Prague to Berlin

I know im a little behind on this. The train ride was good. I slept most of the way. I had to catch up cause Nick snores like a freight train. So I spend most of the 5 hour ride up sleeping and resting my sore feet.

We arrive in berlin in the evening and went to buy 48 hour a pass so we wouldnt get another damn fine for not having a ticket. We arrived at our hostel and theres a bunch of little umpa lumpas running around. It reminds me of my trip back in 8th grade. We went out and got some food because with all this walking im always hungry. We wanted some greek food. Go figure they think gyros are made with pork. I dont think they know what theyre doing. Oh well. It was good.

The first full day here in berlin we spent walking across the whole city. We saw all the cool sights and took a crap load of pictures. We had dinner at a mexican place at check point charlie. I got nick to drink some more beer. Nick thought he was getting a carne asada burrito from alvaros and boy was he wrong. He ended up with steak and potatoes. We then ventured off to find potsdamer platz. One of the main centers here in berlin. We found the 8th wonder of the world. Another hofbrahuas. Another liter of beer was defenitely needed. This place was so cool. We managed to find our way back to our hostel and on the way found a little place in the train station with what we thought was a pizza. It wasnt but is was still good. No it wasnt carne asada fries but it did the job. Next stop we are finally getting our car and get to drive the autobahn. I'll have videos of me doing the posted speed limit. :) yeah right. I cant do that back home. well have some good vidoes and pics though. Well post as soon as we can.

Anthony

On the train from Prague to Berlin with my friend Kurt

When I travel I always like to bring a few books to read. I had to make some difficult choices this time around because I only had limited space in my travel backpack. The first I chose was Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World, a book about skepticism and science as a way of seeing the world.

The second was Kurt Vonnegut’s A Man Without A Country. That’s a pretty good title to describe how I feel sometimes too. It’s a short book, about 145 pages, and I read most of it on the four hour train ride from Prague to Berlin. I got into Vonnegut only a few weeks ago after a friend of mine said I would enjoy him. The first of his books I read was Slaughterhouse-Five, which deals partly with the fire bombing of Dresden Germany by the Allis in the last days of World War II when the British RAF wanted to test a new bomb to see if they could destroy a whole city. Good for them! In one night of bombings they killed more then 160,000 people, more then either Hiroshima or Nagasaki on their own. Why don’t we learn about this in history class?

I didn’t know about Dresden until I read Vonnegut’s book, written in 1968 I think, three weeks ago. He came out with A Man Without A Country in 2005 when he was 82 and just a year before he died. He says he used to be a funny man, because laughter is what we use as a self defense mechanism against the pain of life. But by the time he made it to 82 he didn’t think he could be funny anymore because the pain was just too much. He felt that people have just stopped caring anymore, and that we are all doomed. I’m starting to see his point.

On the train to Berlin we crossed the border of The Czech Republic and Germany. About twenty minutes from the border crossing we stopped at the Dresden Central Station. I got out for a few minutes to breathe the air and think about what Kurt had told me about the place. There were lots of tourists in Prague and there are lots of tourists here in Berlin as I write this from my hostel room. Who goes on vacation to Dresden?

A walk though Berlin or The continuing struggle

This morning we got an early start at 7:00am and had breakfast downstairs in our youth hostel. This place is pretty fun because there are a lot of energetic young kids traveling here. I wish I had done this sort of thing when I was younger. I doubt I would be complaining quite as much about how my feet hurt. After breakfast we had to walk over a mile with our large bags full of laundry from the last 5 days. That took a little longer then we expected so we got a late start on the sight seeing.

We have a 48 hour metro pass that lets us use any of the forms of public transportation in the city. We took two subways up to an area at the west end of a large park which I think is called Tiergarten. As we started walking west we discovered that we happened to be walking though Berlin on the same day they were having a 42 km marathon. This was pretty neat to see in its own right, but proved difficult to get from place to place.

We walked all the way down the Straße des 17 Juni past a bunch of statues of dead guys. We took pictures of them. After about two miles we turned north and saw the Germany government buildings. These buildings use a lot of glass windows in them, more then other government building I’ve seen. I read somewhere that they did this after WWII to symbolizes transparency in government, as a contrast to the secrecy that once did so much harm to their people. They have even retrofitted the old Reichstag building with a clear glass dome that the people can walk around and see right into the parliament chamber. I like this idea very much.

Then we came to the Brandenburg Gate. The marathon that was going on passed right though the center arch. That was really cool to see these runners passing though it. It was smaller then I though it would be though. Once we got to the east side we were on the famous Unter den Linden which used to be on the East Berlin side. I was trying to imagine what it much have been like back in the cold war when this was a divided city. How could our governments do such a horrible thing to these people? Wall suck, always have, always will.

As we continued further down Unter den Linden we were approaching Alexander Platz and the Fernsehturm TV Tower. You could tell how during the cold war each side tried to represent their respective ideologies with architecture. The East was very minimalist and functional, with lots of square concrete buildings and a tall angular tower looking down on the West. On the other side they had all the signs of capitalism with flashy streets lined with expensive shops. Since the wall has come down though, I don’t know that the people are much better off. Now they have McDonalds and Starbucks on every block. You call this an improvement?

