a bucket and a sponge with a note saying. “Our cleaning ladies said you puked at our walls, this is very awful for them to clean, please clean your room or there will be consequences” So I spent the next hour cleaning everything, the place was spotless I tell you, still smelt like puke though. The next day I was sitting in the lobby when an announcement asked for my room and someone else’s room to come to reception. So I make my way to reception and I receive a 50euro fine for “intensive cleaning” Motherfuckers, they were going to charge me for cleaning anyway, they just wanted me to do most of the work for them. I asked about the other room they called out, his response was “I heard it was 10 times worse than your room”.

*shame*

There was also a pretty awesome story involving Ghardo, but I don’t think he wants anyone re-telling the story out of embarrassment.

Post-WCG
I think it was the last day of WCG sometime around the closing ceremony when that ‘end of holiday’ feeling of depression kicked in, and I realised I would still be in Europe for another 10 days.. “Oh crap, what am I going to do?”

I quite literally started running around asking anyone I recognised what they were doing after WCG and even random Germans where they lived. I managed to get a couple of contacts, which in turn helped me figure out a path for the next week or so. Zatic offered for me to come and visit him in Heidelberg, which ended up being awesome. And also one of the refs from Austria also suggested I come and visit her in Vienna.

One of the two cities I definitely wanted to visit was either Berlin or Munich, but I didn’t have enough time to visit both. With Heidelberg and Vienna pencilled in, the decision was easy. Munich all the way.

The next morning I checked out of the hotel, waited around for a few hours in the lobby making sure I said goodbye to everyone. I can’t express how much I hate the last day of WCG every year, having to say goodbye to some many great people… until next year.

I ended up catching a train one stop to the Cologne Central Station. Walked up to information and asked for the next train to Heidelberg. I eventually bought a one way ticket to Vienna valid for 4 weeks allowing me to stop anywhere in between Cologne and Vienna, which worked out well since both Heidelberg and Munich were on the way.

Heidelberg
I arrived in Heidelberg late in the afternoon about 5-6pm, I walked up to the first hotel I saw and checked-in for 2 nights.

View from the hotel.

I gave Zatic a call a couple hours after arriving in Heidelberg. I have to say, I am now a huge fan of Zatic, the guy is awesome, even extremely sleep deprived he came out and showed me around the city both nights. Very smart guy as well, he managed to answer any questions I had about Germany, regardless of how stupid they were. Thanks again man I appreciate everything and thanks for the killer shot of absinth *cringe*.

I woke up the first morning and headed out to try and find a castle Zatic had suggested. I asked the tourist information centre about how I could get there. I ended up at a bus station waiting on a bus to the castle when I was tapped on the shoulder. It was one of the Counter Strike referees, his train had just arrived and he had seen me at the bus station. This is seriously a small world we live in. He was looking for some hotel he had found on the internet, I suggested just staying at mine, as it was literally a 2 min walk from the central station

After checking in we both heading back out to the bus station and were on our way to the castle!

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Reza, Counter Strike Referee.

The second night, Reza caught up with his friend and I met up with Zatic again, and the four of us hit the town. Zatic took us out to a cool club after dinner. He had initially mentioned something weird was going to happen, but it had slipped my mind. 11:00pm on the dot the lights go out, they slowly dim back in and everyone is standing up in their seats waving their drinks in the air, singing and dancing, quite an experience. We all took a taxi home that night, said our goodnight and goodbyes.

The next morning I woke up quite early, like 10am =). Checked-out went to the station got some breakfast and got on the next available train to Munich.

Munich

“Ein Prosit, ein Prosit
Der Gemütlichkeit
Ein Prosit, ein Prosit
Der Gemütlichkeit.
Eins! Zwei! Drei! — G’suffa!”

I arrived early afternoon about 4-5pm, basically my travels across Europe mostly involved little to no organisation; I planned to just show up, walk around central station find a cheap hotel and check in, then figure out what to do from there. Not so lucky this time, firstly the weather was miserable, cold and raining. I started my walk around the station, first few hotels said they have no availability, as I started to make my way across and down the street I tried some smaller hotels and hostels, “sorry no availability, there is an electronics expo in town”. A little bit freaked out I visited the tourist centre, let me start off my saying general information in train stations, airports and general tourist information centres have really crappy attitudes, they don’t want to be there, they don’t want to really help you, they just want you to go away it seems. I showed up and mentioned I am looking for a hotel or a hostel and if they could help me, I said I had already looked around and couldn’t find anything. The lady just looked at me and said “There is nothing available, there is a convention in town” That’s fucking it, that’s all she said... “Umm, thanks?” I walked out and kept looking, I walked into a side street directly across the station and saw a row of hostels, I tried the first one and I guess I used the wrong language, what I meant to ask for was a bed, I asked for a single room. She said it would be 98euros a night due to the convention; mind you I could have gotten a bed in a dorm for 11euros. At that point I didn’t know this; I was tired, cold and just wanted to unload my stuff. “Sure”.

