Czech Republic Part I - Prague

Well, I just finished spending about 5 days in Czech Republic, and I must say that it’s probably my new favorite country so far. I split my time between Prague, the capital, and a quieter village to the south called Cesky Krumlov. The two were basically exact opposites in terms of size and population, but they both were absolutely gorgeous and I had a great time in each.

After leaving Krakow, Poland (on the night train), I arrived the next day completely exhausted. For the first few hours, the night train was amazing, as I had the entire compartment to myself. But as the night went on, I got tired and wanted to go to sleep, but couldn’t sleep on the loud train. To make things worse, more and more people kept getting on, so by the end of the trip we had 7 people in my compartment, so none of us could lay down. Needless to say, I was beat.

Once I got to Old Prague Hostel, my accommodation for my time there, they told me that I wouldn’t be able to check in until 2pm. Not good. They had free breakfast in the kitchen, though, so I decided to go there and wait out the next few hours.

After getting some food in my stomach, I was feeling a bit less tired and decided I would map out all the sites I wanted to visit in Prague. Well, while I was doing research online, I somehow caught some second wind of energy and decided I would go out and take advantage of the day. So out I went, map in hand, to see what I could find.

As I mentioned earlier, Prague is absolutely gorgeous. It was probably the prettiest city I’d been to at that point. Some other cities such as Vienna or Amsterdam have small areas that can rival Prague’s beauty, but Prague’s entire old town was that way. You could walk around for an hour and each street you encountered would be prettier than the last.

The first stop I hit was close to my hostel – the Powder Tower, which dates from 1475. An expert at ascending steep spiral staircases at that point, I made the trek to the top. Stepping out onto the top of Powder Tower shows you just how cool Prague is. Looking towards Prague Castle and the Tyn Church, it looks like something out of a fairy tale, with their spires and towers eclipsing the rest of the town. After hanging out there for a while and savoring the views, I continued on my way.

The next stop was Old Town Square, which is the location of the Tyn Church that you saw in my pictures from the tower. Also in the square is the 600-year-old astronomical clock, which dates all the way from 1410. I happened to be walking by at the hour, so I stuck around for a few minutes to see the “Walk of the Apostles,” a rather uninteresting display of different wooden figures walking by the window of the clock. Some people loved it, though, as there was a crowd of about 500 people there to see it. I call those people “bad tourists,” because they’re always standing in the middle of the street, blocking other people from walking, and snapping pictures of really lame stuff on their obnoxiously oversized camera. Then they would typically go to a highly-overpriced tourist restaurant to eat dinner with 100 other bad tourists from the same country as them.

Leaving the square, I headed to Charles Bridge, the famous historical bridge over the Vltava River, which was started in 1357 and is now protected by UNESCO. On the way to bridge, I snapped about a million pictures of the city and the landscape, as it was all so picturesque. This bridge joins Prague Castle with the rest of the town. Before crossing it, I paid 30 crowns ($2) to go to the top of the south bridge tower, as I knew its views were unparalleled. I got some amazing pictures at the top of the bridge, the castle, and the old town.

Going across Charles Bridge at midday means that there are throngs of tourists doing the same. You can barely walk because there are so many people. To make thing worse, there are sketch artists along the sides, which people stop to watch, blocking up the entire bridge (more bad tourists). However, the views are indeed pretty amazing, so it’s understandable why they’re all there. I’d have to say that walking across the Charles Bridge (even though it is super-touristy) is one of the most amazing things you can do in Prague. The river, the castle, the bridge towers – they all come together to make one of the best panoramas I’ve ever seen.

On the other side, I began the steep trek to get a glimpse of Prague castle up close (it sits on a massive hill on the bank of the river). I was amazed that I hadn’t collapsed yet, as I hadn’t really slept at all yet. However, I did make it to the top, though I was pretty sweaty from the 85-degree weather. Once again, some of the best views that I’d encountered in all of Europe awaited me at the top.

Even though Prague Castle had closed for the day, its top attraction was still open, and free of charge – St. Vitus’ Cathedral. I went in with no line and walked through the whole thing. It was a good thing I went in then, because the following day, there would be a line about 200 people long waiting to go in. After walking through, I used my tripod to get some sweet shots in the square by the cathedral.

After the cathedral, I left the castle and walked even further up past the castle, away from the direction I’d came from. On that same side of the river, there is also a large forest area, with lots of trails that you can walk through. Since it’s on the same hill that the castle is built on, the entire thing overlooks the city of Prague. I walked around for a good hour or so before deciding to call it a day at about 8pm. On the way back to the hostel, I got these funny pictures of a puppy fighting with a stuffed animal (totally random, I know).

Anyway, for the rest of the night, I took it easy since I’d done so much that day. I hung out in the lounge of the hostel and met some people from Oklahoma and Texas that were pretty cool. We planned on doing a pub crawl together the following night.

Tuesday, June 24^th – On this day I decided to go back to the castle to go into its many exhibitions, which were closed the day before. I took the “short unguided tour,” which included the royal palace, the Basilica of St. George, and some tower. Everything was really cool, but every sign and description was only in Czech, so I couldn’t really understand anything. I wasn’t about to pay 200 extra korunas ($14) for an English audio tour though. The palace was my favorite part – it was huge and had lots of balconies that overlooked the city.

For the rest of the day, I went to the museum of Franz Kafka, whose writing is considered to be some of the most influential in western literature. Kafka was born and lived in Prague for most of his life, and wrote stories that dealt with the bureaucracy and impersonal nature of the modern world. He was a strange guy, and the museum is no different. The space was very interesting. For example, one exhibit had photographs and descriptions of Kafka’s life, but they were on plaques that had been placed in a shallow pool of water that went around the outside of the room. Another consisted of “mirage machine” – a room designed to make you think you are seeing something when you actually are not. Even though it was kind of weird, it was pretty interesting, and it was rather cheap for a student ticket.

Back at the hostel, I met up with the people I’d met the day before, who I’d planned on going on the pub crawl with. After some deliberation, we decided that the pub crawl wasn’t worth it, so we would just go out to a bar for some drinks. But first, we watched an entire season of the Ali G Show on the hostel’s TV. I’d bought some beers at a grocery store earlier that day, so I had those while we watched. I’d heard legendary things about Czech beer, and for the most part it was true. They were all really good, and all less than two dollars for a half liter can. My favorite was probably Budweiser Budvar, but it has nothing to do with its mass-produced American counterpart. The two companies have been fighting in international court battles for decades, as to who should get the rights to the name. Well, a unanimous decision was never reached, so every country has different regulations towards Budweiser beer. In Czech, obviously, it is just about 100% impossible to get an American Budweiser. In some countries, they have both, or sometimes will have one under a different name. Either way, the Czech Budweiser was better than ours, hands-down.

After pregaming, a group of us headed out to a little café right by our hostel – the Café Bambus. The group consisted of: Jimmy and Patrick from Oklahoma, guy from Texas and his girlfriend (I talked to them the whole night but can’t remember their names), guy from Eugene, Oregon (should also his name but don’t), and the Frenchies (two girls from the south of France), and myself.

Luckily, the bar we went to had really cheap prices on beer, which was nice. Pilsner Urquell is also from Czech Republic (though you can get it everywhere in the States), so we had a few of those at $2 a pop.

Afterwards, we decided to find a bar or a club to go to. Oddly enough, Prague was very quiet at night, and we had a lot of trouble finding a place that was open. I was considering just calling it a night, but we finally found a place that was open.

It was a seedy place, with a thick cloud of smoke enveloping you as you walked in the front door. It was two levels, and the basement (felt felt more like a dungeon) was where everyone was. When I first walked in, I found it odd that surrounding the entire room were a group of black guys (maybe 25 or 30) who all seemed to know each other, but yet none of them were dancing or at the bar. They would just stand there with a drink in their hand, talking to someone occasionally, but always on the outskirts of the room. It didn’t take long to realize that they were all pushing drugs. On the way in and out of the bathroom, you always get a “Hey man, you good?” from one of them, trying to peddle their wares. On the dance floor, a number of girls had lollipops in their mouths, which is a tell-tale sign that they were on ecstacy at the time. Apparently, the guys were selling everything from ecstacy to cocaine, right in the club. That was pretty sketchy, and it was impossible to breathe in the smoke-filled lair, as it had no windows. Thus, we decided to go home after only a half hour or so. I had to check out of the hostel by 10 the next morning anyway, so it was about time to call it a night anyway. The people I went out with were really cool though. Unfortunately, I forgot to get their contact information before I left, but it was fun hanging out with them that night.

