Europe Trip Blog Posts
Click below to read about each of our cities! At the end of each post is a link back to this page so you can move on to the next easily.
Monday, June 18, 2012
30 Before 30: Travel to Europe: Stops 5 and 6, Krakow and Warsaw
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
The first stop on any tour of Krakow is Wawel Castel (sound
familiar?). The castle was the
Coronation point and home of Polish Kings and Queens all throughout Polish
history. The castle grounds were
beautiful and thankfully the grounds
were open so we could wander around, because the castle didn’t even open for
another 40 minutes after we got there!
Once it opened, we bought our tickets to tour the Castle and some related exhibits. The first things we did was tour the private royal apartments and the castle staterooms. For the former, we actually got a tour with an English-speaking guide who pointed out all of the period pieces and the significance of the furnishings of the room, which was really interesting. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take any pictures! The next exhibit was very similar to the first except without a guide.
After the exhibit, we headed back toward our hotel, got changed, and went out near our hotel in the Kazmirez area of Krakow. It’s the old Jewish area, but is also known as an up-and-coming area for young people to live and go out. We hit up a bar that the Lonely Planet recommended. It was on a sort of square with lots of other bars and in the middle was this large round building with many windows selling late night food. As we sat outside the bar we were at and did our people-watching, we noticed that a lot of people were eating these long pieces of bread with melted cheese, different toppings and sauces on them. They kind of looked like French bread pizza but longer and a little narrower. We saw that they were called Zapiekanki and vowed to return the next day to try them for lunch.
We then passed the President’s Palace and went to the Church of the Holy Cross, which contained probably the strangest thing we saw on our trip…the heart of composer Frederick Chopin. Yes, his heart. Now, we didn’t actually see his heart. It’s in an urn in the wall behind a plaque that says “Here lies the heart of Frederick Chopin.” Apparently when he died, there was some issue where his body could not be buried in his native Poland, so it was his wish that at least his heart be kept there. So it is.
For dinner, we walked further from old town and toward the new hip and trendy area of town and went to a Mexican Restaurant recommended by the Lonely Planet. I should know not to go for Mexican in Europe, but the LP usually isn’t off on their recommendations so we tried it. It was bad per se, but it wasn’t that good either. Except the margaritas, those were pretty good. After dinner, we went to one more bar and had a carafe of wine before catching the bus back to our hotel.
We arrived in Poland, the first place on the trip that
Taylor had not already been, at 7am. The
train station was very poorly marked, and a nice, but clearly begging old man
tried to help us get to the train. We ended up having to be quite firm in
telling him to stop following us and trying to help us. Eventually, we got out of the train station
and found a line of cabs. Taylor had to
take money out of an ATM and we got a cab to our hotel. The price was 25 Polish Zloty, which are
about 3.5:1USD, so about $7, not too bad.
We arrived at Hotel Ester and were not able to check in yet,
as expected, so we washed up a little and headed out to see Krakow.
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| Our cute hotel room! |
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| Taylor liked this sign |
Once it opened, we bought our tickets to tour the Castle and some related exhibits. The first things we did was tour the private royal apartments and the castle staterooms. For the former, we actually got a tour with an English-speaking guide who pointed out all of the period pieces and the significance of the furnishings of the room, which was really interesting. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take any pictures! The next exhibit was very similar to the first except without a guide.
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| Castle Courtyard |
After our castle tours, we went to see a famous Leonardo
DaVinci piece that was on display at the castle, called Woman with a
Ermine. It was a really beautiful
painting with an even more interesting story.
Apparently, it is a portrait of the mistress of the Duke of Milan and
was painted during DaVinci’s lifetime (1500s, I think?) but it was actually
lost until about 1800 when a wealthy Polish nobleman bought it for his
wife. It took years before anyone saw it
and recognized it as a DaVinci and then they went to great lengths to protect
it during WWII and now it’s on display in a castle!
Next, we visited an exhibit called “Lost Wawel,” which
actually winds through an underground area and shows excavations of Wawel
castle from before the 1500s. It was
very interesting to see the castle and all of the artifacts found within it
during excavations over the years.