I unpacked my things, showered and got changed, walked down stairs and started going through the tourist information brochures, there was a company plastered everywhere called the NewEuropeTours and they hosted a beer tour, “beer challenge” to be more precise and to my luck there was one starting in an hour meeting at central station. Put on a jacket headed out and went on the hunt for food, I didn’t have to look far, the area I was staying there were pizza and kebab shops as far as the eye could see, so I grabbed a kebab and started walking up and down the main stretch. I eventually went across the station and found the tour group; there were a few couples and a ton of single guys and girls. One thing I learnt about Munich was that there are tons of Aussie tourists there for some reason, plenty of Canadians and Americans too. Our group consisted of a healthy amount of Australians a couple of Canadians/Americans and a handful of people from New Zealand along with the miscellaneous Europeans and South Americans.

The tour guides I must say were fantastic, very professional in their playful way, knew a ton about Munich and even more about beer, they shared all they knew about German drinking traditions, German beer drinking songs and took us to all the most well known beer halls. Hofbrauhaus & Augustiner Bräu ring a bell, to be honest I stoped paying attention after those first two. The tour started with some roadies, so we walked down to the subway beers in hand on our way to the first beer hall. The tour ended in a hostel smack bang next to mine, a place called the Euro Youth Hostel, it was great the hostel had it’s own bar, cheap beer and tons of social life, I can’t recall when I ended there, but as typical geeks we all took down each others full names so we could facebook =).

The next morning I consulted my tourist brochure again and noticed the same company hosted a free walking tour of the city that lasted about 4 hours. *shrug* why not. I went back to the central station, a couple of familiar faces from the night before, we all headed out to the main meeting point, we joined up with the rest of the keen/hung-over tourist and started our tour. It was basically a trend, I was suppose to initially spend 1-2 nights in Munich and move on, I was having so much fun every day that it ended up being 4 nights.

The company held quite a few tours, some free some you had to pay for, and I made it a mission to go on all their day ones while finding things to do at night, I ended up just hanging out at the Euro Youth Hostel bar one night socialising, and I went back to the beer challenge tour 2 more times, it just made a night out so much easier, you basically get to socialise off the bat with tons of people from around the world rather than having to approach people for a conversation at a bar. Overall I had an amazing time in Munich, met lots of great people and absorb a great deal of culture, I just wish I had some friends there to share the experience, I still want to visit Berlin, so perhaps next time.

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Saint Mary’s statue.

Munich town hall.

Centre of Munich – Marienplatz. On this particular day, the left wing party of Germany had organised a demonstration, the right wing party also wanted to hold their demonstration on the same day and were refused, and as a result the city was polluted with police and riot police, just in case.

This is a typical Munich memorial. Munich is very subtle with their memorials; you basically have to know where the memorials are and what they signify. There are no plaques or signs anywhere. This road signifies passive resistance to the Nazi Regime. As the main road had posted guards that everyone had to salute as a sign of respect to Hitler, this side road was used by people who did not want to salute Hitler.

This is another memorial for all the tragedies and lost lives of WW2. It is very cold and dark in my opinion.

Beer halls!

We walked out drunk and realised we still had our beer glasses.

Dachau Concentration Camp – Memorial
I took a tour of one of the most predominant concentration camps. Most well known outside of Auschwitz I’d say. Dachau was the first and model concentration camp of the Third Reich and it was the only one to remain open all the way through the 12 year span of the Third Reich.

It was about 30-40km outside of Munich, it took a train and a bus to get to the camp, it wasn’t the most fun tour I have ever taken to be honest, mostly due to the subject matter, but I’m glad I went.

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Our very passionate tour guide.

”Work will set you free”

Bunks, similar condition to some of the hostels I stayed in.

Execution wall.

Barrack X.

The two sliders in the middle were used to administer the poison gas.

“Showers”.

Gas chamber.

Fake shower head.

Cremation plant.

“Never Again”. Rofl, yeah right. Guantanamo bay, sup?