Auschwitz

"Words cannot describe the horrors of Auschwitz. Pass through its gates and you become a witness to mankind's ultimate capacity for wickedness."

Disclaimer – Read at your own risk. This post (and the pictures) may be graphic to some.

Saturday, June 21 - On this day, I decided to go to a site that probably everyone has heard of at one point or another – the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Situated 1.5 hours outside of Krakow, it was here that German soldiers carried out their “final solution to the Jewish problem” – the systematic murder of more than 1.5 million people. No other camp was larger, or killed more people, than Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Stepping into Auschwitz sends a chill down your back, as the atrocities that occurred here slowly come into perspective. Everything has been preserved exactly as it was found when the Soviets liberated the camp in 1945. Even the original double-barbed wire fences were present, which still surround the entire camp. When the camp was in use, these barbed wires were electrified, to make sure that no one ever escaped. The original warning signs stand in front of the fence, letting prisoners know what will happen to them if they get too close. Just to be sure, Nazis would man guard towers with rifles, ready to shoot anyone who thought about escaping.

As you enter the inner part of the camp, you pass through the chilling main gate. Atop the gate is the cynical slogan of all the Nazi death camps – “Arbeit macht frei,” which means “Work brings freedom.” Unfortunately, work would never bring freedom at Auschwitz. In fact, the camp commandant, Rudolf Hoss, told each new group of prisoners that they shouldn’t bother with trying to escape, for the only way to leave Auschwitz was “through the incinerator chimney.” Even though many prisoners did perform back-breaking labor each day, Auschwitz was not a labor camp; it was a death camp. Endless physical labor was just one more way that the Nazis could slowly kill a person.

The camp is filled with row upon row of “blocks” – multi-level structures where prisoners lived and slept. If I remember correctly, there are 28 total, and each one held between 700 and 1000 people. Now, most of the blocks house exhibitions focusing on a particular part of the camp’s history. In block 4, there is an urn containing unidentified ashes recovered during excavations at the Birkenau camp. Block 4 also contained the original “Book of Deaths,” where for the first few years the Nazis recorded each person that had died, making up fictitious causes of death and recording them at 5-minute intervals. After a few years, however, Auschwitz’s capacity was so large that they were simply killing too many people to keep track of. Thus, the book is vastly incomplete.

Most people are aware that the main way that the Nazis used to kill was that of poison gas. People were herded into a chamber, where they were told that they would be getting a shower. Fake showerheads and drains on the floor completed the illusion. Once all were inside, the doors were sealed and canisters of a chemical called Zyklon-B were poured into holes in the ceiling. The active component in Zyklon-B, hydrogen cyanide, would claim its victims in 15 to 20 minutes. 5-7 kilograms was enough to kill approximately 1,500 people. On display in the upstairs of Block 4 were hundreds of original Zyklon-B canisters, empty.

Block 5 contained probably the most profound displays of the entire camp. The exhibit, titled “Material Evidence of Crimes,” is designed to put everything in perspective for visitors. When the Soviets liberated the camp, they found thirty warehouses that had been burnt down by the retreating Nazis. Today, we realize that this was an attempt to cover up what they had done, as those warehouses had contained pile after pile of personal effects of the people they had killed. However, the Nazis forgot or were unable to destroy a number of warehouses, and the contents of those warehouses is the “Material Evidence” on display in this exhibit. A display case 100 feet long filled with shoes stacked five feet high – thousands upon thousands of them. A jumbled heap of thin metal, which upon closer look, is actually thousands of pairs of eyeglasses, some with the lenses still in the frames. Hundreds of suitcases piled atop one another, most bearing the last name of their former owner, or even the star of David. Thousands of hair and make-up brushes. The Nazis even plundered artificial limbs. In the hallways, pictures of the victims cover the walls, taken on their first day that they arrived at Auschwitz. On some of the pictures hung wilted flowers, presumably left by relatives visiting the grave of their loved one.

Because the Nazis told their victims that they were being “relocated” to the East, they brought with them only the most important of their worldly possessions – the things that they would use to start their new life. And the Nazis stole every last piece once they were gone. Not a single gold tooth went un-extracted. Seeing all of their possessions piled high, only a thin layer of dust to show the time that’s passed, really puts the number of people that had passed through Auschwitz into perspective.

As mentioned earlier, the Nazis didn’t allow anything to go to waste. Even human hair was made use of. Upon arrival, each prisoner’s hair would be cut, and the clippings saved. The Nazis would then collect and sell the hair as raw material for the German textile industry. That’s right – the Germans sold people’s hair to be made into cloth and carpet. An example of such a cloth is on display, and the way you can tell that it’s made from hair is that you can see the tiny hairs sticking out from the fringe of the cloth. Years later, scientists tested the hair and found that it contained trace amounts of hydrogen cyanide, confirming what the Nazis had done. Upon liberation, the Soviets found sack upon sack of human hair, which had been collected but not yet sold. The contents of those sacks was also on display here – 14,000 pounds of hair. It took up an absolutely massive display case, and you could still see braids that had been cut off entirely. They still held their form after 60 years.

Further down the line was Block 11 – the “Death Block.” Between blocks 10 and 11 was a courtyard where thousands of people were shot, or tortured to death. At the front of the courtyard was a reconstruction of what was called the death wall, a large concrete slab that was designed to absorb the bullets from the Nazis' guns. Thus, it was always in front of the death wall that people were shot. You have to maintain silence in the courtyard, but people are allowed to break silence if it is for prayer. When I was there, a group of about 50 people or so recited a prayer in a language I couldn’t understand. At the foot of the wall, there were flowers, candles, and hand-written letters. A sad sight, indeed.

Just outside the barbed-wire fence on the eastern side of the camp, was the gas chamber and crematorium. Inside were two out of three original furnaces, which could burn approximately 350 bodies daily. Once the bodies were burned, the ashes were used as fertilizer, or dumped into a nearby pond, which is still an eerie gray color because of the amount of ash it contains.

Although I spent hours wandering through the various exhibits of Auschwitz, the absolutely massive amount of information there is impossible to recollect or convey. I usually try to give a fair amount of background information with each post, but there is simply too much to recount with Auschwitz. You really do need to see it to believe it, and to comprehend it. Thus, I only talked about a few of the most profound things that I saw throughout the camp. I thought I knew a fair amount about the Holocaust before I went, but the museum at Auschwitz tells the story like a book never could. If you get a chance, go. It won’t be fun, but it’ll give you a much better perspective on one of the worst tragedies of human history. If you'd like more information on Auschwitz and its role in the holocaust, please click here.

Krakow, Poland

Well, I’m currently on a night train from Krakow (Poland) to Prague (Czech Republic). I was supposed to take a train earlier in the day, but a series of unfortunate events made me miss the train. It’s not too bad though, because the night train is actually really cool. I have a whole compartment to myself (for now) and a really big window that rolls down, so I’ve just been sitting and staring out at the countryside and the faint outlines of the clouds and stars as we go by. On my ipod, I’m playing a collection of songs that I’ve dubbed “train music” – songs that just seem right to be listening to whenever I’m headed to a new place. A soundtrack for my travels, if you will. Right now I seem to be going back and forth between Bob Dylan’s version of “Moonshiner” (amazing) and this awesome artist I’ve just gotten into named Gillian Welch. Her song “One More Dollar” I’ve been playing pretty much constantly. Those are definitely good train songs.

But anyway, I just left Krakow, which is a really interesting place. It’s a very old city, and actually used to be the former capital of Poland. At the center sits Wawel Castle (pronounced vah-vail), where Polish kings lived for hundreds of years. The language spoken is Polish, which is actually really hard to understand. Unlike with languages such as French or German, where if you read something it will sort of sound how it’s supposed to sound, Polish is not the same at all. Their pronunciations are nothing like the words would be pronounced in English. So even if you have a Polish dictionary or a translator, you probably still won’t be able to communicate as you won’t be able to pronounce the words properly. Many people do speak English though, as they are required to learn it in school. That made things easier, as almost all young people knew English to some extent. What else do they do in Poland? Well, they eat tons of sausage (kielbasa) and perogies (noodles stuffed with meat, cheese, potatoes, or fruit). They eat more than 80 pounds of pork per capita in Poland. Also, they have suffered from invasions and oppressive governments for hundreds of years, so they’re just now starting to stand on their own two feet. The site of the Nazis’ largest death factories, there is understandably a great deal of resentment and bitterness towards Germany. And even though Poland is in the European Union, their currency is the zloty (not the euro), because their economy has been too weak to make the transition just yet. They’ve improved a great deal, however, and plan to move to the euro in just a few years. Oh, and you can’t drink the tap water in Poland – apparently it’s not sanitary for drinking, which was a huge pain as I had to buy bottled water constantly.

