Category: Europe 6/2015 Page 2 of 5

I will admit that we really didn’t do sufficient planning for a trip like this. Planning entailed looking up each of our major destinations in bed at night on my phone  – often looking at “off the beaten track” locations and taking screen shots of places I wanted to go. 

This morning we decided we were going to do a walking tour at 2pm so I pulled out my list of places to go and decided to go to Friedtichshain ~ a suburb described as a bohemian chic neighborhood similar to Height Ashbury. I had it starred as a must see on my list but no additional information. Howard had never heard of it but took a leap of faith and agreed to go. We grabbed breakfast and hopped on a train to our next destination. 

I love all of the kiosks in the train station! 

Immediately when we got off the train we were met with tons of ugly graffiti, litter everywhere and more homeless people than we could count. The confidence in my research dwindled quickly as we walked down the Main Street to see what we could find. Things never really improved. We walked through the heart of the neighborhood and we just saw lots more graffiti and homeless people. There were lots of restaurants but I wouldn’t call them chic. We did come across a cool antique shop that had a lot of cool war memorabilia. Due to our lack of free real estate in our packs, we opted to grab these cool former DDR pins as souvenirs.

The most eccentric thing that we came across was the statue of this bear.

After about a mile of walking, with my pride low, I conceited defeat and we left to try to catch our walking tour….

So the Walking tour was amazing. I learned more German history in a 3-hour walk than I learned in all of my years of school. (If Caitlyn retains 50% of the information she will be so far ahead of the game. Sadly I’m not sure she heard even 20%. 

The tour started at the Brandenburger Gate. The starting place was at Starbucks of all places! The square (Platz) was called “Paris Square” after  Napoleon stole the statue on top of the gate (Goddess of Peace), which was hidden in the Louvre during the war. Germany eventually beat France years later and took it back. Upon its return, they gave the Goddess of Peace a war staff and called it the Goddess of Victory and renamed the square “Paris Platz”. The French don’t seem to notice the irony, as they have their embassy located there, beside the Starbucks.

 Aside from the French embassy, the U.S. Embassy also looks onto the plaza. As does this hotel. Does anybody recognize it?

 How about now.

…poor Michael…

From there we walked to the Holocaust Memorial. It was a very somber experience and very well laid out. There were rows and rows of cement blocks of varying heights. The ground also varied so when you were inside of it there was an eerie silence and you often had blocks towering over you. That coupled with the fact that the blocks were close enough that you couldn’t walk next to somebody gave you a sense of being very alone. 

 We came across the “Mall of Berlin”.  One must wonder why they didn’t call it the “Berlin Mall”…that name just has a familiar ring to it.

Throughout the streets, there was an embedded line of bricks that showed where the Berlin Wall was built. It is just so hard to imagine how horrifying it would have been to wake up one morning and be unable to cross to the other side or to be able to see your friends and family anymore. 

 

Gendarmenmarkt was the next stop on the tour. In an effort to increase the population of tax paying residents in Berlin in the 1600’s the government opened the city up to any religion. 5,000 Frenchman (the Huguenot) came to town and the Noble Family built the church on the right as a thank you gift. The Germans were upset that they didn’t get a church as well so the noble family built one for them too (which was 4 inches taller but otherwise the same). 

Some other pics from the day:

In the plaza where the burning of the books happened. (Bebelplatz)

This room is a memorial to the books that were burned. A glass plate set into the cobblestone gives the viebookcases book cases that are large enough to hold the total of 20,000 burnt books.

While on the walking tour, our guide mentioned a long strip of the Berlin Wall that was still standing. It is called known as “The East Side Gallery” and people still continuously paint and graffiti it.  Bet you can’t guess where that was…yep you guessed it…Friedtichshain. (Dang it!!! Why didn’t I write better notes as to why it was a must see.) 

So H navigated us to a different train stop and got us to the wall. As we walked up we caught someone in the act of painting. 

Some other great art we saw along the wall…

We walked the distance of the wall and came to a crossroads…

I wanted to go left to catch the train we had come in on that morning. H wanted to go right to catch a train he thought looked closer. We went right. Guess what we found…..the chic neighborhood. It was really a great neighborhood of restaurants, bars and coffee shops and was really cute! But (always a but) we really wanted to eat German food for dinner and in this bohemian neighborhood there exhisted no German restaurant!  (Literally, we would have seen the Wall and this neighborhood if we would have turned right out of the train station this morning instead of turning left.) 

So we took the train back to the hotel and found a great German Restaurant and ordered wiener schnitzel which is breaded veal (not a hot dog on a stick), curryweirst which was a sausage covered in curry sauce and a venison dish H ordered. Of course we had Apple streusel for dessert! 

It was a full day with a lot squeezed into the 12 hours we were out. 

Looking forward to a few days of chilling out in Prague.

