Tag Archives: Hostel

Aug27

Exploring Stuttgart

Posted on August 27, 2024 by perfectusvarrus

Wednesday, 24-July-2024, through Monday, 29-July-2024

Coming from Zermatt, Stuttgart was about as different as you could get.

No mountains soaring above the skyline, warmer air, and cars all around – it was lovely, but definitely a slight shock to the system as I stepped off the train and started to get my bearings. Thankfully the first part of the walk to my hostel was through a park, which was a nice reminder of the mountains and hills I’d just spent a week exploring… it tempered the abruptness nicely, and I was quite grateful for it.

Now, the walk to the hotel… well, I’d get to know that walk quite well over the next few days, and it never got any less steep over that time. Carrying all my bags, it was definitely more of an effort than I’d expected – challenging even after all the time at elevation I’d spent hiking.

Still, though, Stuttgart was lovely and incredibly welcoming. Murals, green spaces, bustling people and delicious food, I couldn’t complain about any of it. And speaking of food, lets dive right in!

Bistro Einstein – A lovely cafe, which served my lovely favorite – Schnitzel! Simple, efficient, and delicious.
Lib-room – A fun cafe right on a school campus, from what I could tell. Simple and tasty; not something I’d say is a must-visit, but… good, with some nice vegetarian options
Restaurant Tauberquelle – A really fun regional restaurant, with great local options. Kinda touristy… but that’s not a bad thing when you’re a tourist!
Manufactum Brot & Butter – Excellent breakfast, but a bit slow… which was a problem, since it meant we very nearly missed our train since paying took so long! Also, the only spot that credit cards had trouble… yeah, great food, but there was a blood price to pay.
Wasserfallhütte – This is so European… similar to Zermatt, at the top of a hike by a waterfall there’s a small restaurant serving coffee and cakes, ice cream and souvenirs. Ridiculous, but also kind of awesome.
Bäckerhaus Veit – Nice snack after a hike… simple and easy!
Ragazzi – Delicious pizza! This place was a fun adventure; took a bit of getting there, and then they were out of pizza… which feels weird, but okay… but then they found some extra dough and were able to make two final pizzas, we got the last two! Ignore all the people who came in afterward, who also got pizza… Hey, you know what? If it’s true, then cool. If it was a gimmick, then also cool!
Petra’s – Out in Baden-Baden, near the Friedrichsbad hot springs… delicious Cesar salad, excellent coffee… what more could we want?
Cafe König – I was in (or right next to, I guess) the Black Forest. How could I not get Black Forest Cake? Turns out – really hard to find. Which seems strange, but it was later in the day so… maybe that’s normal? I don’t know, but Cafe König had it, and had excellent iced lattes, so I was happy.
Poffers – Ohh. Emm. Gee. Getting a seat here was a challenge, and then getting service was an equal epic. The food was glorious, but seriously. Needed a reservation, couldn’t get it in person, had to go online to a quite circuitous reservation system, then wait for 20min AFTER the reservation time, THEN wait 20min for service… seriously, we used google translate on the German menus, figured out what we wanted, and had a solid long chat before the waitress even showed up to offer us English menus. Great food, but holy crap.
Taraba
Udo Snack

Now, those especially astute readers of mine may have noticed something in the above list that hasn’t really been seen before, except maybe in Iceland and France… I wrote in the plural. That’s not an accident, but a fun extra part from Stuttgart!

You see, dear readers, I wasn’t adventuring alone in Germany! Instead, in a switch up from History, Poland and the United States combined forces and invaded Germany together – my friend Kika came to visit from Warsaw! I picked her up from the airport on Thursday morning, and she flew home on Sunday evening, so I had a buddy to explore and adventure with! Definitely a nice change of pace – Details of our adventures will be their own posts, of course, but the change of pace was very nice… between family visiting in France, and a friend with me in Germany, it was an absolutely excellent way to ease into settling into a more static and social life in Ireland.

I also mentioned that Stuttgart had a lot of murals – I’ll separate them out, here, for simplicity:

Oct1

A labor of love – My labor day climbing road trip! Part 5: Returning home

Posted on October 1, 2021 by perfectusvarrus

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Saturday, 04-Sept-2021, through Saturday, 11-Sept-2021

I love road trips. I’ve learned that, speaking to various therapists and councilors in the last year or so, long drives are a major form of meditation for me. I have something to keep me focused, and I’m accomplishing a goal, but I can let my semi-conscious mind wander and reflect on what’s been happening in my life.

I try to do this at home, of course, but… I always get too stressed out, feeling like I should be doing something instead of just sitting back and letting my brain process all the various thoughts and possibilities that are constantly screaming around in my skull.

FSaturday, 04-Sept-2021, through Saturday, 11-Sept-2021

I love road trips. I’ve learned that, speaking to various therapists and councilors in the last year or so, long drives are a major form of meditation for me. I have something to keep me focused, and I’m accomplishing a goal, but I can let my semi-conscious mind wander and reflect on what’s been happening in my life.

I try to do this at home, of course, but… I always get too stressed out, feeling like I should be doing something instead of just sitting back and letting my brain process all the various thoughts and possibilities that are constantly screaming around in my skull.