Alright, so what did I actually do here? Well, on the first day, as I almost always do, I just walked around the city and got lost for a while. I started out in Kazimierz, the Jewish quarter (also called a ghetto), where more than 68,000 Jews once lived. Unfortunately, most of them fled persecution in the 30s and 40s, and today only 100 practicing Jews remain. Just to the south of Kazimierz is a dilapidated old factory, made famous by a man named Oskar Schindler. He was portrayed in Steven Spielberg’s movie Schindler’s List, and it was here in this very factory that he saved the lives of more than 1,000 Jews by employing them and sheltering them from the Nazis. This is the original factory, which can be seen in the movie, and much of the movie was filmed in the Kazimierz district of Krakow.

As I walked around, I came across a number of churches and synagogues, two of which I toured. Inside the first, I heard choir music, which I thought was being played through speakers. As I got further inside, I realized it was actually being played by an orchestra and choir. The piece started off very soft, with only a few instruments and one or two people singing in harmony. Then, about 30 people slowly stood up, and a drum slowly got louder and faster. Then, in one instant, the entire ensemble erupted into sound, filling the entire inside of the church with harmonies. It was amazing to hear – when they all kicked in, my jaw dropped. I wish I could have recorded it, because my description doesn’t do it justice at all. The altar inside was pretty crazy as well. In the other church, there was a cool crypt which I toured for only 3 zloty ($1.50).

As I continued my walk, I headed up to Old Town, and soon came to Wawel Castle, which lies between Kazimierz and Old Town. I’d heard that ticket lines could be outrageous, so I hadn’t planned on going in that day. However, the line wasn’t bad, so I bought a ticket for two of the parts of the castle (the ticketing system is really weird – you have to pay a different price for different parts of the castle). The castle, sitting atop the massive hill, offers amazing views of the river and parts of the city. Its historical significance is similar to that of the Tower of London – the royal residence of olden times. I toured the treasury and state rooms. The treasury held old relics of Poland’s past, while the state rooms were where the royalty lived and had guests. The rooms were really impressive, but pictures weren’t allowed, so I unfortunately don’t have much to show.

Leaving Wawel, I continued walking into Old Town until I reached the Market Square. As you know from my previous posts, Europe loves its lavish squares, and Krakow is no exception. In fact, this is pretty much the crown jewel of squares. I know it’s one of the largest in all of Europe, if not the very biggest. In the center is the “Cloth Hall,” where inside they had a flea market selling everything from boar skins to wooden shoes. After Berlin, we all know how I feel about boars, so I kept on walking. After a bit more wandering, I headed back to the hostel to call it a day.

Back at the hostel, I realized I had some new roommates. The prior night, there were only one or two other people in the whole hostel, so it was relatively quiet. Tonight, however, there was a “German theater group” arriving, so I assumed they would be a bunch of rambunctious teenagers. Apparently, someone had gotten the wrong information, because the German theater group was actually 22 middle-aged tourists from Hong Kong. The oldest one was 67, and they were relatively insane. They were always running around screaming things in Chinese, so I just tried to stay away most of the time. In order to get me away from the group, a girl that worked at the hostel asked if I wanted to go out somewhere. Very relieved, I agreed, and we set out around 10.

We went to a few different bars, and one of the Euro games was on, so there were a lot of people out. The first place we went to was right on the market square, which was amazing to see at night. We sat on the patio drinking Lech, a Polish beer. I was a bit disappointed, however, that the first song that we heard at the bar was T-Pain’s “Get Low,” a highly overplayed American dance song. Oh well, I’ve come to realize that American influences are everywhere in the countries I’m visiting. The most notable influence commercially would have to be Coca-Cola, which seems to have infiltrated every last nook and cranny of Europe. There are a lot of Starbucks' too.

But where was I – Oh yeah, Margaret and I had a few beers on market square, and then went to a few other bars after that. We ended up meeting some Australians who were really cool, so we talked to them for a while. At about 2:30, we all called it a night and all went our separate ways, mine being back to the hostel just a few blocks away.

The next day, after being woken up by some loud and always angry-sounding Asian tourists, I decided to go to the Wieliczka salt mine, which is about 13 kilometers outside of Krakow. If you’ve never heard of it, it is a 700-year-old salt mine that has been declared one of the 12 most important monuments in the world by UNESCO. What makes it so special is that inside, deep within the earth, the miners carved the salt into various structures and sculptures. There are more than 2,000 chambers over hundreds of kilometers, which were all painstakingly excavated by hand hundreds of years ago. Our tour took us through about 2 kilometers of tunnels and chambers of salt, and we got to see some of the most impressive carvings. Now when I say that the miners did carvings, I don’t mean that a guy with a pocketknife carved some letters into a chunk of salt. Think of a full-size chapel carved entirely out of salt, complete with altars, a huge statue of the Pope, salt chandeliers, and an amazing reproduction of the Last Supper. That was what we saw at St. Kinga’s chapel, by far the most impressive chamber of the mine. As you look at the pictures, remember that we were literally 125 meters underground at the time. It was pretty dark, but luckily I had my mini-tripod, so I was able to get some half-decent pictures in the chapel. Besides the chapel (where they still have service every Sunday), there were also tons of statues, reliefs, and other carvings that were done throughout the mine. It also had its own reception hall, where you can have your wedding at more than 350 feet below the surface of the earth. All in all, the salt mine was awesome – highly recommended. As I walked home from the bus station, I got another great sunset picture to add to my collection.

As I got back to the hostel that night, I had a pleasant surprise waiting for me. The night before, I had told Margaret (the girl that worked at the hostel) that I had never had real Polish perogies before. Thus, she brought me in some authentic, home-made perogies stuffed with cherries that her mom had picked at their own house. After being boiled and sprinkled with sugar, I’m not sure if there is anything more delicious in the world. If you ever go to Poland, get some real perogies – you won’t be sorry.

Saturday, June 21 – On this day I went to Auschwitz. See my next post to read about this day.

When I got home from Auschwitz, there was a huge festival going on in town called Wianci (pronounced vee-yon-kee), which celebrates the summer solstice, aka the longest day of the year. It’s also a time when young women wear crowns made of fresh flowers, which are then placed into the river to drift away. However, this is only done by women who are engaged to be married that year.

There were thousands of people who turned out for the festival. The band Jamiroquai was playing that night, and that’s a big deal for Krakow. I was supposed to meet Margaret and 3 other people at 8pm for the festival (which I left Auschwitz early to be home for), and after waiting 45 minutes with them never showing up, I just went back to the hostel. Upon arrival, I’m told that Margaret called the hostel and cancelled our plans, but since I don’t have a phone, there was no way for me to find that out. However, there were some more new people at the hostel hanging out in the common room, so I decided to hang out with them for a while instead.

On this night, I met some really great people. They included Trystan (from Washington state), Pim (from Holland, wearing the hat), two girls from Finland, a Polish guy, and two people that worked at the hostel. We all hung out and played card games all night, watching the Euro games in between. They were all a blast – we were up until maybe 4 in the morning before we called it a night.

Sunday, June 22 – Today I was leaving Krakow, and I slept in until about 11, after being up late the night before. I planned on taking the 2:40 train, but didn’t make it in time. What happened is this: I only had 2.30 left in Polish zloty, and didn’t want to take any more money out since I was leaving the country. However, the tram to the train station cost 2.50 zloty. Since I was only going four stops and I had never seen them check people's tickets, I just hopped on for the 3-minute ride.

I wasn’t on for five seconds before they got me. I was going only four stops, and it cost me a fine of 100 zloty ($48). The guy made me get off the train to work out the fine, and it ended up taking like 25 minutes. By the time I got to the train station and waited in line at the international ticket office, it was 2:45. I missed my train by five minutes. Instead, they said the only train to Prague was a night train, so I would have to take that. I paid for my ticket and stormed off, mad about the series of events that just occurred.

Hot and angry, I went back to the hostel and hung out with Pim and Trystan for a bit longer. After a nap and getting dinner with those two and a girl that worked at the hostel, it was off for my second round of train-catching. Luckily, I made that one in time and I was finally off to Prague.

It was sad leaving Krakow, as it normally is after meeting new people in a city. I’d exchanged contact information with the 8 or 9 people I’d met, and if I’m ever in Holland or the west coast of the US, I have some new friends to look up. I know the odds are stacked against me that I’ll ever see any of these people again in my life, but I guess that’s an incentive to come back someday.

Anyway, Krakow was great, and I can’t wait to see Prague. Hopefully I’ll meet some more great people there.

To see all 239 pictures from Krakow, click here.