We climbed one of the defense towers of the castle and saw
some great views of Krakow before heading to an area called The Dragon’s Den,
which is really just a cold dark tunnel that drops you out on the Vistula River
next to a statue of a fire breathing dragon (that actually breathes
fire!). The presence of this Dragon’s
Den is apparently linked to the fact that Polish legend has it that Krakow was
founded on the site where a dragon was defeated (or something like that).
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| Wawel from the defense tower |
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| The fire-breathing dragon outside the Dragons Den |
After all these sights, we were quite tired and hungry, so
we went to a nearby restaurant for some pizza and potato pancakes.
After lunch, we headed back to our hotel, checked in to our
adorable hotel, took a shower and a quick nap to recharge and then we headed
out to see the Old Town Square of Krakow.
Krakow’s old town square is actually the largest medieval square in
Europe. It is 200meters square and feels
gigantic! Inside, it has St Mary’s
Churn, which is very big and a clock tower that is the only remnant of an town
hall that once stood there. There’s also
a beautiful building called The Cloth Market, which used to be a market for all
sorts of goods and is now a long line of souvenir stalls. It’s really pretty, even though I really
couldn’t find anything I wanted to buy.
We walked around the town square for a while and waited for
the hourly bugle call from the top of St Mary’s Church. The call is really nice, and it stops
suddenly (at a different point every time) to commemorate a time when the
castle was stormed during a call and the bugler got an arrow in his neck
(yikes!). We then went to see what we
had heard was a beautiful old courtyard of the University Jagglieon, the oldest
University in Poland and the place that Pope John Paul II graduated from after
taking classes covertly during the Nazi occupation of Krakow in WWII.
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| The University Courtyard |
We headed back to Old Town Square and went inside St Mary’s
and another beautiful church nearby. We
then went to visit this exhibit we had heard about called Rynek (which means
square, referring to the old town square) Underground. It’s similar to “Lost Wawel” in that it’s an
underground exhibit. The exhibit only
had tickets available for later that night, so we bought them and went to grab
dinner before heading back to see the exhibit.
Dinner was pierogis and spare ribs. It was very god and VERY filling.
We headed back for our time slot at Rynek Underground, and boy am I glad we did! It was such a fascinating look at the old town square back in Medieval times. Basically, in 2005, they did a huge excavation to find out what was underneath the town square. What they found were remarkably in-tact and historically informing buildings, cobblestone pathways, and even the bodies of individuals who were buried in such a way that it’s clear they were thought to be vampires. The exhibit itself was so well made, you actually walked on pathways past the old market stalls and between layers of stone where you could actually see history stacked on top of itself like sedimentary rock. They say that the current town square is actually 2.6 meters higher than the old one, due partially to the fact that people threw their trash all over the ground because they did not have a good waste disposal system. It was incredible! And to think that the city of Krakow did all of that excavation and research, designed, and built the exhibit in 5 years is also fairly impressive.
We headed back for our time slot at Rynek Underground, and boy am I glad we did! It was such a fascinating look at the old town square back in Medieval times. Basically, in 2005, they did a huge excavation to find out what was underneath the town square. What they found were remarkably in-tact and historically informing buildings, cobblestone pathways, and even the bodies of individuals who were buried in such a way that it’s clear they were thought to be vampires. The exhibit itself was so well made, you actually walked on pathways past the old market stalls and between layers of stone where you could actually see history stacked on top of itself like sedimentary rock. They say that the current town square is actually 2.6 meters higher than the old one, due partially to the fact that people threw their trash all over the ground because they did not have a good waste disposal system. It was incredible! And to think that the city of Krakow did all of that excavation and research, designed, and built the exhibit in 5 years is also fairly impressive.