For my birthday, I’d originally planned to climb at Index with Daniel. When that fell through, I’d sketched out a road trip down highway 101 into California with my friend Laurel. That fell through too. Finally, I gave up and decided to do something on my own – something I’d always wanted to do, but had never quite been able to make happen.

An ascent of Devil’s Tower...

Friday and Saturday, 10-Sept-2021 & 11-Sept-2021

Friday:

I need to type words here… but frankly, it’s kind of hard to think up how to describe the drives home.

It’s sort of like a hike, maybe? In that a description isn’t really viable, and instead I should just skip over it as “Ben did the thing, time passed, and then he got where he was going. Here’s some pictures”?

Like the preface says, I really enjoy long drives. They give me a chance to keep the “I want to be moving!” part of my brain occupied while the “Let’s think about life!” part of my brain gets to run rampant. It’s really cool, actually… there’s been studies on “highway hypnosis”, and it’s even got a Wikipedia article written about it (Ed Note: See the link below!)… from what I can gather, it’s not dangerous… just an example of the human brain being pretty freaking amazing.

I drove.

I thought.

I kept an app open on my phone so that I could dictate notes as I thought up interesting things worth considering.

Wyoming came, and Wyoming went. Montana appeared on the horizon, and then the border passed under my wheels.

It was…

It just was. Excellent.

OHH! One thing worth noting – Missoula was still great! I had a room in a dorm this time, COVID-safe of course with tons of walls and screens, and I had BBQ again!

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_hypnosis

Saturday:

I planned on leaving Missoula early in the morning… around dawn, ideally. That didn’t quite happen though – I got up early, of course, but as I was putting my bags in the car I noticed something… something dangerous. Something familiar to an Oregonian.

I noticed a farmer’s market.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t go to farmer’s markets that often. But I do try to when I have the chance – I don’t know how realistic this is, but I feel like veggies from a farmers market are just… healthier than ones from the store. You know?

They haven’t travelled as far, they haven’t been in storage quite as long, and… I dono, I kind of assume that the farms are smaller, so… they’re from less industrial seeds? That last one doesn’t quite make sense the more I think about it, but the rest of the ideas hold true.

So I bought some potatoes, carrots, dipping oil, and even a super-fancy dry-aged New York Strip steak. I’d still be getting home pretty early, so I figured that a nice meal would help top off the trip, you know?

One last stop on the way out of town took me to a semi-famous used book store (Ed Note: Hello again! Check out yet another link below!), though I didn’t find anything particularly interesting. A few mountaineering books that were maybe worth something, but… none of the climbing guidebooks that I’d been hoping to find. And since my apartment is already a bit overloaded with books, I held off for the time being and got back on the road.

The drives were.

Just as the day before, they simply were.

Miles passed, Montana passed, Idaho passed, and then even Washington passed.

The Columbia River grew up beside me, and the Gorge reared up around me.

Soon enough I was home, laying out the spoils of my adventure and cooking up an exceptionally stellar welcome-home meal.

It had been an excellent trip.

Link: http://www.montanavalleybookstore.com/

Sep25

A labor of love – My labor day climbing road trip! Part 1: Driving to South Dakota

Posted on September 25, 2021 by perfectusvarrus

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Saturday and Sunday, 04 and 05-Sept-2021

Saturday:

I left Wilsonville at 8:00 on a Saturday morning. I’d woken up around 7:30, which… for a Saturday, is crazy-early. But I had a full day ahead of me, and a long day of prep work behind me that I wasn’t about to waste.

I’d spent a ton of time the previous week, and almost the entire day Friday, preparing for this trip. I’d printed maps, confirmed reservations, made a list and checked it far more than twice, and even went grocery shopping to buy food, plastic bins, and various other accoutrements required for a 2,500 mile roadtrip to states I’d never been to.

The plan was to drive to Missoula, Montana, and stay the night at a hostel that I’d reserved. Then, finish the long drive out to South Dakota, and spend the night about an hour away from the climbing destination. You know, to give me time to wake up in the morning?

The drive got underway cleanly. I drove, and Oregon flew by. Washington followed suit, with the terrain and the Columbia River Gorge passing beautifully behind me as I drove onward.

When I broke into Idaho, my jaw dropped.

I’ve been to Montana before, but the roads through Northern Idaho… they’re just purely glorious! Beautiful hills, tall trees, and winding roads with impossibly high speed limits. No traffic, with the exception of a few 18 wheelers and people driving faster than their old trucks should feasibly be able to. Just the open road…

I made good time, getting to Missoula. I’d estimated 10 hours, based on the 9hour driving time Google estimated, and instead I made it in 8.5… even counting in stretch stops every 2 hours. Turns out – open highways do let you make good time on the road. Especially when you’re driving a happily maintained Mustang (knock on wood).

I’ll admit – my back and legs were pretty stiff by the time I walked into the Hostel. I had the rumblings of a caffeine migraine coming on as well, which absolutely didn’t make for an auspicious start to the trip. None-the-less, I persisted onward. I made myself a light cup of tea, took a quick nap, and then took a walk downtown to get some BBQ from a place Clara, Brian, and myself had loved the last time I was in town.

I ate, I rested, and I felt a bit better. Then a shower, some writing, some reading, and a good end to an excellent first day.