I'll get the first question out of the way, because I'm sure you're all thinking it if you haven't asked me already - "Tim, why the fuck would you wanna go to Israel? You're gonna die there. Dying's not fun, is it?" There are two answers to this:
1. It was Bitch (Jess)'s idea, and I'll travel anywhere, so we had ourselves a plan.
2. Anyone who does a little research will realize that Israel is probably one of the places you're LEAST likely to die in the world while visiting. Unless Iran unleashed thermonuclear war on Israel during our time there, we weren't in any danger. The Israelis know everyone hates their asses so security is uber-tight, plus they've kicked the bejesus out of all their neighbors a couple of times already anyway, so they all know better.
Now that we have that outta the way, we can get onto the trip.
The plan for the trip was as follows - fly to Seattle for 1 night to catch European flight; fly to Amsterdam through Iceland, stay in Amsterdam one night; take train to Cologne, Germany with 6 hour layover in Brussels to check it out (on Christmas Eve), stay one night; fly Cologne-Tel Aviv, Israel on Christmas Day, stay 2 nights; fly to Eilat (Southern Israel), stay 1 night; cross the border into Jordan and stay in Wadi Rum and Petra, each for one night; get back to the border and stay another night in Eilat; take the bus to Jerusalem and stay 2 nights; fly overnight to Stockholm, Sweden through Riga and stay one night. At this point, Jess would fly back to Boston, and I would fly to Vienna to stay 3 nights, then one in Salzburg before a night in Sweden and the long trip back home.
Ambitious aren't we?
I made the mistake of listening to Jess the night before and we left drank a big bottle of Rev while packing like he did. What the fuck was I thinking? Hello 3:30am bedtime. Up at 6, sleepy day of work, then met Bitch at the Flying Beaver for a few drinks before we went to the airport. Both of us nearly fell asleep at the bar, but we survived. Got the full body scan at the airport again (heeeey) and bought some hummus at the airport bar, since I figured I'd have to eat it in Israel anyway. Shit's pretty good. After somehow briefly convincing Jamie that we were actually in Honolulu on a connecting flight (which was funny), we made our way to Seattle. Where we promptly passed out without even drinking the beer we bought. Off to a dopey start.
First leg of the Europe flight (7 hours) was completely full, but not too bad. A flight attendant that had worked for Iceland Air for 46 years (!?!) was working her very last shift on our flight. Jess thought it was irrelevant of course, because the only things relevant to him are the Habs, being a nerd, and arguing with me...but I thought it was kinda cool. After connecting so quick we didn't even have time to go to the bathroom or grab water, we got onto the next flight and...waited forever for it to be de-iced. Unsurprisingly with our luck, we couldn't use the can or get food/water during that time, so we were dying. Once service finally started, I basically stampeded to the bathroom, then promptly got back and ordered 2 huge sandwiches and 2 bottles of water. Yeah yeah, make your jokes assclowns.
Upon arrival in Amsterdam, we quickly took the train into the city, where we proceeded to get ripped off by a cabbie pretty much immediately. He managed to take us to the wrong hotel, AND charge us 15 euros (20 Canadian) for a three minute ride. Dammit. We were both too tired to protest much, which makes it our fault. It actually didn't work out so bad though...we walked the extra 2km to the correct hotel, and got a nice view of the Amsterdam city centre. And to make it better, my bag was WAY lighter than Bitch's and he has a bum shoulder to boot, so he suffered the whole way. His suffering amuses me.
It was pretty cold and windy outside, but nothing unbearable. Check-in was followed quickly by red bulls and a lot of walking around. And bars. The first bar was a Brit Pub, which was pretty shitty overall. But the bartender chicky had HUGE cans, so it wasn't a total loss. After that we sauntered up to the famous Red Light District, which was...amusing.