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| Rynek Underground |
Beautiful views of the square by night
After the exhibit, we headed back toward our hotel, got changed, and went out near our hotel in the Kazmirez area of Krakow. It’s the old Jewish area, but is also known as an up-and-coming area for young people to live and go out. We hit up a bar that the Lonely Planet recommended. It was on a sort of square with lots of other bars and in the middle was this large round building with many windows selling late night food. As we sat outside the bar we were at and did our people-watching, we noticed that a lot of people were eating these long pieces of bread with melted cheese, different toppings and sauces on them. They kind of looked like French bread pizza but longer and a little narrower. We saw that they were called Zapiekanki and vowed to return the next day to try them for lunch.
We headed back toward our hotel after a couple of drinks and
enjoyed some wine out on our patio before heading up to our room.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
On day two in Krakow we walked from our hotel across the
Vistula River to go to a museum housed in the enamel factory owned by Oscar
Schindler, the namesake of the Steven Spielberg movie Schindler’s List. On our way, we passed through what used to be
the center square of the Krakow Ghetto where Jews were sent when the Nazi
occupation of Krakow began in September of 1939. Basically, the Nazi’s said that their
officers could not be expected to live side-by-side with Jews, so they sent
them all across the river. The told them
they could take all of their things, but when they got there, they realized
that 17,000 people were being forced to live where only 4,000 really could fit,
so most of their belongings were left in the square and stolen or pillaged by
Germans.
The museum wasn’t far from the square and it was
phenomenal. It tells the story of both
Oscar Schindler and his factory during the Nazi occupation, but also of the
city of Krakow during that time. Oscar Schindler was essentially a Nazi party
member, but sympathetic to the Jews, and he offered his factory to be an annex
of a concentration camp nearby, but he treated the Jews there very well and,
toward the end of the war when the Nazis started to suspect something was up,
he took 1,200 or so of his employees to another old factory that wasn’t even in
use and pretended that they were working for him in order to save them from
death. Pretty amazing.
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| Oscar Schindler's office |
The exhibit also had tons of info about how the German’s not
only occupied Krakow from 1939 to 1944, but truly overtook it in an attempt to
completely convert the city to a German territory (in addition to removing all
of the Jews). So they renamed all the
streets and the old town square became “Adolph Hitler Platz.” They closed all Polish schools and made them
German schools. They posted German and anti-Jewish propaganda all over the city
and opened stores selling images of Hitler.
It was kind of, no wait REALLY, nuts.
After the museum, we went to get our Zapiekankis for lunch
and they were amazing! Basically, the
base of all Zapiekankis is toasted breadk with a mushroom and cheese
topping. Then, you choose what meats or
veggies you want on it and what sauce you want on it. I got a
Grecka (Greek) with tomatoes, cucumbers and feta and then Dill
sauce. Taylor got salami on his and
garlic sauce. They were amazing! We decided that it would be the perfect kind
of think to sell late at night in a popular bar area in the U.S. And they were only like $3 each!
After lunch, we really just spend the afternoon relaxing and
enjoying the beautiful weather in Krakow.
We walked around Kazmirez and saw all the Jewish Synagogues and a
cemetery. We got beers at a café outside
and got ice cream and walked down by the river.
It was very nice and relaxing and it felt like we were really
experiencing city life.
At 5pm, we left our hotel to go to the train station for our
last city, Warsaw! The train, despite
some confusion with our ticket, was very smooth and the Polish countryside was
so pretty. We arrived in Warsaw at
around 9pm and got a cab to our hotel.
Our hotel was actually somewhat inconveniently located near the airport
and not very close to downtown, so we stayed in our hotel and grabbed dinner
(more pierogis!) and a drink before heading to bed.
Friday, May 25, 2012
Last day!! Can you
believe it!? Are you tired? Because I sure am! Our last day was a full day in Warsaw,
Poland’s capital city. Our first
impression of Warsaw is that it is much bigger than Krakow and Prague, with a
proper downtown with skyscrapers that we could actually see from our hotel
room. However, after taking the bus in
to the middle of the downtown and old town area, we were very impressed with
how clean and quaint it actually was.
