Mountains, an Ancient City, a Wall, and Expenses

Hey all! We're back in Germany right now. To start off, the title refers to the four places we've been in the past week: Switzerland, Prague, Berlin, and Copenhagen, respectively. 

In Switzerland, we stayed near the shore of Lake Geneva, with one of David's old doctors, François, his wife (Elizabeth) and daughter (Isabelle). (I'm only going to use first names as a courtesy to our hosts' privacy.) Although François was on call for much of our stay, we always had a fantastic meal in the evenings and they were all very generous to let us stay with them for a few days!

Elizabeth took us on short trips every day. The first day, we saw the shoreline of Lake Geneva, which was absolutely beautiful. We were staying right near the Alps - you could see the French Alps across the lake and the Swiss Alps behind us. The scenery was great! I'll try to append pics to this post when I have access to a computer. 

Isabelle was kind enough to let us stay in her room, and there was a balcony off of it with a view directly to the mountains. They couldn't have been more than a mile or two away, because they loomed up over us. For those of you who know me, you know I'm obsessed with mountains, so I enjoyed just sitting out there at night and gazing up at the stars. The world is a beautiful place. 

One day, we went up into the mountains by way of a cog railroad. There was snow on the peak - one of the first times I've ever walked around in 6" of snow in October! We made snowmen...mine was more of a crudely constructed, 6-segmented snow insect, though. After I finished, it promptly fell over. :P. There was a dog running around on the peak as well that enjoyed "fetching" snowballs...but the downside was that she would also attack any snowball you were trying to roll. XD it was difficult to get anything done. We did miss the train down and decided to walk instead. We had some awesome views of the Swiss Alps!

We had a good old American barbecue one night, which was fantastic and reminded me of the states! I'm happy that all of David's contacts in Europe that we've stayed with have been excellent cooks, since it feels good to sit down to a home-cooked meal once in a while. 

The evening of 30/10, we carved pumpkins with Isabelle to celebrate Halloween, even though people don't usually recognize it in Switzerland. Again, it made Europe seem a little more like home :)

Of course, no trip to Suisse would be complete without a sampling of local chocolate! We went to a factory in the area and bought a number of bars to try. We had milk (much better than in America), honey (aerated with small bubbles but not great), with nuts (very nutty, obviously), and dessert chocolate (a soft type of chocolate...delicious!) There were a few others but I don't remember their names. 

Switzerland was expensive - 8 franks for half a sandwich! (A frank is roughly a dollar.) So it was a good thing we had someplace to stay. 

We said our goodbyes to our hosts and started towards Prague. It wasn't horribly far from Berlin and I had always wanted to see it. Like Budapest, Prague had not been on our original itinerary. 

As always, our trip had a snafu - apparently, it was some sort of vacation week in Germany and all the seats on one of our trains were booked. Instead of standing, we decided to buy food from the dining car and take a seat there. Surprisingly, a lot of other travelers ended up sitting on the floor. 

We got to Prague in the evening and went straight to our hostel - no problems finding it, luckily. I'll not bore you with the details, since it was an unremarkable hostel. 

I met the love of my life in Prague! It was amazing. Unfortunately, I let her slip through my fingers...let me explain. According to Czech lore, you will meet the love of your life on a certain bridge in Prague. I walked across it, but I didn't know which one she was. Oh well. :(

What I enjoyed most about Prague was the architecture and cuisine. We took a walk around a castle, which was cool and provided a great view of the city. Hot wine seemed to be the Czech version of hot chocolate, so I tried some of that and very much enjoyed it. (Great for cold days.)

One day for lunch I ordered the roast duck. It cost the equivalent of $10 so I wasn't expecting much. But when my plate came out of the kitchen, it had half the freaking bird on it XD. It was accompanied by bread and potato dumplings, and all of it was delicious. 

We didn't spend as much time as I would've liked in Prague, but hopefully I'll be back someday. At this point we have to keep to a schedule since our Eurail passes will run out on the 19th. Basically, wherever we are on 19/11 will be our last stop before we return to England since trains are too expensive without it. 

Up next was Berlin! We had already determined that we love German meats, so we were delighted when we found a Currywurst stand right outside our hostel. 