It's sooo commercialized. Kids, couples, grandparents, you name it...all walking through an area full of erotic clubs, pubs, and windows with prostitutes hanging out. Some ugly, some decent, and a couple super-hot. One kid was ogling one of them and she shut the curtain on him, which made us laugh. We checked out a pub down there, which was pretty dead. We walked in and see coasters, ads, posters, and everything else identifying one kind of beer. So we went in and ordered Stella, which made the barlady laugh. She just pointed at the coasters. Guess we only had one choice. Oops. I seem to do that a lot for some reason.
On the way out, we stopped at a smoke shop, where Jess was hoping to get some mushrooms. All we ended up getting was some shitty energy drink that didn't work, because he didn't ask about the shrooms. He said that they probably didn't sell them anyway, which amused me because there was a gigantic stuffed Toadstool (of Mario fame) on top of the TV which seemed to indicate they did indeed sell them. Jess didn't even see Toadstool somehow, which is crazy because he was HUGE, so he went shroomless (totally not a word) for the night.
Onto the next pub. Little busier, and some chick seemed to want to have a staring contest with Jess, which was pretty funny. We ended up hitting two or three more pubs that night. I liked it because every place had a different vibe, and there was a lot to choose from. Amsterdam is a lot more walkable than I thought it was...I expected a huge city, but the downtown core is pretty small compared to a place like London or Berlin.I know Ive been thee before, but I obviously went the wrong way or something, because I never found any of this stuff.
Finally, after being awake for 33 hours, I hit a wall and it was sleepy time. Jess said I was asleep about 3 seconds after laying down, which is funny because normally it takes me a while to get to sleep no matter what. He got like 3 hours sleep, then somehow woke up and watched the Habs game on his phone. They lost too, which makes it even better (for me at least). Weirdo.
The next day was Brussels and Cologne. I woke up at 5am, starving and dying for water. Jess had been up for 3 hours already and was starving as well, but nothing around the hotel was open in the middle of the night. And it was fucking cold outside. After getting ripped off by the vending machine (I always make other people go first if I'm with someone using a vending machine...if they get ripped off, I save my money! Thanks Jess!), we waited it out until it was time to head to the train station. Magically this cabride was 15 euros as well, despite being twice as long. The canals are pretty cool in the morning, by the way.
Upon arrival in Brussels, we had to ditch our packs so we could walk around for a few hours. The manned luggage service was closed, so we were forced to use lockers. No big deal, except...the lockers kept spitting out all the change we put in them. BUT they were spitting out tickets and locking our bags up. What the hell? We opened and closed them a few times just to make sure we weren't being Punk'd, then left for town happy to save 3.5 Euros. Weird. I was expecting our shit to be gone when we got back for sure, but alas, it was all there.
We arrived in Brussels on the wrong day, in many ways. Christmas Eve might seem like a cool time to visit a town in theory, but it didn't really play out like that. First off, they had a crazy snowstorm the night before and the roads were nuts. Our cabbie kept stopping to help people push their cars up hills because they were stuck.
(Side note - I'm going 207 km/h on this train between Vienna and Salzburg right now, and it's tripping me the fuck out. Trying to look out the window at anything just makes me dizzy)
We finally got out of the cab right down near Grand Place, and slid/stumbled through the snow and ice into it. They had a gigantic Christmas tree and a whole manger set up in the middle, complete with real sheep. Kinda cool for Christmas shit. The funny part was the tree was full of snow, and it seemed like every time someone tried to take a picture near it, the wind would pick up and either dump snow on their heads, or it would blow by so fast the picture would be just a white blur. Between that and a few people slipping and falling, we were pretty entertained.
Bitch had one order of business in Brussels - to go to the Delirium Cafe. It's a bar with like 2000 different types of beer or something, so obviously I was down. He had been talking about it since we had set out in Seattle. He was hyped as we tried to find it...without success at first, because Brussels can be hard to navigate, even with a map. Finally, we found the Holy Grail. Jess starts jumping up and down like a 4 year old, runs over to it...and stops dead. And almost bursts into tears. He then says, with a hilarious pouty look on his face:
"It doesn't look like it's open. FUCK, it's not! What the fuck!"
