When it rains

The car provides loads of entertainment when it's raining.

Deustchland Waning

Having now experienced Munich, I would dare say it was worth the drive. I'm still wrapping my head around a city that doesn't have a founding date; just an earliest documented mention... the year 1158. Which still makes it a MILLENIUM younger than Vienna, which we'll roll out to tomorrow, but still a lot older than I'm used to associating with human habitation. Despite the age, though, it still manages to have the best public transportation I've ever experienced.

Our hostel was a drastic change of pace from the one in Luxembourg. The previous one was more akin to a resort: serene, lakefront, nestled in a tiny village, and a skilled chef on staff who presented a four course meal. The Munich hostel is five floors of youthful German intoxication.

On first arrival, I was loudly greeted from an open window on the fourth floor by an amiable young man who rotated through 3 languages before he found one I understood enough to answer his trilingual query of where I was from. America seemed to he an exciting answer, judging from his exuberant welcome to Germany and insistence that I join him in the hostel.

The seven of us are sharing an 8-bed dorm with a very unfortunate man named Diego, who probably didn't realize what he was getting into by bunking with 7 Dorans. He's an Italian who speaks English with an Irish accent, as he currently lives in Dublin. His interests include growing body hair and wandering around in boxer-briefs. Don't know why he's in Munich, but he seems to be enjoying himself, judging by his apparent state of mind during his 6am return to the dorm in the mornings. Nice guy; asked if we were Canadian. This marks the first time anybody has talked to us and not immediately assumed we were American (of the USA variety). Undoubtedly this was due to the melodeous overtures of the Canadian national anthem emenating from the bathroom, where dad was inexplicably singing it while introductions with Diego were taking place.

Introductions also took place between myself and German beer. I'm thoroughly impressed. I drank beer from a brewery that's been brewing beer since 1328. (Augustiner Braü). Beer is a big deal here. Its outside the scope of a blog post, but all interested parties should look up German beer history. There's beer purity laws in Bavaria from the 14th century that brewers still follow. Three generations of Dorans sampled the fruits of said brewers today and deemed them laudable.

I've also been sampling the food. As I previously experienced with Fish and chips in the UK, it turns out that i've also never had saurkraut before. To clarify, I have always really liked saurkraut. However, seeing as how the randomly selected biergarten in Munich has saurkraut of the caliber I experienced, then I have ... again ... been missing out for very long time. I've preemptively come to the conclusion that this will be an ongoing revelation for the remainder of the adventure.

Palace visit

A nice woman volunteered her husband to take our picture. I think maybe he did this for a living. He did a sneak attack and got a great photo.

Munich the wet

Munich was memorable. It started when we rolled up in front of the neon pink sign at the hostel. Matt declared it to be the best place he had ever been in his life and we weren't even out of the car yet! Sierra had her car door opened by a dude we dubbed "green shirt", and at some point, Brian looked down from our room at the street below and noted that his wife was dancing with some random guy on the street (who we dubbed white shirt).

The first notable thing we accomplished in Munich was to catch up on sleep. Though sleep for some was interrupted by our poor roommate who returned at 0600. I was personally a bit surprised to wake up to a strange man standing nearby in his tighty underpants. The catch up on sleep caused us to miss breakfast, but nobody cared all that much.

We were treated to a fantastic lightening storm Saturday night, which heralded the onset of great rain. So much rain the locals kept apologizing for it. Off tromped in it though. We walked across the Oktoberfest grounds and visited the Bavaria hall of fame. Then walked over to the museum of transportation, took some photos of a giant snail, and headed for a church we had seen nearby. It turned out to be St. Paul's cathedral, one of the most amusing features of which were giant lifelike photos of what we assumed We're the priests, on video loop so their eyes moved. The floor was painted with big letters that appeared to say "we're watching".

Next we headed for the subway and tram for a trip to the palace. Not entirely sure who's palace it was, but it was really huge. Once we tired of that, we set off for a food quest. It was much harder to find bratwurst than we expected, but we finally prevailed.

Once fed, the under 30 crowd went drinking (yes, all of them). A good time was had by all!

Photos coming soon!

