Berlin, Part 2

Our final day in Berlin, we decided to celebrate with a woodlands picnic.  We took a train down to Grundewalde, brought some cheese, bread, and fruit, and walked into the most beautiful and serene forest I've ever visited.  It was beautiful.

      We walked around in the park until we found a nice grassy spot to have our picnic.  We hadn't been sitting for more than a few minutes when we noticed that we had accidentally stumbled upon a nudist colony.  Or so it seemed.  Lounging a few hundred meters behind us was a sunbathing man just letting it all hang out.  Partially hidden behind a log lay a very old, very nude woman. Apparently, there are no public indecency logs in Germany, and this oversight has definitely been taken advantage of in Grundewalde park. I would have been uncomfortable even if these nude people had been attractive, but every one was over 50 and nobody who I would ever want to see sans clothing.
   We decided to turn around and enjoy our picnic with the view of the lake in front of us, instead of inappropriately attired old people.

Picnic time!

Yum yum yum :)

Another attempt at hipster. Megan's smile ruins it all.

     On our way back home, we stopped by the most amazing chocolate shop in the world.  Giant statues made completely of chocolate lined the room.  Everything was extremely expensive, but I managed to find 80-cent stick of chocolate and reveled in its deliciousness.

Brandenburg Gate...in CHOCOLATE.

Chocolate airplane!

A chocolate Butterscotch! (My teddy bear)

    We then took the tram over to the last in-place section of the Berlin Wall.  It had been turned into a kind of modern art gallery, and artists from all over the world had painted on sections of it.  Some of the parts were hauntingly beautiful, and others were just weird.

A bit strange.

Creepy.

More creepy.

Interesting.

What?

For our final night in Berlin, we went out to a local pub, and I finally found a palatable beer.  Granted, it was so sweet that our waiter actually grimaced when he served it, but I liked it.  I doubt I will find passionfruit beer again, but now I can say that I have tasted a beer I enjoyed.
    Sunday morning we rushed our way to the bus station to take a seven-hour bus to Munich....

Berlin, Part 1

Berlin, Day 1

We arrived in Berlin midday Wednesday, and headed over to my friend's apartment where most of us were staying.  It was an absolutely gorgeous day outside, but the early flight had left us all tired and grumpy, and we trudged along the streets of Berlin feeling very sorry for ourselves.  Then we got to Parker's apartment and immediately brightened up a bit--it was such a nice place!
     Immediately after this observation, we proceeded to decimate his room.  Huge suitcases, backpacks, coats, purses--all the necessary belongings of four girls became his new carpet.  You literally could not walk across the floor.  Parker took it all in good cheer, though, and headed back to his internship while Kelsey, Caitlyn, and I hopped on a free walking tour of the city.
    Our guide for the walking tour was fantastic.  Rob S., I want to steal you and make you tell me stories all day long.  He made history interesting, which is something that almost nobody can do for me.  While my knowledge of German history is pretty much limited to World War II, we learned about centuries of German history that everyone forgets because the Nazi regime had such an enormous impact. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera, so I have no pictures to show you.  I did, however, steal some from my friends.
    The first place we visited was the Holocaust Memorial.  It was composed of a whole lot of vertically aligned granite blocks of different heights arranged in a grid formation.  As a piece of "modern art," we kind of rolled our eyes at first, but as we explored it became more interesting and meaningful.  Some people, our guide told us, feel oppressed in the maze-like memorial, in some kind of fiercely rigid scheme.  The stones reminded me of tombstones.

    Our guide said that Germans have not forgotten this awful heritage; they're almost ashamed to be German.  Berlin is now a hippie city where pretty much anything goes--you can be whoever you want, and everyone accepts it.
    We also saw the Brandenburg Gate, a triumphal arch in the middle of the city. Rob showed us an unassuming car park where (12 m below the ground) Hitler's bunker still remains, where he committed suicide in 1945.  We went around to many of the famous buildings that were used during the Nazi era, and saw what remains of the Berlin Wall.  At the end of our tour, the guide brought us to a restaurant where we ate traditional German food--currywurst, essentially a sausage with some curry on top.  Little did I know that I would eat more sausage in the next 7 days in Germany than I had eaten in my whole life.  I would also discover that Germans do not believe in vegetables--only sausage, pork, and maybe some potatoes on the side.
    That night we made a run to Netto's (officially my favorite grocery store--so many things under 1 euro! It also made me realize just how expensive Dublin is) and went to bed.