After I stopped laughing, I walked over and saw the sign myself. You see, it's not just that it was closed. The sign, which made me laugh even harder, said:
CLOSED ON CHRISTMAS EVE
Delirium Cafe is closed exactly one day out of the entire year. And it just happened to be the day we were there. Basically, Delirium Cafe bitchslapped Jess somethin fierce. Which had me laughing for DAYS. Sure, I'd like to see 2000 beers too, but this place was actually important to him, and he got brutally denied...like I do by pretty much every woman on the planet. Fair enough. Either way, it was fucking funny.
Luckily, Brussels has a lot of places that can (at least somewhat) make up for Delirium being closed. First stop - De Bier Tempel, which I came to the last time I was here. It's a store that sells like 1000 different types of beer or something. And assorted Delirium stuff, which made Bitch happy. You see, all Jess was really in the market for at the Delirium Cafe was some of their memorabilia. They have a mascot, which is - get this - a big pink elephant. Jess came all this way to shop for a PINK ELEPHANT.
I'll let you get the laughing out of your system before we continue.
So, while he tried to decide between a pink stuffed elephant, a pink blanket, and a pink t-shirt, I walked around and silently yelled at the beers I had bought here last time which induced one of the worst hangovers of my life. The worst part was that he didn't even end up buying anything. He's like a woman in a mall - they like the first thing they see, but they have to walk all over the mall five more times before they just come back and buy the first thing anyway. There's a reason I call him Bitch people!
After some lunch, we ended up down in the market area, which was fucking hilarious. After doing shots of jager out of chemistry beakers (awesome) and Jess drinking some hot wine they sell on the street, we happened upon the most slippery spot in Brussels. Hell, in THE WORLD. Everyone that walked through this one area slipped. Most fell. So what did we do? We camped out there, with Jess videotaping the whole thing, while people slipped and fell. I know how immature that is, but come on...strangers falling down is fucking funny, I don't care what you say. Especially after beaker jagers.
After a while of that hilarity, it was about time to go back to the train station to catch our train to Cologne So we went in search of a taxi. Seems like a pretty simple thing in a large city, right?
Nyet. Not on Christmas Eve.
After multiple hotels telling us "dere arr no taxeeees today" we became a bit concerned. Finally one hotel lady (coincidentally at the last hotel I stayed at where I was here) directed us to the metro and told us where to go. We arrived with a few minutes to spare. Crisis averted. Or was it?
We went down to the Thalys (train company) tracks, to find out our train had been delayed...indefinitely. No one would tell us anything about the situation, which was annoying. Jess called it before we even got there though - he saw they were giving out free coffee and said "companies never give out free shit unless they fucked something up". Sure enough, Jess was right (fuck I hate typing that). The problem was that it was fucking COLD down there, and we pretty much had to stay there because the other screens didn't update very fast and we could miss the thing if we waited up above in the main station. So we suffered. And it fucking sucked.
At one point I was so cold that I actually went and got a cup of coffee. The second cup in my entire life. The first was when my train to Barcelona was delayed in 2004 and someone bought a cup for me. So I kept up two trends at least - I only drink coffee when waiting for a late train in Europe, and I don't pay for it. I can live with that. Unfortunately there was no sugar left so the coffee tasted like Chernobyl soil. Oh well.
Finally after about 2 hours, they let us on the fucking train. We didn't arrive in Cologne until after 10pm, which sucked since we had to be up at 5am to go to the airport. Our hotel was right up the street from the station luckily, but it was insanely cold and windy outside. We ended up taking the wrong exit out of the train station, which put us face to face with the biggest, craziest church I think I've ever seen. It was too dark to get a pic, but it was MASSIVE. I wish we had the time and patience to explore it, but we were all out of both at that point, so onto the hotel we went.
Stay tuned for the following: (seemingly) killer Germans, all the strangeness of Israel, being strip searched (!), cat fights, being ripped off in a bunch of countries, modern bedouins, me hiking 5km uphill and Jess riding a donkey, craters, the Dead Sea, the worst fortress ever, fucking stupid Shabbat, Penguins, and much much more.
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