26th September - Luxembourg

Trying my best to catch up to present day diary news but it's not easy, here goes again!

We had high expectations of Luxembourg City and in the first few hours of our arrival it was looking to meet them.  Caught a decent train from Trier to Lux where we could secure our bikes easily with a seatbelt AND get a seat.  Arrived in Lux City, walked for an hour through the hilly city to our hostel.  Was a little early to check-in so locked up bags and spent a good hour taking in the views across the city while walking around some of the historical sights.  Even stopped at a free art museum which had a few nice pieces and some art by Turner & Victor Hugo.

That's when life got real painful...  Checked into the hostel fine, decided we would wash our clothes using the hostel washer.  It was a five-hour ordeal...  The only washing machine they owned was also used by the hostels cleaning staff.  Someone must have washed with some serious chemicals because it smelt like methylated spirits & paint brushes inside the machine.  Not wanting to risk all our clothes in that, we searched online for a Laundromat, closest was 20km away...  Went to get a refund from the hostel counter, he offered to wash & dry our clothes in the staff facilities.  Naturally we thought this was awesome.  2.5 hours later we thought the clothes would be dry.  Super wet.  Didn't want to hassle the guy anymore so went and hung all our clothes in our room.

As we were hanging them, I thought they smelt like BO and was concerned enough to mention it to a French guy staying in our room.  Turns out it wasn't our clothes at all but the French guy who stank!

During this whole ordeal we were also surfing the net looking for a cheap place to eat but could find nothing, so felt like the city was just trying to destroy us...

Luckily Julie decided to turn down a dodgy strip-joint street on our hunt and we found some cheap Chinese food & a kebab shop for the next night.

Our second day in the city was much more successful.  We went to a market to buy some fresh dips & olives for lunch which we chowed down upon on the steps of city hall.  Perfectly timed a free organ show at a large church.  Went on a walking tour of the city.  It's worth noting that the only walking tour we could find was the official tour run by the city's tourist office.

Finished up with some pre-planned kebabs for dinner in strip-town & prepped for our epic bicycle journey from Luxembourg, through Belgium to Germany!

25th September - Trier

After all that binge-drinking in Munich, it took us 3 days of going sober & eating healthy to feel good again.  I couldn't believe just how quickly I got fat from 3 days sitting down & drinking.  A lesson hopefully remembered for a long time to come.

The train ride to Trier with our bicycles was pretty exhausting.  We had to catch 4 trains over the course of 7 hours.  1st was a Munich metro train full of locals angry about the space we took up.  2nd we had a nice spot for the bikes however we had two severly disabled & annoying women sit in our 4-seat section even though the train was mostly empty.  If they weren't calling Munich shit and weren't yelling at each other, they were pulling apart a roast chicken with their fingers and grossing up the joint.  3rd train was fine.  4th was another regional train full of locals on their way home from work.  We stood for an hour on that train with our bikes and all our gear.

Eventually we made it to Trier and made it to our AirBnB accommodation which had it's own kitchen.  Laura eagle-eyed a vietnamese restaurant on our way to the accom, so we ate Pho for some tastes from home & hit the hay.

After our train woes in Munich the first thing we did was check our tickets to Luxembourg were in order.  Turns out for that train you don't even need a seperate bike ticket.  While there at the station, saw a lot of what we believe to be migrants trying to sort out train tickets with minimal English skills but with huge wads of cash in hand.

Today was spent going to all the toursit sites.  Trier has over 2000 years of histoy beginning with the Romans, so there was plenty to keep us busy.  One of the main attractions was one of the original city gates built by the Romans in 200AD!  This thing must have towered above all else back in the day, incredibly tall for such an old piece of architecture.  It is named Porta Nigra or "Black Gate" due to the discolouration of the stones caused by bacteria.

I was interested in seeing Triers Amphitheatre, an arena used for fighting & performances, so we headed there but Julie's blood sugar levels dropped dramatically so we turned back to get her some coffee and sandwiches first!

They have this tourist card called an 'Antikencard' for 10E so we bought some of these which allowed us access to the main town museum & two other historical sites 'of our choice'.  Starting at the museum they had HEAPS of artifacts, more than I think they knew what to do with!  spear-heads, pottery, jewelry, coins, gravestones, mosaics, etc!  Laura's favourite section was of the intricate jewelry designed for the horses of well-off Roman families to exude their wealth.  I think my favourite was the area of floor-sized mosaics pulled from expensive Roman houses from the around the area.  Apparently the residents of Trier keep digging for construction jobs and just keep finding more stuff.  One example being over 2000 gold coins from 4th centry AD in an old chest of a collapsed basement!

Visited the amphitheatre, full of icky spiders but very cool.  Then realised our tourist card did not allow access to the place we wanted to go so ended up climbing up the Porta Nigra before retiring to our kitchen to make Herring Stirfry Curry & ice-cream for our future trip planning session.