Vienna, OR: What Shall We Do With A Drunken Swedish?

Song of the Day: Barenaked Ladies - It's All Been Done

For me, Vienna came and went in the blink of an eye. Where I last left off, I was on my 5:49am train to Vienna, where I was to meet up with a good friend from back home. The train ride was okay – I had to switch in Nuremburg, and from there out the train was filled wall to wall with drunken Germans who were traveling to Austria for the big game that night. As I’d mentioned earlier, Austria hadn’t beaten Germany in soccer in 22 years, so if they won tonight, there would be absolute mayhem. Since Ryan and I weren’t able to find a hostel for the first night, we planned on riding the wave of energy from the game all night long, then heading to our hostel the next morning so that we could sleep all day. Luckily, we didn’t have to do that, as the hostel we’d booked for the second day somehow now had beds available. We booked two up quick and were relieved that we had a place to sleep.

Once in Vienna, it was great being with someone from home again. I hadn’t seen many familiar faces at all on my trip, but Ryan is a good friend of mine from my fraternity. Although he’s just now going into his sophomore year, we’ve had the opportunity to hang out quite a bit in the last year or so. We went on a trip to the University of Virginia together, as well as a trip to North Carolina. He’s been traveling around Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, and a few other places for about a month, so we had both planned on meeting here for a day or two.

After showering up and getting dinner, we decided to walk around the town a bit. One nice thing about Vienna (and many other European cities) is that you’re allowed to drink alcohol on the streets, so we picked up a few Stiegls and started walking in the direction of the main square. In the square is a giant outdoor viewing area they’ve set up for the soccer games, called FanZone. It has a huge TV screen, bars, etc. When we first got there, it was already filled with people, and the entire square itself was also filled. The game was about to start.

We were pretty far from the screen, and couldn’t really tell what was going on, but the first half was uneventful, with neither team scoring. At halftime, we met two girls from the states, and hung out with them for a bit until they decided to get food at some Irish pub that was way overpriced. Instead of paying an arm and a leg there, Ryan and I left the girls and went to a convenience store in order to replenish our supplies.

We watched the rest of the game at Fanzone, hoping that somehow Austria would pull off a win. In the end, they ended up losing, and the crowd dispersed shortly after. It’s a good thing we had a place to stay, because there was no “wave of energy” for us to ride through the night, as we had planned on earlier. We walked home, got some kebabs and currywurst, and called it a night.

June 17 – After sleeping in, Ryan and I decided we would go out and see the sights in Vienna. The center of the town is actually really beautiful, and we spent most of the day just walking through. Among other things, we saw Mozart’s house and a pretty cool church. We were thinking about walking 300-some steps up the south tower of the church, but we decided that a nap would be a better idea. We kind of went in the exact opposite direction on that one.

Back at the hostel, I was able to sleep for about an hour, but Ryan was kept awake by some of our noisy roommates – two Swedish girls named Sara and Tessa. We had met them the day before, and we’d gotten off to a bad start after one of them said something obnoxious. However, we wrote it off as cultural differences, and were willing to give them a second chance. We awoke to the two Swedish girls sitting at the table, drinking beer and wine. “Come drink with us!” they shout. Always willing to foster international relations, Ryan and I sit down for a beer or two.

In the beginning of the night, the two girls made many claims about how the Swedish had a high tolerance for alcohol, but I guess these two broke the mold, as they were completely obliterated after about 45 minutes. The previously quiet one (but only quiet because she didn’t speak English well) became really loud and obnoxious, performing such antics as:

• Throwing wine boxes off the fire escape
• Addressing our 31-year-old roommate as “Old Guy"
• Going to other people’s rooms via the fire escape
• Attempting to climb onto the roof
• Having all of the roommates sign her with a ballpoint pen

Those were only the funny ones that I can remember, but you get the idea. After a while, the girls decided to venture downstairs to the bar, so Ryan and I took some time to relax and play guitar. We played a bunch of songs, along with our roommate Hank, who was formerly in the US Navy. I got some good video footage of the star in action, so hopefully I’ll get a clip uploaded soon. After a few hours of that, and finishing our laundry, we went to sleep, the Swedish girls nowhere to be found. But they did come back eventually, although not together. The first came back with a Swedish guy that she had met, and the other came back at like 7 in the morning. I awoke shortly thereafter to her screaming “YOU MUST GO NOW!” and things similar. I look up and it takes me a minute to realize what’s happening. The Swedish guy that the first girl had brought back was now passed out in the second girl’s bed… completely naked. I couldn’t help but laugh, and after about 10 minutes of those two yelling back and forth, the guy gets up and leaves. I’m not sure what happened after that, as I fell right back to sleep after all the commotion stopped. Those two Swedes were definitely out of their minds, but they were pretty funny (and another good story, of course).

Ryan had a plane to Greece that day, and I was headed in the opposite direction, up north to Poland. He left about an hour before I did, and just like that, my trip to Vienna was over. It would’ve been great to spend a few more days together, but the two days we had there were a lot of fun. I checked out of the hostel, got some lunch, and headed to the train station for my 2:30 train to Krakow. So long, Vienna...

I'm Sorry, I Didn't Realize This Was the Serengeti (A GREAT Story)

Preface: For the past few weeks, a good friend of mine from my fraternity and I have been planning on meeting up in Vienna, Austria. He’ll be backpacking around Europe for about a month, and we just happened to be going there around the same time. Well, we had planned on meeting up in Vienna on June 16^th, and spending two nights there together. Well, for some reason, I got confused and thought that I wasn’t leaving Berlin until the morning of the 17^th. So as I was getting ready for bed last night, I got an e-mail from Ryan asking what time I would be getting to Vienna the following day. Wait… what?? That’s tomorrow?! I’d completely screwed up… now I had to find a way to be in Vienna by mid-afternoon, as he would be getting there at 2pm, and I certainly couldn’t leave him stranded. Besides, we had big plans to watch Austria play Germany in the Euro Games, and hit the town hard. I looked up train times for that morning to see if I could get there around the same time as him. It’s a ten-hour train ride… crap. That would mean I need to be on a train by 4am (it was already 1:30 at this point). Well, there wasn’t a 4am train available, but I did find one for 5:49, which would put me in Vienna by 3:30. I decided that’s what I would take. And since the train was leaving so early, I was just going to pull an all-nighter and catch the train in the morning. The only problem is this – my hostel is in the middle of nowhere, and because of this, it is only serviced by buses (not the metro). Buses wouldn’t start running until 6 in the morning, and I had to be at the station by 5. The metro trains do run all night, though. So I decided I would walk to the nearest metro station from my hostel (about 30 or 40 minutes) and take that to Hauptbonhof, where I was catching my train to Vienna.

Okay, did you get all that?? Recap – I’m an idiot, had to get a train to Vienna ASAP, found one for 5:49 in the morning, and will be walking to the metro 40 minutes away so that I can get to the station in time.

Preface 2 – As mentioned above, my hostel is in the middle of nowhere. I mean nowhere. It is on the outskirts of Berlin, right between the suburbs and a big forest, which may be some sort of national park or something. For all intents and purposes, the hostel is in the woods – it feels like you’re camping actually. To get to the hostel from the main road, you have to walk down a gravel path, maybe 250 meters long, that has woods on both sides. At night the road is really creepy – I’d walked home on it at night a few times, but never with any problem.

Actual Post – Okay, now that I have all that out of the way, I can actually tell you my story. Let me start it off by posing a question: Of all the hardships or problems that a traveler might face (such as myself), what do you think the most severe or the most worrisome would be? Think about it long and hard. Is it a lack of funds? Homesickness? Getting lost? When you have your answer, read on to find out what the case was for me.

Okay, are you ready? Well here it is – my problem was… wild boars. That’s right… WILD. BOARS. I know that right now, that doesn’t make any sense, but it is my intention to explain myself as clearly as possible. So here we go… Remember how I said I was going to have to walk to the metro station in order to get to my train in time? Well, I left the hostel at 3:45 in the morning, with the metro station being about a half hour away. And remember how my hostel lies on the edge of a forest down a very long, dimly lit road? Well, as I left the hostel I started out down the gravel road, suited up with my pack on my back. I was a little tired, but excited to see my friend in Vienna. It was a cold night – so cold in fact, that I noticed before I left that I could see my breath. As I first set out, the gravel road was eerily silent, and all I could see was pitch black interrupted by the faint glow of three light posts in the distance that lit the path sporadically. As I walked along, the only sounds were of my footsteps grinding against the gravel. As my eyes adjusted, I could see about 15 feet in front of me (barely) but only black beyond that.

