22nd-23rd: Stuttgart, Germany
24-25: Amsterdam, Netherlands
26-28: Berlin, Germany
29-31: Prague, Czech Republic
1-2: Vienna, Austria
3-4: Mayrhofen, Austria
5-6: Milan, Italy
7-8: Geneva, Switzerland
8-9: Interlaken, Switzerland
10: Gimmelwald, Switzerland
11-13: Munich, Germany
Now, each place was fascinating enough to fill up an entire blog entry, but I simply cannot put all of it into words right now. For now, I will just post some photos below with descriptions, and gradually update this post over the next week or so.
STUTTGART, GERMANY
Stuttgart is a beautiful city in the southern/central area of Germany. They had awesome bakeries, a really cool park (The Schlossgarten), and an awesome Mercedes-Benz museum. We stayed with Tom at the University of Stuttgart. The highlight was definitely our soccer game with the Germans, followed by dinner and drinks at the biergarten in the Schlossgarten. This marked the beginning of my newfound love for European beer.
Stuttgart is a beautiful city in the southern/central area of Germany. They had awesome bakeries, a really cool park (The Schlossgarten), and an awesome Mercedes-Benz museum. We stayed with Tom at the University of Stuttgart. The highlight was definitely our soccer game with the Germans, followed by dinner and drinks at the biergarten in the Schlossgarten. This marked the beginning of my newfound love for European beer.
Palace and plaza in Stuttgart city centre.
They had some sort of event/exhibit in honor of the World Cup, with bears representing each country in the world. This is me and the Portugal bear.
Brian and the American bear.
We played an awesome soccer/football game of Americans versus Germans. As expected, we were thoroughly demolished. They outscored us by about 15 goals. Still, in the end, we decided to play "Next Goal Wins," and I scored the winning goal! In all, I had 2 goals, 2 assists, 0 goals allowed, and about a million turnovers.AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS
Everyone knows about Amsterdam. It's a city of immorality, drugs, sex, and Indonesian food. Our hostel was in the Red Light District, which certainly made things interesting. In the windows, you could see women in bikinis, and there were pornography stores in every direction. I didn't care much for the inner-city. It felt like an amusement park to me. Instead, we took some time to travel outside of the city centre and get a more "Dutch" experience.
Drinking gourmet coffee in Amsterdam. From a machine. In the train station.
Wandering the streets of Amsterdam in search of our hostel.
The Sex Museum. It was lame.
This is crazy. You put money in the slot just like any vending machine, and out comes burgers and fries and other greasy nonsense. How does the South not have this?
See, this is what you SHOULD do in Amsterdam. Tom and I rented bikes for a day, found a map, and went searching for windmills in the outskirts of the city. It was fun, except the basket on the front of my bike was about 246 lbs.
Windmills in the suburbs of Amsterdam.
Playing with the gizmos and gadgetry at the NEMO Museum. Look! I'm in a bubble!
This was embarrassing. Facing head-on, I thought this glass hemisphere was concave and not convex, and then I proceeded to bash my face right into the glass. Tom managed to take a photo of it while laughing hysterically.
One final photo on our way out of the city. In all, Amsterdam was a little too sordid for my tastes.
BERLIN, GERMANY
Never would I have guessed how much I'd love Berlin. I think the city gets a bad rap because of the whole Holocaust and Iron Curtain thing. Still, the history is fascinating, and it's so valuable to be able to actually observe the reunification process succeeding in the city. The East and West sides clearly have different atmospheres, with the West being more modern and commercial. Still, the East is progressing right along. In fact, I think I enjoyed East Berlin more than the West side. Overall, things in the city were cheap, the locals were nice, the S-Bahn (subway) was efficient, the food was good, the beer was amazing, and the sightseeing was incredible. Prost!
Brandenburg Tor, a gateway dividing East and West Berlin. Our !FREE! city tour started here.
The Berliner Dome!
Here are some pieces of the Berlin Wall outside of Potsdamer Platz. The Platz is a nice and modern shopping area in West Berlin. You can find these pieces of the wall scattered across the city.
Top of the Reichstag. The Reichstag is the main seat of government. The view from the top is surreal. I'm smiling because I just finished drinking a delicious Milchkaffee.
The Holocaust Memorial. It's design was very ambiguous, and apparently meant to be that way. Germans are very regretful about the atrocities committed during World War II and the Holocaust. I was amazed with how well they have come to terms with their mistakes and misdeeds.
Me looking fierce until the tower in the center of Berlin's main park. Tom and I walked to the foot of the tower and did what we do best: Took a nap.
Checkpoint Charlie: Gateway to the American Sector during post-war occupation. It's now a haphazardly-put-together museum, but the history is quite interesting.
Another delicious beer. I know they have Paulaner in the U.S., but it tastes WAY better in Germany.