Our first stop was a museum that we heard from the Lonely
Planet offered an English-language video every day at noon detailing the
wartime destruction of Warsaw. It was a
great way to start the visit because it gave us such an appreciation for how
beautifully the city was restored from, literally, total destruction. In the video, we learned that after the fall
of Warsaw, the Germans literally tried to wipe it off the map. The city was so destroyed that no one even
lived in it for a solid 3 months after the fall. Slowly but surely, though, people started to
return and revive the city.
Our first stop was the old town market square, which was
full of cafes and men selling paintings.
The square was much smaller than Krakow but still very pretty.
From there, we walked to an area called the Barbican, which was an old fortress and one of the entrances to the city. You can actually walk along the city wall for a little while and it’s a really pretty area.
We walked through old town to the Royal Castle (number 3!) and the Castle Square area. The Royal Castle in Warsaw was completely destroyed in WWII, and it was restored from 1971 to 1984, when it opened to the public as a museum. Because it has been restored, this castle truly looked like a castle inside. They took care to re-construct every room with as much accuracy as possible (relying on paintings or sketches or written descriptions of the rooms as available). The rooms were beautiful, opulent, and very interesting, and they had great descriptions in each room (they were even in English!). We even got to go in the room where the Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791 was enacted. I didn’t know this, but it was actually the first true Constitution in European history and the second in the world only after the United States!
We walked through old town to the Royal Castle (number 3!) and the Castle Square area. The Royal Castle in Warsaw was completely destroyed in WWII, and it was restored from 1971 to 1984, when it opened to the public as a museum. Because it has been restored, this castle truly looked like a castle inside. They took care to re-construct every room with as much accuracy as possible (relying on paintings or sketches or written descriptions of the rooms as available). The rooms were beautiful, opulent, and very interesting, and they had great descriptions in each room (they were even in English!). We even got to go in the room where the Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791 was enacted. I didn’t know this, but it was actually the first true Constitution in European history and the second in the world only after the United States!
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| Where the Constitution was enacted |
After the castle, we went in nearby St. Ann’s Church where
you are able to climb the bell tower and see awesome views across Warsaw,
including the stadium where the Euro Cup will be played in June.
From there, we headed out of the old town
area and down a road called Royal Way.
Along it, we attempted to go to the Museum of Charicature, which we did
manage to walk in to and even look in one of the galleries before a not-so-nice
Polish gentleman came to tell us they weren’t open (why were the doors unlocked
then? We do not know).
We then passed the President’s Palace and went to the Church of the Holy Cross, which contained probably the strangest thing we saw on our trip…the heart of composer Frederick Chopin. Yes, his heart. Now, we didn’t actually see his heart. It’s in an urn in the wall behind a plaque that says “Here lies the heart of Frederick Chopin.” Apparently when he died, there was some issue where his body could not be buried in his native Poland, so it was his wish that at least his heart be kept there. So it is.
After seeing Chopin’s heart, we went to Saxon Gardens, a
very nice park and just relaxed for a bit.
Then we grabbed some ice cream and decided to head back to the old town
square for a beer in the sun before dinner (notice the pattern…eat, drink,
eat…repeat).
For dinner, we walked further from old town and toward the new hip and trendy area of town and went to a Mexican Restaurant recommended by the Lonely Planet. I should know not to go for Mexican in Europe, but the LP usually isn’t off on their recommendations so we tried it. It was bad per se, but it wasn’t that good either. Except the margaritas, those were pretty good. After dinner, we went to one more bar and had a carafe of wine before catching the bus back to our hotel.
Saturday, May 26, 2012
After a VERY long and tiring trip, we figured we were due
some indulgence, so we reserved the hotel Jacuzzi and sauna for Saturday
morning before our flight and got up early to relax our cares away. It was very nice and a good end to our
trip. We caught at 10:30am shuttle from
our hotel to the airport and boarded our 12:40pm flight to Amsterdam right on
time. We had a 3 hour layover in
Amsterdam, but fortunately the airport there is actually pretty amazing. They have tons of great areas for relaxing
with comfortable furniture, TVs, free internet, you name it! They even have a casino! Our flight from Amsterdam to New York took
off right on time and I am sitting here in the tail end of it now finishing up
my recounting of our trip. We should get
back to Taylor’s parents house tonight around 9pm and will probably leave
sometime in the late morning tomorrow to drive back to Ann Arbor. We can’t wait to see our pup, sleep in our
bed, and be HOME for a while. It was a
great trip!!
