updates

I am posting some pictures and blogs from Nina's house in Venice. Pictures from Prague through Belgium are up. I am still working on Brussels, Paris, Lyon and Bern (Switzerland).

pictures from Ghent and Brugge

pictures from Amsterdam

pictures from Berlin (page 2)

pictures from Berlin (page 1)

pictures from Dresden, Germany

pictures from Prague (page 2)

pictures from Prague (page 1)

Belgium (Brussels, Ghent and Brugge)

We got to Brussels on a Thursday night and took the metro to our hostel. We went out that night to walk around, we went past the Royal Palace and other important buildings and then found the Grand Place - a huge old plaza. One of Brussels’ most popular attractions is a fountain of a little boy peeing, called the Mannekin Pis. We saw some signs for it so we followed them and almost walked right by the statue because it’s really small. It was just a statue of a naked boy with water spouting from his penis. His image is on t-shirts and postcards everywhere. It’s a tradition to dress him up so there are posters everywhere of him wearing all kinds of different outfits. We were kind of disappointed; we thought it was a big fuss over a stupid little statue. We went back to the hostel and hung out there, there was a nice bar full of young people that sold a bunch of different Belgian beers.

The next day we wanted to do a day trip to see some of the old Flemish towns in northern Belgium. We walked to the closest of the city’s three train stations and discovered that it is right in the middle of the red light district. It was a gritty old neighborhood, not as quaint as the canal-lined red light district in Amsterdam. We got off the train in Ghent, Belgium’s third largest city that was one of Europe’s biggest and most important cities during the Middle Ages. We got lost in the new part of the city and eventually found our way to the old part, which had some really old churches, monasteries and a castle along a river.

We got sandwiches and fruit for lunch there, and some hot and fresh Belgian waffles. We took another train to the town of Brugge, which was recommended by other travelers as a really beautiful city. We could see a tall church from the train station so we decided to head towards that. It was in the middle of a complex of monasteries, gardens, old footbridges and statues. There are two old plazas and the Basilica of the Holy Blood. Everything in Brugge was cool. We cooked dinner back at the hostel and then took the metro to the east side of town where all the European Union buildings have been built. It’s mostly a bunch of office complexes and there is a lot of construction to expand the administrative buildings as the EU expands. We found the parliament, which is the only well known building. We went back to Grand Place and the historic center and walked around there some more. On Saturday we went to the train station so that I could book a ticket on the high-speed Thalys train to Paris. We went to Grand Place because we had missed the beer museum there. It was really hard to find and when we finally did find it, it turned out to be closed. The chocolate museum nearby didn’t interest us as much.

The European Auto Show was going on in Brussels so we went out to the convention center to check it out. It was a huge car show with lots of European cars that are not sold in the US. I sat it one of the SmartCars and to my surprise I fit, though there’s not much headroom and the rear door is just inches behind the front seats. Besides the Ferraris, Bentleys, and Porsches, one of the coolest cars we saw was a Tour de France station wagon with the Discovery Channel team bikes on top. We walked through a shopping area and theater nearby and then took the metro back to the city. We went to a big grocery store where Charlie got chocolate and beer to bring home and we walked down a busy shopping street. There are lots of winter sales were going on. We cooked a spaghetti dinner and both spent time packing, Charlie had to get ready to go home – he left early the next morning and I took a late-morning train to Paris.

Amsterdam

When we first got to Amsterdam we walked around and went in a sex museum – that and the red light district was our first impression of the city. The next day we walked to the south end of the city to see the Van Gogh museum. They had really high tech audio guides that were PDAs and you selected an image of the painting on the screen to hear more about it.

We did something called “The Heineken Experience” at the old Heineken brewery. Heineken moved into a bigger brewery recently so the old one was converted into a museum. The museum was more of an extension of Heineken’s highly successful ad campaign than an educational museum. There were some displays on the history of the company, the Heineken family and how the beer is made, but it was mostly a lot of loud and flashy high-tech exhibits. They had video stations where you could record a short video message and then email it to someone. There was one video station that had a blue screen so we recorded another video that made it look like we were swimming in beer. There was a dj face-off where Charlie and I were at opposing stages and pushed buttons to make a beat and sound effects and change the lights. There were two virtual rides, one that simulated what it is like to be a bottle in the bottling plant. In a little movie theater you stand on a platform with some railings that lurches back and forth while a big screen shows you the perspective of a bottle on the conveyor belt, being washed, filled, a label slapped on, boxed and shipped. The other virtual reality ride was in a wooden carriage with hydraulics that made it bounce around while a video gave you the view of from carriage pulled by the Heineken horses through the streets of Amsterdam. There was another room where you lie on a recliner and look up at a big screen and you can watch all the old Heineken commercials. There was a bar in the middle of the tour that gave you one free beer, and another bar at the end that gave you two free beers, and then we got a Heineken glass at the end of the tour, so we definitely got our money’s worth.

We looked into seeing a movie but there was nothing that we both wanted to see. The next day we went to the Dutch Resistance Museum, which tells the history of the Dutch people who resisted the German occupation during WWII. Later that night we went to the Anne Frank house, which gave a personal story of a family that was a part of the Dutch resistance. The museum was really well done. We went to an Indonesian restaurant since Amsterdam is supposed to be the best place to get Indonesian food outside of Indonesia. We got gado-gado and chicken satay, both were made with a peanut sauce. It was the best food we’ve had so far I’d say. The next day we left early to go to Brussels. We tried to take a train to Gouda in southern Holland, but ended up in another town in the middle of Holland. So we decided to get another train to Rotterdam and explore that city instead. We walked around Rotterdam for a while and were surprised by all the skyscrapers. It has some canals, but we never saw them. It had a very different feel from Amsterdam; it was a big and boring commercial and shipping center. We had some Surinamese food there and then got back on a train.

