Munich again

In the morning, we had the unpleasant task of figuring out how to get to Stockholm by Saturday morning to meet Mike (Jeremy's friend visiting from home to go to a computer graphics festival). We finally decided on an overnight (and almost 24-hour total train ride) departing at 10pm and thus had a day to kill in Munich. This is how this blog finally got updated (yay)! More as the day goes on..

Change of plans!

We had planned to go to Copenhagen from Hamburg, but the hostel/hotel prices there were pretty steep, especially after all our time in Eastern Europe. Since the weather to the north looked rainy and neither of us really cared much about the stop in Copenhagen (we had heard it described as "super cool and trendy" so many times that we guessed we wouldn't like it), we decided at the last minute to head south back to Munich and enjoy one more beer garden before leaving Germany.

It was on the way to the grocery store and the train station that we finally found the area of Hamburg that we could enjoy. A nice, cheap, friendly shopping street lined with kabab places and supermarkets. I think we may have enjoyed the city much more if we had walked in this direction first..

After an uneventful 5 hour train ride, we arrived back in Munich. We returned to the same camp ground we had stayed in before, repaired our tent to its best condition in weeks, and set up camp. Then we went out to the beer garden where we had the terrible credit card confusion the week before. This time it all worked out much better. Every table in the huge garden was filled with people, and we eventually found a spot on a picnic table next to a group of Germans who happened to be joined by a student from San Diego and were thus speaking English. We played cards, made sandwiches, and drank a couple of steins of beer as the sun set over the park.

Hamburg (Becky)

We decided to make a short stop in Hamburg, Germany, largely because our German friends recommended it as one of their favorite cities. After a morning in our hostel trying to figure out housing in Scandinavia (it’s pricey!), we finally set out for an early afternoon train ride to Hamburg, arriving around 5 pm and too late for any free walking tours.

One of the strange things about German cities is that they are almost all brand new. Everything is from 1950 or later. Most cities were reconstructed in a mix of modern architecture and replicas of historical buildings. In Hamburg, the newness was a bit overwhelming. We walked through the shopping area (which looked to me like a mix of Paris and Portland, if you can imagine that - all new but trying to look older), and soon we were in an area of Rolex watch stores and expensive restaurants. We kept walking in hopes of finding affordable dinner, but couldn't seem to escape the countless fancy malls and shops. We eventually made our way to the ports and the heavily Portuguese-influenced area. This was where it started raining, and we ducked into an Italian restaurant for a pizza (the cheapest food in the area, if not the city). In the restaurant, we were seated next to a toddler in a high chair who got great joy out of turning to us and saying "HALLO!!!" then waiting for a response. The first few times it was charming, but the kid didn't stop - just kept staring and saying hello (and occasionally other things in German that we couldn't understand). It was quite the distraction.

All this wandering convinced us that Hamburg was too ritzy for our budget. We headed back to our hostel, played drinking games with cheap wine we'd bought in Berlin, and quietly watched some MTV (with German subtitles) while our dormmates slept.

Berlin walking tour

We took a fantastic free walking tour that took up most of the day. We saw all the famous Berlin sites – the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, a piece of the Berlin wall, the Jewish Memorial, etc. I’m leaving a space here for Jeremy to fill in some interesting/historical tidbits from the tour, because he hasn’t written anything for awhile. If this remains blank, blame him.

Fine, fine, I’ll write something. The tour guide jumped around mostly between the Nazi and Stalinist eras of Berlin’s history. Regarding the former, the modern German government explicitly highlights the victims rather than a perpetrators of WWII and the Holocaust. The Jewish memorial is composed of thousands of concrete pillars, roughly the size of coffins, but ranging from just off the ground to several meters high, arranged in a large grid. While no official symbolism is present, walking through this provided an impressive feeling of disorientation (some of the blocks slant in, others out, and change hights sporatically), entering a dense, man-made forest, and being separated. Becky and I took different paths through and there was an interesting effect where you would see each other for a moment and then a turn would separate us and we would be alone again. This provoked thoughts of how loved ones were separated in the camps and would have only seen each other in glimpses if at all. It was a very well done memorial.

