The Great Pre-Brexit UK Tour

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A friend and I wanted to backpack through the UK, and we kind of had the funny idea of doing it before Brexit actually took place. The idea was that we would see the UK before Brexit and then come back a few years after Brexit to see if it had turned into a utopia or the next installment of Mad Max.

I had made an open Facebook post indicating my plans, and it so happened that some of my family in the US took me up on the offer. Things worked out so that I would meet up with my family as well as spending some time with my friend as we toured through the UK.

As the time came to leave, I took the overnight bus to London from Cologne.

It’s hard to make out, but this is the train that our bus drove into so it could drive under the English Channel

My dad, stepmom, and two of my brothers flew into London and were already at our air B&B. This is our reunion photo.

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USA Trip

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I had been living in Germany for 3 years by the time this trip rolled around. Other than a short weekend in the USA in conjunction with a business trip, I hadn’t been home for a few years, and it was time to visit.

A friend of mine and I flew out in October, and our first destination was Chicago, where we visited an old friend of mine. Together, we checked out some sites to show my German friend around a bit.

Looking out to Millennium Park from the pavilion

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Romania

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I used to work for a company here in Cologne, Germany. The IT section of said company is located in Romania, and we had always discussed going there to visit, see the office, and just to say hi.

It then happened that someone spotted some really cheap tickets on Ryanair. We went there for about 4 days, and the flight to Romania was a measly 3€, and the return was something like 15€, which was still unbelievably cheap. (We spent more on beer while we were there than we did on the flights!)

After seeing who could go, 4 of us plus one partner went. The day came, and the 5 of us met at the train station. We had to fly out of Düsseldorf Weeze, which was actually about 3 hours away from us since the trains and bus were all slow. We were waiting for the first train in Cologne, at the right platform, and as the train was supposed to depart, it still hadn’t even arrived…

We got a little confused, and at the last second, I noticed that they had changed the gates and it was actually behind us. We tried to make it, but the doors closed in front of our outstretched hands.

An excellent start…

Slightly panicked at missing our 3€ flight, we looked up possibilities and found another train we could take. In the end, it worked out, but it was certainly not a smooth start.

We got to Romania and checked into our B&B, and then we went to the office. We have known a lot of the IT guys for quite a while, but we had not met most of them before. It was pretty nice to actually see them face to face and chat with them. We spent the rest of the day “working” before going out for the evening.

2 Jesuses united

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ESA Tour

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One of my friends knows a guy who works with the European Space Agency here in Cologne, Germany. One thing led to another, and we were offered a tour of the facility.

Around 15 or so people were interested in coming, and it turned into quite the proper tour. We all got in cars (the facility isn’t very public-transportation accessible), and made our way there. Casey then led us through the facility, showing us the very things that astronauts train with and are assisted with.

Model of the International Space Station

The Space Shuttle

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Abandoned Sports Hotel and Video Game Museum

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I have always had a fascination with abandoned places. A while back, I found a website that listed a bunch of abandoned locations in Berlin, and I wanted to find something exciting. The city is rife with abandoned places, and one that really caught my attention was an abandoned theme park, complete with roller coasters and other carnival rides. Unfortunately, I read in the comments that it was now heavily guarded and one could easily get caught.

Not feeling bold enough to attempt that, I looked for another location. I found an abandoned sports hotel, and a few friends and I went for it.

We took the overnight bus on Friday evening to Berlin and arrived first thing Saturday morning. After dropping our stuff off at the hostel, we went straight to the abandoned hotel.

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An American in North Korea (and How it Wasn’t too Hard)

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I always had an odd desire to visit North Korea, or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. I like going to odd places, which is why I have visited abandoned missile silos, backpacked/hitchhiked around South America with no solid plan, and various other locations. Something about North Korea drew me to it—one of the most politically isolated countries in the world. It was hard to get in, and the sour relationship with the USA didn’t help.

While I was traveling the East Coast, I met up with my uncle. He was telling me about how he went to East Berlin when the wall was still up. He was telling me how wildly different it was, and how much it changed after the wall came down. I was resolved to go there, and I wished to visit North Korea before it changed, for the better or for the worse. It could retract into its isolation or open up like China did, and I wanted to see it before anything changed.

It turns out, it’s not actually that difficult to get into North Korea. You just need to go with a tour company. I did some research and settled on Young Pioneer Tours. We had exchanged some emails, but it was still odd to pay ahead of time without having actual proof that it wasn’t a scam.

Hesitantly, I paid the ~$1000 for the 6-day tour, and it seemed to be okay. I got a Chinese Visa (you can only fly into Pyongyang from Beijing, so I had to go there first), and I booked a flight.

The time finally arrived, and in the fall of 2015, I got on a plane and flew to Beijing.

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Norway and Jotunheimen

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A few years ago, a friend and I decided to go to Norway. We wanted to go backpacking, and we decided on the Jotunheimen National Park, which is about 400km northwest of Oslo. Jotunheimen means home of the Jotuns, with the Jotuns being a race of giants on Norse mythology.

We first flew into Oslo and hung out there for a day and night.

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European Vacation with Dad

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A couple years after I moved to Germany, my Dad flew out here to visit me, and we traveled around Europe a bit.

The day after my father arrived, we hopped in a plane and went straight to Leipzig. I remember that we disembarked the plane pretty rapidly since it was a small airport, and they just put the stairs up to the plane. After landing, we were within the terminal in no more than a couple minutes. What was surprising was that our baggage was already on the carousel even though we had just landed. Talk about a quick ground crew!

We stayed at a couchsurfer’s house and checked out the city during the day.

We went up the Hochhaus, which is the skyscraper in the middle of the city.

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The Pyrenees

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A few years ago, my friend and I went to France to go hiking in the mountains. We decided on going to the mountains near Lourdes because it didn’t seem to be as touristy there as compared to other more well-known areas in the Pyrenees.

We first had to fly to Toulouse, and then we took the train to Lourdes.

Once we got to Lourdes, we started making our way through the town toward the mountains.

Unfortunately, it started raining right then. We trudged through the rain along the roads until someone was kind enough and pulled over for us, offering us a ride.

It was nice to get out of the rain on the first day of our backpacking trip, and she got us much closer to the mountains. By that time, the rain had subsided enough that we could walk without getting soaked.

We managed to get to a lake that marked the entrance of the park, and we ended up pitching our tent behind some bushes where it was fairly hidden.

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