Charlie's Guest Blog Post (written in Amsterdam)

Greetings from The Netherlands! We've only been in the country's capital for 20 minutes now. The train station in which we ended our six-hour train ride was a very ornate, cool-looking building. (And boy have I seen a lot of cool buildings so far, my top fav' being, well, nearly every building in Prague.) Then we strolled along a hoppin' street lined with little eateries and hip shops full of funny T-shirts and Amsterdam memorabilia. As Sam said, this place feels like a huge college town. Except it is one that's got hundreds (thousands?) of years of history, Van Gogh's finest works, and lots of canals.

Since Sam has been diligently documenting the day-to-day happenings, I won't repeat what he has written but will instead describe my observations of Europe in general. (I haven't read any of Sam's blog posts from this trip, so I apologize for any repeats.) I'll begin with a list of favorites. So far, this has been my favorite...

Food: Doner Kebab. It's basically a gyro, but a little different (more lettuce-like veggies, different sauce). You find these all over Germany, especially in Berlin where there is a large Turkish population. According to our concentration camp tour guide, more doner kebabs are consumed in Berlin than Whoppers, Big Macs, and all other hamburgers combined. It seems like there's a doner kebab joint on every block in Berlin.

Drink: Dark Munich beer + Lemonade. I had this drink along with a giant pretzel at the famous Hofbrauhaus in Munich. I had no idea which beer I had ordered as it was in German. Upon taking a first sip, we both thought it tasted like Sprite; it had a sweet taste to it. We later found out that it was dark beer mixed with lemonade. Who knew that'd be good?

Building: As mentioned before, all of Prague, pretty much. Every building's faade was beautiful. Every single building, from the famous ones lining Old Town Square, to the tucked-away apartment buildings, had ornately carved faades. It would be quite difficult to find a plain, cement building in Prague, ugly monstrosities that are so dreadfully common in every other city in the world.

View: From atop the tower in the middle of the Old Town Square in Prague. Nearly every building has the same red-tiled roofs that are typical of Prague. The view was spectacular. Later that day, I looked at the picture on the cover of my Eastern Europe guidebook and realized that it was taken from that very tower of the buildings and hustle-bustle square below.

City: Prague (see above two items for why). Prague was simply overflowing with charm.

Church/Synagogue: The palace church in Prague. (Can you see a theme?) The church is on a hill and has a great view of the city. But I mostly liked it because it was so old, way older than any of the other churches we've seen (and we have seen a ton of 'em!). The stain glass work inside was also very unique; the colors were unusually bright, which made them far more interesting than typical stain glass in churches. Also, King Wenceslas is buried there, along with lots of royal treasures, but we were too cheap to shell out a few euros to tour the crypts underground to see some of that stuff.

Desert: CafŽ con Helado. It's a latte with a scoop of ice cream and a tiny spoon. First you eat the ice cream and dip it in the coffee. Once the ice cream is melted, then you have a delicious, creamy latte. Believe it or not, we always got this at McDonald's. We have only seen this available in Madrid.


Random observations of Europe, Europeans, and the European lifestyle.

Mullets: There's so many! It is very common for a European male to have short hair all around but longer in the back. In the U.S., a mullet is a stereotype of white trash, hicks or hill-billy's. But in Europe the subtle mullet is common among hip, metrosexual men.

Public Bathrooms: Almost everywhere we go, the public bathrooms cost money. This bugs me. It costs upwards of .50 euros (or -,50 euros written in the European way) to use a public bathroom! Even McDonald's charges its customers to use their bathroom. I've never seen this in the U.S. In German train stations, they even split it up between Number One and Number Two, and they have different prices for each.

Shoes: I love the European style of shoes. I have been looking to get some Puma shoes, which are very common here. In the U.S., guys wear more cross-trainers and athletic shoes, but in Europe guys wear more stylish shoes. It's hard to describe. I also like the European style of fancy "pointy" shoes.

Breakfasts: We've had hostel breakfasts in 3 countries now, and they have been surprisingly similar: rolls, meat and cheese slices, jam, plain corn flake cereal, OJ and coffee. Each hostel seems to have a little variation on this breakfast.

New Updates

So here are a lot of updates at once. I posted them in chronological order but they show up on the blog with the most recent post on top so it is in reverse chronological order. Start with the Vienna post and read up from there. I forgot to transfer Charlie’s guest blog so I’ll get that online as soon as I can. I’m still working on the Amsterdam and Brussels posts. But I’ll give a quick update: yesterday we took a daytrip to the Flemish towns of Ghent and Brugge in Belgium. Both of them were important medieval cities and a lot of the old buildings and bridges are still standing. Both places were really beautiful, especially the rivers and gardens in Brugge. We ate hot fresh Belgian waffles for the first time in Ghent. Last night we saw the European Union buildings in Belgium. It was a lot of really new office buildings and the gigantic parliament building and there is still a lot of construction is going on. Some of the highlights of Amsterdam were the Van Gogh museum, the “Heineken Experience” (a museum in the old Heineken Brewery), Anne Frank’s house, and an Indonesian restaurant that we went too. The red light district was an interesting a sight, it was just blocks from our hostel too. We stopped in Rotterdam on our way to Brussels, which was a bunch of boring skyscrapers and shops.

Best and Worst of the Trip

Charlie is going home tomorrow, so we decided to look back upon the highs and lows of our three weeks travelling in Europe.

Most beautiful city: Prague

Ugliest city: Stuttgart, all the communist buildings and memorials in Dresden, Berlin, and Sachsenhousen.