Berlin, Day 2

Our second day in Berlin, Kelsey, Caitlyn, and I decided to visit Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp near Berlin.  (If you're wondering what happened to the others, they were still alive, but wanted to take things a bit more slowly).  We weren't allowed to take pictures in the camp.
    Sachsenhausen was not an extermination camp; instead, it functioned more as a organizational base and transit camp.  (An extermination camp is like Auschwitz, with many gas chambers, which essentially murdered everyone who walked through its gates.)  SS guard were also trained there.  Sachsenhausen was also the model for many other concentration camps, both in its layout and its treatment of prisoners.  While thousands and thousands of people died there, most were not Jews.  Sachsenhausen mostly sent those condemned prisoners to Auschwitz or other death camps, because they did not have the capability to exterminate on such a grand scale.
     Much of Sachsenhausen was destroyed by the Nazis to hide their crimes, but what does remain is an eerie reminder to the wretchedness of the human soul.  The most awful place was the execution trench where thousands of Soviet prisoners were murdered.  You can walk down into the trench, and at one end is a room where the crematorium once was.  There is a small pane of glass so that you can look inside, and when I leaned up close against it I could smell the wood--it was awful.  It smelled like death.  I don't know how it still reeks after almost eighty years, but it does, and it's nauseating and frightening.

The execution trench. (Picture stolen from Wikipedia.)

    We took the train back from Sachsenhausen, and met up with the other girls at the German history museum.  Now, I like history if it's told to me, but just reading about history for two hours is unutterably boring.  This museum was not my favorite.  However, I soldiered through it, and afterwards we lazed around in a nearby park and took some fake hipster pictures.

I fail at being hipster.  Too much smiling.

 I kept mixing up "hipster" and "hippie," which are apparently drastically different things despite the very similar names.  Hipster, for those of you who don't know, is a degenerate version of preppy; you wear sweaters and skinny jeans, aviator glasses, and walk around with a permanent sulky face that your mother would scold you for.  It also comes with greasy hair and an occasional cigarette. You're too cool to smile, or really care about anything.  Hippie is the 70s flowy-skirt, dangly jewelry, peace-and-love thing that doesn't actually exist any more, but people try to copy anyway.  Why the two styles have such similar names is beyond me.

     Kelsey and Caitlyn left for Dublin that night, and the next day we planned to picnic in the nearby forest of Grundewalde....

Amsterdam: There's No Place Like Home

Amsterdam, Day 1

     Out of all the places I've visited, the Netherlands is the country where I feel most at home.  I loved Leiden, and Amsterdam was also amazing.  Something about Amsterdam puts me at ease; everybody bikes everywhere, and the whole atmosphere is relaxed but still lively and interesting. The bike lanes, first of all, are great--I'm convinced that if the States had as many bike lanes, the obesity rates would be far, far lower.  It's also really cool to see literally everyone riding around, including businessmen in fancy suits, old ladies in their skirts and hats, young kids listening to iPods and texting while biking (seems to complicated for me. I could never have done it when I was a youngster.)  In any case, I really, really want to live in Amsterdam.

The beautiful Amsterdam.

  Monday morning we woke up very, very early to visit the Anne Frank House. Like every other seventh-grader, I read the Diary of Anne Frank, mostly skimming the "boring" parts until I got to the good romantic bits.  Many many years later, I think I would read the diary with a bit more care, but I still think that actually visiting the house where she hid gave me much more of a reaction than her diary ever would.  It was almost eerie; I could imagine her hiding behind the bookshelf, sitting on the stairs and writing in her diary, looking out of the attic windows and longing for just a little freedom.  It was haunting, like all the memories she poured into her diary had bled into the walls and formed a soul imprisoned by that tiny attic.  I felt like I could see her.
    In typical museum fashion, I wasn't allowed to take pictures of anything, so it's all stored in my memory. But it was beautiful and sobering, and anyone who can should definitely visit.  Just to remind me, I bought a copy of her diary there. We have one at home, but I figured a "Bought at the Anne Franke House" stamp on the front page would imbue the book with special meaning.

