Unfortunately I lost this article when I lost the database for my old blog. I noticed the link is still generating quite a bit of interest from the superuser question and I have been emailed about the page. I am currently away so don’t have time to try and completely rewrite the article, but here is what I said to the person who emailed me as a rough guide:

Roughly, I ended up creating an image of the disk with dd in linux and then created a VMWare Virtual Machine. I then modified the configuration file (.vmdk IIRC) for the virtual machine to make the virtual disk descriptor map to the dd image I’d created (information about how to do this is on google, you just want to ‘redirect’ the disk descriptor to go to your image rather than the empty container vmware creates). Sometimes you have to fiddle with the SCSI/IDE controller type to get the virtual machine to boot without blue-screening.

Hope this helps.

Munich was a destination partly because we were going in that direction anyway, and also because of the rather famous beer. The views from the train as we got closer in the evening were spectacular. The countryside was a lot more interesting than Northern Germany which mainly seemed to be boring, flat farmland. Bavaria is full of little forests, woods, lakes and idyllic houses and cabins. The laptop stayed firmly shut.

I am still not sure why train stations attract so many drunks and people off their faces on whatever else, but after navigating these predictable staggering obstacles we found the hostel, with less surrounding sex shops than usual. It was another dormitory affair and pretty standard, the bar had Augustiner on draught though which was welcome.

Next day we decided we couldn’t be bothered with the walking tour this time around and spent ages trying to find somewhere to have lunch instead. We found the forbidding looking Chinese place which was supposedly authentic and had a good lunchtime deal. The only waitress in the deserted restaurant didn’t speak English and gestured that the deal did not exist and we’d have to get something from the main menu instead. The only bits in English offered disgusting (sorry, I am only bothered about authenticity to a limit) things like Pig’s Trotters, Ears and Stomach. We made a speedy exit and went to find a Thai restaurant called Zitronengras (Lemon grass) instead.

After a lot more walking and grumbling stomachs and mouths we found it. It was absolute chaos with three staff cooking and serving a horde of poorly queueing Germans in an open plan kitchen. The manager pretended not to speak English (we found out the next day he spoke perfect English!) possibly because he was too busy. However it was almost stupidly cheap and the food was amazing. I asked for a €2 50cl bottle of beer and the manager brought four, I managed to negotiate this down to two and took one out afterwards

A lot of the bits of Munich we walked through weren’t very exciting, so later on we got the S-Bahn (free with Interrail, takes about an hour) to Herrsching, a little town with a big lake. We hired a pedalboat for €13 an hour which was great fun and only enhanced by the fact we didn’t see any other English people. Definitely a good place to get away from smelly cities. In the evening we went for a gigantic Wiener Schnitzel in the studenty Steinheil restaurant. It was definitely not a €9,90 experience to be missed. We fit in a good amount of drinking in the bar later and didn’t even have to make an effort to approach people as they came to us to talk!

Friendly duck in the English Garden

Next day we went back to Zitronengras and then went to the ‘Englischer Garten’, which is a big park with a rapid river running through it. We went for an exhilirating swim (mostly trying to stay above water) with a delightful absence of health and safety. It was good to not be in the UK. Next, the Hofbrauhaus, a massive beer hall with litre beers for about €7 and incredible pork with grated potato, plus an endearing lack of green vegetables common in our German food experiences.

Munich was good but I would have liked to explore more of the surrounding countryside, probably by bike as well as S-Bahn. It would be a great place for a stag do but wasn’t as exciting a city as Berlin or Hamburg in terms of daytime ‘cultural’ stuff from my point of view. It is also pretty expensive for Germany. We were definitely glad we went though. Next stop: Lake Bled in Slovenia.

I’ll admit I wanted to go to Bruges (Brugge, not pronounced the same which can be confusing) because of the scenery in the film ‘In Bruges’. The city is almost all medieval or mock-medieval buildings with cobbled streets. Even the new buildings such as the monolithic post office near the station are fairly tasteful, and there is not a concrete block in sight. There is a lot of bell-ringing going on too at the 83-metre high central Belfry.

Our hostel (‘Passage’) turned out to be basically a hotel, being the first with the free little bars of soap and towels. It had an adjoining restaurant run by the same people, which we went to in the evening on the back of a promise of two free beers for being guests. The restaurant is open to the public too and was very busy which I think is a good sign. We ordered Flemish Stew (beef in dark beer gravy with a jacket potato and assorted veg) and Waterzooi (chicken broth stew with veg and jacket potato). It was defnitely the best food we’ve had so far and incredibly filling.

Afterwards we went for a walk around the city, it was night but the streets are very nicely lit and were very quiet. It didn’t feel unsafe whatsoever though, it was very peaceful. We went to find a bar on the excellent tourist map we’d found. The map is focused on young people and lists many bars and clubs (we didn’t come across any full on nightclubs but there are several music venues). The other side has things to do in the day like going to all the museums with a €1 ticket for under 26’s.

We found an underground bar (‘T Poatersgat’) where I managed to bang my head on the way in despite thinking that I should avoid doing so. Things improved from there though when we found the massive menu containing hundreds of types of beers. The place was pretty cool and seemed to be mostly local 18-30’s with few foreigners besides us, definitely recommended.