Best food: Indonesian food in Amsterdam, sausage wrapped in dough and baked, goulash in Prague, Chinese food in Vienna, currywurst in Stuttgart

Best dessert: Belgian waffles, Principe cookies (sold everywhere), helado y café, apple strudel

Worst food: “Coated fried cheese” with mayonnaise on a bun in Prague, ham flavored chips in Amsterdam

Best drink: Hofbrahaus dark beer (Sam), Kozer beer in Prague (Charlie), latte in Austria, espresso in Prague, Beck’s, Heineken, all Belgian beers, all Czech beers

Worst drink: a pint of chocolate pudding that I thought was chocolate milk when I bought it in Amsterdam, Kiwi flavored sparkling water in Prague

Best train: Stuttgart – Munich (lots of snow, shepherd, kids sledding, cross country skiers), and the train through Austria too (snowy mountains and lots of skiers and boarders on the train)

Best public transportation: Madrid’s metro, Prague’s metro (free for us), streetcars in Dresden

Best train station: Amsterdam (cool looking building and close to everything)

Worst train station: Dresden (there was no heat so it was really cold and it was under construction and was evacuated for 20 minutes for an unknown reason)

City I’d most like to live in: Madrid or Munich (Sam), Vienna – preferably in the Hapsburg Palace (Charlie)

Best market: the Viktualienmarkt in Munich

Most bikers: Amsterdam

Best weather: Belgium and Madrid (sunny and sort of warm during the day)

Worst weather: Vienna (rainy, cold and slushy)

Best hostel: Die Boofe Hostel in Dresden for the free wireless internet and double room.

Best bar: a communist themed bar in Berlin where white college-aged German guys were rapping in German, a funky bar in Berlin with a fire breathing dragon, the hostel’s bar in Brussels

Best museum: the Heineken Experience, Reina Sofia museum of modern art in Madrid (Sam), Anne Frank house (Charlie)

Best museum we didn’t get to go in because it was closed: Deutches Museum in Munich and the Beer Museum in Brussels

Coolest stoplights: Berlin (the East Berlin symbol of a little guy for the walk and don’t walk signals is still used and its really famous, Charlie bought a shirt of the guy)

Most underwhelming sight: the Mannekin Pis statue in Belgium (a famous statue and fountain of a little boy peeing) and the Astronomical clock in Prague

Most breathtaking view: from the top of the tower in Old Town Square in Prague

Best bridge: the Charles bridge in Prague

Best city square: Puerta del Sol in Madrid, Old Town Square in Prague, Marienplatz in Munich

Best church: the Lutheran Church in Dresden (bombed and rebuilt) and Kaiser-Wilhelm Church in Berlin (bombed and not rebuilt) (Sam), the Palace Church in Prague (Charlie)

Best sign: Köck (a German bank), EXTRA DICK! (on a package of cheese in Germany, it means “extra fat”), Gute Fahrt (means “safe journey” in German), Schmuck (We think it means “jewelry” in German), and a Brussels metro stop that is too vulgar to post.

Smart Car Pegar

Back in Madrid I taught Charlie a game that was invented in Sevilla early in the semester. It’s called “Smart Car pegar” and is basically the European version of the American game known as “Punch Buggy” or “Slug Bug.” Instead of punching someone when you see a VW Beetle, you say “Smart Car pegar” and hit (“pegar” in Spanish) someone whenever you see a Smart Car. We have been keeping a tally of the game. I got out to a head start because I had to explain the rules before Charlie got a hang of it. The score has never been close, I’ve always had at least double Charlie’s score - maybe its because I have developed an eye for spotting Smart Cars (and their new four-door counterparts) over four months of playing Smart Car pegar in Spain. I also got lucky and saw four parked neatly in a row at the Mercedes-Benz plant, and I also was the first to see a Smart Car dealership in Berlin. The score currently stands was 89-31 about one week ago, Sam winning. The final score: 183-69 – Sam wins by a landslide. I also finally got to sit inside a Smart Car at a car show in Brussels today and I was surprised that I fit fine in the car.

Berlin

Our hostel in Berlin was next to a river near the center of the city and it was really cheap – only 11 euros a bed per night. We walked to Potsdamer Platz, a main square that was previously undeveloped because the Berlin wall ran through there but now it has lots of brand new skyscrapers, a mall, IMAX, and ice rinks. We got some brats, walked through the mall and across the river, through a park and got kind of lost so we went got on the metro and went to the hostel.

On Saturday we decided to take a free walking tour of Berlin. The free tour was advertised everywhere and lots of people showed up. The tour guides are young people living in Berlin who speak English (or Spanish – there was a Spanish tour too) as a first language. They split us up into two groups – our tour guide was a history grad student from Australia who has lived in Berlin for almost a decade. They attract lots of people and do really good tours so it seems like they make good money from tips alone. We started at the Brandenburg Gate, where lots of new hotels and embassies have gone up in the last 16 years because the land was previously undeveloped since it was the no-man’s land along the Berlin wall. The gate and the parliament building, the Bundestag or Reichstag, were really cool so we went back that night to see them again. We walked down a street nearby that has a line going down the side of the street. The line is two bricks wide and very subtle – it marks where the Berlin wall once stood. There is a 110 meter section of the Berlin Wall still standing, surrounded by a fence to protect it. We learned lots of little trivia from the tour and came away amazed by all the history that Berlin has, especially the incredible turmoil of the last century.

One amazing place we visited was a square that has the Berlin opera house, a church and some buildings of Humboldt University. In the middle of the square is a small square of thick glass placed in the cobblestone. Underneath this glass floor is a deep, well-light room full of empty bookshelves. It is the memorial to the famous Nazi book burning incident where thousands of books, mostly by Jewish authors, were burned in that square. Our guide explained how Humboldt University was one of the world’s best Universities in the 19th and early 20th centuries and that before 1933, one third of all Nobel Prize winners were German, and one third of those German Nobel prize winners were Jewish. Germany was at the forefront of the Enlightenment, the Protestant Reformation, and in the 19th century it was a leader in science, medicine and philosophy. And then they turn around and burn thousands of books. Knowing that history of Germany makes the book burning and attacks on intellectuals in the 1930s even more mind-blowing.