    After the Anne Franke House, we went to the Rijks Museum, which had opened just a few days earlier.  It had been closed for some 10 years, ostensibly to remodel, but actually to make the floorplan the most confusing thing ever.  The museum had hired guards who stood at every corner "guarding" the art--mostly just giving directions.  The Museum itself was alright.  I'm not really into art, especially after the atrocious amount I was exposed to in Paris, and it had advertised itself as having all these famous pieces.  It did have some, but you can't really mark a Van Gogh "wing" when you only have 1 of his paintings.  Also, one Yves Saint Laurent dress does not constitute an exhibit you can mark on the map, especially when said dress is pretty simple and ugly.

The only Van Gogh in the Van Gogh wing.

  We then went to a cheese and wine tasting at the Reypenaur cheese factory, a very fancy cheese place in Amsterdam.  Apparently Amsterdam is known for its cheese, which I did not know, but after this tasting I am very appreciative of fine cheese.  It was amazing.  We tasted 7 different kinds of cheese, and had to rate them and talk about them on this little scoring sheet.  He also gave us different kinds of wine to go with the cheese, because apparently certain wines complement certain kinds of cheese and others detract from the cheese.  For me, the wine always ruined the cheese.  I really don't understand why people like wine--it's so bitter and has the worst aftertaste, even the expensive stuff.

Waiting for the wine and cheese tasting! It was so sunny outside.

 Our next stop was prostitutes.

I suppose I should throw in a disclaimer.  We did not actually hire any, but we walked around the infamous Red Light district just to see.  The most ubiquitous store were very explicit sex shops that made me feel awkward just by walking past them.   There were also many "coffee shops" whose doors leaked marijuana smoke that reeked (smells like skunks, eww.  No, Mommy and Daddy, I didn't have any, don't worry.)  And there were also prostitutes.

The prostitutes stood in these large windows, posing in very tiny lingerie and stretching "seductively" (I actually thought it was closer to ridiculous).  Because it was the middle of the day, we didn't see very many, but even the ones we did see just looked cheap and sad.

After each corner we turned made us feel more uncomfortable, we headed back to the hostel for some food and Facebook.

Amsterdam, Day 2

Our second day in Amsterdam, we awoke very early to go see the Dutch Resistance Museum, which details the Dutch resistance to the Nazis who occupied the Netherlands.  Now, I am not a history fan by any stretch of the imagination.  History museums generally involve just reading long blocks of boring stuff about wars and politics, with a few pictures thrown in to keep the attention of people like me.  This history museum, though, was fascinating, probably because it was designed for students with a three-year-old's attention span.  There were so many interactive parts--you pulled out knobs to read more, flipped little flaps to see pictures, pressed buttons, lifted up covers, and investigated squirrely corners.  I'm pretty sure that's what kept me sane and interested in (of all things) history for almost three hours.

My mind has been so jammed full of Nazi history for the past few weeks, so I'm not positive how much I can remember, but it seems like the Dutch people adapted pretty well to the German occupation.  The Nazis tried to integrate as much as possible to try to win them over to their side.  In the beginning, this worked fairly well, but as time went on and their treatment of the Jews started to become more awful, the resistance movement picked up.  There didn't seem to be many outright shoot-outs or anything violent, but more passive protests like labor strikes or refusing to volunteer for German factories, etc.

Strange sculptures in the park across from the Dutch Resistance Museum.  Sadly, there was no picture-taking at the museum, but I think these will suffice.

I don't understand.

My dad's favorite nickname for himself.  IT IS REAL!

Dutch tulips!