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Sunday, June 17, 2012
30 Before 30: Travel to Europe: Stop 4, Prague
We arrived in Prague at around 7:15pm and were somehow able
to figure out how to take the Metro from the train station to our hotel (I
worked the logistics, but Taylor gets credit for securing the tickets for
that). Luckily, our hotel was very close
to a train stop and was very nice. We
checked in and got changed to head out for a night in Prague. In our last few cities, we only have 1 day
each, so we wanted to make the most of it.
Going 100% off of Lonely Planet recommendations, we first
went to dinner at a delicious little Czech place near our hotel called
Ferdinand. Taylor had chicken with
mushrooms and cheese (I actually ordered him the wrong thing, sorry honey!!)
and I had a delicious Czech goulash. We
also had some great local beers. Our next
stop was a little beer place called Pivovarsky Dum. Pivovar means brewery or pub, so that’s
basically the name of all bars. There,
we tried the beer sampler, which included a coffee beer, a banana beer, and a
green beer we couldn’t even figure out.
It was all delicious! After that,
we headed to a chill bar closer to the center of town called Duende for our
last drinks of the night.
The highlight of the night, though, was after we left Duende, Taylor suggested that we make our way toward the River that runs through Prague. I was lukewarm about the idea because I didn’t really know what we would see, but boy was I in for a treat!! Right across the river was Prague Castle, all lit up like a literal fairy tale castle. It was so beautiful.
We then headed in to the Old Town Square where I was again blown away by the beauty of the buildings all lit up at night. The Czechs seem to love putting spires on their buildings and it makes them look so much like fairy tale castles, it was awesome.
We then headed in to the Old Town Square where I was again blown away by the beauty of the buildings all lit up at night. The Czechs seem to love putting spires on their buildings and it makes them look so much like fairy tale castles, it was awesome.
After seeing Old Town it was time to call it a night, but not before a trip to the Night Gym
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
In the morning, it was off to spend the day sightseeing
around Prague. We had to make it quick,
too, because we had an 8:17pm train to Krakow to catch, so not too much time to
see all the sights!
Our first destination was the Charles Bridge, which crosses
the Vltava River over to Prague Castle.
We didn’t get to go to the Charles Bridge Museum unfortunately, but did
learn that the bridge was built around 1400 and served as the major reason that
Prague became an important trade route.
The bridge itself is very ornate, with statues lining both sides.
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| Prague Castle by day |
We crossed the bridge and climbed a large hill up to the
entrance to Prague Castle. Apparently it
Is the largest castle complex in the world, and we were determined to explore
as much as possible! We started by
visiting the Cathedral, which is really the piece of the castle that makes it
look truly majestic from across the river.
It has many huge spires and is lit up beautifully at night. Inside, the church is full of beautiful and
somewhat modern stained glass, as 20th century artists were
commissioned to replace the glass after WWII.
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| Prague Cathedral |
We also visited the inside of the castle itself, which
wasn’t as ornate as I had expected, but considering it is no longer lived in
and has been subjected to many fires over the years, I guess there’s no need
for fancy adornment. It was, however,
really cool to see the inside of a real castle (the first of 3 in the latter
half of our trip.
We got to see the changing of the guard at Prague castle
before taking a stroll around the left bank of Prague and taking in beautiful
views of the city.
Finally, we headed in to the castle to a place called Golden
Lane. It’s a set of home that were
actually built into the castle wall to house employees of the castle. In the early 1900s, apparently the residents
of Golden Lane started to realize that people found their little homes in the
castle wall fascinating and would come to see them, so they started to decorate
them beautifully in order to show them to tourists. Some people even rented out their homes for
visitors or simply lived elsewhere and owned the home just for showing to
tourists. The famous author Franz Hall
actually wrote some of his works there in 1915 – 1916.