23rd September - Munich Oktoberfest

MUNICH (19th - 23rd)

Our first night was very timid.  Spent a little time searching for fealmarkets & bike shops so we could ride on the Vennbahn Trail from Luxembourg to Germany.  Google lied to us about where one was located and the second shot was closed until the day before we left Munich.  After the search we settled on a doner for afternoon tea and a farmers plate of olives, cheese, dip, breat & crackers for dinner in our hotel room.

Ibis Hotel was great!  Cheaper than Joe & Aime's hostel and they supplied breakfast too!

Day 2:  Involved meeting up with everyone at 9.30am.  Joe, Amie, Brendan & Andy all looked a bit seedy but they soldiered on & led the way to the massive Hofbrauhaus tent in Oktoberfest.  By 10.30am the tent was already full and roudy with person after person standing up on the benches & skulling entire steins!  There was a loud american bloke on our table that got kicked out by 11am coz he was (a fuckwit) too drunk.  A chick on the table next to us who decided it would be a good idea to skull two steins before 11.30am.  She followed that up by promptly spewing back up into the glass and spending the next 4 hours with her head in her hands.

We started putting bets on when she would recover with the longest bet being 4pm.  We all lost.

Brendan managed to pick up twice.  By the end of the night while they were engaged they toppled off the chairs onto the floor, an action shot which I missed on the camera by about 0.25 seconds.

Any stuck with pretzels all dayto save cash on food until he realised that he'd spent 15E on pretzels & could have purchased half a chicken for that price!  We ended up being in the tent for 12 hours and left in darkness back to our hotel :S

Day 3: Met everyone at the more respectable time of 11.30am at the Oktoberfest gate.  Today was Tom's first day so we all had to back up yesterdays effort!  Went to the Paulaner tent this time & sat on a table with this old swiss bloke in a fluro shirt named Roberto.  He started off being a bit of a drain on the table but managed to join us dancing on the benches by the end of the night.  I kept managing to order crappy sausages off the menus somehow.  At about 6pm I left the tent to go pick up this crappy bike I found on a trade website.  The tent was prett ycalm when I left so it was a suprise to return at 7.30pm to see the whole tent up on chairs raucously cheersing & dancing to the band!  Left tent at night and bought a massive pizza which we devoured on the bed back at our hotel.

Day 4:  Each day our meeting times became later & later!  Today we met at 12.30pm and graced the Lowenbrau tent with our presence.  Best beer at the festival was here in my opinion.  Light, fruity & went down easy after two full days of drinking.

Laura & I had a prett ysuccessful morning though, buying a bike for her at a shop for 75E.  The bike ended up being a piece of rubbish, but more on that later.  We had a stein in the tent and left to organise bike tickets for our train ride to Trier.  It ended up costing us another 70E to get the bikes to Trier because we had to buy tickets to a different train that initially purchased.  Lesson here is always buy your bike tickets at the same time as your train tickets.  And if you are travelling near Oktoberfest, book them in advance!!

We returned to the tent and partied on with some older German women before Brendan got grumpy because a group of women jumped on our table & they weren't drinking!  They weren't enough fun for him so we moved & then hugged everyone goodbye.

19th September Manchester & Stuttgart

I've decided to stop the daily script I was so scrupulous at maintaining over the walk.  Not as fun to write as bunching a few interesting points across a few days.  So here we are, currently on a train headed for Munich to meet Joe & Aimee for Oktoberfest.

MANCHESTER (15th-17th)

We ended up having to catch buses all the way to Manchester from R.H.B.  Train tickets were going to cost us 95 pound as we didn't pre-book, so we went with the 44 pound bus tickets through York & Leeds.

Even though we only passed through on the bus, I've decided that York deserves a few days of investigation if we ever return and decided I could happily never visit Leeds again.  York just had this clean & grand architecture that was really appealing while Leeds just felt unclean, oppressive and stagnant.

I am happy to report that first impressions of Manchester were quite good.  We were aching for a good indian curry and read that there is an area called The Curry Mile in town.  It must have received it's name a long time ago thorugh as when we arrived it appeared that the Indians had up and left, while a bunch of Turks & Afghanis had taken up residence.  We aren't fussy as long as it tastes good, so picked up some kebabs and shawarmas that Laura advised were the best she had EVER eaten.  Not bad!

Manchester has a distinctly similar vibe to Melbourne.  There always seemed to be live music, sport and art events to attend, while it also had a good food & cafe scene.  We managed to tick all of the boxes with the exception of sport, however I did attempt to return a soccer ball to a group of youths on the 5th level of a parking lot!  Won't be signing any lucrative deals anytime soon.  Ball landed in basement floor.