Below that architectural exhibit was a small museum highlighting families from all over Europe decimated by the holocaust along with post cards and letters written from within ghettos or, in one case, thrown off a train going to a death camp by Jewish people who did not survive. This provided a more personal look back at the individuals affected during this time that complimented our earlier visit to the Dachau concentration camp.In contrast to that large and very noticeable memorial, the place where Hilter’s bunkers were located was under a run-down parking lot with a small sign. Our guide said that Berliners often take their dogs on walks by this spot to “do their business.” A bit later, we passed by a building that had stood during the war which was pock-marked with bullet holes left over from the Soviet invasion of Berlin.

The Stalinist era was not much more pleasant for East Berlin, and there was an interesting set of murals showing the dichotomy of real life versus contemporary government propaganda. One original mural (on the side of the Luftwaffe building converted into an East German governmental ministry showed the German people happily going to the horse races, working in a factory, and generally enjoying life. On the square in front, a photograph of the same size (maybe 2x10 meters) shows people protesting in a failed uprising from the 50’s who were killed during the conflict.

After the tour, we contemplated going on a pub crawl, but determined that it wasn’t a very good deal (and that we didn’t really care). Instead, we went back to the hostel pretty early again to have dinner and try to do laundry. But, of course, the Laundromat was 30 minutes away from closing when I got there, so that got postponed until the next morning. We just sat around the hostel instead, reading and trying to plan.

Trains and waiting around.. (Becky)

We took a loooong train ride on Saturday. That’s pretty much it. We made sandwiches on the train, found a copy of The Economist on the train, and read books on the train. Exciting.

When we got to our hostel in Berlin, no one was there to greet us. We called the number listed on the door and got no response, so we grumpily sat on the street with our packs and waited. Finally, another guest opened the door and let us in, assuring us that the owner would show up. And that the owner was gay, a stickler for cleanliness, and kind of a weird guy. Other guests arriving later shared the same observations about the owner. Finally, two boring hours later, the owner showed up and gave us our beds. We had been planning to go out to a crazy techno dance party (this is my stereotype of what people do in Berlin), but by this point I was too tired to do much of anything and we just crashed for the night. While we watched online television and mellowed out, our hostel owner was running around, playing music, and dyeing his hair. He asked if anyone else wanted to dye their hair black “like a Spanish boy,” and one of the Canadian backpackers agreed – so the owner cheerfully cut and dyed his hair in the hostel bathroom. Jeremy refused to dye his hair black, unfortunately..

Brewery Tour! (Becky)

We set this day aside to visit the Pilsner Urquell brewery in a town near Prague. Jeremy could talk much more intelligently about it, but what I gathered was that it was the birthplace of Pilsner style beer. Our train (which had a final destination in Nurmburg, Germany) was packed with people, and most of the seats were reserved. Jeremy had the presence of mind to snatch a spot in the hallway where extra fold down seats were, so we were able to sit at least. A large group of British backpackers near u s were not so lucky, and wound up sitting on the floor throughout the car and the hallways. The train was (of course) then delayed repeatedly for a cumulative 1.5 hours. Oh, and did I mention that there was no air conditioning, although the windows thankfully opened and it was rather cool outside so it wasn’t the hottest train ride we’d had.

We arrived in Pilsner just 10 minutes before the last tour of the day and rushed the few blocks to the Pilsner Urquell plant, arriving just in time to join the tour. The tour itself was pretty cool and included a section in a rotating theater, which was completely unnecessary but really amusing. There were also free samples of a “special brew” at the end (yay) but they were out of big cups when we got there and got small cups that only held half as much as the others got (boo). After the tour, we took a relatively empty and uneventful 2 hour train ride back to Prague, got Chinese food (where we accidentally ordered meaty spring rolls, much to our disappointment), and spent the rest of the evening planning our Berlin stay at the hostel.

