Doubling up on Deutchland

We finished up strongly in Brussels, doing some sightseeing, trying the local food (mussels with pommes frites – interesting combination) and going back to the 2000 beer bar to order our favorites again.  Monday was a long travel day, with a 2 hour train ride to Cologne and then a 5.5 hour ride from there to Berlin.  I personally was in Berlin about 2 weeks ago while my mom and sister were still here, but Darryl and I needed some filler stops before any rooms became available in Paris next week, so we figured it would be a good couple of days.  We took a cheapo walking tour which was actually really good.  It brought us to all of the former Nazi sights in the city, including the former Gestapo headquarters, the former Luftwaffe headquarters, memorials to the various groups persecuted during the Holocaust, Hitler’s final bunker site, and more.  We went to a biergarten at night and enojoyed a few brews from Munich.  The next day we rented bikes and went to the Gestapo museum and then to the Berlin Zoo, which apparently has the largest number of species of any zoo in a major city in the world.  The real star of that day, though, was dinner.  We had an awesome tapas meal for a pretty reasonable price.  If the tapas in Berlin were that good, I can’t imagine what they’ll be like in Spain.  One last thing about Berlin:  the hostel we stayed in was actually friggin awesome.  For future reference, it’s called Baxpax Downtown Berlin – very clean, modern, safe, and friendly staff.  Cheap drinks at the bar too. 

 

  

After our short stay in Berlin, we took the train to Düsseldorf, along the Rhine River in Germany, where we are now.  I have to say it’s definitively not tourist-y here and it’s been refreshing.  Things are relatively affordable.  There isn’t all that much to do, but it’s been nice to take the time to do laundry and reorganize a bit before we head off to Paris tomorrow.  We’re anticipating everything in Paris being über expensive, so we’ve been eating as well as we can and preparing for the worst.  Last night we went to a Mongolian place that featured zebra, kangaroo, crocodile, antelope, and ostrich on it’s menu (obviously we tried them all, it was all you can eat).  Then we went to Altstadt, which has the reputation as “the world’s longest bar” (it’s actually 500+ separate bars, but it’s all good) to have a few drinks and explore a bit. Today after our laundry we went to the top of the TV tower along the Rhine for the view, then back to Altstadt for dinner.  We’re definitely looking forward to the city of lights tomorrow though.

I think overall, so far, Germany has been my favorite country.  Of course the heavy hitters, France and Spain, are coming up next, but it’s just pleasant to be in Germany.  The people readily admit and acknowledge their past and ensure that their children learn from their previous mistakes.  The infrastructure here is simply amazing also.  I’m actually jaded to the fact that we can sit on the train and cruise at 250+ km/hr (155 mi/hr+) like it’s nothing and that the trains actually run on time.  The autobahn is also one of the safest roads in the world, in spite of the fact that there are some sections with no speed limit.  It’s amazing what decent, well maintained infrastructure can do, as opposed to what we have in the States. On a side, according to our tour guide, contrary to popular belief, the autobahn was not a Nazi-conceived project.  Rather, it was conceived and planned during the years of the Democratic Weimar republic, and the concept was hijacked by the Nazi political machine after their takeover as part of its public relations/economic recovery push in the early to mid 30’s.  In fact, many of the welfare and recover plans were already in place during the Weimar years, but were inherited by the Nazi government, which took credit for everything.  It’s interesting to think what might have happened had the Weimar Republic been given 10 more years to help Germany recover before being challenged by National Socialism.  

Brussels Beckons

It’s been a little while since I’ve been able to write an update, and it’s not because I’ve been entirely too busy, it’s actually because it’s a little difficult to find time to upload my pictures in the hostel we’re staying in without keeping my laptop out in the open for too long.  Darryl and I moved to the Flying Pig Downtown Hostel a few days ago, and while it’s definitely a change from the hotels I was in, I can’t complain.  There’s free internet (the service is spotty but hey, it’s free), a clean room with a relatively comfortable bed, a good shower, and most importantly the whole place here is safe.  It’s a little odd to get used to locking up everything you own all the time and worrying that someone might take anything that’s left out, and while all of the people that we’ve run into have been very friendly, there are certain precautions that you just have to take because you really don’t know who’s staying around here.  That being said, it’s a 24 hour party atmosphere here, with a 24 hour bar in the lobby and a porch/patio out back to hang out on at all times of day.  Pretty wild.