We found what we were looking for here in Prague. This is one of my favorite destinations this far! We got in around 3:30pm, got to our hotel and completely unpacked. We will be here for 3 days and it’s nice to actually see what clothes we have rather than live out of our backpack. (Or rather ~ to see what little clean clothes we have left.) Will be finding a laundry mat Saturday.

We called it an early night and went back to the hotel and crashed!

Prague is known for its astronomical clock. It is over 600 years old and is the last one in the world that is still operating on its original parts. If anyone knows me they know I have a thing for clocks so I was especially excited to come here and see it! I assumed we would come across it last night while we were wandering around but never did. Sure enough, it was like 200 yards from where we were sitting yesterday and we totally just missed it. We fell upon it today and were in awe of its beauty. You’ll notice the latest Czech married couple in the lower right; the wedding parties came out of the church that the clock tower is attached to. Cat let us know that she didn’t want to have a big wedding but instead wanted to have a destination wedding here. (#Proudmom)

We also climbed up to the top of the tower to the lookout. Such amazing views!

From there we wandered into a back alley and found a Buddhist monastery.

The Hari Krishnas were parading through the square yesterday which was also an interesting conversation to explain to Cat.

We kept wandering and discovered a hole in the wall coffee shop that we ducked into to recaffinate for the day. You know it’s a good coffee when the stick stands up!

I was really wanting to do a Segway tour on this trip. In the Czech Republic there is no age limit to do the tours and I totally thought Cat could do it. Our neighbor was a Segway Tour Guide in Old Town Scottsdale and let us know that it was the same concept as skiing. Cat is a great skier so I figured she would be fine.

We talked to a family on the street who’s kid was on a Segway and they confirmed it was really easy as well.

(I will note that H was completely against this from the getgo. )

The basics in riding a Segway is to lean forward to go faster and lean back to slow down. While we were walking around,  one of the guides approached us and asked if we were interested in a tour.  I asked if she could teach Cat how to do it which she promptly agreed. Initially, Cat did great but then forgot how to slow down and kept leaning forward. Unfortunately, no one could keep up with her since she was accelerating so fast. She ended with a minor face plant and a few scratches. We all agreed we would wait and try again in a few years. Personally, I still think she could do it…we would just need to help her better understand how to stop.

Thunder, lightning, and rain visited on and off for the rest of the afternoon so we alternated from sitting and drinking at restaurants to shopping in various markets. We found a great vendor inside the local grocery store, picked up dinner and called it an early evening!

Random pics for the day

 Of course, we went to our favorite breakfast coffee house.

Then we decided to hop on the next trolley that drove by and took it to the end just to see the real part of Prague. We took Trolley 17.  3 dogs and their owners got on board the first stop after we got boarded. They were cute and seemed to enjoy the ride until one if them got sick! The owners did clean it up which was good. Poor dog.

We made it to the end of the line and found ourselves at a grocery store. Grocery stores in foreign countries are one of my favorite things to do for a couple reasons!

A) Obviously, there are things you never knew existed.

B) Things get lost in translation

C) Cheesy marketing campaigns make you wonder if people think our marketing campaigns are completely over the top.

D) They have figured out a better way to do things….why waste your time putting PEZ candies into the dispensers when you can just eat them like an adult!

When we were checking out, the cashier was fabulous with Caitlyn and taught her some Czec. FYI “Ahoy” means hello in Czec!

We drove past some really nice houses with beautiful gardens….

But then we also went by nice houses that backed up to some “not so nice houses” as well. There were also lots of ugly apartment blocks.

There is a lot of graffiti here. It makes me wonder if people ever have guilt about the things they have ruined with paint or markers.

Halfway back, the guy in the picture below approached me and showed me a  metal pin. I honestly thought he was trying to sell me something and I quickly responded “No Thank you” and turned my attention back outside of the window. In a deep, serious and annoyed voice, he asked for our tickets in English.

We handed him the tickets and then he smiled and asked where we were from. The shop we got the tram tickets from only had adult tickets so we bought an adult ticket for Cat as well, an extra 40 cents. I think he thought we got scammed.

We hopped off the trolley shortly after that happened and found a park to eat our snacks we got at the grocery store.

I saw this on another travel blog and loved the idea. We brought 2 bouncy balls with us and just play catch with them when we have down time. It’s a bit like living on the edge because the balls have a mind of their own.  You have to watch out for people around you and for yourself when you have a rogue ball! We bought 3 more since we have been here as well. The 2 pictured below are our favorites!

We must have played for an hour at the park. I think that’s where we got most of our “steps” today.

We walked a bit further across the river and found a new park. We came across this obstacle course that was really cool!

Cat and H were being silly on the walk to the hotel.

We decided to go back to Cafe Mozart to watch the clock and have dinner. I just love that thing!

Afterwards, we came home and packed for a day of travel to Vienna tomorrow.