At one end of Alexander Platz there is a very small and modest monument. It is of a sitting Karl Marx and standing Friedrich Engels. I knew about this statue and was anxious to see it, being very curious about the subject matter they wrote about, but something there surprised me. Around the stature of the two men were eight steel obelisks with about 10 or so small picture on them on both sides. When I looked at the pictures I quickly realized that these were not famous leaders or military generals, but everyday nameless workers, farmers, protesters, artist, mothers, fathers, children, and so on. These were real working class heroes, to quote John Lennon, and they are indeed something to be. I realized that this was a monument to us all and the struggle goes on….

After a quick bite to eat at the train station we headed over to the East Side Gallery. This is the largest remaining section of the Berlin Wall. It has since been used as a giant canvas for artists to express themselves. I apologize that I have no pictures for you yet, and words will just not do it justice, so I will stop using them now.

Just arrived in Berlin

We got into Berlin about 6:00pm today. Had a pretty nice trip from Praha. Tomorrow we need to do some laundry in the morning then we are going to head out sight seeing. I really want to see the Branenburg Gate and the Pergamon Museum. I'm going to try and fine us an internet cafe that will let us upload a bunch of pictures. We have about 250 MB of them for you all. Thanks everyone for all the comments. It's fun to hear from everyone at home as we go along the way. It sure is nice over here though. Every turn we make we find something new and surprising. Bye for now. Nick

Day two in Munchen

Again, it was raining cats and dogs here in Munich. Suprisingly enough we didn't have any hangovers. We learned that they don't put any preservatives in any of their beer. Guess the German's drink it quick enough to where they don't need it. We headed over to the BMW museum.


Those damn German's can sure make an amazing automobile. Maybe I will by my M3 now. We toured the BMW museum and walked around olympic park where the olympic games took place back in 1972.

We will post pictures when we get to Berlin. We have some shots of where they assemble all of the cars and load them on the trains for transport. I think my buddy Jeff has purchased every single car they've ever made.

From there we went to the Deutches museum. This was an interesting museum. They had more things to look at than you could shake a stick at. We got to see a lot of interesting aeronautical things as well as electrical and IC engines.

After the visit to the museum, we had about 5 hours of time to kill before our overnight train to Praha. We walked around and went back to the hotel to send some emails. We then went and got dinner at an italian place and I had another beer and Nick had another Coke. Typical Nick.

We learned a very valuable lesson riding the underground subway system in Munich. HAVE A DAMN TICKET ON YOU AND DON'T RIGHT NEXT TO THE GUARDS! Our hotel told us it was free to ride the U-Bahn to Oktoberfest so we figured to ride it for one stop it shouldn't be a problem being that we have walked about 10 miles every damn day. Nope. We sat right next to three of the guards. As soon as we sat down I guess we had tourist written all over our face. They showed their badges and asked us for our tickets. We played dumb and it didn't work. We both got hit with a 40 Euro fine. That's $60 each. Could have done without that. This was right before we shipped a package full of stuff back to the United States. Oh well. Like and learn.

First day in Prague

We arrived by overnight train in Prague at 9:00 am. We started off at the train station and were a little confused about how everything worked from the start. Prague is definitely the most different from the States then any place we have been so far. Not as many people speak English. The first restaurant we went to the waitress spoke none at all. This was a very good thing though because when we first got there I could tell she was frustrated, but as we ate we also studied our translation book. By the end of the meal we were able to say things like please, thank you, and good. Every time we used a new word she would smile. I felt that she had a better impression of us when we left when we got there.



Then we walked around town and just explored the streets of Prague. Every street we turned down we just saw more amazing old buildings. All the streets here are cobblestone and very old. At one point we turned down an ally for a moment to look at our map and when I looked up I saw a plaque that said it was the home of Johannes Kepler. Kepler has always been one of my favorite astronomers ever since I did a report on him in seventh grade.



Just down the street from there we saw the Astronomical clock and the Old Town Square. It was huge and overwhelming. I've got a lot more to post, but we are just getting ready to head out for the night. I'll finish up tomorrow.

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Thanks,
Nick and Anthony

Munich was amazing

We just arrived in Prague Czech Republic this morning on the overnight sleeper train (ten hours!). Sorry we didn't get much posting while we were there, but the internet was very hard to get onto, and we were pretty busy doing stuff around town.

On Tuesday we starting things off by heading over to the Oktoberfest (the largest fair on Earth). I think someone said they were expecting over 6 million people. I've never seen anything like it. As soon as I get a chance I will upload some pictures from there. We meet this cool guy who just sat down at our table. He was a janitor from Stuttgart who drove for two hours just to have one liter of beer and then he drove back home. His English was pretty week, but a lot better then our German! We were able to communicate pretty well with very little. I can't believe how many languages people speak around here, at least in the big cities anyway. At home people seem to not even want to know other languages.





