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I am a new traveling fool. I've been a corporate travel junkie for one too many sales quarters and am ready to spend my hard earned cash... I'm taking a "sabbatical" for a while and hitting the road to travel. The trip should take me to six out of the seven continents if I don't run out of cash early.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Munich, Prague, Berlin & Hamburg


Back before I headed down to Zimbabwe from San Francisco Paul got a call from his buddy Larry.  Larry explained his friend, Betsy, was going to be backpacking in Europe this summer and that he thought we’d all be good traveling partners.  Paul quickly reached out to Betsy to see what her schedule looked like.  It looked like we’d be able to meet up in Germany and Betsy followed up by inviting her friend Mary from Chicago to come along.

If I’ve learned anything about long term travel it helps to have a lot of people on the trip.  The more people you have the more options you can explore by splitting into different groups.  I guess that’s just my thought. 

So we met Betsy in Munich!  Unfortunately while we were in Munich it rained every day but one.  On our one nice day we headed out on a bicycle tour.  The tour helped us see the entire lay out of the city.  Munich was completely destroyed in WWII but they have done an unbelievably amazing job of recreating it to look like it did before the war.  All of the buildings are immaculately detailed.  Munich fulfilled all of my stereotypes for Germany.  I guess I should have realized that the stereotypes of Germany tend to be rooted in Bavaria.  We had sausage, beer by the litre, pork knuckle (don’t ask), potato everything! Also lots of pretzels with mustard and cheese! It was a carb filled few days and each night I swore I’d give up pretzels and beer… only to give in by noon the following day. 

Beer Gardens: seriously there are more beer gardens in Munich than there are restaurants!  I really think the beer garden business model would succeed in San Francisco!? Why don’t we have more of them? Or do we? Did I just never look?

We brought out or first Eurail pass for our trip to Prague where we’d be meeting up with Mary from Chicago.  The train trip was rather uneventful but it was nice to be taking a train to see some of the countryside.

Prague was beautiful.  In a nice contrast to Munich nothing was bombed in Prague in WWII.  I honestly felt like I was living in medieval days walking around Prague.  All of the streets are cobblestone. Yup. ALL of them!  This is a high heels wearing ankles worst nightmare!  We took another bicycle tour of the city and were introduced to all of the old architecture. The Prague castle dominates the cityscape from every city district. 

It was interesting seeing a former communist area in eastern Europe and being able to compare it to our Asian communist experiences in Vietnam.  How strikingly different the two cultures and countries are.  I could still feel some of the repression from those old communist days.  Don’t get me wrong the city is unbelievably cosmopolitan but when you get out of the castle district and on one of our over night stops in Karlovy Vary, Czech it became apparent more of what the country went through under communism.

We finally made it to Berlin after Eurail passing it over the border.  In Berlin Paul and I met up with my old Phi Psi brother, Rob Scheid.   It was so great meeting him and his girlfriend, Marianna for dinner! Rob speaks fluent Italian as Marianna is from Italy.  He works for a branch of the Germany government that helps bring green industry to the country.  We were able to stay with him for a night before we met back up with Betsy in our hotel.  If Munich was full of German stereotypes Berlin busted all of them apart.  I never thought there would be such a cool city like Berlin in Germany.  What do I mean by cool?  Berlin is clearly still evolving after WWII.  How can that be? Hasn’t it been so long?  Well the Berlin wall only came down in 1989 and its amazing how slowly a new culture can grow from 1989 until today.  I cannot express my feelings in words I have about Berlin.  The entire time I was in the city I was confronted with a mix of emotions from nazi experiences (we spent a day at the “model concentration camp”) but also the bohemian hipster young city feeling…  The city has such a complex history! Honestly my emotions ran high to low as I explored former Nazi historical sights and then spent time with a fellow Midwestern American who has made this eclectic city his home.  The beer was decent and the weather gave us a few rainy days and a few sunny ones.

Following Berlin we headed over to Hamburg.  I had no idea what to expect with Hamburg.  This seems to be a common theme from my blog posts… How could I know so LITTLE about all of these major European cities?  I guess you can only hear a name and ramble off historical facts about a place for so long before you realize you don’t know a thing about that place until you get there, put on your running shoes and head out to explore.  Hamburg was beautiful!!  Its one of the largest ports in the world (definitely one of the top three in Europe.)  The funny thing is the city is 100k away from the ocean!

We took a nice walking tour and met up with a Hamburgerian (ha!) Flo.  Paul met Flo in our hostel in Melbourne.  The two exchanged Facebook information and when Flo saw us post we had arrived in Hamburg he offered to take us around for the afternoon to show us the outskirts of Hamburg by car.  It was a generous offer and it was great to see the headquarters of Airbus as we cruised through the green outskirts of Hamburg.  I’m so glad Flo reached out to us because we were able to see a completely different part of the city.  I guess it would be as if someone visited San Francisco and didn’t get to see the Presidio or GG park?  One of my favorite parts of SF is the open space!?  I always take people who are visiting there so they can experience how amazing it can be to be in the heart of a bustling multi-cultural city and within a few minutes be deep in a forest with little signs of people or buildings.

So Hamburg was a good trip as well.  If I were working in Europe I’d hope to get to spend some times there. I’m not sure if I’d plan a vacation there in the future but I know I’d be comfortable living there if a company took me overseas for a few years. Now all I need to do is learn German!



Surfing in Munich on a RIVER!


Prague Cityscape


Prague Castle shot!


Prague Castle Shot pt 2


pt 3


The Beatles Wall!


Locks of LOVE


yup


candles at the main prague church


art


America!


Berlin monument to woman of war


Berlin Wall


Jewish Holocaust Memorial 


Pariser Platz


Patagonia in BERLIN!


Flo joined up in Hamburg!


Betsy!



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