Kiebingen and other adventures

. I left Munich on Friday an caught a ride to Tubingen to visit a German girl who I met in California when she was Couchsurfing at Dan’s place. She came back to Germany after almost two years three days before I came so everything was a bit new for both of us. Flori picked me up at the train station and we went out to get some drinks to celebrate my birthday. Not sure I have ever been so sick since I had food poisoning but I suppose that is only proper for my 21st birthday. When I woke up in the morning Flori’s mother came in my room and introduced herself. When I went outside I realized I was in Paradise. Flori’s grandpa owns a gardening business which is operated on the same property as their home so the house is surrounded by luscious gardens and has a luxury swimming pool which apparently costs 80,000 euros. We spent the morning swimming and trying to clear our heads from the night before. At two Joris, the Dutch guy from my polish adventure came to join us for my actual birthday. As I was still a bit sick we spent the afternoon by the pool talking to Flori’s family. We planned to go to a concert in the evening but Flori was upset because her mom wanted to go as well and so she ended up going and we, Joris and I, ended up going out in Tubingen and having a traditional Schwäbish dinner which was a bit difficult as all three of us are vegetarians and most traditional foods are made with meat. Flori came back form the concert around 5:00 in the morning so she spent the next day sleeping and Joris and I spent the day exploring the forest on and farm land around her house. We picked blackberries and attempted to back pie which turned into tarts because we did not have enough flour and we ended up also making jam with the extra berries. On Monday Joris left and Flori and I really got to spend some time together. After dropping him at the train station in the morning we rode our bikes over to Rottenburg, a village about two kilometers from the village Kiebingen where Flori lives. After coffee we decided to ride into Tubingen and do some shopping and see some of her friends. The ten kilometer ride to Tubingen was absolutely stunning, you are surrounded everywhere by lush green fields and vineyards. In Tubingen we met up with two of her friends and after another coffee decided to go with one of them and rent a boat to take out on the Neckar. First we went in search of bathing suits as none of us had one and then we rented a row boat and spent an hour touring the city by boat and swimming with the current in the river. After we went back to Flori’s house and made Lasagna and spent the night playing music and dancing. We spent Tuesday with her cousin at a lake about five kilometers from their house and so now I am completely sun burned but it was a really nice time. Tuesday night we ate dinner with her grandfather as it was my last night there and then in morning we ate breakfast with her grandmother from the other side of her family in the village before I caught my train to Esslingen. Of all the parts of Germany I have seen the small Schäbisch villages have been the most beautiful.

actually the pictures from Munich and Berlin

I realized that the last batch of pictures I posted were the photos from poland so here are the pictures from Munich and Berlin:

Berlin Poland and Prague

I realize it has been a long time since I caught up with this thing so instead of trying to recap everything in detail I will summarize most of the time and do more details about the most recent events. After the backpacking trip I traveled with Dan back to Stockholm and hung around at Linn’s house for a few days before flying to Munich to visit my friend Christian. I spent two weeks in Munich mostly meeting Christians friends, handing out by the river, and spent one day in the mountains wandering about. From Munich I took a rideshare up to Berlin and stayed with Tilman, and friend of a friend who had spent some time in SF, Toby, and Tim his flat mates. I stayed in Berlin for a week but did pretty much nothing the first three days because I got a UTI and had to take antibiotics which made me very sun sensitive and tired. On a positive note I got visit one of Germany's best hospitals. Tilman left on a trip to Switzerland on Wednesday and the same day my friend Jeff arrived from Oslo came and stayed with me in the flat. It was really great to see him again and have someone to explore the touristy and interesting parts of the city. He arrived in the afternoon and I took him back to apartment to drop off his rucksack and then we headed out to find cheap dinner before going to the Free Hugs event some other couch surfers had organized. The next day we went on a free walking tour which took us to most of the central touristy locations and gave us a good idea of Berlin’s history. After the walking tour we went back home for a bit to do some laundry and get out of the brutal sun. That night we went out to this rad squat in Friedrichshain that was serving dinner for a Euro and showing War Inc. on the wall. It was really fun except that the movie was dubbed in German and Jeff could not understand it. Day three we spent going back to some of the places we had visited on the tour and really spending time there and also exploring the wonderful eastside gallery where a long portion of the wall has been left standing covered in murals about peace and futility of wall building. On Friday afternoon we left Berlin and took the train to Kostryn where the Woodstock festival was being held for the sixth time in its fifteen year history. From the small town we took a bus crammed with people for the US dollar equivalent of 66 cents. From the entrance to the festival we walked toward the main stage as we had seen a graphic location of where the Couch Surfing camp would be namely in the forest directly facing the main stage and a bit to the right. We arrived at the camp relatively easily thanks to the giant blue tarp someone had put up and a big sign saying CS. The first night was one of the best for music. Jeff and I spent most of our time at the folk stage listening to polish-funk-folk-punk combinations. It was a bit funny walking around the festival because there were no rules really about where one could or could not camp so there were tents everywhere. The next morning we had a nice breakfast and got to know our fellow campmates a bit. As the music did not start until the late afternoon we went exploring after breakfast and met some of the Hare Krishna people who were running a big food tent for about a dollar a plate. That afternoon we went down to the main stage with a bunch of the couch surfers and had a great time dancing our heads off to polish bands everyone else could sing along to. Sunday we spent a lot of time chilling out at camp as it was blistering hot. That night it poured rain from about 8:00 to 8:00 so when we packed up to leave in the morning it was with somewhat dampened spirits. From Kostryn our plan was to take an overnight train to Krakow with five other folks from the camp. While we were waiting at the train station wondering what to do with the eight hours we had to kill before our train we met a Ukrainian girl and her polish friend who would end up being our saviors. They were volunteers from the festival and so had special accommodations in the train station where we could leave our backpacks and get out of the rain. They spent the afternoon showing us the city including the former pre-WWII ruins and a red soldier cemetery then helped us get on our train by arguing the people in our seats out of our compartment. Five of us slept in one compartment with a polish couple who were going to Krakow on vacation. We arrived in Krakow the next morning cramped and a bit exhausted although apparently I was the only one who got a significant amount of sleep, and found that we had a Couchsurfing host who was an American working for the consulate in the city. We stayed for two nights in his luxury apartment and explored the city a bit with him. After that I left our group with Joris, one of the Dutch guys from the festival, and we hitchhiked to Prague, via Wroclaw, a grand total of about 520 kilometers. Our first ride was a couple on there first night out since having a daughter who took us to Katowice where there was a huge U2 concert going on. From there we got a ride to Wroclaw with a polish business man and his wife who had been to some meetings in Katowice and were on their way home. They even helped us find a hostel which ended up being one of the nicest and cheapest I have ever stayed in. That night we went out for what we planned would be a quiet beer but ended up staying out until four in the morning talking to polish people about everything from politics to magic. The next day we headed out of town a bit late and had a lot of trouble finding the location that the hostel lady told us would be good for hitching to Prague. We finally found the right bus stop, took the bus to the shopping mall at the edge of the city and started asking at the gas station. Most people seemed to be staying in the city but one guy gave us a ride to the road that would take us to Prague a few kilometers away. From there we got a ride with a man who did not speak any English but drove us about 130 kilometers to the outskirts of a small town. Literally the middle of nowhere. From there we got a ride with a young kid who looked like he had been driving for about six months who gave us a ride to the border of Poland and the Czech Republic. By this time it was already about seven and we were getting a bit ragged from standing outside in the sun and not eating so we got some food from the polish dinner and tried our luck for about 30 minutes before we got a ride with a truck driver who was making a long haul from Warsaw to a small town in the Czech Republic. He spoke some English and his girlfriend was living in Colorado for four months. He also loved the Dutch because as he put it “ Marijuana is legal..and Armin Van Burren” which he said wildly banging his radio from which the famous DJ’s music was blasting. He only took us about 30 kilometers but he left us near a train station and as it was getting quite dark we decided to do the final 125 kilometers by train. We arrived in Prague around midnight and decided to stay in the train station as we could not find a hostel with availability. Around 1:15 we awoken by the police and told that the station was closing for the next two hours so we went outside and sat on the grass to await the reopening. While we were selecting a spot to sit we heard a somewhat desperate cry of “Do you speak English?” There happened to be three other girls from the bay area looking for people to sit with because they were afraid of the bums around and had been told that Prague’s train station was dangerous at night. One of them happened to know me from High School and somehow recognized me immediately even while she was still silluetted by the light of the train station and I had not heard her name or seen her face. All it took was oh your American from California? Oh from the bay area eh? Are you Jeanne Johnson? At the time it was completely mind blowing. After a restless night in the train station I left Joris dazed, confused, and in search of coffee, and caught my rideshare to Munich where I have been relaxing for the last few days and making arrangements for the last few weeks of this adventure.

Munich and Berlin photos

Jeanne