The next tent we went to we got another beer and some great food. The music was cool too. I was surprised how many American songs they were playing and everyone was singing along. Hmm, that's another interesting thing. You can really see the hegemonic influence we have on the world. Everywhere we have been so far there is one thing we can count on. They have CocaCola, McDonalds, and Starbucks every few blocks. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I can tell you that we have had all three already. :( What can I say, sometimes it's just easy.





After the first trip to Oktoberfest we staggered back to the hotel and decided it would be a good time to do some laundry. The only clean thing I had to wear was my nice pants and a tshirt I got from the fair. Laundry was fun too. While sitting waiting for the wash cycle to finish we were practicing our German with our phase book and a nice girl came up to us and just started helping us with the pronunciation. We also ran into a couple from New Zealand who were traveling around like us. It's always a treat to run into someone who you can just speak regular English with.



For our second trip back to the Oktoberfest we tried to get into a few tents, but they were all filled up and reservation only. We must remember that for next time. After walking though a few more tents and getting some pictures and videos of all the action we decided to get back on the subway and head downtown by where we were the night before. We ended up just going to the Hard Rock Munich, which turned out to be really good food.



After that we called it a night. On the next post I will tell you about our trip to the meuseums and Olympic park.

Goodbye for now. :)

Trip from Interlaken to Munich

Trip from Interlaken to Munich

Day four of our trip consisted of a long train ride from Interlaken to Munich. On the way, we decided to stop in Zurich for a couple hours to check out the city. Just as I expected for being the most expensive city in the world.

From there, we caught a train to what we thought was going to be Munich. When our tickets were being checked we were told we need to pay another 22 Euros because this particular train goes through a little part of Austria. That would make this trip 6 countries. Guess that’s what we get for venturing off.

Once we arrived in Munich I had to send a couple emails and of course check football scores.

We decided to go to the first brewpub in Munich. This place was definitely the German experience I expected. There was loud music, loud people, and lots of beer.

Next stop OCTOBERFEST!

From Interlaken to Zurich to Munich

Yesterday morning we woke up in Interlaken and had a nice breakfast at the Rugenpark Hotel. We changed our plans a little and left a few hours early so we could stop off in Zurich Switzerland for a few hours.

This is a street long the river in Zurich. What a beautiful city!

We stopped at a small café and had a couple beers.

When we got back on the train from Zurich to Munich we ended up sharing a compartment with and older German woman who at first I though wasn’t interested in talking. But soon after we left the station I found out that she did speak very good English. We had a weekly English conversation group where that got together to practice. She had done a similar thing with Italian some years ago. I’m so impressed with how everyone here speaks multiple languages, and not just because they have to, but because they enjoy it. In America people seem to revel in not speaking other languages. We talked for a few hours about all kinds of things, politics, religion, history of Germany. I was very happy to have this experience.

Once we got to Munich it was very easy to get to our hotel. It is right across the street from the train station. Here is a picture from our hotel of the street below n front of the station.

Once we got settled into the hotel we went for a walk down the main pedestrian only street that runs though the middle on Munich. It was kind of quite being a Monday night and all but we still had a good time. We had dinner and beers at the Hofbräuhaus.

We just had breakfast this morning on day 5 of our trip. We are planning on heading down to Octoberfest. It is raining right now, so I hope it clears up later in the day. We will have more for you this evening I guess.

Day two in Interlaken

Today we took the train from Geneva up through the Swiss Alps into Interlaken. This was my first experience with the European transit system on the train. It's amazing how well their train system is here. Everything was actually on time. We have first class seating throughout the whole trip.



Once we arrived, we rented scooters and rode up to a waterfall and up through Grindelwald a ski resort up here in the Alps. A truly amazing experience.






Once we got back we took a tour of downtown Interlaken. The people up here were very different than back in Geneva. Interlaken is a very German influenced town. We felt very welcomed by the people here. We were able to get out and watch football at a local bar here. Go figure. I think I'm going to cash out here and call it a night. We have a long train ride into Munich tommorrow with a stop in Zurich on the way. Oh yeah thanks for the post mom. I love you too.

A diverse culture

The overwhelming feeling that I got from our first day in the Geneva Switzerland is one of diversity. Everywhere we went we saw people and heard languages from all over the world. How refreshing to see such different cultures living and working together. My apprehensions about how we would be received as Americans were put to rest. I feel very much at home here. Even when we were sitting at an Arabic hookah bar with older gentleman that did not speak English the enthusiasm in there interactions with each other transcended any language barrier.



This city is rich in culture and history. At one point we were walking down an empty alleyway in the old town and I could not help be feel that this must be what it looked like back in the 16th century when Geneva was the "Vatican" of the European Reformation. I could almost imagine John Calvin standing on the steps of St. Pierre Cathedral giving one of his sermons.


One more special place we visited was the United Nations Outpost in Geneva, the second office after the headquarters in New York. I got to stand by and touch the three legged chair which is a memorial to all those who have been the victims of the barbaric use of land mines around the world. It affected me more than I thought it would.


Well, it's just getting to be midnight here so we need to get some rest because we have a 07:10 train in the morning to Interlaken in the Swiss Alps. We should have some great picture for everyone tomorrow.
Nick