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| Golden Lane |
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| Looking out over Prague |
After completing our tour of Prague castle, we began to head
back toward the town center, on the way stopping to see a somewhat infamous
sculpture that stands outside the Franz Hall Museum. It’s 2 anamatronic men peeing in a pool
shaped like the Czech Republic. The figures
were quite lifelike, and their *ahem* “members” actually moved mechanically
while they peed. Quite interesting!
We then headed back across the Charles Bridge for lunch
where we caught our breath after a busy morning of walking. Then, we headed in to Old Town Square, which
we had seen at night but really wanted to see during the day. It was just as beautiful, but very crowded
and hot, so we didn’t stay long before heading to the Jewish Quarter of Prague.
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| Old Town Square |
In the Jewish Quarter, we toured several synagogues,
including one where the names of the 797,000 Jews from the Prague who died in
the holocaust were written. It was
pretty intense, because literally every wall of the church was covered in
names. It really helps you take in the
enormity of what happened in the holocaust.
We also toured an very old Jewish Cemetery, where they stopped burying
people back in the 1800s because it was so crowded that the bodies were in some
cases 12 layers deep!
After seeing all the main sights in Prague, we decided to
treat ourselves to some delicious beer at a place recommended by the Lonely Planet. After a couple of beers, it was time to head
back to our hotel to get our bags and catch our overnight train to Krakow!
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| Beers! |
On the train, we had our own compartment with 2 bunk beds, a
small sink, and a window (thankfully!).
We both took a NyQuil to help us sleep and probably managed to get 6-7
hours of fitfull sleep (due to the train starting and stopping a lot) before
waking up to coffee being delivered at 6:30am just before our arrival in
Krakow.
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Thursday, June 14, 2012
30 Before 30: Travel to Europe: Stop 3, Berlin
Friday, May 18, 2012
Friday morning we got up bright and early to catch our
flight to Berlin. The flight was
somewhat challenging, considering the Germans had quite a few rules that 1)
didn’t make any sense and 2) our baggage situation simply prevented us from complying
with. After spending time in Poland (to
be documented later in this blog), I am not surprised by these crazy German
rules. Seems to be something of a
problem they have.
Anyway, we arrived in Berlin and caught a train in to the
city from the airport followed by another train to the stop close to our
hotel. We got really lucky, too, because
our hotel was really close to the S-Bahn stop (that’s what they call the
above-ground train). In fact, there were
more reasons to appreciate our hotel’s location. It was situated in a nice shopping center
with great prices and even a TK Maxx, which I’m pretty sure is related to TJ
Maxx of the US. In fact, our first photo
in Berlin is of me in front of TK Maxx.
After leaving our bags at our hotel (it wasn’t check-in time
yet), we headed out to explore Berlin.
Taylos spend a summer studying abroad in Berlin in 2005, so he was eager
to relive many favorite memories, and with that, our absolute first stop was to
get a Doner Kebab. For those of you not
acquainted with the most delicious street meat ever (as I was not), it’s
essentially like a Gyro with delicious meat, lettuce, onions, tomatoes and that
delicious white mystery sauce. The
Doner, however, rather than Greek is actually a Turkish invention and comes on
really good grilled bread rather than a pita. The entire thing costs 2.70€ and
easily feeds 2 for lunch.
After our Doner Kebab, we hopped on the train to visit some
of the hot spots of Berlin. We started
at the Brandenberg Gate, where pretty much every important moment in German
history took place. The plaza near the
gate is also home to the Hotel Adlon where Michael Jackson infamously dangled
his baby nicknamed “blanket” over the balcony.
From the Brandenberg Gate, we walked south next to
Tiergarten Park, Berlin’s large city park, toward the Memorial to the Murdered
Jews of Europe (and thus commenced the second half of our vacation, which
pretty much revolves around WWII and the Holocaust. Depressing, but very interesting). The memorial itself is a disorienting field
of rectangular columns designed to instill the feelings of confusion that
accompanied the persecuted Jews of WWII.