Leaving Munich & Vienna

On my last day in Munich I went to the train station to check the schedule for trains to Vienna, I wanted to leave early and get there early, I specifically didn’t want to lose a day by waking up late and spending the rest of the day getting to Vienna, the first train was at 9:27am, probably about an hour early for me as I would be drinking that night, but I guess it will have to do.

The next morning I quite literally woke up drunk after about 3 hours of sleep, luckily I had packed before going out the night before, I shower while stumbling around, got changed and went down stairs to checkout. I get to the train station and force myself to eat something to soak up the alcohol, waited around 20 minutes for the train, got onboard and went to sleep. I woke up a couple hours later to find the train had stopped at some random station, it was about 11am so I figured we must be a couple hours away from Vienna, I slowly drift in and out of sleep, got up again at one point at about 12:30pm. And the train was still at the same station. “wtf?” Everyone was still on the train looking pissed off, I wondered around and surprisingly I found an America guy I was drinking with the night before and I asked him what was going on. “Apparently somewhere down the line on this track, someone committed suicide by jumping out in front of the train”. Seriously, that’s just inconvenient. I figured we’d get moving soon. I messaged my friend in Vienna and told her I’d be a couple of hours late, poor thing had planned a ton of things for us to do when I arrived in Vienna. Believe it or not the train didn’t start moving until just after 3pm. That’s a 4-5 hour delay because some asshole decided to end his life, on MY track. I ended up losing a day, exactly what I didn’t want to do. Friend still picked me up at the train station, had already found a hotel for me and had bought me a 2 day pass for Vienna transit. Sweet.

We went out to dinner that night to a local student restaurant; I had Turkey-Vienna-Schnitzel. I received two huge schnitzels and a mountain of fries; I managed to eat a small potion of the fries and only one schnitzel. I’m a total failure, but looking around, no one at the restaurant had managed to finish their food, apparently the place was known for it. We walked around the centre of Vienna for an hour before heading back to the hotel, she showed me around, showed me where I could go and what to visit while she was at work the next morning.

The next morning I headed up, got my map and ‘list-of-things-to-do’ spent the day looking around the city and visiting a few museums.

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The second night was really fun, we went ice skating at one of the largest and the oldest ice skating rinks in the world, and tried their winter punch, hot wine mixed with sugars and fruit, awesome! Afterwards we went to an old fashion authentic Viennese restaurant tried some local food and wine, over all it was a very fun and pleasant night.

The next morning we organised to have breakfast, Verena my guide had to be at work and I was leaving Vienna around lunch time to head back to Cologne, stupid me. My lack of planning meant that I had to go back to Cologne to fly out back home. I woke up early at about 6:45, put on a T-shirt a light sweater and some open slip-on shoes. Big mistake, we headed out of the hotel and walked for about 15 min in the freezing cold, well… cold for me anyway. We went to a very old, very genuine Viennese style café for breakfast, it felt like I was in a fairy tale; it was a really nice place. We had some coffee and breakfast. Verena told me all about Austrian history, the history of the café and a lot about current Austrian politics and life, really interesting stuff.

We walked back to my hotel, said our goodbyes and I went back upstairs to my room to pack, I went back to sleep for about an hour, got up, showered got changed and went down to check-out. I took a tram back to the train station, unfortunately my train wasn’t for several hours, I placed my luggage into the station storage, but there wasn’t much to see around the station, so I had no option but to sit and wait. Luckily I had brought the first 3 Starcraft books with me, I went into a café ordered a coffee and started reading, beer after coffee, after beer after coffee and I had finished the first book by the time my train had arrived. I checked my trip length, it was going to be about 9 hours so I went into the station super market and bought a few sandwiches, some drinks and of course some candy. The train ride was long and arduous, I managed to read the next two books and watched a movie on my mp3 player, I was still a few hours away, I wanted to sleep but I was afraid I would sleep through my stop.

Cologne

I finally arrived in Cologne around midnight. Verena had already made reservations at a hostel for me; I was too tired to figure out how to get there so I took cab, 10euros. Arrived at the hostel and paid for my room. Check-out was at 9am, what a load of crap. It was already 1 am; I was going to get like 6-7 hours sleep before I would have to get up and checkout. I grabbed the keys for my room, casually and loudly opened the door and walked in when I froze and went silent. “Shit, it’s a shared room” there was already 4 other guys in the room completely asleep. I didn’t even have a chance to get changed without waking anyone up, I just locked up my back-pack and camera, I wasn’t going to sleep in my jeans and sweater, so I just climbed up my bunk, got changed and went to bed naked. I woke up at around 8am, luckily by that point a few of the guys had already got up and left, I got some clean clothes out of my bag, showered grabbed all my stuff and checked-out.