Hearing about the fall of the Berlin wall from our guide was also really captivating – he gave a really detailed account of how the East German Immigration Minister read the new visa guidelines one day that would allow East Berliners to travel outside of East Berlin. Everyone was in disbelief, most Berliners didn’t expect to see the reunification of Germany within their lifetimes; no one expected communism in Eastern Europe to fall so suddenly. It is hard to imagine such a physical and forced division like the Berlin wall, a wall that prevented East Berliners from visiting parts of their own city for decades. And now it’s just a narrow line of weathered bricks in the street.

We went to the Reichstag, the parliament building that night. There was a long line to get inside because of the tight security, and for some reason there was only one metal detector so it got really backed up. Once inside, you take an elevator up a few floors, and then walk up a ramp that winds around inside the huge glass dome. At the base of the dome, there is a small exhibit explaining the history of the Reichstag -- it was the parliamentary home for the Weimar Republic in the early 20th century, then was damaged by arson in the early 1930s and reopened after WWII. The dome was added in the 1990s and the national parliament was permanently moved back into the Reichstag in 1999 when the German capital was returned to Berlin after reunification. There is a glass ceiling that lets you see into the parliament room and a huge cylinder of mirrors above it. Its weird looking because the new addition is all glass steel and the rest of the building is still the original stone and marble. At the top, there is a 360 degree view of the entire city.

On Sunday we decided to do a tour of Sachsenhousen, a concentration camp 35 km north of Berlin. It was the first concentration camp and the camp that served as a model for the others. The tour was through the same company as the free Berlin walking tour that we did, but this one cost 10 euros. Most of the original buildings in the camp are no longer around; there is a wall with the silhouettes of some of the barracks that once housed tens of thousands of prisoners. Some of the buildings have been rebuilt to show what life was like in the camp and the place was filled with memorials and large blank gravestones where bones and ashes were found buried in the ground. The main SS training facility was there, and the camp was used to practice and perfect the tools and techniques for torture, executions, and control for the other concentration camps built later on. The prisoners were communists and socialists, Poles, Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Gypsies and POWs. They were used for manual labor to make bricks and cut lumber to build and expand the camp, and to make shoes, weapons and equipment for the German army.

The tour guide told us lots of little stories about life in the camp, the horrible things that the SS guards would do to the prisoners, how the prisoners would try to escape or commit suicide, and what went on there that no one in the small town nearby ever knew about. Some of the sobering sights we saw were the displays showing prisoner uniforms, piles of human hair and dentures, the cramped and dirty washrooms in the prison barracks, the execution trench where firing squads killed thousands of prisoners, the gas room and crematorium (now just the crumbling building foundation), and the infirmary’s autopsy tables. Sadly, the Soviet government secretly re-opened the camp and used it after WWII for years to hold Nazi war criminals and political prisoners.

But in the 1960s it was closed for good and the Soviet government built memorials and a small museum there to honor the “victims of fascism.” The Soviet built museum is still there, along with a new museum built by Germany in the 1990s. So the Soviet memorials and museum that are still there were really interesting to see them because they only honor the communists victims of the camp, and glorify the valiant struggles of the communist prisoners. The little Soviet museum quietly ignores all the victims of the camp who were imprisoned for reasons other than being communist supporters. The truth is sort of fudged and the place reeks of propaganda; the prisoners (and the Soviet troops liberating them) are all portrayed in murals and statues as strong, loyal communists. The drawings of the prisoners don’t show the reality of Sachsenhousen – the prisoners aren’t frail and malnourished (like they are in actual photos shown in the newer museum) because the USSR wanted people to see the prisoners as strong and healthy communists. Anyways, the communist propaganda was interesting to see. And its ironic that the Russians fought hard to defeat fascism, only to then become a state just as authoritarian as the Nazis, that ruled in a similar way, through censorship, propaganda and sticking political prisoners in labor camps or killing them. The history of the camp as a Soviet prison for political prisoners is also ignored by the Soviet built museum, but is well documented in the newer one.

That night we went to the Europa Center nearby, which is a big mall, but most of the stores inside were closed because it was a Sunday night. We saw the Kaiser-Wilhelm church, which is a famous symbol in Berlin. It’s a huge old church that was badly damaged in WWII but was not repaired in order to show people the effects of war. Half of the dome is missing, as are huge chunks of the pillars on the side of the church. The enormous circular windows that once had stained glass are now empty gaps. We looked for a grocery store, but they were all closed. We went to the Sony Center near the Potsdamer Platz, where most of the stores were also closed. The huge theater there had an IMAX movie in German and a bunch of other movies in English with German subtitles. There was nothing we wanted to see so went back to our neighborhood to a famous jazz club. There was no live jazz music so we went to the hostel. Another slow Sunday.

Dresden

After a short train ride and two more stamps in our passports we arrived in Dresden, Germany. I had read that it’s a nice mid-sized city with a lot of history, and since it’s halfway between Prague and Berlin, we decided to make a one night stopover there. We took one of the many very quiet and modern street-cars across the Elbe River towards our hostel. The hostel was nice and new and for the first time we had a room all to ourselves. It was a tiny double room – the twin beds were almost touching each other. We were pleasantly surprised to discover an unprotected wireless network so we both spent some time catching up with news and emails online. I was able to post pictures too. We ate from our food stash and then went out looking for some bars that Charlie found in a guidebook. We got a kebab (there seems to be a little Middle Eastern falafel & kebab restaurant on every street corner in Germany) and tried Beck’s and Guinness. And then we spent some more time online and snacked back at the hostel.