I had gotten about halfway down the road when I first thought I saw something. Up ahead, near the wood pile along the side of the road I thought I saw something move. Nah, I’m sure it’s just my eyes playing tricks on me. After all, it is pretty late. Well wait a second, there it went again. My pace slowed as up ahead, in the incredibly faint glow of a street lamp, I saw something move again. Is that a fox? I was about 100 feet away from the wood pile, but I was still walking forward, knowing that even if there was something there, it would surely get lost quick when it heard me coming. When I got to about 60 feet from the wood pile, that’s when it turned. Whatever it was, it was MUCH bigger than I had originally thought. I froze dead in my tracks, unsure as to what lay ahead of me. All I could see was a silhouette, and it appeared to be about the size of a large dog. It hadn’t made a sound yet, and the forest was dead silent now that I had stopped. I waited for something, anything to give me some indication as to what it was or where it was headed. After about 30 seconds, it started to move. It had moved out into the road, away from the glow of the street lamp, and I could no longer see it whatsoever – not even an outline. Its footsteps were heavy, and I could tell that they were coming directly at me, in the middle of the road. I was now in between two of the street lamps, far from either one, and a good 125 meters from the hostel. As the steps got faster, I knew that this thing in the distance was closing the space between it and me. As dark as it was, I wouldn’t be able to see it at all until it was about 15 feet away from me, and I didn’t want to be 15 feet away from whatever this thing was. I didn’t want to move, because then I wouldn’t be able to hear its positioning, but I had no choice. I slowly paced backwards, painstakingly placing each step with the utmost precision so as to make the least sound possible. I didn’t turn my back on whatever it was… I wanted to make sure to be in some sort of attack formation in case this thing decided to get physical. Its steps were still faster than mine and getting louder, so I knew it was close. As I continued to walk backwards, I neared one of the street lamps, and I began to come in range of the glow once more. And that’s when I saw it. The lamp’s rays swept over my pursuer, and I got the first view of what was approaching me. There, in the middle of the road, 30 feet away, was a massive wild boar. A WILD BOAR. WHY ARE THERE WILD BOARS IN THE OUTSKIRTS OF BERLIN!?! At this point, I started to freak out a little bit and think about what I should do next. I was frozen in the middle of the road, unable to believe what my eyes were seeing. The boar let out a loud grunt, with the warm breath from its snout visible in the cold air. What am I supposed to do in this situation? Okay, think… there has to be some sort of boar protocol. Do I open up my jacket and yell, like with a bear? Do I stand still? If I run, will it chase me? Are boars aggressive? Should I curl up in the fetal position and wait to be impaled? I had to do something. The boar took a few steps down the road, and then began to run straight at me. In a split second, my body reacted and didn’t care about whatever reasoning my brain was trying to do. I was running – fast. I was putting one foot in front of the other straight back in the direction of the hostel. I thought about ditching my pack as it was slowing me down bigtime, but I wanted to have something big that I could put between me and the boar if it got too close. The only problem was now that I was running, I couldn’t hear the boar. Was it still chasing me? I don’t know, but it hasn’t hit me yet, so I’m not stopping. I ran back to the hostel, got inside the wooden fence, and threw my pack on the ground. WHAT just happened?? How is this possible? Behind the impermeable safety of the rickety wooden gate, I looked back down the gravel road to see where the boar was. It sounded like he was now in the woods, and I heard multiple grunts and footsteps over a minute or two. It was still pretty close, but at least I was near the hostel now. All of a sudden, the boar darted across the road. Wait a second, that’s not one boar... that's a bunch of boar!! There were at least five of them, and they all ran across in a line. Whatever you call a bunch of boar – a herd, a flock, a gaggle, a pride – I don’t know, but this was 5-7 bloodthirsty, flesh-eating boar out in the forest. In retrospect, I believe it was a mother and a bunch of young ones. Perhaps that’s why she was so moody and decided to throw down.

I went back inside the hostel and there were still 7 or 8 people up in the common room, drinking and socializing. I was still in complete shock and awe; I told them what happened and none of them could believe it. One of them said he heard of a guy that had seen a boar the night before on the same road. I guess I didn’t get that memo. They all wanted to see if what I spoke was the truth, so we all headed back out into the gravel road, the time being about 4am at this point. Immediately, we could hear them rooting around in the woods, stomping around and grunting. Since the people from inside were quite full of liquid courage at this point, they decided that they wanted to try to get pictures. I didn’t mind, because one way or another, I had to get to that train station, and that road was the only way. If they’re distracting the boars with paparazzi shots while I sneak by unscathed, that’s fine with me.

We venture back out onto the path, and I’m not nervous at all now that I’m with other people. However, this time I was armed with a flashlight and my pocketknife. Not that the pocketknife would do anything but make it really mad, but it did give me some sort of solace. We walked down the path and eventually got to the point where the boars were straight into the woods next to us. The other people started pointing and snapping, and that’s when I high-tailed it outta there. As I walked away, I could hear the boar still out in the forest, and they weren’t coming my way at all this time. The diversion had worked. I made it to the end of the road and out of the forest, back into the suburbs of Berlin. What a ridiculous, absurd, totally nonsensical experience that was. I just got charged by a gaggle of angry boar in Germany. Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but seeing the outline of that thing in the moonlight is still pretty intense(not to mention having it charge you when you're not even able to see it). As stressful as it was at the time, I laughed about it the entire way to the train station, thinking of the reactions I would get when I recounted it to people. If anything else, it’s definitely a great story, and it has made my trip to Berlin all the more “unique.”

I ended up making my 5:49 train, and I’m currently on my way to Vienna. I haven’t slept yet, and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to sleep on this train. I really hope I do, because Ryan and I don’t have a place to sleep tonight – all the hostels were booked up, so we decided we would bank on the hope that Austria will win the game, and then ride the wave of energy all night long until morning. Austria hasn't beaten Germany in soccer in 22 years... think of how Boston was when they won the series. That's what Austria will be like if they win this game. We’ll see what happens – hopefully the boar didn’t take all my energy. Until next time…

Berlin, Part Two... And a Great Story

On my second day in Berlin (6/13) it was rainy and cold so I decided to try and do something indoors. Berlin has a ton of museums, so I figured one of those would suffice. After my usual 45-minute trek downtown, I chose the Pergamon Museum, which houses all kinds of ancient art from thousands of years ago. I realized I wasn’t the only one who decided to do museums that day, as the line for the Pergamon was about a half hour long. After finally getting in, one of the first exhibits is the Altar of Pergamon, an incredibly massive structure that was constructed in the 2^nd century BC by the ancient Greeks. After it was excavated, the entire thing was transported to the museum and reconstructed. It fills an entire room the size of a warehouse and is around forty feet high. Around the wall of the room are these long marble “friezes” which tell the story, through sculpture, of when the greek gods fought the giants. As you walk along, it plays out like a filmstrip.

Another cool thing that’s housed in the museum is the original Ishtar Gate, which guarded the entrance to the ancient city of Babylon. Apparently it’s the most impressive thing in the museum, even after the Altar of Pergamon, and it was pretty much the reason I went to that museum. However, once I bought ticket and got inside, we were informed that the entire Babylon exhibit was closed! That’s pretty much half the museum, and I didn’t even get to see it. Here’s a picture I stole off Wikipedia to give you an idea of what it looks like. I wish I could’ve seen it, but for only four euros (student ticket), the Pergamon Altar was still pretty cool. They had a ton of other relics and sculptures from long ago as well, which I took a bunch of pictures of.

After the museum, I stepped outside to realize the rain had stopped, so I could do some more stuff outside. For lunch, I picked up a doner, which have probably accounted for about 80% of my diet in Berlin. They’re kind of like gyros, but instead of tzatziki (cucumber sauce), they put garlic sauce on it. It still has the souvlaki-type meat that’s carved off the massive rotating spit, which is then topped with onions, lettuce, and “salad” (tomatoes, cucumbers, etc) and all stuffed inside a grilled pita. They’re delicious, super cheap at only 2.50 a piece, and no matter where you are in the city, you can always find one.

After lunch, I headed towards the Berlin Wall Documentation Museum, which chronicles the rise and fall of the wall through interactive exhibits. Remember the Brandenberg Gate that I talked about in my last post? Here's what it looked like in the 60s (that's barbed wire). And across the street from the museum is the only surviving example of a section of the Berlin wall where both the eastern and western walls are still intact, complete with the area in between the two known as the “death strip,” or no-man’s-land. On the top floor of the museum, there is an overlook where you can look down at the walls and death strip across the street, which was really cool.

Next, I walked to the Sony Center at Potsdamer Plotz to try and leech off some free wireless internet, but it wouldn’t work so I just had some coffee.