In terms of out in the city, we’ve been doing some on-our-own type exploring and some more touristy stuff.  I generally don’t like paintings and visual art very much, but the Van Gough museum here is awesome.  They have the largest collection of his works (I’d hope so, given the name and purpose of the museum), the works of some of his inspirations, and also a cool exhibit about preserving paintings.  We took a stroll through Rembrandt Park also, which was nice.  Not much to do there, but nice to look at.  We took a tour of the Heineken brewery which was actually really cool.  They do a good job explaining the history of the company and making you genuinely love beer.  I also got a lesson in professionally drafting a beer from one of the brew masters there.  We’ve found our absolute favorite spot in the city – a little café in the corner of the Dam square called Euro Pub.  All we do there is sit and have a coffee, but you can see the entire square from their outdoor seating area, and you could literally sit and people watch all day there if you wanted (and we have).  A few days ago we took an afternoon train ride to Haarlem (the original Haarlem), which is a much quieter, much less touristy town outside of Amsterdam.  You can see a traditional Dutch windmill there (they’re just like you’d imagine), and also a really cool Church dating back to at least the 1500’s.  The church was a little creepy because the whole floor is made out of gravestones, but the decorations and artwork inside are fantastic.  Yesterday we left Amsterdam and moved on the Brussels, Belgium.  While I was sad to leave, I actually think it’s about time to move on.  Amsterdam is definitely a hang out kind of city, with some things to go do and see, but not a wealth of them.  Brussels, so far, has been significantly cheaper (half the price for food and beer) and much less touristy.  Not only that, but this place is ridiculous for beer lovers.  Last night we went to a bar that had 2000+ different beers available (!), including 50 pages of just Belgians. 

 

One thing about Europe in generally, and seemingly especially Amsterdam at this point, is that everything here is extraordinarily expensive.  In order to keep a decent budget we’ve really been eating mostly sandwiches that we make from stuff we get in the supermarket (think really cheap meat, bread, and cheese), frites (which are awesome but have zero nutritional value), and carry out type food (as our splurge of the day).  The cost of living is really making me realize how much it sucks to have a weak Dollar when traveling.  Everything would be relatively reasonably priced had the Euro and the Dollar been evenly valued, but paying 1.5x more for everything really is a killer.

A Dam Good Time

Yeah I ripped off the tourist slogan, sue me (may or may not be sober so take this all with a grain of aslt).  Amsterdam is pretty awesome too, I have to say.  I spent my fisrt three days here exploring the historical and toursity part of the city with my Mom and sister, hitting the floating flower market, another flower market which is widely acknowledged as the largest outdoor market in Europe, as well as some other sites.  Amsterdam definitely seems to be much more of a hang out and chill city than a sightseeing city, which is fine with me at this point haha.

So Darryl got here yesterday, and ever since then I've been looking at Amsterdam from a slightly different perspective that I had been up until yesterday in the morning.  Of course, the history and all that is awesome, but enjoying the nightlife has been a complete revelation.  The pubs around here are a little expensive (make that very), but it's certainly possible to be economical if you look around a bit and try.  After exploring yesterday, today we rented a paddle boat and made our way up and down the canals that criss cross the downtown area of the city.  It's definitely an efficient way to explore Amsterdam without having to navigate the streets which are laid out in a really illogical way.  In spite of all that, the city is beautiful...with all the 18th century canals and houses around, its just totally scenic and awesome, full of old footbridges and canals and all.  We're gonna be here for a few more nights, so theres more to come haha.  Here are some pictures:

Now for the Netherlands

So we’re done with Berlin but it was a friggin sweet city, I have to say.  Our hotel was on one of the main streets (Unter Den Linden) of the huge central neighborhood of Berlin (Mitte).  On Tuesday we took a walking tour with an American ex-pat who has been living in Berlin for over 10 years.  He was extremely knowledgeable about just about everything, and had some cool insight into the rebuilding of the city, especially after the reunification in the early 1990s.  He pointed out that many of the blocks on the East side of the city were never rebuilt after the war under the communist regime, and as such are brand new buildings built to look just like they had been before the war (at least on the outside, many of the insides are totally modern and some even abstract).  On a few occasions he pointed out buildings that had been lifted off damaged their foundations by huge jacks, had their foundations re-poured and re-solidified, then set back down in order to preserve the look.  Cool engineering.  Yesterday we explored a bit on our own, going out to some pedestrian markets, through some old shops and all over Mitte basically.  I picked up a sweet antique Soviet army-issue mechanical tanker’s watch for a few Euros and it actually keeps perfect time.  Those Soviets definitely knew how to build reliable machines for their soldiers. 

Berlin also provided a welcome break from the monotony of heavy krauty food in Bavaria.  For a change of pace, we did Vietnamese, an American style restaurant (which I was expecting to suck, but I guess there are enough ex-pats around that any American food has to be reasonably good), and Thai.  It also is really gonna help that they’ve figured out the E. coli BS and I’m gonna be able to eat all fruits and veggies again. 

Today was the train ride, again not much to discuss there, but we got to our Hotel in Amsterdam around 6:30 PM, thinking of Portuguese food tonight.  Definitely looking forward to the arrival of Senor Levy on Sunday to start our month of madness.

To Berlin

After being told repeatedly that there would definitely be internet access on my 6 hour train ride from Munich to Berlin, there of course was no internet access on the train...I was planning to write this up on the ride but I couldn't so bare with me on this one.