Next day we tried to fit in as many things as possible since we had to leave in the evening. Unfortunately a lot of tourists had now come out of the woodwork and there was a massive queue to get into the Belfry tower so we gave it a miss. We discovered a market with random things like ancient letter openers and wooden swords which would have been amazing to have as a violent child, and got the obligatory waffle which is a local speciality.

We spent the rest of the day looking at various attractions on the map including heavenly chocolate shops. There is a healthy rivalry between Switzerland and Belgium over who makes the best chocolate. I haven’t been to Switzerland but some little chocolate shells we bought in Bruges were amazing and I would like to have the money to try more. Bruges is a great place and we would have loved to stay for longer, however we were now going to Frankfurt for a day to meet a friend of Lucy’s.

Frankfurt was a strange mixture of skyscrapers (financial centre of Germany) and an expansive red light district. As usual, we were staying in a hostel in the red light district for budget reasons. It didn’t really seem very dangerous at all though and it was quite bizarre seeing bankers walking out of sex shows at 10AM the next day.

In the city centre there is a lot of opportunity for shopping if you’re into that kind of thing (I’m not). There was also bizarrely a queue and bouncers outside the Hollister shop. Apparently there is also some classical music and opera going on (ditto). However we did manage to get some Bratwurst with Kartoffelsalat (potato salad) and walk around the river which was a lot more agreeable. It is great the way Germany are not bothered at all about drinking in public whereas the police can be a pain about it in England even when you are not at all drunk. A few fountains and ice creams later we got the train to our next stop – Munich!

After a 6 hour journey from Hamburg, we arrived in Amsterdam Centraal, which is housed in a very nice building. We were in the minority of foreigners not interested in going to the ‘Coffeeshops’ to buy cannabis. We stumbled out onto ‘Damrak’, the main street outside the station. It was buzzing with trams and tourists attempting to avoid their angrily beeping progress (including us, by a matter of inches).

We then took a wander through what turned out to be the even more famous Red Light District, which while apparently ‘open for business’, was also patrolled by Politie on bicycles. There is something about bikes which detracts from the intimidating factor and adds to the humorous factor. After a bit we had to reluctantly buy an overpriced drink (€2,50 for a thimbleful of diet coke) from a café to use the toilet. Free public toilets do not appear to exist in mainland Europe, or at least any of the cities we have been to. We also sometimes get irritated looks when we order the cheapest and smallest drink between us.

Later we met some friends who live in Amsterdam and went for some great Dutch (and probably Belgian) beers in a much less touristy pub than the ones lining the main streets. After this we got the tram to their flat and watched the Olympic Opening Ceremony on TV with a tasty Chinese takeaway. The ceremony was a bit bizarre in places but had many undeniably impressive moments. We went to bed very tired but contented.

In the morning we got some tips about where to go and said farewells. We had failed to book the Anne Frank museum and after walking past decided the queue looked non-negotiable, we will have to save it for another time. We did get an excellent chocolate muffin and had a nice walk along the quiet canals which Amsterdam is renowned for. Next stop: Bruges, Belgium.

Later on that day, we went on the Sandeman’s bar crawl which required some involved U-Bahn hopping to get to Oranienburger Straße. The drinking began in earnest after we were warned to not take photos of the numerous prostitutes dotted along the street. It would make pimps quite angry with you. Apparently it’s completely legal in Berlin.

After not-particularly-wanted free shots of Jagermeister (I think it tastes like a mixture of Listerine and Calpol) and navigating past beggars at ATMs (who ever gives them €20?!), we ended up in the ‘Matrix’ club. It was very big and busy but disappointingly did not play any discernibly German music. Eventually we got a taxi back and managed to blag a fare reduction by trying to speak German (‘my friendlys are very drunk’) to the driver.

In the morning I noticed a helpful mosquito had bitten me on the top of my foot, which is a very itchy place to choose. We had to try and book our night-train to Amsterdam, and could not do this online or over the phone. And so we U-Bahn’d to the labyrinthine Berlin Hauptbanhof (main station), which has at least four levels. After waiting for at least 25 minutes an implacable Deutsche Bahn official told us with great finality that all the night-trains were full.

We went to visit the ‘Topography of Terrors’ museum which lies on the former site of the Gestapo headquarters. Much of the area is in ruins, but there is a mercifully air conditioned museum with a lot of interesting exhibits with chilling history. Definitely worth a visit and it is also free. We then went on to have another walk around the Holocaust Memorial before heading back to our hostel. We made the mistake of trying to take a short cut, and our slightly outdated map did not show us that the line was under maintenance between Franzosischestraße and Friedrichstraße. And hence a half hour journey became an almost two hour journey.

The consolation was that we were to have a barbecue on the hostel terrace with the excellent and free-to-use gas barbecue. We bought some absurdly cheap vegetables and meat in Kreuzberg (I’d say everything was almost if not twice as cheap as in Bristol, UK). Then we made excellent kebabs in the sun and watched a wasp attempt to fly into the barbecue and think better of it after several attempts. At last we had to say goodbye to Berlin and all the great people we had met, and make our way to Amsterdam via an overnight stay in Hamburg (again).