I took the train which now in daylight was directly across from the hostel and went directly to central station, “Damn, could have saved 8euros”. Put all my bags into the luggage locker and started exploring Cologne, as I hadn’t had a chance to see the city during WCG.

I had two missions, find some ice cream and find a store that sells Oakley sunglasses as I had recently lost mine.

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No luck on the Oakley’s but I found the ice cream!

Back to the train station and headed out towards the airport. Europe was dead set on screwing me one last time, or at least attempting to. My route home was Cologne –> Amsterdam –> Kuala Lumpur -> Perth. I was only supposed to have a 1 hour stop in Amsterdam until my flight to KL. There was no way KLM were going to make it easy on me, my flight from Cologne to Amsterdam was over an hour late, which gave me approximately 0% chance of catching my connecting flight. Thank you KLM. “We apologies for the delay, we had to change the plane” …yeah, that’s always good news. I arrived in Amsterdam expecting to have to be placed in the airport hotel until the next flight out. My luck had finally kicked in; my connecting flight to Malaysia had been delayed by exactly an hour, woha! From that point on everything went really well, both my connecting flights from Amsterdam were only about 50% full so I had a row of seats to myself to lie down on. Arrived in Perth airport which is always a pain in the ass and I got through fine, didn’t even get picked for a “random bag check” that usually happens to me coming back into Perth every year. Left the airport caught a taxi home!

Overall I had an awesome time in Europe, this was definitely my favourite holiday over the past 4 years of travel and I can’t wait to come back, unfortunately I doubt it will be next year as I have a few trips planned to Asia, with a pretty big tour of South East Asia around WCG next year.

I’d like to thank everyone who made my trip as fun and pleasant as it was, I truly cherish these events and these memories and I am really honoured to be part of this community to allow me to have some of these experiences.

Thank you.
- Armin

You can find the rest of my photos here:

Camera Phone Album
WCG 2008
Amsterdam
Dachau Concentration Camp
Europe 1/2
Europe 2/2

Tonkerchen

680 Posts

November 28 2008 22:49 GMT

nice pictures!
I hope you enjoyed it here.

distant_voice

Germany2521 Posts

November 28 2008 23:16 GMT

Thanks again man! <3

YPang

United States4024 Posts

November 28 2008 23:17 GMT

holy shit... that munich town hall looks so badass.

Not_Computer

Canada2277 Posts

November 28 2008 23:36 GMT

Hey! I was at Dachau before too!

The surrounding area has such nice scenery for such a dark past.

You went to different parts of Munich and Vienna than me though, I don't remember that epic town hall.

QuanticHawk

United States32025 Posts

November 28 2008 23:37 GMT

Munich hall looks amazing.

Still reading thru, I book marked for later. How'd you figure out what hostels to stay in and what not? what's it like, how much it cost, etc etc

Energies

Australia3225 Posts

November 29 2008 00:05 GMT

Heh, I planned nothing, I would basically arrive in each city and walk around the centre of town or around the central station looking for hotels and hostels just checking prices. The conditions of hotels are excellent and the condition of the hostels are great, nothing like you would expect.

Regarding the cost, you're looking at 8-15euro per night if you want a bed in a dorm in a 20-40 bed dorm. 20-30euro for a 4-8 bed, room. (All shared rooms include a lock box/cupboard for your things.

Single/double rooms in hostels cost anywhere between 30-50euros. Hotels cost around 50-70euro a night for some really great rooms.

I arrived in Munich during a convention which double/tripled all prices though.

zatic

Zurich15306 Posts

November 29 2008 00:06 GMT

Read it all in one go, glad to hear you had a great time in Munich! Ein Prosit indeed.
You're always welcome to visit again!

Chill

Calgary25954 Posts

November 29 2008 00:09 GMT

Wow this is the sickest blog. I read the entire thing. So good. Thanks!!!

Dknight

United States5223 Posts

November 29 2008 00:28 GMT

#10

Awwwwww. It was a blast ^_^.

Our room seriously smelled for a solid 4 days. Good job noob.

Oh yeah, pull the 'lazy' card on me. I don't think so.