Blimey!  I almost forgot to mention the bloomin' Walkabout Hostel!  5 star! ... Out of a possible 20.  Honestly, it was only 11 pound per nich each, so we didn't expect much, and it met our expectations.  Clean bed, quiet room & good location.  Had to go to the bar twice to get checked-in then get our key working.  The following day had to go to the bar again to get our key fixed again, only to have it STILL fail and we ended up having to wake the occupants for entry.  If low on cash, a fine stay.  Just be warned.

Getting quite warm on this train at the moment.  We recently changed trains at Ulm, which is the birthplace of Albert Einstien.


STUTTGART (17th - 19th)

Took us the whole day to fly to Stuttgart & catch the train into the city.  Our first meal in Germany was a traditional American burger with a pint of Dinklelacker Export to wash it down.

We only had one full day in Stuttgart, but didn't get out of our hostel until 1pm (A & O Hostel) as we had to organise what we were doing after Munich.

A nice city with uber amounts of construction in the works (Manchester was similar actually).  A shopaholics dream with some pleasant sights included!  We spent the day walking around the city & parks & the afternoon at the Mercedes-Benz museum.  The museum was very cool,m reckon I took more pictures there than I have in the last two weeks combined!  8 stories of building that starts at the top and slowly winds its way down from old to new, incorporating some 19th & 20th century history at the same time.

We haven't made it to Munich yet, early reports from Joe are that it's crazy busy & was apparently impossible to catch a train from Austria to Germany due to German sanctions that were imposed to stop the flow of Syrian migrants into the country after they recently announced they would home 500,000 migrants a year from the IS conflict.

Will be interesting to see how the city copes with such a sudden influx of festival-goers and migrants at the same time.  An exciting time to be visiting the city, although i have not heard anyone mention migrants on the train.  Most sound too excited for the festival!

14th September - Grosmont to Robin Hoods Bay

Our final day walking replayed the terrain from the last 15 days.  We had a little bit of everything: 33% incline hills, tarmac, soggy moors, forests and about 2 hours too much mud.

Felt great to finally make it to the North Sea after 190 miles.  The weather 'just' held out for us however the mud did dirty our moods!  As did this female couple who kept passing us at high speed, only to slow down & look at their map when they had no one to follow.

We arrived 'Suitably Disheveled' to Robin Hoods Bay, had a show at our B&B at the top and finished the last mile in style, walking down to the sea in jeans & smelling fresh!

Picked up a celebration whiskey at The Bay H which Laura spilled after standing to hug Janice who was also there celebrating.

Picked up some amazing fish & chips, drank & ate merrily a bus stop by the sea.  Met the Aussies & Americans one last time for a few pints before getting their twitter tags and closing out the day.

Tony Abbott's last day as prime minister was today, replaced by Malcolm Turnbull 1 year before elections are due.

13th September - Blakey Ridge to Grosmont

Feels wierd that we only have one more day of walking left :S  We saw the North Sea today so reality really hit home.

Today we walked to Grosmont (silent S!) about 13 miles (6 hours) walking with breaks.  My body felt pretty exhausted, I guess it required a lot of energy to keep warm during yesterdays walk and had not quite repaired itself ye.  Saw lots of Pheasants & Grouse.  Tired body made it a long hard walk despite the mostly flat terrain.

Made it to Grosmost House, a huge impressive building that was built in the 1860's.  Was a shame then to find such a shitty bathroom in our room.  No fan, felt like I was showering in a cupboard.  Water took 3 minutes to warm up & then just went scolding hot with no way to turn down the heat without turning the shower off!

Can't forget about julie the lord of the sheep when a paddock full of sheep came running over to us.

Watched some T.V.  now off to the pub for dinner.

12th September - Europe Diary

Woke up, it was dark, raining & windy.  Packed all the wet weather gear for the day.  And we thought yesterdays weather was bad!  Got driven back to Clay Bank & got instantly blasted with cold rain.  Threw on my water-proof pants instantly but was too late, pants were soaked.

Luckily we knew we only had 3-4 hours of walking to the Red Lion Inn so we punched up the speed to high gear and did not stop until we arrived at Blakey Ridge.  Eating our sandwiches while walking.

Didn't matter how fast we went.  Julie's pants & boots were soaked & squelching while my boots stayed dry but my shirt was soaked despite my waterproof jacket.

Had some hot chippies & pints before calling our accom August Guest House to pick up up.  Michael was a funny bloke who never stopped joking & they treated us very well, drying everything & driving us to the pub with a salt-of-the-earth aussie walker named Janie.  She was from Foster in NSW & ran her own small hobby farm just like what we'd like to do.

What did I miss...  Every walker at The Lion Inn was soaked, no matter the combination of gear.  Some poor soals had another 9 miles of walking that day.  Thank god we booked here.