The next day we took a street-car to the train station to store our stuff in a luggage locker and then walked through a mall and some shopping streets. They were in the part of town built under Soviet rule so it was very plain and boring. Then we got to the river, which is lined by beautiful and historic buildings. Like all the statues in Prague, the buildings were dark gray or black. They must be black from coal soot or maybe acid rain, I’m not really sure but everything that is old is black. I had heard about the huge Lutheran Church in Dresden that is not only important because it was the first Lutheran Church to be a German national church, but also because it was almost completely destroyed by bombings in 1945 and was only recently rebuilt using as many of the original stone blocks as possible. I was amazed to discover that it really is true that the building looks like a chessboard – with the black original stone blocks that survived the bombing mixed with the newer white blocks. The statue of Martin Luther outside the church was also put back in place. The old bridge that spans the Elbe River has a similar checkered pattern of new and old stone. Dresden was once the most important cultural center in Germany, and was known as the Florence of the north. It lives up to that claim with all the old buildings, palaces and museums along the river. We saw tons of neat old buildings – the coolest place was a courtyard, lined with royal seals and ram heads carved out of stone, which held jousting competitions a long time ago. We didn’t go inside many buildings or museums, but we saw a lot on foot.

We went back to the train station to catch a 2 pm train to Berlin. While snacking in the train station and waiting for the train to come, an ear-piercing siren went off and a announcement (in both German and English) played over and over telling everyone to immediately evacuate the station. So like a fire drill everyone made their way outside and stood around, wondering when we could all go back inside. Charlie and I went inside the mall across the street and stood next to the heat vents. We were worried that our train would be really delayed or that there was a terrorist attack somewhere that preempted the evacuation. We never knew what was going on but luckily they let everyone back in 20 minutes later and our train only had a short delay. Just a false alarm, apparently.

Prague

We had trouble figuring out the S-bahn system in Vienna so we took a long way to the train station (which was different one than the one we arrived at) and we made it just in time to catch the train. It was another four hour train ride and this time our passports were stamped. We arrived in Prague around 4 pm, got some Czech money (called crowns), reserved train tickets to Dresden, found a metro map and city map, and when we were trying to figure out how the metro ticket machines work, two people who were leaving Prague gave us their 7-day metro passes with 2 days left on them. A lucky break. The hostel was two stops away and really close to the metro station, it was an old hostel but really nice. We walked to Wenceslas Square, got some bratwursts from a stand and bought tickets to a symphony (20 euros this time, but we actually get seats!), walked around, got a coffee and a beer, then went to the concert hall. It was Mozart’s Requiem. There was a choir, an organ/piano player (there was one organ solo), and a small symphony. We were in the balcony in the back, but it was a good view. We both kind of fell asleep near the end, but it was really good music.

The next day we went to a huge square, called Old Town Square which has two churches, some government buildings, a huge statue, and is lined with colorful old buildings. We climbed the tower of one of the churches to see the view of Prague. At the base of the tower is a famous astronomical clock that has some little wooden mechanical people that move every hour. The clock is really complicated and shows the lunar cycle and the date. We got there a little before noon and there was a huge crowd of people with necks strained and cameras pointed up at the clock. When it struck 12, the bell rang 12 times and the Twelve Apostles appeared in pairs next to a Jesus and there are other figures that represent different things that move one arm or nod their head. There wasn’t much to it, it was a little disappointing.

We wandered through the Jewish Quarter where there was lots of cool architecture and little old synagogues. We had lunch at a local pub that had a cheap lunch menu. We got soup, goulash, spaghetti, apple strudel and a Czech beer called Budvar or Budweisser. We then walked to the Charles Bridge and went in a marionette shop that had all kinds of wooden marionettes of creatures and people – some of them were really creepy witches or devils. There was a little workshop attached to the store. We had some really strong espresso and then went on a 20th century history tour that was led by a young Czech guy who studied history and quizzed us on US history during the tour – he was really knowledgeable. The tour was really good, it was just the three of us and he told us about how the Czechs and Slovakians created one country to counterbalance the powerful German and Austro-Hungarian nations. Part of Czechoslovakia was given to Germany to appease Hitler, and although Prague wasn’t severely affected by WWII, it suffered through decades of communist rule. We learned about the 1968 protest and the Velvet Revolution in 1989 that peacefully ended communist rule and we saw several memorials. We were struck by how old some of the buildings are, a few buildings from the 11th and 12th century are still around.

We went back to the Charles bridge to see it at night. We saw the huge church and the castle up on a hill from a far. There were lots of people and beggars out on the bridge. We watched a guy tune up his piano made of about 20 wine glasses filled with varying levels of water. He created pretty loud sounds by wetting his fingers and rubbing the rims of the glasses. He spent some time tuning each glass using a big eyedropper to add and remove water until each one hit the right pitch. Then he played a song by Bach and got really into it. He had some CDs of his music too. We wondered around forever and found lots of pubs and finally picked one. We got two beers, one of which Charlie is convinced is the best beer in the world. It was a smooth-tasting dark beer called Kozel. And they were cheap, about 1 euro for a half liter. It took us a while, but after making a couple circles we eventually found our way back to Wenceslas Square, got a sausage from one of the many stands and went back to the hostel.

The next morning we ate breakfast, checked out and went to the big cathedral on top of the hill on the other side of the river. There were two stone-faced guards standing at the gate to the compound surrounding the cathedral, just like at Buckingham palace. We went inside the cathedral and some of the gift shops and then went back to Wenceslas Square one last time to spend the last of our Czech money before leaving the country. I got a cheap soccer jersey (Ronaldinho’s Barcelona jersey) and ham, cheese, bread and pudding for lunch on the train. We went back to the hostel to get our packs and we got my computer online by unplugging the modem cord from the public computer in the lounge and plugging it into my laptop. That’s how I got the previous blog posts online.