In Germany you can carry open containers of alcohol out in public. It was common to see people walking on the streets or heading to work with a beer in their hands, as if it were a bottle of water. Here, Tom and I bought some Becks and drank it on the side of a riverbank overlooking the new ultramodern Berlin Hoptbanhof. It was our version of pregaming before the bar crawl.
Our tour group organized a bar crawl one evening. We met a really nice couple from Norway, and their English was flawless. We got VIP passes at several bars, and Tom somehow managed to go up to the bar and get us beers without paying. Twice. Berlin is awesome.
Best part of the evening: Doners! It's a pita/bread type substance, covered in meat, cabbage, lettuce, and smothered in three delicious sauces. I think the meat is from a mixture of beef, lamb, chicken, squirrel, and camel. Or was it llama? Anyway, they were dirt cheap in Berlin. This one was 2.50, but we found some for 2.00, as well. We came to the conclusion that, strangely, the cheaper they were, the better they tasted.
Prague, Czech Republic (and more) coming soon....
Everyone knows about Amsterdam. It's a city of immorality, drugs, sex, and Indonesian food. Our hostel was in the Red Light District, which certainly made things interesting. In the windows, you could see women in bikinis, and there were pornography stores in every direction. I didn't care much for the inner-city. It felt like an amusement park to me. Instead, we took some time to travel outside of the city centre and get a more "Dutch" experience.
Drinking gourmet coffee in Amsterdam. From a machine. In the train station.
Wandering the streets of Amsterdam in search of our hostel.
The Sex Museum. It was lame.
This is crazy. You put money in the slot just like any vending machine, and out comes burgers and fries and other greasy nonsense. How does the South not have this?
See, this is what you SHOULD do in Amsterdam. Tom and I rented bikes for a day, found a map, and went searching for windmills in the outskirts of the city. It was fun, except the basket on the front of my bike was about 246 lbs.
Windmills in the suburbs of Amsterdam.
Playing with the gizmos and gadgetry at the NEMO Museum. Look! I'm in a bubble!
This was embarrassing. Facing head-on, I thought this glass hemisphere was concave and not convex, and then I proceeded to bash my face right into the glass. Tom managed to take a photo of it while laughing hysterically.
One final photo on our way out of the city. In all, Amsterdam was a little too sordid for my tastes.BERLIN, GERMANY
Never would I have guessed how much I'd love Berlin. I think the city gets a bad rap because of the whole Holocaust and Iron Curtain thing. Still, the history is fascinating, and it's so valuable to be able to actually observe the reunification process succeeding in the city. The East and West sides clearly have different atmospheres, with the West being more modern and commercial. Still, the East is progressing right along. In fact, I think I enjoyed East Berlin more than the West side. Overall, things in the city were cheap, the locals were nice, the S-Bahn (subway) was efficient, the food was good, the beer was amazing, and the sightseeing was incredible. Prost!
Brandenburg Tor, a gateway dividing East and West Berlin. Our !FREE! city tour started here.
The Berliner Dome!
Here are some pieces of the Berlin Wall outside of Potsdamer Platz. The Platz is a nice and modern shopping area in West Berlin. You can find these pieces of the wall scattered across the city.
Top of the Reichstag. The Reichstag is the main seat of government. The view from the top is surreal. I'm smiling because I just finished drinking a delicious Milchkaffee.
The Holocaust Memorial. It's design was very ambiguous, and apparently meant to be that way. Germans are very regretful about the atrocities committed during World War II and the Holocaust. I was amazed with how well they have come to terms with their mistakes and misdeeds.
Me looking fierce until the tower in the center of Berlin's main park. Tom and I walked to the foot of the tower and did what we do best: Took a nap.
Checkpoint Charlie: Gateway to the American Sector during post-war occupation. It's now a haphazardly-put-together museum, but the history is quite interesting.
Another delicious beer. I know they have Paulaner in the U.S., but it tastes WAY better in Germany.
In Germany you can carry open containers of alcohol out in public. It was common to see people walking on the streets or heading to work with a beer in their hands, as if it were a bottle of water. Here, Tom and I bought some Becks and drank it on the side of a riverbank overlooking the new ultramodern Berlin Hoptbanhof. It was our version of pregaming before the bar crawl.
Our tour group organized a bar crawl one evening. We met a really nice couple from Norway, and their English was flawless. We got VIP passes at several bars, and Tom somehow managed to go up to the bar and get us beers without paying. Twice. Berlin is awesome.
Best part of the evening: Doners! It's a pita/bread type substance, covered in meat, cabbage, lettuce, and smothered in three delicious sauces. I think the meat is from a mixture of beef, lamb, chicken, squirrel, and camel. Or was it llama? Anyway, they were dirt cheap in Berlin. This one was 2.50, but we found some for 2.00, as well. We came to the conclusion that, strangely, the cheaper they were, the better they tasted.Prague, Czech Republic (and more) coming soon....
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