To end the day, I went up in the Reichstag (German Parliament) building which has a big overlook on the roof. In the 1930s, only one month after Hitler became chancellor, there was a very mysterious fire that devastated the Reichstag. Hitler used the fire to declare a state of emergency, saying that it was started by those that were against his government (i.e. communists, Jews, etc). He started rounding them up, arresting them one by one. Those that didn’t get arrested fled the country in fear of their lives. Then, a few weeks later, there was a pivotal vote in parliament that would allow Hitler’s party to have supreme, dictatorial power. The only members of parliament that showed up to vote were the Nazis, because everyone else had been arrested or left the country. Thus, the vote passed with flying colors, and so began Hitler’s third Reich. Years later, it was discovered that the Reichstag fire was started in five separate places at once, which leads us to believe that Hitler almost certainly started it intentionally. After a 45-minute wait and an intense security screening, they let us go up to the top. It gave a pretty good view over Berlin, so I snapped a few shots while I was up there.

After I came home, a bunch of people were hanging out in the common room, so I bought a few Berliner Pilsners out of the vending machine and chilled with them for a while. We ended up watching I Am Legend with Will Smith, which actually turned out better than I thought it was going to be. I got to sleep around 2:30, way later than I had planned.

6/14, Saturday – I ended up sleeping in bigtime this morning, and when I woke up I actually decided to take the day off and relax for once. I always try to do so much every day, and it had caught up with me. I sent some e-mails, made some calls home, and even watched an episode of The Office that I had downloaded a few days prior. The hostel was nice and quiet with everyone else being out for the day, which was nice. For lunch, I hiked on a trail through the woods (my hostel is on the edge of a huge forest) to a beer garden that’s only about 15 minutes away. Don’t think it was anything spectacular – it was a tiny hut with a few tables that served a bunch of different kinds of beer. The food was pretty amazing though, as well as the beer they gave me.

Since I hadn’t yet gone out on the town in Berlin, I decided that tonight would be a good time. I got a hold of Fab and asked if he wanted to do another pub crawl, and he was more than happy to oblige. The pub crawl started at 8:15, but I had no idea how far away it was going to be. I left at 7:45, but I had a really long way to go. On top of that, the train line I was on got shut down and we had to walk really far to get there. I met some college kids from Missouri who were heading to the same place, so we all made the trek together. We ended up getting there around 9:15 and I reunited with Fab, who I hadn’t seen since Amsterdam.

This night actually ended up being a ton of fun, and it ends with a pretty good story as well. Right off the bat, we met a lot of different people, including a guy and girl from London, John and Aslynn, who study archaeology together. We spent most of the night with those two. We also met people from Virginia, Australia, and of course those Missouri kids that I’d walked from the train station with. Luckily, I took my camera that night so I have pictures to remember everyone by. Fab ended up losing the pub crawl at the second to last bar after he went back inside to get a lemon from the bartender (which is pretty funny in itself), so I hung around with those two from London for the rest of the night. They told me that if I was ever in London again, I was welcome to stay for free at their flat. Since I’ll be in London at the end of July (right before I fly home), I just may take them up on it.

This is where the story gets good… Well, around 3 in the morning (Berlin parties all night long), I decided I should head home since I had such a long commute back. I had no idea where I was and forgot to bring a map, so I just started walking on the main road until I came to a train station. I actually ended up having to walk like 45 minutes, and it was really late by the time I got on the train.

Late at night, the trains move really slowly, so it took me forever to get all the way to Hohenzollerndamm Street, which is where I normally catch the bus to go home. On the train, there was this crazy-looking guy paying techno out of a boombox who ended up putting the stereo under his head and going to sleep on the counter in the train. Very bizarre. By the time I got to my train stop, it was nearly 5, and I checked the bus schedule, which I had to take for the last leg of my trip. Yesss, the bus will be coming at 5:09. It was 5:03, so I knew I’d be home soon. Okay, 5:07, only two more minutes and I’m on the warm bus. 5:09, okay any second now. 5:11, I guess it’s running a bit late. 5:12, alright something is wrong here. The buses were always on time. I go back up to the schedule for a closer look, and I didn’t have to speak German to realize that I had been looking at the “Monday through Friday” timetable. I cruise past the Saturday timetable and over to the Sunday table (as it was now early Sunday morning). Oh no… the first bus wasn’t coming until 6:30 in the morning. Here it was 5:15 am, I’ve been out all night long, I’m super tired from the already long commute home, and now I’m stuck far from home and have no way to get there. I had only brought enough cash as I knew I would need, so I didn’t have any spare money for a cab. My only choice was to walk it.

The sun was already up when I set out on my journey. I headed south on Hohenzollerndamm Strasse, knowing I would eventually hit the road that led to my hostel. The only problem was that it was 9 bus stops away, which I knew had to be really far, at least a few kilometers. The trek was brutal – definitely not what I wanted to be doing at 6 in the morning. However, I did commandeer a bike about 20 minutes in, which was nice. It was a purple women’s ten-speed, with half-flat tires, and I assume it had been abandoned by its owner (if it had one) as it was laying on the side of the street. I hopped on that thing and rode like the wind. I can only imagine what people thought when they saw me – some guy weaving down the street, eyes half-closed, knees out to the sides, on a purple women’s bicycle with nearly flat tires. If only I could have gotten a picture… I did get one of the bike, however, which I placed against a tree for some other weary traveler once I reached my destination. I walked the last little road to my hostel and stepped inside at 6:15 tired and dehydrated, but happy to be home. I didn’t want to wake up my roommates by coming in so late, so I was trying to be as quiet as possible. I crack open the door, peek my head in, and see two glossy-eyed roommates getting ready for bed. “You’re just getting in too?” they ask.

And so ended an awesome night in Berlin.

To see all my Berlin pictures, please click here.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear this mother down...

Well, I’ve been in Berlin for two days now, and have spent about twelve hours yesterday and twelve hours today just walking through the city and taking everything in. I’m not sure if there are many other cities in the world that have been through more ups and downs than Berlin. As my tour guide put it yesterday afternoon: “Berlin has seen the worst horrors that history has ever known… but we have finally emerged on the other side.” And it’s true… after Germany was heavily involved in WWI, Berlin served as the geo-political epicenter of WWII, the capital city where Hitler first rounded up Jews and communists by the thousands. 90% of the city was destroyed during the war. The city was then split in two, with the Soviets occupying the Eastern region, and the Allies occupying the western region. In 1961, the Berlin Wall was erected to prevent East Berliners from fleeing to the allied western region, and anyone caught trying to cross would be shot on sight. And that’s how it was for 28 years, all the way up until 1989, when the wall came down and the city was one again. Today, it is a shadow of its former self, but the scars still remain all throughout the city. It seems like everywhere you look, there’s a history lesson.

On my first day, I decided to take a free tour offered by a company called “New Europe.” They operate in a bunch of major cities and offer great tours on a tips-only basis, because they feel that no one should be excluded from experiencing the culture and knowledge of such an important place. It met at the Brandenburg Gate, so that was our first stop. If you’ve never heard of it, it was erected in the 1700s as a symbol of peace, but was later changed to a symbol of victory. However, it may have more familiarity as the location where Ronald Reagan gave his famous “Tear down this wall” speech in 1987. Right by the gate is also the Hotel Adlon, which gained instant notoriety when Michael Jackson held his infant son out over the balcony a few years ago. Hence, it was referred to by our tour guide as the “Whacko Jacko Dangle-Baby Hotel.”

Next, it was off to the Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas, or the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe. This solemn site was designed by Jewish-American architect Peter Eisenmann, and was inaugurated in 2005. It consists of 2,711 concrete slabs arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. The blocks vary in height, and as you walk through it, you easily lose sight of the city around you. Thus, even if there are other people walking through the memorial, you get the feeling that you are alone. There is a very unfortunate fact about the memorial, however, which didn’t arise until after it was built. The concrete slabs are sprayed with an anti-graffiti chemical, and the same company that supplied that chemical also supplied the Nazis with Zyklon-B poison pellets to use in their gas chambers. It was the center of a heated debate, but ultimately, the company was used. It was an interesting place; there is also no plaque or sign that explains the memorial, or even says what it’s called. This was done so that every visitor interprets the space in their own way, with no basis to go from. It was overcast that day, and I got an amazing picture of the dark sky above the memorial.

