TravelStream™ news feed for member dikano on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/dikano en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:25:47 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dikano/sauerkraut/1211520180/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dikano/sauerkraut/1211520180/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dikano/sauerkraut/1211520180/tpod.html Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:25:47 -0400 Bismarck und Perón

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Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands

Wife found it shabby... I loved it!



I had no idea Amsterdam was such a touristic city. There's a million bars, a million coffee shops, a million canals and another million bicycles. Just beautiful (except for the stupid bicycles)!



Worth mentioning:



* Waiting till you're 31 to walk the red light district massively detracts from its mystique

* Smelling joints on the street ALL the time is not cool

* The girls in Amsterdam come in close second to the ones in Stockholm in terms of "Jesus-fucking-Christ! did you see that girl?!" looks

* Amsterdam is full of places selling, get this, pizza AND donuts AND soft ice. An odd combo, you'd think. My wife cracked the mystery behind it: munchies!

* Everyone speaks very good English

* You'd be hard-pressed to find any Dutch people that like Germans

* Driving in Amsterdam is shit, largely due to them having more bicycles than inhabitants and their inherit need to ride their stupid bikes under other people's cars

* People are very stylish

* That language they speak there is an atrocity and a cruel, cruel torment to the ears. It sounds like a mixture of dreadful English with dyslexic German. Imagine that!



All in all, an excellent town to walk through and through. High or "low" ;)
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Paris, France

The single most beautiful and stunning city in the world. If it wasn't for the French. They hate everyone that doesn't speak French (and likely those who do, as well). Switching from Yank to German seemed like a catch-22.



We slept in the red-light district, ate pancakes and visited a bunch of Argies, who gave us a heck of a local wine and cheese tour.



On my birthday, I farted loud by the Gioconda. It didn't remotely help clear the Japanese, picture-mobbing crowd...
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Frankfurt, Germany

We visited Frankfurt and got off at Hauptwache. After living in Marburg for a while, it felt like New York.



We eventually moved to Frankfurt and this is where we live these days. We're Frankfurters now.

Yay ... I guess.

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San Carlos de Bariloche, Patagonia, Argentina

We went with our class, like every other Argentinian class ready to graduate form highschool, to Bariloche.



I won't focus on the grass, that cool hand job, those two hours in jail or how I chose "bags "when Melissa offered to either pack my bags or "do something else", just a few minutes before leaving. No. I'll focus on what a horrible place to live in Bariloche must be.



Bariloche is one of those beautiful spots on Earth, where nature just dazzles you and makes your urban background shake to its foundations. BUT, Bariloche "city" is systematically bombarded, all year-round with hordes upon hordes of horny, loud, obnoxious teenagers. We all know there's nothing worst in the world than teenagers. They're shit. They've just discovered booze, so they're always testing their limits; they're trying to understand their present and future place in this world, so they make themselves notice by every means conceivable; they've just discovered their penises and their vaginas, so they engage in the most primal territorial pissings, so as to demarcate their territory and secure maximum replication, etc. Teenagers are God's way of saying: - Oh, I fucked up. Can't you guys pull the plug yourselves so I don't have to feel guilty about this mess? -.



And that's what Bariloche is: an Argie teenage Mecca. Hell, in other words. You'd think the price per square meter ought to be a bargain, but no. It's just puzzling.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dikano/sauerkraut/713909700/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dikano/sauerkraut/713909700/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dikano/sauerkraut/713909700/tpod.html Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:09:15 -0400 Bismarck und Perón

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Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina

While I was momentarily attending a highschool called "Master College" (what in God's fucking name were these people thinking? "Master College"? Seriously?), our biology teacher had no better idea than to take us on some sort of field trip to Comodoro Rivadavia. That's in a province called Chubut, which in Spanish means "why are you still here?", so you kind of imagine the kind of desolate landscape that must be.



