I've been putting this off for some while! The computer sites over here only allow me to look at our site in their language!  Not too bad if its in Spanish, but Czech?! C'mon!  Anyway, we muddled our way through it so here it is...

My (Dave) trip started off a bit notoriously...Hans and I rented a Zip car in NYC!  The streets of Manhattan are no place for a slow driver at one in the morning!

I got off alright out of JFK and hitched on my first attempt!  (If you don't know about Airhitch, you should! www.airhitch.org) I flew on Iceland Air, a lot of Bjork and good looking blonds! I had a brief stop over in Paris before I got to Amsterdam where a beautiful strawberry blond was waiting for me!  Everything went well until I got to the baggage claim, they lost my bag, and to make matters worse, I could see Katie though a sound-proof glass wall; all the while waiting for a bag that would never come (you have to go thorough coustoms in order to be on the other side)! For my trouble I received a 25 euro credit and a T-shirt I'm wearing right now!

Our trip together started off in the Nederlands (Netherlands).  Amsterdam, Harlem, Rotterdam, and Den Haag (The Haag).   All the cities we visited were exciting, exotic and picturesque!  I think anyone who has ever travelled can attest to that as a description of any city.  I think the real experience lies in the people you meet along the way. 

The Dutch are many things, not least of which they are a very, let me stress, very tolerant people!  Katie and I were walking around a place outside of Rotterdam called Kinderdijk.  They have a bunch of wind mills there and we were taking pictures of them.  We went up to this one that looked really interesting and accessable and proceeded to take pictures of it.  We saw this guy pull up on a moped and look at us, we didn't think anything of it.  After about ten minutes this guy walked around us, tipped his hat, and opened the door to his house!  We felt like asses, especially after we read a sign that said, "No Trespassing"!

The wind mills are really neat, especially when you consider that about a quarter of their country is actually below sea level and they use those giant wind mills to pump excess water from the rivers into irrigation canals!  Attached is a picture of me and one of the locals! (Well, after trying to upload some photos unsucessfully we'll have to get that on the next one!)

We met a lot of really cool people in the Nederlands, I think my most memorable character was Ali, a guy from Pakistan.  We stayed up till 3 in the morning talking about everything!  He was from Peshawar, a city situated in the north west of the country.  He lives two hours from Afghanistan and literally an hour and a half form the eastern edge of the War Zone.  When we learned that he was from Pakistan I have to admit, I felt a little uncomfortable.  I kept thinking that some how he would blame Katie and I for the current conditions in his country.  We talked about a lot, where we'd been, where we were going, and about the things we had seen along the way.  Yet, the entire time I kept thinking Islam, Pakistan, Afghanistan, terroristists until I finally felt uncomfortable enough to ask him about the war and its effect on him.  We started talking at 10pm and by the end of the night, he could have been my best friend!  We shared the realization that we have more in common than not.  Our values and fears to our hopes and dreams.  He really made an impression on us and set the tone for the rest of our trip...

...enter Deutschland. Berlin is one of the COOLIST cities in the world!  If your into street culture or art, Berlin will not disappoint! The city a virtual canvas due to the excess of abandon buildings!  Berlin was expanded by Hitler (not entirely) to be a modern day ancient Rome with the current infrastructure able to support a population 2.5x the current population (3.5 million)! That's good if you're looking for a cheap place to sleep and eat!  Its truely a painted city! Everywhere you go you see tags and graffiti pieces from all sorts of hacks to legit artists.  What's most impressive about the pieces is the stories behind them.  Before the wall came down there were only a few grafix crews on the west side (Democratic) of the wall and virtually none on the east (damn Commies).  When the wall came down in '89 the east exploded as a whole new place to paint and explore.  After the hack graffiti artist were sorted out, the talented artists started putting up really inspiring stuff all over the city.  Some of the first pieces of art were put on the former Berlin Wall on a section which is now known as the East Side Gallery.  Anywhere you go in Berlin you could almost feel the creativity oozing  off the streets! There were no shortage of art galleries, the most interesting was a place called Tacheles.  Its an abandoned building complex with a "self-organized collective of artists" living and working there.  Their galleries are open to the public.  Most of them are street artist, drawing inspiration form the urban enviroment.  We loved it!  

The other thing about Germany that really caught our attention was the history of the country.  It has a dark past and the evidence is everywhere.  We saw bombed out churches and bullet holes to the burnt facades of countless other buildings, and the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen.  We came away from Germany with a sobering view of the past that our Grandfathers helped shape.  

During our weeks visit we stayed mainly in Berlin.  There was so much to do and tons of cool people to meet! While in Berlin we met two realy cool guys, Gariff from England and Pedro from Brasil! They were very easy to talk to, I think we'll have a place to stay when we visit England and Brasil! And if they want to see some snow they're welcome in Wisconsin! They really loved their futbol and ping-pong! We had a great time playing ping-pong and drinking beer! Watching Katie rally for a near win against an Israili guy with us cheering her on in the backround, well, I'd have to go out on a limb and say it was almost as exciting as a Futbol match!

We almost forgot to mention the beer! Awesome and cheap! When I say awesome thats no exageration! After all, the beer is brewed under Germany's first law, the Reinheitsgebot {Bavarian Purity Laws}! And cheap, we were drinking .5 liter bottles {about a pint} for .34 eruos, thats like 50 cents! Now some may say German beer isn't the best in the world,  but we'll let you know after we visit the Czech republic!

Cheers, Proost, and Na zdravi!