Germany!

Since the last week of track league in Manchester was canceled for track repairs, I decided to take a side trip to Germany for Christmas markets, tasty German food, German beers, and some bitter cold weather.  That, and I figured with the recent terrorist threats in Germany, at least they wouldn't attack while I'm around.

So, on Wednesday I headed to the Manchester airport and boarded an EasyJet flight to Germany.  For those who have never flown EasyJet, it is a bit like Con Air, but without the convicts.  There are no seat assignments, so it is a first-come first-served free-for-all to find a nice place to rest one's rear for the duration of the flight.

I boarded near the end of the queue, but still managed to find an emergency exit row seat.

We were delayed close to an hour before the plane took off (the de-icing queue was rather long) but I figured the three hours I had budgeted to get from the airport to the train station in Hamburg should be enough.

Sure enough, it was!  I even had time to eat a small snack in the food court in the Hamburg Hauptbahnhof, and take a few pictures.

The Hamburg Hauptbahnhof is festive at Christmastime.

From Hamburg, I took the train to Berlin, a city that seems to only sleep when the sun is up (?!?).

Due to the recent terrorist threats, the German parliament building (also known as the Reichstag) is closed to visitors, but I walked around the outside and took what I thought to be a nice picture in the evening.

The Reichstag at night!

Before going out to a house party the other night, a group of us were sitting around doing puzzles.  I breezed through the first two puzzles (one where four wood blocks are arranged to form a square, and another where 6 foam puzzle pieces are arranged to form a cube), and was offered a chance to try the third puzzle which nobody had solved (since the current owner owned it).

The following picture shows the result.

Evidently I am not as dumb as I look.

At the house party, a somewhat hilarious situation arose.  I was waiting in the queue for the toilet when a guy who was obviously in dire need of a bathroom visit came bouncing up.  Not wanting a puddle on the floor, we let him proceed to the front of the queue and he zipped in and shut the door rapidly behind him.  A moment later, all of us standing in the hall noticed something odd, which I then captured in a picture:

Can you tell what is odd in this picture?

It looked to us like our friend had caught his belt in the door in his haste to close it.  This in turn conjures up all kinds of delightful images of what is happening on the other side of the door.  Is is standing there, back against the door, trying to arc a shot into the toilet on the far side of the bathroom?  Did he pass out and try to pull a Jimi Hendrix?  Did he dive out of his pants in order to reach the porcelain appliance in time?

I'll leave things at that to avoid my blog's complete digression into toilet humor.

Yesterday, I headed to the Berlin velodrome (velodrom in German) to take a look at the venue for the famous Berlin Six Day race.  A combination of U-Bahn, S-Bahn (not necessary), and Tram took me to within about two and a half blocks of the site.  From there, signs directed me the rest of the way.

The Velodrom sign let me know I was in the right place.

Much to my delight, there was an event taking place.  It wasn't a track racing event, which would have been super-cool, but it did involve wheeled apparatus.  The event was called something like "Extreme Playground" where nutcases on BMX bikes and skateboards were risking life and limb to please a crowd of German teenagers and an American (that's me). 

Taken out of context, an appropriate caption for this might be: "This will not end well."

The American BMX trick rider, pictured above, did land the jump/flip/twist maneuver as he had planned (or at least well enough to fool us) and went on to win the competition.

The riding, skating, and currywurst eating made for a good afternoon and a happy Karl.

After 8 weeks of traveling, I'm down to my last few days abroad.  It's been a fun run, but part of me is ready to come back to the USA, sleep in my own bed, eat some regularly scheduled meals, ride my road bike, go to the gym, and be at least a little more productive than just writing the occasional bike/travel/racing blog post.