Anyways, I saw whales fucking whales, penguins fucking penguins, walruses snoring (and fucking other walruses) and Julieta's crotch from every imaginable angle. I'll cut it short, because I'm a dreadful comedian: I did end up learning a good deal about biology on that trip ;)
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Cordoba, Argentina

It's customary in my country to take the entire class of elementary school graduates on a trip. As if to say: - enjoy it, 'cause you had it good till here... and now you're fucked-. When ready to graduate from highschool, another trip ensues, but this time under the motto: - enjoy it one last time, you had it decent till here... now you're really, really fucked-.



Beyond my issues with maturity, what I wanted to say is that in 1989, my elementary school took me to Córdoba, which is somewhat of a standard destination for these sorts of trips. The cracker is that in that province, one can find several villages in which everything is in German. 1945 type of German, if you catch my less-than-subtle drift.



Coincidence? Hmmm...
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dikano/sauerkraut/568503300/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dikano/sauerkraut/568503300/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dikano/sauerkraut/568503300/tpod.html Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:05:13 -0400 Bismarck und Perón

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Misiones, Argentina, Argentina

My parents come from a little shit province in the north of Argentina called Misiones. Misiones means "missions", so that's where them Spaniards began their process of "re-civilization". All in the name of God, of course. As a cultural note: those Indians did stand a chance, but they were successfully bamboozled with colorful mirrors and spicy paella. If you see the Spanish today, you'd think they're better aligned with Africa's "success story" than Europe's, but back then, they were admirably cunning.



Anyhow: Misiones. That's the gate through which God entered America and that's where those parents of mine spawned. It turns out, the soil is red in Misiones. I don't know why, but it's Mars-like red. And it gets stcuk all over your shoes, your clothes, your body. It's freaking awful. You'd wish that was the only problem, but then people speak with a funny accent (the "what fucking language do you guys speak here?" type of funny, though), poverty is rampant, it's 40 degrees all year long and mosquitoes are deadly.



People are nice, though, not that after all this calamity of a description it matters a bit anymore.

]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dikano/sauerkraut/445728660/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dikano/sauerkraut/445728660/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dikano/sauerkraut/445728660/tpod.html Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:03:50 -0400 Bismarck und Perón

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Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

I went to visit my dad. I must admit I didn't get to see much of Rio beyond its glorious beaches, but I did learn three valuable lessons:



1) Those knobs, usually hidden behind a plastic panel, in old TVs, are not toys. They're actually used to calibrate channels. While kids nowadays don't have to be so weary of that, I learned my lesson the hard way.

2) Onions are shit and Brazilians don't know squat about half-ass, decent cuisine. They would eat tires if they smelled of anything. Eventually, I ended up loving onions, but that revelation was definitely profound.

3) It is perfectly possible to take a dump in the sea while "riding" a wave. I did it, albeit accidentally, at the tender age 8. Eventually, I repeated it, not without a measure of skill, in a beach holiday in Argentina many years later.



Ahhh ... those were the days.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dikano/sauerkraut/1253562333/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dikano/sauerkraut/1253562333/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dikano/sauerkraut/1253562333/tpod.html Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:58:36 -0400 Bismarck und Perón

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Port El Kantaoui, Tunisia

So, my wife and I went to Tunisia for a week of holidays at the beach.

How do I break this kindly to the nice Tunisian people? Vacationing in your country was a shitty, shitty experience. There was nothing nice about it. Beaches were filthy, hotels (and their star ratings) were awful, food was downright terrible (what ever made you think people would go to Tunisia to eat pizza? We want some freaking cous-cous, for crying out loud!), everything was falling to pieces and vacationing there was hardly cheap.

I'm sure there's got to be something nice in Tunis, but the area of Sousse where we went to is an absolutely, positively, ghastly, God-forsaken corner of the Earth.

]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dikano/sauerkraut/1240416000/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dikano/sauerkraut/1240416000/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dikano/sauerkraut/1240416000/tpod.html Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:02:58 -0400 Bismarck und Perón

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Berlin, Germany

I went to Berlin for a job interview and since I arrived horribly early, I kill several hours just walking aimlessly across town.

It's funny how just a couple of hours every couple of years are enough to remind myself that Berlin is so cool it's only second to Paris. No two ways about it.
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