I visited the Kölner Dom (aka Cologne Cathedral) in Köln with Julian Münster, an old hockey friend of mine. I went again the morning after and climbed to the top. For future reference, I suggest leaving your luggage behind before deciding to embark on climbing the staircase :/
We also headed to the Gaffel brewery to try the local brew called “Kölsch”, a slightly strange beer which is traditionally served in little 200 mL glasses.
I visited Bonn, Germany around 2009, but I was mostly just passing through on my way to Köln just north of there. This time around I had a proper look, including taking a bus tour (note: bus tours in Germany are for old boring people and are best avoided). Whilst in town, I had some awesome beer, including a slightly strange but tasty brew called a “kristall weiss”, which is basically a regular weissbier, but it’s filtered so it looks like regular beer.
After having more beers than is a good idea, I headed over to the Bonn Münster, a church in the Bonn city center. It looked quite spectacular in the evening. It was built in the 11th and 13th centuries.
I moved into my current apartment because I knew I would have awesome flatmates. Three awesome girls and a cool guy. My room is 23 m2, ie: very big! I am moving out because I am moving to Berlin.
If you know of any males looking for a room to rent or are looking for one yourself, please get in touch 🙂 Rent is 5670 NOK per month plus electricity and internet and the bond / damage deposit is 12000 NOK. Rent starts December 1st.
For an extra fee of 5000 NOK you can also have the whole place totally kitted out with furniture, including a nine month old double bed, a couch, large mirror, large Plasma/LCD TV (not sure which), big chest drawers, a bookshelf, a desk, two free standing lamps and two giant bean bags (useful if you have lots of visitors over).
The apartment is situated between St Hanshaugan and the Royal Palace, easy walking distance from bus, tram and subway routes. We have two bathrooms, a very large kitchen/dining area and we have tons of storage room.
I had an awesome time in Amsterdam after WordCamp Europe with Ivelina and some of the other WordPress geeks. We went to Brouwerij”t ij, a small micro brewery with great beers and went out for dinner in a really awesome Chinese place. I didn’t think Europe had any good Chinese restaurants, but it turns out I was wrong 🙂
My lovely friend Nadia (the original English one, not the Norwegian one), decided to try beer for the first time. She however made the n00b mistake of deciding to try cheap nasty Norwegian alcohol free beer. This was never going to go well. I insisted she needed to try proper alcoholic beer, preferably from Germany, Belgium or the Czech republic. I don’t think I’ll ever get her to try alcoholic beer, so since I was in Germany where they seem to serve alcohol free beer in every bar, I decided to have a bash at comparing two supposedly identical beers to see if it were actually possible to get a drinkable alcohol free beer.
I found a bar in Berlin which served one of my favourite brews, Erdinger Weissbier, alongside it’s alcohol free equivalent, Erdinger Weissbier Alkoholfrei. The bar tender served them both up in identical glasses and didn’t tell me which was which. One had a distinct wheaty hoppy taste, the other tasted like Weissbier and got me drunk. Conclusion … even high quality German beer tastes bad when it’s alcohol free.
I visited Susan, an awesome girl I know from Dunedin, in Wuppertal Germany. Wuppertal is a small city near Dusseldorf. It is famous for the Wuppertaler Schwebebahn, a very old but unique train system which hangs the trains from above rather than on tracks.
I had my first experience of AirBNB in Leiden in the Netherlands. It was a really nice place at a good price and with a terrific view. I forsee some more AirBNB’ing in my future 🙂
I’m currently sitting in a teeny tiny pub in Bonn (Germany), drinking something called a Kristall weiss, which according to the bar tender is apparently like a regular weissbier, but it’s filtered so it doesn’t have the cloudy weissbier thing going on. Imma starting to feel a little drunk 😉
Ivelina and I went to a Shisha pipe place in Amsterdam. It’s not really my kind of thing. I mostly spluttered and coughed. Ivelina clearly enjoys it a whole lot more than me though 😉
Space cake apparently makes it even more enjoyable 🙂 That’s also not my kind of thing though.
We had a shuffleboard tournament in Dramman for Kiwis. Lots of fun had by all 🙂
Shuffleboard is a rather strange table top sport. It feels like a cross between ten pin bowling, curling and pool.