Not o' bahn

Deustchland Waxing

Since I was derogatory about the roads in the UK yesterday, and don't want to sound like a broken phonograph, I'll avoid dedicating to much of this post to traffic updates. Having said that, I'm not impressed with the general roadtrip experience in Germany so far. Our merry meandering towards Munich has found itself beset by road closures on all sides. I believe we are now on a road. However, the universal lack of forward momentum, coupled with the abundance of Germans who have exited their cars for a smoke break, leaves an impression more akin to a parking lot rather than motorway. I'm considering wandering over to the adjacent tour bus to ask if i can make use of the toilet they are proudly advertising as a feature.

Traffic aside, there's been several interesting developments:

• The tribulations of our much-maligned cartop carrier continue. It has developed a horrific buzzing noise at speed. Seemingly this is emenating from the straps vibrating, but no amount of creative tying or excessive tape has resolved the issue. The other possibility is that we're being pursued through Deustchland by an 800 pound bumblebee.
• Additionally, there's some debate going on as to whether the increasingly large dent in the roof (caused by aforementioned cartop carrier) will start collecting water now that it's raining and we've stopped.
• I had my first beer since I arrived. It was a hefferwiezen. I ordered it in German and was, thus, very proud of myself. It was also delicious. 
• Patte has, apparently, taken her pants off. I'm not sure why and I don't plan on turning around to find out, but there's something going on in the back of this van that has warranted a pants removal.

There's a certain level of indescribable chaos going on in this van. Punctuated by wild cheering every time there's forward progress. Or sometimes screams of terror depending on how aggressive Bridget (the current driver) is at carving out forward progress.

... and Dad has left the vehicle. Hopefully he decides to come back before the next frantic bout of crazed Bridget-driving happens.

Setting the bar

This is our first night in a hostel and the bar has been set very high.  We are at the Youth Hostel Lultzhausen. We were a little confused finding it because the street name is the same as the city name. It turns out that's because there's just one street here!

They have an actual chef here who served us an excellent 4 course meal. We have two large rooms with extra bunks and the showers are plentiful!

This place is definitely worth a stop if you find yourself needing a place to sleep in the boonies of Luxembourg.

Hark, yon castle

A Doran ancestor was born here.

Of Fish and Chips and London Mishaps

I'll go back to London at some point. My brief stay there on the first day of this dubious adventure was moderately dampered by a 30 hour sleep deficit, and further befuddled by not experiencing a lack of daylight for the duration of said insomnia marathon.

In addition to a reasonable amount of sleep, my future London endeavours will benefit from my newfound London lore, which includes (but is certainly not limited to):

1. Don't drive in London. The city of London, beautiful though it may be, seems to have collected a variety of goat-trails over the centuries. Innovating minds apparently decided they should add cobblestone and call them roads, thus saving on civic engineering costs.
2. If you do drive in London (fool) don't schlep around a car-top carrier without being mindful of parking garage clearance. A 'miscommunication' between our driver and the rest of the van shouting, led to an unfortunate collision.
3. If for some reason you are forced into notes 1 and 2, bring copious ducttape. Our canvas carrier suffered severe abrasions by my hand as i frantically drug it down a street to safety. The abrasions eventually developed into lacerations, but seems to have stabalized through liberal application of duct tape

The collection of experiences that brought me these helpful hints is what Dorans refer to as an Adventure. Since this all happened within the first few hours, of this shindig, I think it bodes very well for the potential for Adventure during the remainder of the expedition.

I've also learned that I've never had fish and chips before. I thought I had. I was wrong. I had fish and chips on the shore of the English channel last night, and it was nearly a religious experience. I don't think I can ever have a dish called fish and chips in the States again. Maybe legitimate ones exist. Regardless, i've been missing out for a very long time.

Breakfast on the ferry

Across the channel

So long Great Britain! We are on a ferry, crossing the English Channel to Calais. We saw the sights of London, did serious damage to the car carrier (note: remember to check overhead clearences), procured duct tape, and found our way to Folkstone for the night. We even managed to eat really good fish and chips before we crashed for the night.

We briefly befuddled the French border agent at the ferry terminal when we rolled up in our French plated minivan. First by not being French, then by the number of passports that came out the window at him. He had a bemused smirk on his face as we drove away. We caused similar amusement to the ferry agent after he asked "are there seven of you in there?!"

Next stop, France!

We made it!

UK border entry. Tired campers.

Off we go!

We made it safely to the airport, in spite of having to pull over due to the presence of ants in the car. TSA was awesome and pulled us all for pre-check, so security was a breeze. It turns out that the Blogger app for Android stinks,  so this is the 4th attempt at making this post! And no, we have no idea what Matt was looking at here.