 After the Resistance Museum, we headed down to the Heineken factory for a tour, but detoured down a market street where we ate heavenly fries and I bought three (3!) headscarves for a paltry 3 euros.  I was very excited.  We also ate fresh stroopwafels with chocolate, which was the most amazing thing I have ever tasted or will  ever taste. Yum.

The bustling marketplace.

 The Heineken tour was nice, but I'd like to think the Guinness factory in Dublin is much better.  It was less informative but more technological, with things like "Make your own Heineken music video!" or "bottle your own Heineken!" for the low low price of 7.99.  We did get a complimentary half-pint of Heineken with the tour, though; I tasted one sip and immediately gave it away.  Like I've said before, I really, really hate beer.

My free Heineken, which I promptly gave away.

 The Heineken tour was quickly followed by a relaxing canal cruise that brought us around the canals of Amsterdam.  It was a "guided" tour, meaning everyone had a headset that blared a pre-recorded tape of this supposedly old married couple who told us the highlights of the city.  The couple would have these strange, awkward interactions where they talked about their honeymoon, fake children, and other things in their too-happy, white-picket-fence voices.

We got off the tour and walked over the the famous "i amsterdam" sign and took some cool pictures.  The letters are short enough to climb on, which was great fun.  Then it was time to go home, pack, and prepare for Berlin...

Lambs in Leiden

     The train ride to Amsterdam was terribly early, but as usual, we reached the station forty minutes after we planned.  We arrived twenty minutes before the departure, but it took us fifteen minutes to figure out how, exactly, to transform our booking numbers into actual tickets.  The French ticket people looked at us suspiciously and finally handed us our tickets, just in time for us to dash to the train like maniacs.
      We arrived in Amsterdam, only to split up; two of us headed to Amsterdam proper, while Megan and I boarded yet another train to Leiden, a small city about 40 km from Amsterdam, to visit my uncle's brother Don and his family.  (For those snarky people who are thinking I'm stupid because I don't realize my uncle's brothers are also my uncles, I say to you I am RIGHT. It is my uncle by marriage, therefore he is not my uncle.)  The little boy on the train next to us snored louder than my father, which is quite an accomplishment. However, he was cute, which made it endearing instead of annoying (as in my father's case).
     Don met us at the station and whisked us away to his house, where he and his lovely wife Corinne gave us everything we could possibly desire (in this case, grilled cheese, the very Dutch stroopwafels, and laundry).  The combination of food and free laundry was too much goodness to bear, so we escaped on bikes into the wilds of the Netherlands.  Megan and I borrowed bikes from the family, and biked across the town of Leiden and into the plains of the Netherlands. It was beautiful.

An artsy shot, graciously provided by Don.

The wilds of the Netherlands! I stopped at every photo o

This is the house where Corinne's father hid from the Nazis for two years. Her family isn't Jewish, but the Nazis were taking men away from the Netherlands to work in German factories, so he hid out here and worked as a pharmacist for the family living here until the war ended, hiding somewhere in the attic when searches were held. The two families remain friends to this day.

SHEEP.

   We also stopped by farms by the road to pet the little lambs. They were adorable.

My favorite of the bunch. So adorable!

    We visited a farm-turned-petting-zoo to pet some more lambs. At least, I thought they were lambs for a very long time, until Don and Megan informed me that these fluffy white creatures were in fact baby goats. In my defense, they are both small, fluffy, white, and gangly--practically the same!  They grow up to be distinguishable creatures, but until then I am not entirely convinced they are separate species.

Newly-born calf--there was even still blood on his fur!

Kissing a lamb (goat?)

    We then biked back to the center of Leiden, a lovely little college town, for some lounging and drinks with Don and Corinne.

The beautiful town of Leiden!

     We biked back to their house, and Corinne and Don made us Indonesian food.  Indonesian food is actually really popular and good in the Netherlands; we had no idea why until Megan (resident history buff) remembered that some parts of Indonesia were Dutch colonies.  The food was amazing and seemed authentic for a born-and-bred suburban girl like me, so I'm not surprised.

     We headed back to Amsterdam with the sun setting in the sky.

The Netherlands.