At the train station we still had lots of Czech coins left over. Since we couldn’t change those back into euros, we bought some drinks, granola bars, apples (even though we already had some) and walnuts. We had a ton of food with us on the train. It was a crappy old train but was only half full so we had four seats to ourselves, two and two facing each other -- the legroom was great.

Vienna

We caught a train to Vienna at 3:30 pm on Janaury 1st. We got to Vienna around 7:30 and took the metro to our hostel, which was huge and nice but out in some really boring suburb. Nothing was open that Sunday evening. We took a bus to a main street. The only place that was open was a Chinese restaurant so we went there and had some really good food. The town was dead and we tried to walk home, we went a little bit out of the way but we eventually found our way back. The room was nice, four bunks and spacious but it was hot and smelled of body odor. Three other guys were sleeping in there. I showered for the second time on the trip – I’m not keeping to a daily shower schedule.

The next day we walked all around Vienna. The ground was covered in a good layer of snow and it snowed for an hour or two in the morning and then as it started to warm up the snowfall turned into sleet and then turned into rain. It never stopped raining all day long. Everything turned to slush. We were never completely dry for the rest of the day. We saw a bunch of governent buildings (the Parliament building was the coolest), a huge church, statues of Mozart and others, and then we stopped for coffee and warmed up, then went to a chocolate store where we got some banana covered chocolate bars. They looked good but tasted really gross, it was a gooey, processed banana paste inside a thin coating of chocolate. We saw the huge cathedral, Stephensdom, more statues and later we went to a deli/bakery and got a tasty sandwich and a little pizza. We took the U-bahn to the huge palace on the westside of the city, the Schönbrunn. It was a huge building with all the old rooms set up they way they were when the Hapsburg royal family lived there. It was a lot more walking around but we were glad to be inside and we learned a lot from the handheld audio guides. We went back to the center of the city and got bread, meat, cheese and drinks at a grocery store. There was no where dry to eat – we walked around forever until we found a bench in a park. We ate huddled over our food to keep it dry. Our hands were frozen after finishing the food… so we got some coffee and apple strudel at a coffee shop and warmed up again. The coffee was huge and really good – especially Charlie’s white mocha.

So after the world-class Viennese coffee we went to the Staadstoper Opera house for a world-class opera. We got in line for the standing room tickets. The wait was less than an hour and we were sheltered from the rain. The 3.50 euro tickets that we were hoping to get were sold out when we got to the ticket window… so we went for the two euro tickets. Then it was 90 cents for the coat check. So the whole thing cost the two of us 5.80 euros. It was the best bargain ever. We got inside well before the opera started, so we wandered around the building and lost track of time. When we went to get our standing spots we could only get ones at the end of the horseshoe-shaped theatre. We were in the 5th level balcony (the very top), almost directly above the orchestra pit. I didn’t know what to expect, I had never seen an opera before. The orchestra played a couple songs, and then the opera started. The volume of the actors voices and the acoustics of the building was impressive – every word was loud and clear, even though we couldn’t understand anything because they were singing in Italian. Luckily every seat (or non-seat like ours) had a little screen that displayed the lyrics in whatever language you choose. The opera, “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” – “The Sevillian Barber,” was about a young man who falls in love with a young women but her over-bearing father, who is a barber in Sevilla, won’t let her date anyone and they have to find ways to secretly communicate with each other and they plot against the father and he tries to discredit the guy. Anyways, it was good and there was a lot of humor in it too. We finally went to bed after a long day.

Berlin

We got to Berlin last night. Its really really cold. Today we did a long walking tour and saw the Brandenburg Gate, the area where the Berlin Wall and the no-man´s land once stood, part of the wall that is still standing, the holocaust memorial, the bunker where Hitler killed himself (its just an unmarked spot in a sidewalk right now), the museum area (went inside the Pergamon museum where statues and entire buildings from Pergamon and Babylonia are on display), a memorial to the Nazi book-burning, and we went inside the Reichstag - the parliament building with a redesigned roof and great view. We saw lots of other stuff that I can´t remember or can´t spell. Its a huge city.

Stuttgart & Munich pictures

Madrid pictures

Munich pictures

Vienna pictures

trip update

I finally got my computer online at the hostel in Prague so I was able to post what I had written on Madrid, Stuttgart and Munich. Still working on Vienna and Prague. So now you can read about the first three cities we visited below (Madrid - Stuttgart - Munich). We are heading back to Germany in less than an hour... to Dresden.

Munich

We got on the train to Munich - it was packed. The ride was really cool, we went through the snow covered Black Forest and saw a shepherd with his dog herding his sheep and lots of cross country skiers and kids sledding down small hills. After a couple of stops, we got to Munich, where it took a while to find a good map and luckily we found out that our hostel is only a block from the train station.

We stayed in a 40-bed dorm room. It’s a huge room with 20 bunk beds and 40 luggage lockers, one for each bed. Most of the beds are empty so it’s really quiet. We went out with someone we met at the hostel, a Canadian girl Charlie’s age who took a year off from school to work in Scotland. We walked down the main pedestrian street to the big square, Merienplatz and found our way to the world famous beer garden, the Höfbrahaus. It was HUGE. There were tons of long tables full of people drinking huge mugs of beer and having a good time. There was a polka band – a bunch of old guys wearing lederhosens. The place was packed, we walked around forever until we found a table. The three of us shared a table with some people we didn’t know – a young German couple and an older woman from New York. We each picked a beer, not knowing what we were getting exactly. I ended up getting a dark beer and Charlie had a dark beer with lemonade, which tasted more like Sprite than beer. All the beers at the Höfbrahaus are one liter and are served in huge mugs. The beer was really really good too. The Höfbrahaus is beer heaven. The place was so lively and fun. The old woman sitting at our table ate 1/3 of her liver soup and only drank half of her beer. She didn’t like either one so she ordered a bratwurst and a different type of beer. She didn’t finish that beer either, so when she left, we took the beers… and the rest of her bratwurst. The free beer was a sweet deal… so after drinking all of it, we went back out into the frigid night and got subs at a little grocery store nearby and ate and watched TV in the hostel. Wow -- Munich is a fun place.