Short guide to German food

Currywurst: sausage sliced into pieces with curry and powder on top
Pomme-frites: French fries, which seem to be traditionally dipped in mayonnaise
Curry-buletten: same as currywurst but with hamburger
Brezel: Large doughy pretzel
Döner kebap: Called a kebob in many places and found in every single city we've visited, this dish apparently originated in Germany. It's very distinctive! It involves a huge round chunk of meat, often 2 feet high and a foot in diameter, being turned on a spit around a heat source. When someone orders, the cool shaves bits of cooked meat off the outside with a long knife or a special electric razor. The shredded meat is served in a pita with vegetables and a sauce. 

Sightseeing in Berlin pertained mostly to the wars (Cold War and WWII). We saw the Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which was basically a maze of square pillars of varying heights arranged in a grid. I don't know what the symbolism was, but I'm sure it was there. The Topography of Terror detailed the many horrors of the Holocaust, albeit in a rather dry manner. Checkpoint Charlie, an old US Army checkpoint, was interesting but rather touristy. 

But my favorite part of Berlin was seeing the old wall. They preserved a section after it fell in 1989, and it was sobering to think that people were probably trying to cross that wall up until close to the time we were born.

While we're on the subject - it seemed odd that the Germans' point of view of the war (in hindsight) was mostly the same as the American view. Maybe a little more apologetic. But mostly the same. This was odd because I expected there to be some bias to what we were taught in the US...perhaps we didn't see a difference because we were only reading placards for tourists. I don't know if that made any sense or not...but do you see what I mean?

German Parliament is topped by a giant glass egg. Very cool to look into, even more cool to look out of. We climbed the spiral stairs around the egg and got a view of the city. Look on my Facebook profile for pics [eventually]!

We went straight from Berlin to Copenhagen since Hamburg, our next stop, was very expensive that week -possibly because of the aforementioned vacation? The train ride was looking to be uneventful until the train boarded a ferry. Yeah, you read that right. /The train drove onto the train tracks on a ferry./ I was floored. I didn't know that was even possible! Legally we couldn't stay on the train so we went up to the top deck and enjoyed the cold air and refreshing wind. I can't get over how cool it was that OUR TRAIN WAS ON A BOAT! (Cue matching music video by The Lonely Island.)

The section on Copenhagen is going to be comparatively short. I don't want to be overly harsh, but it just wasn't an interesting place. 

Our hostel was very far away. We had to take a metro to the airport, then take a free bus to another terminal, then walk 20 minutes to get there. It was really just someone's house with beds for rent...not very clean or secure, but hey, it was cheap. The only cheap place we could find, actually. Anyplace else would've cost us twice what we paid there. 

To my great displeasure, the obese man on the bunk above mine was inclined to snore. Loudly. All night long. Sleeping was fun that night. 

We went into the city in the morning (after paying $20 for 5 metro trips) and had a look around. I should note that although the metros were expensive, they did have free wifi. We walked around the border of a huge fort surrounded by walls in the shape of a star and a similarly star-shaped moat. It was still an active military base, so we saw soldiers walking around as well. The tops of the walls gave us great views of the port.  

The one famous monument in Copenhagen is a statue of The Little Mermain, in honor of Hans Christian Andersan. Guess what? As a small placard told us, it's in China right now! Doesn't do me any good there, now does it? :(

There are a number of canals in the middle of the city, so we walked around those for a while until we saw a very tall tower connected to a church. It was open to the public [for a fee] so we climbed it! The stairs went right past the tower bells and some gears that probably assisted the ringing of said bells. 

The stairs on the spire switched to the outside, and we slowly wound upwards. The spire itself was gold and was quite a sight from below, but we were more concerned with the view of the city that it provided. (Have you noticed that we like climbing to the high points of every city?) Strangely the stairs never stopped - they just got narrower and narrower until you couldn't squeeze yourself around again. We saw the sunset from the tower, which was beautiful!

That was about it for sightseeing in Copenhagen. The snorer left at 5:45 the following morning and turned the lights on while packing; I walked over and turned them back off while ranting at him. (Since he didn't speak English this was probably ineffective, but I think he got the point.) Despite wanting to have some traditional Danish food, it looked like we would have to drop around 200 dkk ($40) for food at a restaurant. Sigh...Denmark is expensive. 

Hamburg had reduced in price at this point so we booked a couple of nights there. The train didn't actually go on the ferry this time; instead, we had to disembark, board the ferry, then get on another train on the other side. The ferry was still cool though. 

I'll talk about Hamburg in another post since this one is too long already. I've received a comment that my updates focused too much on what I did and not enough about what I felt, and I've been trying to fix that. What do you think? Let me know in a comment!

< Derek >