NeverGG

United Kingdom5399 Posts

November 29 2008 00:35 GMT

#11

Really great blog

It's interesting to see some shots of the various architecture. One thing though;

'So I make my way to reception and I receive a 50euro fine for “intensive cleaning” Motherfuckers, they were going to charge me for cleaning anyway, they just wanted me to do most of the work for them.'

I have to clean rooms myself and I think cleaning it up yourself when you throw up is perfectly justified. (It's good that you at least made an attempt.) It seems like a (very) steep price personally, but if it was really that bad.... just consider how you'd feel having to clean up someone else's vomit. It's not fun and it's not fair especially if it's drink induced vomiting which is avoidable if people show a bit of self-restraint. (I totally sympathise if people are just ill though - that sucks.)

Energies

Australia3225 Posts

November 29 2008 00:46 GMT

#12

It wasn't really vomit anywhere since I cleaned it all up the night before, it was stains on the wall leading to the bathroom, I wasn't annoyed that they made me clean it up, it just didn't make sense to clean it up and then be fined for it as well...

90% of the hotels I stay in throughout the year are through work, so they always end up being quite expensive, I have never had to clean up after myself in any hotel. Not saying that I leave the place looking like a pig sty, but if I had left bottles on the table or accidentally spilt a drink or some food, I would never be expected to go crazy and make the place spotless, let alone be left a bucket and a sponge to clean it up..

I was actually sick one day a year ago on a work thing, similar situation where I throw up a bit, I saw the reception in the morning after I had cleaned it and told them there was a stain and if they could give me something to clean it, her response was "don't be silly, we'll send someone in with a carpet cleaner later, did you want to change rooms?"

Hostels are different I guess.

Energies

Australia3225 Posts

November 29 2008 00:51 GMT

#13

By the way, I appreciate anyone who actually read through the entire blog, I know it's quite long. I was basically writing one section a day after work for a few days.

NeverGG

United Kingdom5399 Posts

November 29 2008 00:54 GMT

#14

On November 29 2008 09:46 Energies wrote:
It wasn't really vomit anywhere since I cleaned it all up the night before, it was stains on the wall leading to the bathroom, I wasn't annoyed that they made me clean it up, it just didn't make sense to clean it up and then be fined for it as well...

90% of the hotels I stay in throughout the year are through work, so they always end up being quite expensive, I have never had to clean up after myself in any hotel. Not saying that I leave the place looking like a pig sty, but if I had left bottles on the table or accidentally spilt a drink or some food, I would never be expected to go crazy and make the place spotless, let alone be left a bucket and a sponge to clean it up..

I was actually sick one day a year ago on a work thing, similar situation where I throw up a bit, I saw the reception in the morning after I had cleaned it and told them there was a stain and if they could give me something to clean it, her response was "don't be silly, we'll send someone in with a carpet cleaner later, did you want to change rooms?"

Hostels are different I guess.

If it was stains then it might've been the cost of repapering/repainting the walls. I know we've had people throw up on linen and had to replace it (even bleaching doesn't work sometimes - god knows what they ate/drank beforehand lol)

I think it's just puking that causes the issues with cleaning at hotels/hostels - food and drink are fine because it's par for the course really. Heck even other bodily fluids don't bother me personally. Carpet is a lot easier to clean as well - though thankfully here out floors are all lino/wipe clean ^^.

Chef

10810 Posts

November 29 2008 01:04 GMT

#15

Really nice blog

Looking at the pictures of the death camps... I still get this surreal feeling that "This actually exists... This was actually designed used to systematically kill people." It'd seem so absurd, like a Bond villain's lair, and yet there it is.

PS: You gotta put a bowl by your bed when you're feeling sick bro :O Easy rule, and it saves a lot of mess. Just like... a cooking pot or something.

000.Zulu

Germany83 Posts

November 30 2008 09:15 GMT

#16

Awesome reading! ^^ I´ve been on all pleaces in Heidelberg you took pictures of, hardly recognized before... :D ...Dachau also, which is´nt so nice to remember, was depressing there.

It was very cool meeting with you... ^^

Ilvy

Germany2445 Posts

November 30 2008 13:45 GMT

#17

really nice to read, and yes it was a great time in Cologne.It´s just always so sad that time runs much faster. I hope you will come back to Germany where we can meet again

Elsi

United Kingdom8173 Posts

January 05 2009 12:12 GMT

#18

awesome

deserves a bump!

nice meeting ya in wcg Armin!

cya soon!

Roxen000

1226 Posts

January 05 2009 12:36 GMT

#19

Man looking over this I didn't think I would read it all but I did! Good blog. Cool pictures, good stuff!