Beneath the monument, they have
an amazing “information center” which is more like a very well-put-together
museum chronicling the plight of the Jews as a whole, based on their country,
and even down to the family level.
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| A piece of the Berlin Wall that says "Next Wall to Fall, Wall Street" |
From the memorial, we walked to the newly-developed
Potsdamer Platz. Back before WWII,
Potsdamer Platz was a center for trade and socializing, much like it is today,
but for the 50 years between the start of WWII (when it was heavily bomed) and
the fall of the Berlin Wall (which ran right through the Platz), the area was a
no-mans land. Only in the last 10 years
has it been revitalized with such new corporate buildings as the Sony Center and
the Daimler Center. Right off of
Potsdamer Platz, Taylor thought he remembered a place from his summer in Berlin
called “Haus der hundred biere” or “House of 100 Beers.” Sure enough, we rounded the corner and found
it, right where he left it! We stopped
in and had the first of what would be many delicious German beers in Berlin.
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| At Haus der hundred biere |
From House of 100 Beers, we headed to the Ku’Damm area, the
old heart of Western Berlin. The area is
now a huge street full of glass buildings, souvenir shops, and fancy stores. Even the old church that used to be there is
currently cleverly scaffolded for renovations and looks just like the rest of
the buildings around. We grabbed a
“currywurst,” which is a bratwurst cut
into bite-sized pieces and covered in this delicious ketchup/barbecue sauce and
then springkled with curry powder before heading back to check in to our hotel
and rest for a bit.
Later, we regroup and decide on a place to go for dinner
(straight out of our favorite travel guide, the Lonely Planet). We take a train to the old center of East
Berlin, Alexanderplatz and walk through the oldest part of Berlin,
Nickolaiviere. The area is very cute
with cobbled streets, no vehicle traffic, and outdoor beer places. The place we chose was supposed to have great
food and it did not disappoint. By a
stroke of luck, we were in Berlin during spagel season. Spagel is GIANT white asparagus and it is
delicious! I got spagel covered in
hollandaise sauce with a schnitzel (veal pounded thin, breaded and fried) and
potatoes. Taylor got a sausage with
potatoes and sauerkraut. I LOVED the
sauerkraut in Germany. It was much
better than what I’m used to in the US.
After dinner, we hit up our favorite spot, Haus der hundred
biere, which just so happened to have a second location right near our hotel
(ok fine, we picked the hotel for this reason!). The beers were yummy and the people watching
grand. Perfect end to the day.
Saturday, May 19, 2012
On Saturday (at least the calendar tells me it was Saturday,
I had no idea), we woke up and headed to catch a bus that was recommended by
the Lonely Planet to check out East Berlin[1]. It’s a city bus that just so happens to have
a fantastic route through all of Berlin’s top sites, and they have actually
dedicated a double-decker bus. So we got
on the top level and had a great view as the bus took us from near our hotel
all the way past Tiergarten, Schloss Bellevue (where the Chancellor lives), the
Reichtstag Building (where the German Parliament meets), the Brandenberg Gate,
many historical buildings, and in to Alexanderplatz. We got off the bus in
Alexanderplatz and worked our way back through Berlin with stops at the oldest
church in Berlin (the name escapes me), the Berlin Cathedral, Museum Island,
and down a street called Unter Den Liden, which means “under the liden” and
refers to the trees that dot the historic street where many great churches and
buildings are.
After seeing the beautiful sites of East Berlin, we headed
to a more sinister tourist attraction, Checkpoint Charlie. This was the only point in the Berlin Wall
where non-Germans could cross between East and West Berlin. It was manned by both Allied and Soviet
guards and contains grave warning signs like “You are now leaving the American
Sector.” The area is very strange
because it’s right in the middle of the city and there’s a lot of “normal”
things going on and then there’s this crazy part of history preserved just for
the tourists.
Next, we went to the Jewish Museum. The Museum is housed in a phenomenal building
that has only been open a few years.