The Final Countdown

Everyone is assembled at Sarah's tonight. There were a few minor hiccups with packing and forgotten items, but that was easily solved by a little rummaging around the house, plus a quick trip to Fred Meyers. After a bit of sleep, we'll all meetup at the airport again in the morning and start the great adventure!

All our bags are packed, we're ready to go ...

With just 36 hours or so to go, everybody is pretty much packed and ready. Not just packed, but condensed into a single carry-on plus backpack for every person, and that includes a cartop carrier!

A couple of minor crises have been resolved along the way.

• Matt's hostel card never arrived, so we'll have to either replace it for free in Seattle or rely on the email confirmation they're sending him. Or buy a new one when we get to Luxembourg. 
• Patte couldn't decide which camera to take, but she resolved that. 
• The mifi that was originally ordered was not as advertised, so a complaint was lodged with Amazon and a new mifi was ordered. The international data SIM works great in it and it's ready to go too. 
• Airport transport was resolved by the sudden move of Garrett (the youngest Doran sibling) to Seattle. He's going to deliver half the party to the airport and Jon's going to deliver the other. Then he's going to house-site for Brian and Bridget, which resolved yet another small problem (who would feed their cats?!). 
• Ken got a new, smaller, CPAP, that doesn't wheeze and snorfle like a wild animal. Those sharing a room with him will be most grateful (some of them having had to share a room with the old one on the Alaska adventure!). 
• Sarah and Jon had two extra international capable phones lying about, so Brian and Bridget are adding one to their T-Mobile account for Matt to use. 

The only thing left to do now is for everybody to converge on Sarah's house Tuesday afternoon/evening. We'll have a little party, do a bag check, do a last minute run to Fred Meyer's to get whatever is missing from people's bags, sleep (doubtful), then be off to the airport bright and early Wednesday morning.

Woohoo!

To the land of our people

Since we seem to have picked up a number of new followers, it seemed time to post a synopsis of the great expedition. Two years ago, Sarah got the notion to visit Romania and visit the ancestral village of the Dorans. She invited Ken, her dad to come along. Then somehow, a bunch of people decided to come along. Now we're up to 11 countries, 7 people, and 1 minivan, and will traverse 3200 miles over 22 days, starting next week.

This definitely counts as the trip of a lifetime. Three generations of Dorans will be trekking about the countryside, exploring the places that our family came from. We'll tromp through old graveyards, visit old churches, and explore new and interesting places. We'll have a lot of stops long the way to check out historical sites and other cool stuff.

The intrepid travelers include Ken, whose grandparents immigrated to the United States from Pankota, Romania (though it wasn't Romania then) in 1906, Ken's sister Patte, Ken's kids Sarah and Brian, Patte's daughter Sierra, Brian's wife Bridget, and Matthew, Ken's grandson and the nephew of Sarah and Brian. Luckily we all get along really well and are experienced roadtrippers! Three generations of Dorans, headed to the land our people!

We'll have plenty of internet connected devices, so we anticipate posting to the blog nearly every day. Sometimes it might just be a photo, others we'll take the time to write something. No doubt some will be boring to anybody who wasn't in the car that day, but hopefully we'll have a good record of what we saw and did.

So, there's your synopsis. And if you're wondering about the "bears" reference in the logo, refer to the blog we kept of our trip to Alaska in 2010. There were bears ....

Updated logo

Brian was kind enough to make us an updated logo that's more in the spirit of our expedition. Mini van, smoke pouring out the back, luggage falling off the roof ...

It's a castle!

This is probably the most expensive hostel we're going to stay in on the whole trip, but it's a 16th century castle!

Nurnberg Hostel

Trial run

The maiden voyage of the car top carrier. Everything fits, with room to spare. Doing a speed test now.

Essential Travel Items Accumulation

The pile gets larger every day!

The trip draws near

With just over three weeks to go, last minute planning has begun. We discovered that the leased car does not in fact have roof bars, so our cargo carrier of choice won't work. The rear mounted saddlebag is also out, as the taillights on the car are 4 inches too close together and the bag won't fit between them. We found an alternate roof top carrier that clips to the door frame. It will arrive tomorrow from Amazon and we will load four suitcases in it and see if they fit!

Fingers crossed!