I need to:

1) Remember to buy a can opener. Or…
2) Remember to not buy cans.

While I’ve gotten pretty good at opening a can with a razor blade, I wouldn’t exactly call it easy…

That is all for now...

Museums. Well, Museum at least.

I was working last weekend, so I took Tuesday off and went to the Mercedes Museum. Check out pictures of horse, bus, and cars.

Went to the Ritter Sport chocolate factory on Friday. We learned when we got there that the factory had a museum, not of chocolate, but of modern art... Art Museum out in suburbia didn't exactly seem like a must see, but at least they had a chocolate store.

Goodbye Fiat.

Today I turned in my Fiat for an Audi 3 diesel with a navigation system. Significant upgrade, significantly cheaper. Of course, I could really be saving some money if the rental place offered the Mazda 6 live-in edition (engineered by K. Goza).

More on Germany

1. Parking lots in Germany will have a sign that says "frei" (free). After parking several times and having to pay, I've realized they mean free as in available, not free as in free... I guess there's more to learning a foreign language then memorizing words.

2. Afraid of declining birth rates, the German government will now give its citizens up to $33,470 to have a baby. Maybe I should go find me Helga while I'm here....

3. March has significantly less Madness in Europe. It's a good thing I didn't come here during football season.

Mannekin Pis

I've been working hard on trying to find out the story behind this kid, his pee, and why it attracts hundreds of people at a time away from things such as beer, chocolate, and seafood. It turns out, it is not known where he comes from. There are several stories surrounding him, mostly involving the peeing producing some sort of military victory... Brussels, you would've been better off just claiming you made it up (see: Hokie).

Pictures

Brussels

Went up to Brussels this weekend where a coworker from DC, Mel, just starting to work with NATO. The first site to be seen would be Brussels' most famous - Manneken Pis. More on it later, but it's a small statue of a kid peeing. Well, at least Brussels has beer, waffles, chocolate, and seafood to fall back on...

When walking past a bunch of seafood places, I made a comment about snails being on a lot of the menus. Mel said, with no previous bacon-wrapped-bacon conversations influencing her, "they're actually pretty good wrapped in bacon". Consider the bacon makes everything better point proven.

Next up, a bar that's in the Guinness book for most types of beer. They had 2004. I drank 2. One tasted kind of like Sam Addams, one tasted a lot like pennies. mmm... copper...

Sunday morning we went over to a flea market. I was thinking it was going to be a tourists' flea market with lots of souvenirs, but it was definitely more geared towards locals. Nothing purchased, but I came across an 8-track car stereo. Unfortunately, it wasn’t compatible with the Fiat...

Brussels summary: Beer – good. Mussels – excellent. Waffles and chocolate – fair. Statue of kid peeing – weird enough to warrant its on blog post.

The weekend that went not good.

The plan: Weekend in Paris.

Actual events:

Left Saturday morning with my coworker Adrienne for Paris. Got to Cologne where we planned to transfer trains. The train from Cologne to Paris was reservation only and we got into Cologne too late to make the reservation. We now had the decision on whether to wait 2 hours for the next train to Paris or jump on another train somewhere else. After looking at the schedule, we decided on Amsterdam.

Before catching the Amsterdam train, I came across the worst pizza ever. Salami, mushrooms, and tuna fish. This is just more proof that if it isn't pork, the Germans don't know how to make it edible...

We got to Amsterdam early afternoon, did some sight seeing, ate excellent Mexican food (run by supposedly the only Mexicans in town), then caught a comedy show (blogged earlier). After the show, it was time to grab our stuff from a locker in the train station and find a hotel.

We got to the train station to find a large metal door in between us and the lockers.... About three feet above eye level, there's a sign showing the hours the locker room is accessible. Stupid important signs not being in plain view...

No stuff, but at least we'll have a bed to sleep in. We go across the street to a hotel. They just rented out their last room to the people that walked in ahead of us. We try the next hotel. No rooms. About 5 hotels later, we catch a bus to a different part of town. After about 10 more hotels giving us the answer: "There are no rooms available anywhere in town", we start to see the writing on the wall, this is going to be an all-nighter...

We start at an Irish pub. I'm talking to the bartender, who can't believe there are no rooms available. It's the middle of the off season and the city wasn't busy. He says he may be able to the help us though. He knows a guy. Umm… Is this help that I want? He goes off to make a phone call. He comes back. "Sorry, I can't help. My buddy works at a hotel, but he's on his couch sleeping". Well, at least I know he was actually trying to help.

Irish Pub closes up at 3am. Next up, Burger King. A Norwegian girl behind us in line decided to explain to me that drunken Dutch people are not nearly rowdy enough and that they should be louder like Norwegians. I told her she was too loud. She didn’t take me seriously and only got louder...

Burger King closed at 4. Walked 40 minutes back to the train station where we hung out until the 6am train that went back.

Not being able to sleep Saturday night caused me to miss out on two very important things on Sunday: Falafel for lunch and Heineken brewery tour. Very unfortunate.

Went to sleep around 3pm and slept straight till the next morning. Good times.