Our next stop looked like nothing more than a crappy old apartment complex. However, we were intrigued to learn that the very ground we stood on once contained that most infamous of sites: Hitler’s bunker. It was here that he spent the final weeks of his life, along with Eva Braun and their German shepherd. Germany was losing the war, and Hitler’s grand plans were being reduced to rubble. Thus, it was here in 1945 that he shot himself, after taking cyanide capsules with Eva. When the soviets arrived, they burnt his body about 15 feet from where we were standing, and it is believed that Hitler’s skull may still be in a KGB archive in Moscow. A lot of the bunker is now gone; however, the floor and parts of the walls still remain in the ground. It was constructed 30 feet beneath the surface using concrete more than 10 feet thick, so it was impossible for them to remove all of it.

On the way to our next site, we saw a building that was left unrestored after the second world war. It stood out like a sore thumb – the façade looked like the surface of the moon, marked with overlapping craters from shell fire and flying shrapnel. It was crazy to think what Berlin would have been like during that time. How this building even survived at all is a wonder.

Next, I got my first glimpses of the Berlin Wall, which still stands in only three locations throughout the city. It’s deteriorated over the years from people pecking at it, so they had to put up a fence to preserve it. Where the wall used to stand, they have laid a double row of distinctive cobblestones, and it always has a plaque that says “Berliner Mauer 1961-1989.” You can follow the cobblestone line all the way through the city if you want. It’s crazy to think how much struggle and heartache the wall has caused, and that only twenty years ago, it totally encapsulated west Berlin and its people.

The next stop was a place that has unfortunately been subject to commercialism of the highest degree. It’s called Checkpoint Charlie, also known as Checkpoint Disneyland by the locals. There is a great deal of history there, however. During the time when the wall was up, there were only a few checkpoints where people could go from one side to the other. Checkpoint Charlie was the third, after checkpoints Alpha and Bravo. They were mainly used for military, as the soviets would not allow ordinary citizens to go from one side to the other. However, under a pact with the Soviets, they had to allow the allies to move freely anywhere in Berlin, including the soviet sector. Well, one day, the soviets decided that they weren’t going to let the American soldiers through, even if they did have a pact. The soviets sent tanks to make sure that didn’t happen. Well, we weren’t going to let the soviets push us around, so we sent some tanks of our own. And right there, at Checkpoint Charlie, the Americans and the soviets faced off, with each other in their sights and their fingers on the triggers. For sixteen straight hours they faced off, with World War III being perhaps only one shot away at any time. Luckily, no one opened fire, and both sides eventually retreated. There’s a great picture there of the two tanks staring each other down, just waiting for someone to make a move.

Our next stop was Bebelplatz, a large square where in 1933, Nazi students raided public and university libraries, rounding up books that had been banned by the Nazis for the ideas they contained. These included works by Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, and Helen Keller, just to name a few. They then ritualistically burned all 20,000 of them in the center of the square. Now, in the same place, you’ll find a glass window on the ground, which looks down into a sealed room full of pure white bookshelves, all of which lay empty. Near the window is a plaque with a quote by Heinrich Heine (his were among the books burned), which reads “Where they burn books, in the end, they will also burn people.” Quite fitting, given the subject. The strange part is that he wrote that in 1820, 113 years before the Nazis and the book-burning ever took place. On that same square is Humboldt University, a very famous school that had such greats as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and even Albert Einstein.

Moving on, we went to a place called Alexanderplatz, which once held Nazi rallies of over a million people, but now is a green square with museums and the Berliner Dome. Behind the Berliner Dome to the right is an interesting landmark – it’s called the TV tower, and it’s the third-tallest structure in Europe. It was designed by a Swedish architect during a time when the oppressive government was trying to rid Berlin of all religious symbols. They scoured the city and removed everything, no matter how large or important. However, the TV tower does something peculiar when the sun hits it – it has a bunch of silver tiles in the middle, and the radiating sunlight forms the shape of a crucifix when it hits them. And since the TV tower is the tallest structure in the city, you can see it from just about anywhere. Once the government realized what was going on, they tried a number of measures to prevent the light from forming that shape, but to no avail. Thus, it is now called the “Pope’s Revenge.”

We finished our tour here on the steps of one of the museums, and our guide recounted the story of when the Berlin Wall came down. The tour had been awesome, and I wish I could have tipped her more than I did, but all I had otherwise was a 20-euro bill. I think she got a lot in the end, though.

Afterwards, I sat on the steps of the square for a bit and then re-visited some of the sites we hit, so that I could look at them more closely. Germany was playing Croatia tonight, and a guy on the tour told me it started at 8, but as I walked by a café, I realized he was wrong and it had started at 6. I got some dinner at the café and watched the game, which Croatia commanded to an early lead. Halfway through, I transferred to a local sports bar, where there were a lot more people and a lot more energy. I had a few Warsteiners and watched the rest of the game, but Germany couldn’t beat Croatia. Had they won, I was gonna go out that night, but since they didn’t, I just headed home.

The hostel I’m staying at is in the middle of nowhere, so it takes forever to get home. It’s actually right on the edge of a forest, where they apparently have wild boar that occasionally come near the hostel. The people that run it are pretty cool though, and they were actually all drunk when I got here on my first night, which is kind of funny. Ironically enough, I met some more people from University of Maryland here. On my train from Amsterdam, this guy overheard me talking when I said I was from Maryland, so he came up and introduced himself, saying he was also from Maryland. A long story short, we both went to UMD, we both majored in business, and we spent four years in the same building together and had never met each other once. That blew my mind, that after four years, the thing it took for us to meet was to both be on a 4pm train from Amsterdam to Berlin, sitting only a few seats apart in the same car.

But anyway, I think I’m going to meet up with Fab sometime soon (I haven’t seen him since I’ve gotten to Berlin) and do another pub crawl. We had fun in Amsterdam, so we might as well try it in another city. That'll probably be the only night I go out in Berlin, in order to save money. I’ll keep you updated…

AMSTERDAM

“Amsterdam’s reputation precedes it – and what a reputation it is. Born out of a murky bog and cobbled together over eight centuries, the “Dam on the River Amstel” (pop. 743,000) coaxes visitors with an alluring blend of grandeur and decadence. Thick clouds of marijuana smoke waft from subdued coffee shops, and countless bicycles zip past blooming tulip markets. Against the legacy of Vincent van Gogh’s thick swirls and Johannes Vermeer’s luminous figures, gritty street artists spray graffiti in protest. Squatters sharpen the city’s defiant edge, while professional politicians push the boundaries of progressive reform.” – Let’s Go Europe 2008

Arriving in Amsterdam with Fab, we split up at the train station and headed towards our respective hostels. He had booked a place outside the city center, while my location was right in the middle of everything. I’ve found that you get what you pay for with hostels – the few euros more per night that I paid for my hostel got me free wireless internet, free breakfast, and a location central to all the major sights.

Stepping out into the sunlight, I got my first impressions of the city that everyone has an opinion about. The town is criss-crossed with lazy canals, and bikes whiz by you in every direction. Every so often, you’ll walk by a coffee shop with their door wide open, tourists and locals alike smoking marijuana in the dimly lit cafe. If you didn’t realize, marijuana is legal in the Netherlands, as well as other “soft drugs,” such as mushrooms and peyote. So-called “smart shops” deal in the latter, normally stocking all sorts of natural or herbal supplements as well. No matter where you are in the city, you can probably smell or see someone smoking marijuana at any given time.

In the same sense, the Netherlands has also legalized prostitution, which gave rise to the famous Amsterdam red light district. My hostel is actually only a block or so from the red light, so I walked by it on my way in. At its core, it consists of rows and rows of doors, each one housing a prostitute trying to lure in customers. At the top of each door is a long red neon light, which indicates whether anyone is working there at the time (hence the term red light district). The girls are pretty gross – you want to spray yourself down with Lysol after just walking through. I only managed to get one picture of the RLD, as pictures are strictly forbidden, and if the girls see you trying to take one, they’ll send over a 12-foot dude with a baseball bat to ruin your weekend. Luckily, I got away unscathed. Outside of those rows (there are probably 200 doors or so in the core), there are porn shops that litter the rest of the inner city.

I made it to my hostel with little trouble (Amsterdam is actually a pretty small city) and got checked in. It’s called the Bulldog, and in addition to a hotel/hostel, the Bulldog also owns numerous bars and coffee shops, and is apparently very well known in Amsterdam. As I walked in, some middle-aged guys were rolling joints in the lobby.

After getting settled, I e-mailed Fab to see if he wanted to meet up somewhere. After finally getting a hold of him, he met me at my hostel, and it was already 7pm or so. We set out into the city, walking in the direction of a famous park, called Vondelpark, which is supposed to be really beautiful. After twenty minutes of walking, I realized I’d forgotten the memory card for my camera, as it was still in my computer from when I copied my pictures over earlier in the day. Thus, I didn’t take any pictures the first night. We walked to Vondelpark and wandered around for a bit. There were a TON of people there; you could barely find a place to sit down on the grass as it was so crowded. After an hour or two, we both decided to head home, tired again from moving to yet another country.