On Saturday morning, December 31st, we went to the Viktualienmarkt where lots of little stands were selling meat, cheese, bread, pastries, fruits and vegetables. One huge stand had tons of big barrels full of different types of olives and they had lots of olive salads. We got one salad with huge pitted green olives, garlic, olive oil and feta cheese. We also bought a huge round flat-bread. On the way back down the big shopping street, Kaufingerstrasse, we stopped at a supermarket near the hostel to buy cheese, sandwhich meat, granola bars and a bottle of Spanish red wine for New Years. We stuffed ourselves at the hostel and then went to the otherside of the Isar River where we got lost in suburb before we found our way to the river and went to the Deutsches Museum, a science and technology museum that we were excited to see, only to find out that it was closed on the 31st and on January 1st. Most museums and other attractions were closed both of those days. So we walked along the river and got a glimpse of the University and the Max Planck plaza (one of Charlie’s physics idols) and then walked down Maximilianstrasse which was full of really expensive stores. We saw another plaza, an old government building and then went inside the Neues Rathaus (late 19th century neo-Gothic cathedral) and the Gothic Dom (another cathedral). We had walked a ton so we went back and rested for a hour or so at the hostel. The hostel was packed the second night and everyone was really excited for New Years. We snacked some more and then went to a bar down the street with a bunch of young people from the hostel. Most of the them were college students traveling over their winter break like us - two were studying in the Netherlands, two were studying in Rome, a few were studying in Munich and a few came from the United States. We took the S-bahn to Ostbahnhof, a big nightspot were old warehouse buildings have been converted into bars and clubs. We went into a club in a huge building just before midnight. There was a laser light show that did the countdown and everyone chanted along: “fünf…fier…drei…wei…einz…PROSIT NEUJAHR!!!”

I tried to call Martha and a couple other people but I my phone was out of money. I did get text messages to work and got a reply from Martha and Nina. They did another countdown at 1 am when the UK entered 2006. We were there for a while, got onto a packed S-bahn, got some sleep and then checked out at 10 the next morning. Hardly anything was open the next day because it was a Sunday and it was a holiday. We walked around, went to the gift shop in the Höfbrahaus and went to an internet café and played cards in the hostel lobby.

Stuttgart

At 5 pm on Thursday, December 29th, we took the metro to the Madrid airport and walked forever through the airport to get to the check-in, and then waited for our (delayed) flight to Germany. When it finally took off, we flew over France and Switzerland, all we could see was clusters of lights in the darkness -- some towns and cities we were unsure of. We arrived in Stuttgart about 10 pm and took the S-Bahn (light rail) from the airport to the Hauptbanhauf (train station) in the center of the city. The tourist information was closed at the airport but we did find a booklet listing all the hotels in Stuttgart. It had a really detailed map. We knew the street name of the hostel and knew that it was near the train station, but had no idea where to start looking. We divided up the map by square sections and started looking at each and every long street name. German isn’t easy. We learned that street (strasse) is abbreviated as str. Double ‘s’ can be written as β. So streets are also written as straβe. That was only the beginning of the confusion. Charlie finally found the street the hostel is on, and we decided to get a taxi as it wasn’t very far so it wouldn’t be an expensive taxi fare and we also didn’t want to walk through the snow and cold. It was snowy and very very cold. It was the first time I had seen snow this year too. The taxi driver didn’t speak english so we wrote down the address for him and pointed it out on the map. The entrance to the hostel isn’t on the street listed as the address, it’s on a hill and you have to go down some stairs to another street to get to the front door. Some German woman helped us out by yelling something in German from her apartment balcony and pointing out where to go. So we finally got there and went into our room with 4 beds. Two people were also staying in our room, just their stuff was there when we got there, they came home late. They were German, we said “hallo” and that was it.

We ate breakfast at the hostel (lots of sausage and cheese in addition to normal breakfast food like yogurt fruit, coffee and cereal). We took our backpacks to the train station and put them in a luggage locker and then got back on the S-Bahn and went to the Mercedes-Benz plant at the edge of Stuttgart. A free shuttle bus took us through the plant and to the museum. The museum was really nice, had free lockers and free audio guides. It started with the world’s first motorbike, built in 1882. It is a little wooden bike with a huge motor that has a 0.5 horsepower motor and its top speed is only 12 km/h. There were lots of mint condition old cars; some really cool old racecars, the newest racecars, and some cars from the “Million Mile Club” - Mercedes Benz cars with over 1 million miles. One was a former taxi car from Greece that has almost 5 million kilometers on it, or 6 trips to the moon and back. The end of the museum had the 2006 fleet of Mercedes-Benz cars, all really nice cars. They are moving the museum into a brand new building in a few months, so we should go back next year.

We went back to the train station and walked down the shopping area and through the main plaza. There were a lot of people out. There was a winter fest with ice-skating and food stands. We got a couple schnitzel things and went to a sausage stand where everything on the menu was really hard to pronounce so we ordered the only thing that was easy to say, “currywurst”. It was a chopped-up bratwurst with ketchup and curry powder on top. We at the whole thing with two little forks before they gave us the dinner roll that you are supposed to put the sausage in before eating. Whatever – Charlie ate the roll with some peanut butter and gnutella later on. Stuttgart is big and modern, and along with Munich it’s the heart of Germany’s high tech industry. It’s not a very beautiful city with much to see, so we were glad we didn’t stay more than half a day.