It’s very interactive and has all sorts of exhibits detailing the
history of Jews in Germany for hundreds of years, up to and including the
Holocaust. I highly recommend this
museum.
Next, we went to the longest remaining section of the Berlin
Wall, the East Side Gallery. It’s about
a mile of wall covered in commissioned paintings by artists. It’s really cool to see the wall intact and
also the art that people chose to put on it.
Our final stop on the Berlin Wall Tour was a section north
of downtown where the wall and the Death strip on the Eastern side can be seen
as they were in 1989. It’s a moving
exhibit that shows how brutally the wall was guarded and pays tribute to those
who lost their lives either protecting it or trying to get out.
After a long day of sightseeing, we decided we had earned a
meal and a beer. We made our way to
Hashecker Markt, a nice little square full of brew-pubs for a delicious dinner
and some beers. After dinner, we found
another place that Taylor remembered from his summer in Berlin, where you can
lounge in beach chairs along the river and order beer. It was so nice.
Finally, we headed back to our favorite bar, Haus der
hundred biere, to watch the Champions League final in soccer. It was the team from Munich (Bayern) vs.
Chelsea (from the UK). It was a good
game and I especially enjoyed it since I had delicious beer, but unfortunately
Munich was not victorious as we’d hoped.
After the crushing defeat (JK), we headed home.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Sunday morning, we got up and went for a run to see Schloss
Charlottenberg, the castle on the West side of Berin that was built as a summer
home for Sophie Charlotte, wife of Friedrich the Great, one of the Kings of
Prussia back in the day. The castle is
gorgeous and so are the grounds, so we just ran and walked around them for a
while.
After our run, we showered and got ready and headed out to
the burbs so Taylor could show me where he lived and went to school when he
studied abroad. It was still accessible
via S-Bahn, and we had a great time seeing his old apartment building, grabbing
ice cream at the place outside, and walking through the campus of the Freie
Universität Berlin, where he studied German and the European Union.
After walking around in the hot weather for a while, we were
ready to relax and what better (or more German) way to do that than at a Beer
Garden! We headed to the nearest green
spot with beer and got ourselves a pretzel and relaxed J
Taylor's apartment building and school in Berlin
What does one do after a pretzel, a pork chop on a bun, and
2 beers? Why, get dinner of course! Our next stop was a German restaurant in
Potsdamer Platz and back to Hause der hundred biere for some of our favorite
brews. We may have had too many of our
favorite brews, or perhaps the sun got the best of us, because Taylor and I got
in a little tiff on the way home and ended up in bed (and a little angry) by
around 11pm. Don’t worry, we worked it
out!
Monday, May 21, 2012
Last day in Berlin L. Our train was at 2pm or so, so we spent our
last day in Berlin grabbing souvenirs (chocolate, newspapers, etc.), looking
for brightly colored pants (for me, not Taylor) and eating one last Doner Kebab
before heading the train station and making our way to the Czech Republic.
Back to Table of Contents
Back to Table of Contents
[1] Allow me to interrupt for a quick and dirty
history lesson. After WWII, the Allies
(France, US, and Great Britain) came to a tenuous agreement with Russia to
split Berlin into 4 areas. West Berlin
belonged to the Allies and became capitalist while East Berlin belonged to
Russia (now the U.S.S.R) and became communist.
Because they preferred the lifestyle and trappings of capitalism (the
shopping malls) and to reunite with family, many residents of East Berlin began
to leave to go to West Berlin. In 1961,
the Soviets erected the Berlin Wall to keep East Berliners from deserting. The wall wove a jagged pattern through the
city and was extremely dangerous on the Eastern side, with barbed wire fence
and guard posts every 500 meters in what became known as the Death Strip. Meanwhile, West Berliners could walk up and
touch the Western Side of the wall (in some places). The Berlin Wall fell in 1989 shortly after
the collapse of the Soviet Union, but is still physically visible in some parts
of Berlin and can be felt in many aspects of current life in Berlin.
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