Eurotrip - Day Two - Münster

Day Two

I got up early to see if I could get in touch with the Participatory Mapping expert in Wageningen and organize when I was going to meet with him. I was able to finally get in touch by 9:30 and arrange a meeting for the following day around noon. Thore and I made some breakfast consisting of bacon and eggs, which I'm told is a bit of an odd thing to have for breakfast in Germany. Apparently eggs are only really used in baking.

Finishing our breakfast, Alex and I headed into town and on the way tried to find her some Tylenol for a headache. We stopped in a few convenience stores along the way and also in a a few 'shoppers drugmart' type of places with shampoos, beauty products and whatnot. There were no tylenols to be found. It turns out that while in N.A. you can get over the counter drugs just about anywhere, in Germany this is definitely not the case. Drugs (including over the counter stuff) is controlled through only very specific places, which we learned to be the "Apoteka." When we finally did get into an Apoteka Alex had to talk with a pharmacist and then the pharmacist had to go into the back room to locate the Tylenol. As I said earlier, drugs are very controlled in comparison to N.A. (which is surprising given the ease of access to beer and Cigarettes. Cigarettes can be bought out of vending machines on the street).

Our next stop after the pain meds was to head into the town and chek out the main tourist area. There was an interesting church there from the middle ages that had large cages hanging in the tower, which apparently were used to publicly starve criminals of the state hundreds of years ago.

The cages got us thinking of food and we then went to a cafe to grab some lunch. The cafe was a particularily nice place, and we had a window in the sun to enjoy a pizza and a beer. After lunch we walked around the tourist areas a bit more heading into various shops and a tech store to see if I could find an extra memory card for my camera as I was beginning to worry about running out of space. Unfortunately for me, memory cards are REALLY expensive here! for the same card that I bought at home in October of 2008 for $60.00 (CAD) they wanted 50 Euro (50 euro = $80(CAD)! I think not....

We then walked out to the area of town where there was a bicycle highway. Münster is completely bicycle oriented, meaning that every street has a bicycle lane on the sidewalk and you do not want to walk in this lane as you will get run over by a speeding bike (seriously). Bikes are taken so seriously here that there are bike police that will chase you down if your bike is not in proper working order or if you are cycling on the wrong side of the street and give you a ticket.

The bicycle highway that we went to was a sight to see. It was located away from the road and formed a large ring around the city. Shaded by nice leafy trees it was full of bicycles commuting home from work. It had sidewalks as well so we could safely walk bside without getting run over.

We left the Bicycle highway when we were near the university castle and headed through to the botanical gardens. The gardens are maintained by the biology students at the university and were really nice. There was a decently large pond in the centre and large Heron taking a rest in a tree at the centre of it. Very picturesque.

From the gardens we walked back to Thore's place where we met him and then went to meet his girlfriend to get some supper at a local student bar. I had a fantastic pasta dish with fancy cheese and enjoyed a beer with pears and strawberries in it. We then went to a small cafe on the way home and picked up some extra bikes and went for a ride home, enjoying the wonderful bike lanes.

Once home we headed to bed, as it would be an early morning to get to my meeting in the Netherlands.