Monday 6/9 – The following morning, I set out on my own to see what I could find. I stumbled upon this really cool outdoor flea market, and I spent maybe an hour wandering through it. There was some really cool art that I wanted to buy, but I’ve so far not bought a single thing as a souvenir from any city, so I couldn’t break my streak now. My pack is already heavy enough as it is. After the flea market, I walked along what almost looked like a harbor, which was right by Amsterdam’s opera house.

Next, close-by was the Rembrandthuis Museum, which is the house that the famous artist lived in during the 1600s. The house itself was very expensive back in the day, and Rembrandt went bankrupt a few years after buying it. The house was seized and everything he owned was auctioned off. The good part, however, is that the officials running the auction took a very detailed inventory of what Rembrandt had in each room of his house, and that inventory list has survived to this day. That formed the basis of the reconstruction of his home, in addition to a few sketches of the rooms that the artist did himself.

It was pretty interesting to see – in addition to an artist, Rembrandt was also an art collector/dealer, so every room was filled with original paintings. Rembrandt also taught art from his home, and his pupils had their very own art studio upstairs where they could practice. In Rembrandt’s private studio, the windows were strategically covered with a semi-transparent paint, which would let in only the perfect amount of light needed for painting.

One of the highlights of the Rembrandthuis was a newly discovered painting, which was originally thought to be done by one of Rembrandt’s pupils, but is now believed to have been done by the master himself. It was first revealed at an art auction, where it was appraised at only 1000 pounds (about $2000). However, collectors of true Rembrandts realized that there was much more to the painting than met the eye, and a bidding war pursued that raised the price exorbitantly. Whoever bought the painting gave it on loan to the museum, and it was on display there. It’s called Rembrandt Laughing, and is a self-portrait. He had been experimenting with different techniques of showing human emotion in the faces of his subjects, and this painting is believed to be one of his preliminary works in that regard. It’s still not totally verified as a true Rembrandt, but the case they made for it seems very solid.

After Rembrandthuis, I wandered around Nieue Market and visited a building called the Waag, which literally translates to “Weigh.” This is where merchants traveling up the canals would bring their goods to be weighed and thus have the value determined. It’s hundreds of years old, and now unfortunately houses a restaurant. Interestingly enough, the red light district was formed close to the Waag, so that weary sailors didn’t have to travel far to find a lady of the night.

Next, I visited Amsterdam’s Sexmuseum, after hearing several recommendations from people at the hostel. It was pretty interesting, but it was mostly just novelty as opposed to factual exhibits.

After this, it was about 6pm, and I headed back to the hostel, as Fab and I had signed up for an Amsterdam pub crawl, sponsored by a company called Ultimate Party. Fab had done it last year, and said it was a really great time. I showered up, sent some e-mails, and headed out at the meeting point at 8:30. I didn't take my camera because I didn't want to risk damaging it, so once again I have no pictures of this night.

As luck would have it, Netherlands was playing Italy in the Euro Games that night. If you haven’t heard of it, the Euro Games is a huge soccer tournament that has taken Europe by storm. As you probably know, they’re very serious about their soccer and it’s a source of great pride for their home team (or shame if they lose). Thus, the night was bound to be a good time.

I found Fab easily at the first bar we went to, and the game was just getting ready to start. The Ultimate Party guys treat their customers pretty well – you get a free drink and a free shot at each bar you go to, as well as unlimited shots from 8:30 to 9:00. They walk around with 2-liter bottles filled half with vodka and half with juice, pouring mouthfuls into whoever crosses their path.

As the game kicked off, everyone was getting rowdy, and all the locals were in their orange jerseys and hats, supporting their team. Netherlands got off to a quick lead, and the score was 2-0 by the time we left the first bar. At the second place, Netherlands secured their victory over Italy, and the town was on fire. The pub crawl goes to six different bars, and you spend an hour at each place. It was a lot of fun, and the fact that we got to experience a hometown soccer game (a blowout over Italy of all things) made it all the more exciting. The pub crawl wound down around 2 or so, and I made the walk back home to the hostel, happy after a great night in Amsterdam.

Tuesday, 6/10 – On this day, I spent most of my time wandering through the city, checking out all the nooks and crannies of Amsterdam. The two major sites I hit, however, were the Vincent van Gogh museum, and the Anne Frank house. On my way to the first, I spotted the famous “I Amsterdam” letters and took some time to pose for a picture or two. The van Gogh museum was right around the corner, which I was pretty excited about.

The van Gogh museum was a hefty ten euros, but I think it was worth it in the end. It chronicled his life, displaying paintings from each major chapter that he went through. The museum has by far the largest collection of van Gogh’s work, with more than 200 paintings, 500 letters, and a great deal of etchings as well. His story is ultimately a tragic one, with van Gogh committing suicide at only the age of 37. He had become an artist at the recommendation of his brother Theo, and took to it very quickly. However, his work was not as well received during his lifetime as he had hoped. One particular example involves a now-famous painting he did called “The Potato Eaters.” It had been his first real attempt at painting a “masterpiece” – it was a physically large work, involving numerous figures sitting down at a dinner table, with an oil lantern burning above them. When done properly, painting the emotion on the faces is very difficult to do, as well as painting the reflected light from the oil lantern. He did his best, but critics did not receive the painting well, and it did not garner the masterpiece title that he had hoped for. Discouraged, van Gogh never attempted another painting of this type, and it remains the only example of such a work. So that was really interesting to see. In town, I later saw a parody of the painting on the side of a fry shack.

Some other cool van Goghs I saw were Portrait of the Artist, Sunflowers, and Wheat Field with Crows. However, plagued by a form of epilepsy, van Gogh was subject to psychotic fits, such as the time when he famously cut off a part of his own ear. Burdened with his illness and his limited success as an artist, he unfortunately shot himself in the chest, and died two days later with his brother at his side. It was not until the 20^th century, after his death, that van Gogh’s art was received well by the critics. I wish I could have seen Starry Night, or Café Terrace, but they had a lot of his other good stuff.

After van Gogh, I hiked across town to the Anne Frank house, and got some awesome pictures of the sky on the way. It was bright blue, and looked amazing above the canals.

The Anne Frank house, a few blocks away, is the original house where 13-year-old Anne Frank penned her diary in the early 1940s. Facing persecution by Hitler and the Nazis, Anne Frank and her family went into hiding, living in an annex above the canal house for two years. They managed to elude the Nazis by living in silence, tip-toeing around the annex and getting food from their “helpers,” close family friends that were covering up their operation. For years, Anne’s only contact with the outside world was a fleeting glimpse of a chestnut tree that she could see from one of the annex windows. Every day, she chronicled her thoughts and experiences in her diary, which painted an intimate picture of their lives while in hiding. Unfortunately, the Franks’ hiding place was betrayed by an anonymous member of the community, who alerted the Nazis of their presence in the house. Just months before the liberation of the concentration camps and the end of the war, the Franks were split up and sent to Auschwitz and Burgen-Belsen. Of the eight individuals who were hiding in the annex, the only person to survive the war and return home from Auschwitz was Otto Frank, Anne’s father. He was unaware of the rest of his family’s fate, and spent months trying to find them. After it was certain that they were all dead, the helpers returned to him the belongings of his family that had been left behind when they were arrested. Among these was his daughter’s diary, which he had never read and barely even knew about. After reading them, he had the letters published, which have now been translated into countless languages worldwide.

The house was very interesting – it’s been preserved and decorated to look mostly as it did when the Franks lived there. In each room are artifacts and quotes on the wall from Anne’s diary, and even the secret bookcase hiding the tiny staircase to the annex has been reconstructed. In the last room, her original red plaid diary was on display in the center of the room, opened to a page that she had penned more than sixty years ago. Now, in addition to preserving the Franks’ legacy, the museum serves as a proponent against discrimination, with a number of programs and efforts that they support. I’m very glad I went.

To finish my day, I walked home as the sun was setting over the canals of Amsterdam. It had gotten a bit chilly, but I didn’t mind. I was going to savor the rest of the time I had there. In the end, there’s a lot of talk about Amsterdam, but no matter what your thoughts or opinions, it’s still an incredibly beautiful city, and I really hope I get the opportunity to go back someday.

Tomorrow morning, I take the first train to Berlin I can find. I can’t wait to see what the energetic, formerly war-torn capital of Germany has in store for me. Until then…