Madrid (with Charlie)

On Monday, December 26th, I went to Starbucks to use the free wireless and I booked a hostel in Madrid for two nights, got 40 euro plane tickets to Stuttgart, Germany and booked a room there too – we are able to get to central Europe much faster with the cheap flight. The first leg of the trip was set. We plan on taking a short train to Munich on the 30th and staying there for New Years. I relayed all the information to Charlie, including a meeting place for Tuesday morning -- 10:30 am at the statue in the middle of the Puerta del Sol in the center of Madrid. The rendezvous site was set. All afternoon I packed (lightly but warmly – 1 t-shirt, 2 long sleeve shirts, 2 pairs of pants, 2 fleeces, 1 wool sweater, 1 rain/wind shell and two warm hats). I was hoping that Charlie wouldn’t forget to bring the wool socks, long underwear or gloves that I had asked him to bring. It was hard to leave my family. It was difficult to realize that I would be gone for so long. They did my laundry for me and sent me off with lots of food. Pedro drove me to the bus station in Sevilla at 11:30 pm so that I could catch the midnight bus to Madrid. It was a long and slow bus ride. I don’t remember much of it – I think we stopped twice but I never got off until we arrived in Madrid at 6 am. It was only 17.50 euros – a bit cheaper than Charlie’s ticket to Madrid. I spent some time in the bus station waiting for the sun to rise. It had rained that night and the sky was still dim when I took the metro to Puerta del Sol. I went to the only café open that early (Madrid party’s late but doesn’t wake up early). Our hostel is geared towards backpackers. I went there at 8:30 to drop of my pack. We are in a dorm room with 8 bunk beds. There are a few other similar rooms, a big kitchen, a lounge area, two computers with internet and lots of little bathrooms with showers. There were some open beds so I took a nap. A little before 10:30 I went to the statue in Puerta del Sol to wait for Charlie. I spotted him first.

I took him to the hostel and we talked over some fanta and muffins in the kitchen. I got out my huge Europe map so we could start planning the middle part of the trip. We had our Eurail passes and the entire continent of Europe spread out before us. The possibilities were endless. We decided to concentrate on Madrid first, so we got out a Madrid map and planned the rest of our day. I tried to show Charlie the highlights in the center so we walked by the Palacio Real and then through Plaza Mayor. Plaza Mayor had lots of stands set up selling all kinds of things (we got something for Martha – she’s going to love it), and then we stopped at a market to buy some goat cheese and bananas for lunch. We also walked through the shopping area and browsed through few stores. We went back to the hostel to eat our ham and cheese bocadillos.

Charlie wanted to see the main University in Madrid. Its one of the places he is considering for studying abroad for a semester. We took the metro to the campus. I sat on a bench and listened to Charlie’s ipod while he walked around, I wasn’t so in to seeing the university buildings. It was a pretty boring campus. We took the metro back to the north side of Madrid to walk through the Chueca neighborhood. It’s supposed to be the new hip and vibrant area of Madrid. There wasn’t much going on during the early afternoon. We walked down Gran Via street, a Broadway-like street full of theatres. We had to stop for coffee, our legs were dead. The weather was overcast but pretty warm, in the mid 50s during the day. We kind of got lost and took a long way home. There is a lack of internet cafés and grocery stores in the downtown area. A little convenience store near the hospital had some good food; we picked up spaghetti, tomato sauce and tuna for dinner. 3 euros for a lot of food. There are at least 15 Starbucks in Madrid. We saw them everywhere.

Over dinner we discussed the first week of the trip. Although we were both exhausted, we went back out again (it was only 7 pm). We finally found an internet café and sat down for an hour to look into train times and hostels. We booked a hostel in Munich for Friday and Saturday night. Munich was the hardest city to find beds. We booked two beds in a hostel in Vienna for Sunday and Monday and a place in Prague for Tuesday and Wednesday. All the places are hostels with dorm rooms, kitchens, laundry, internet and breakfast included for 15-20 euros per bed. The trains won’t be that bad either. 1.5 hours from Stuttgart to Munich, 4 hours from Munich to Vienna and another 4 hours to Prague. We were both exhausted and slept a lot that night.

On Wednesday we went to the Reina Sofia museum in the morning and spent a few hours there. One of the temporary exhibits had changed since I was there in October. I finally got to see everything there. The train station is across the street from the museum, so we went there to get our Eurails validated and stamped and booked tickets from Stuttgart to Munich and from Munich to Vienna. The process was pretty simple. On the way home we stopped and got some groceries and then ate lunch back at the hostel. That night we got some Turkish kebabs and saw a movie at a theatre nearby, The Constant Gardener, in english with spanish subtitles. On the way back we looked for a good bar but didn’t find a cheap one, went to one that had just closed and then went to another one that was dull so we didn’t stay very long.

The next day we went to the Parque de Buen Retiro, a huge park near downtown Madrid. We walked around and took some pictures. We cooked lunch at the hostel - pasta carbonera. We walked around some more, I feel like I know downtown Madrid really well now, I’ve spent 5-6 days walking all over the city.

Prague

We just got to our hostel in Prague. It has one computer with free internet. Internet was really expensive everywhere in Vienna so we were glad to find that it's free here. Vienna was really beautiful but it never stopped raining and snowing so we were always wet, but we saw a lot and had a good time despite all the slush on the ground and the non-stop cold rain. We saw an opera last night, we waited in line to get the standing-room tickets. They were horrible seats (well we didn't actually get "seats") but the price was unbelievable - two euros each! We payed four euros (plus 1.80 for the coat check) to see a world-class opera.

So we are going to explore Prague for a little bit tonight and we will check back later.