Over the past couple of days we did some more exploring in Munich, including a visit to the Olympic Park from the 1972 Olympics (the Stadium itself was closed because there was some mountain biking festival happening there when we went...almost got run over by several drunk mountain bikers. We also went to the Hofbrauhaus for dinner, which is THE famous biergarten in Munich.  I know I wrote about the Augustiner Biergarten last time, but this was like Augustiner x 10.  Much louder, people were much drunker (including me) and I thought the beer was actually better too (then again I was drunker, so take it with a grain of salt).  The food kinda sucked actually, but it's more about the atmosphere there

On Friday we went to Neuswanstein, which is the castle that King Ludwig II built that inspired the design of the Magic Kingdom Castle in Disneyworld.  It was pretty cool, except its sorta disappointing in that the interior was built to be 100% modern (in the late 1800s) including phone lines and giant plate glass windows, and it's also unfinished because Ludwig ran out of money during the construction.  Still, impressive from the outside and pretty nice inside.

 Today was the train ride to Berlin, not much to say there.  I will say that the food in Munich grows very old very quickly.  Pretty much, you're forced to eat super heavy food like potato dumplings, sausage and sauerkraut all the time; the other options are pretty lacking except for the Italian place we found by chance, especially with the whole E. coli thing going on here.  The international food of Berlin will definitely be a welcome change.

I realize that this might be starting to sound like a travel guide, which is exactly what I've been trying to avoid, so I'm gonna try to throw in some editorial comment about something I see here or hear about from back in the States whenever I can.  Feel free to tell me I'm dead wrong and/or discuss.  Last time I touched on the kids wanting to seem Americanized, and I actually want to go after that one a little more.  It's really odd because whenever you ask for an English menu at a cafe, or are heard speaking American English, the Europeans automatically give you a sneering look as if to say, "oh, it's a dumb American."  They get especially mad when you try to rush cafe or restaurant service so that you don't end up spending 3 hours drinking a cup of coffee.  I understand that there is an appeal to hanging out for a while and taking it all in, and when I have time I'm all for it.   But sometimes I do have things to do.  They seem to think their way is much superior but then they still lust after our culture, music, and clothing.  Really weird.

I'll get some pictures posted on here when I'm not afraid of crashing the internet I'm using so I'm not assaulting everyone with a wall of text every time

Hallo Munchen

I don't really know how to start off a travel blog, especially since most everyone who's going to read this knows the basic idea of my trip anyway, so I guess I’ll get right into it.  My mom, my sister and I got to Munich a couple of days ago and it’s basically been a non-stop eating and wandering fest ever since. Our hotel in Munich is right across from the central train station, the Munchen Hopfbahnhof which is a great location.  We’re about a 10 minute walk from the very touristy but beautiful city center, which includes the apparently famous Munich glockenspiel (think a giant version of a cuckoo clock with dancing statues in the city’s main square) and some cafes, shops, etc.  We wandered around the city center for a few hours then cleaned up and went out for dinner at the Augustiner Biergarten.  If you real the guidebooks, they’ll tell you that this is the most authentic, local biergarten in Munich, and it’s easy to see why.  There’s an outdoor section where you can hang around outside under a stand of chestnut trees and put away fresh beer from 1L mugs, or, if its too cold out, you can go inside to the crazy loud and crazy awesome beer hall.  I asked what kind of beer they had, and without even answering my question the waiter brought over some pretty awesome lager-type something or other, and when I asked him again what it was, he just said “beer.”  Good enough for me.  A few more of those, a plate of wurst and a good weiss bier later, and my day was done.

Today we took a train ride to Salzburg, Austria, birthplace of Mozart (had no idea about that one before we got there actually) and backdrop to the film The Sound of Music. Of course unless they work in tourism, no one in Salzburg even knows what the Sound of Music is, but whatever.  In order to get there, we took an extremely scenic 1.5 hour train ride through the foothills of the Bavarian Alps.  I’ve never seen anything like this before and it’s freaking awesome, exactly what you would imagine.  Little villages with the typical Bavarian white and brown buildings set into the fields and hills; really gorgeous.  Of course Salzburg itself was awesome too.  There’s an older section of town (die alterzentrum) full of the expected tourist shops and then, in the hills above the town, a 15^th century fortress with more sweeping views of the countryside.  On our way back to the central train station we stopped at the public gardens.  We ate dinner at a nice Italian restaurant (that’s actually run by real Italians – go figure) where they do something a little odd: when you’re done eating your main course, they take the little paper placemat that was under your plate, rip it in half, and throw it on the floor.  The restaurant is littered with the remains of every diner’s placemat from at least the night, maybe even the week.  Strange. 

One other thing I noticed – a lot of the younger Germans and Austrians (in their early 20’s) are really creepy and scuzzy looking.  Mohawks, weird piercings, blaring car stereos and all that seem to be the norm.  Kinda makes me feel uneasy walking around sometimes cause I don’t know who I really have to look out for, but it’s also funny to know that they basically all aspire to the American style of dress and way of life – invariably they’re dressed in American branded clothing and playing American music through the cars.