Walking walking walking (Becky)

We walked a lot on Wednesday. We didn’t manage to get off our butts and out of the hostel until 1pm, but after that was almost constant movement. We skipped breakfast and instead got cheap Chinese food nearby (like 2 euros per plate). Something very strange happened at the Chinese restaurant: some sort of pressurized gas tank exploded in a van in front of the restaurant There was a pop and a loud fizzing noise, and then out back of the van sprayed a misty cloud of gas. The van was labeled all in Czech with “Bomby” written on the side, so we were naturally a little worried (we later deduced that this probably means “delivery”). And the Chinese waitresses looked genuinely terrified, as if a bomb had exploded. So everyone on the outside terrace cautiously moved into the building, the waitresses covered their mouths and noses with napkins, and some people with kids moved as far back as possible into the restaurant. About ten of us just stood in the doorway quizzically until we saw a man casually walk up into the spraying fumes, look into the trunk, and close the back doors of the van. Taking this as a sign that it wasn’t dangerous, we all moved back to our seats and cautiously continued to eat. The van owner laughed and said something in Czech to us all that, based on his hand gestures, probably translated to “it’s not dangerous because it all disperses into the air.” Another guy made a joke that, again based on hand gestures, said “so I’ll just light my cigarette now then!” And everyone laughed nervously while eyeing him to make sure that he didn’t actually make a spark.

After that adventure calmed down, we walked around taking in the sights – the famous Charles Bridge that is the main Prague landmark, the touristy areas around the bridges, the Old Town central area of Prague, etc. We went in search of a bagel shop that had been advertised as a great place for internet, but after a long walk we found that they actually didn’t have wifi at all and their terminal computers were something like 4 euros per hour. So we didn’t bother to stay and set out wandering again, eventually snaking our way back to our hostel to get warmer clothes, and then back out to the central square to catch a Ghost Tour. Prague is famous for its ghost stories, and there are many creepy pictures of its gothic architecture and bridges engulfed in an eerie mist. The tour, however, was not as creepy as expected. Our guide was a woman speaking in stilted English, wearing a top hat and dark eyeliner, and carrying an umbrella. We chose her over another tour that was led a bored looking girl in a dark hood, and a third tour led by a man in a top hat without an umbrella. We may have made the wrong choice, though, as our guide started out the tour by telling us all about the “ghost orbs” that appear in people’s photos and urging us to take pictures and find ghosts. We, of course, all did find orbs (presumably due to the lighting or the dust in the area rather than ghosts, but who knows). She led us to a door with bear carvings that looked gold in photos but not in the dimly lit street (ok..) and had us take pictures of a hooded statue that was supposed to sometimes show the face of Mozart’s father in photos. She also told us a few creepy stories about the city, including the one that seems to be most classic: A man went to one of the local cathedrals to steal money and jewels. As he took gold off of the statue of the Virgin Mary, the statue grabbed his hands and refused to let go. When the priest found him, there was nothing he could do to free the man except to cut off his arm. After this happened, the statue dropped the hand and moved back to its original position, and the man was able to go free (but armless). The arm was then hung in the church as a joint symbol of the miracle of the statue coming to life and the punishment of stealing from the church, and the bones still hang there today hundreds of years later. It’s an interesting story, but not very creepy..

After the tour, we joined a huge group of tourists that had been inexplicably drawn to what appeared to be a typical street band. We watched for a few songs, then moved on. We visited the bridges again in the dark, but they were still not so creepy as the famous photographs and postcards. Exhausted from the day of walking, we finally went back to the hostel and (after a couple of 11 czk (40 cent) beers) crashed at the hostel. During the night, our dorm filled with its other inhabitants, who almost instantly gave it that familiar scent of college dorm rooms and binge drinking boys.