Day 7: Second time's the charm?

Cat and I are all about finding free things to do, so when we found out our hostel was offering free tours, we thought "Oh our hostel seems pretty legit, let's try this." Well second time was not the charm, but again it was very entertaining. Our guide was this crazy guy who was a model/actor and said things like "Berlin is very multi-culti," throughout our tour. He also at one point referred to the graffiti covered area we were in as "Little Paris." And as I'm looking around, I'm thinking to myself...now I've never been to Paris, but I imagine it would be prettier than this. We ended up just taking a nice walk through random parts of Berlin.

Berlin and the area around our hostel especially is weird. You walk down one street and it looks like this:

You walk a little further and come upon a nice park, but the walls around it are covered in graffiti. This is just normal as it's turned into an art form for Berliners. Once you get used to it, the graffiti is kind of amusing as it many times consists of a lot of random English words. Lots of the buildings have murals painted on them as well.

We then walked down the Unter den Linden to the Brandenburg Gate...

And then made our way over to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which is this huge field of these concrete blocks that are different sizes and the ground often slopes different directions. At first glance it looks and feels more like a playground, but if you are thinking about what it was put there for, it actually makes you feel very uneasy because the ground is so uneven and you can't see very well, and it's easy to lose people in there. It's actually built on top of the former location of the administrative offices of Hitler's regime. In the middle, there is a museum that is free to the public and has so much information about the Holocaust that it is hard to absorb it, and you leave feeling hollow.

Our final stop of the day was to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. The people of Berlin decided not to rebuild the church after it was destroyed during World War II as a memorial of the cost of war, and I'd say it's pretty effective. It's in the middle of this huge and modern looking shopping center in what was West Berlin making the contrast all that much more striking.

May 26, 2010 

Day 5 and 6: On to Berlin!

Day 5 mostly consisted of us traveling by train to Berlin. After Cat's experience with the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, neither one of us wanted to risk flying in Europe. We stayed on the East Berlin side, which made it cheaper and more interesting. We stayed at the Grand Hostel Berlin which I highly recommend because the hostel is in a residential area, so you get to see a lot of local people. The next day we found this amazing bakery just around the corner that we went to every single morning for breakfast. I got the same thing everyday because it was so good. It's called a marzipanplunder and is seriously the most delicious pastry I've had in a long time. It's sort off like a croissant with marzipan filling and icing on the top. I'm salivating thinking about it now. Just look at the picture!

In the morning, we took the subway out to Schloß Charlottenburg or the Charlottenburg Palace and wandered around the beautiful gardens. 

It was a day of good food as we found this little cafe that had really cheap, but delicious food. The potato salad had lemon and dill and parsley on it. Yum. I don't even like sausage, but those were good too. I also had a pretzel, which didn't make it long enough to have its picture taken. 

In the afternoon,  we went to the Jewish Museum and spent nearly 5 hours there. It wasn't just a museum about the Holocaust, but had the whole history of the Jewish people back into how they lived during the Middle Ages. It is a kind off funny looking museum though. I think it's trying a little too hard to be modern... 

The East Side Gallery was next on our list and definitely one of my favorites. This is a 1.3 km section of the Berlin Wall that has been painted with murals by artists from all over the world. Some are really amazingly clever where it looks like a window into somewhere else or just what's behind the wall. Some are just crazy and complicated. Others have quotes or a message. My favorite says "He who wants the world to remain as it is doesn't want it to remain at all." When you get there, though it's just like any other concrete wall, really. For me the significance of the Berlin Wall didn't really click until I touched it. I'm sure it's different for everyone. 

May 24 - 25, 2010 

Day 4: Rijksmuseum and canal boats

We weren't sure what we wanted to do our last day in Amsterdam, so originally we just set out wandering because it was Sunday and we weren't sure what was going to be open. We ended up buying tickets on a canal tour boats they have going around the city and then going to the Rijksmuseum, which is in the beautiful old building that is completely covered by scaffolding currently. They have some very famous paintings by Rembrandt and Vermeer in this museum along with a lot of Dutch artifacts. The Vermeer painting, The Milkmaid, was so amazing in the detail and the way the painting captured the light.

The rest of the day we took it easy explored a little before having dinner, and then found a nice cafe to drink a bottle of rosé and watch the bicycles go by as night fell.

May 23, 2010

Day 3: Bikes and Windmills

The third day in Amsterdam Cat and I decided to rent bikes and pretend like we were locals with bright red bikes and big red signs on the front that clearly gave us away as tourists.


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From the bike place we found a route that took us north of Amsterdam to the town of Zaanse Schans. The route was about 40 km, which is way further than I've ever ridden a bike before. It first took us up through the town of Landsmeer and through this beautiful park with lots of meadows like these and also along lots of canals.







Our goal was to reach Zaanse Schans, which has 8 windmills for tourists to come and gawk at. We stopped in the main part of town to find some lunch, and ended up in this little place that sold sandwiches and hamburgers and stuff like that. Cat and I are just minding our own business and scarfing down our food because we just rode 20 km. The only other customers in this place are a group of teenage boys sitting a couple booths over from us. Well they get up to leave, and our table is facing the window right where their bikes are parked. We notice they are acting kind of strangely and looking at us a lot, but they all get on their bikes and get ready to leave but one guy. I don't know how they decided, but apparently it was his job to moons us and then they all raced away on their bicycles. Pretty hilarious. It was also a pretty pathetic moon. I kept hoping we would see them again as we rode through town so that we could show them how it's done.

May 22, 2010

Day 2: van Gogh, Anne Frank, and Bacon pancakes!

On our second day in Amsterdam, Cat and I decided to go to the van Gogh museum. The museum is actually setup pretty cool because the curators have accumulated painting by other artists that had an influence on van Gogh's evolution as a painter. These are not what you think of traditionally as van Gogh, but they were my favorite: Fishing Boats on the Beach at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer and The Sea at Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. I am really a fan of paintings that use colors that are wildly different from the actual color and trick your eye into thinking that it really is that color. To me, that is the only way to capture the subtleties of a very colorful landscape especially if there is water involved.  

In the afternoon, we decided to visit the Anne Frank House, but on our way we just randomly chose a cafe that was along our route. You never know what type of food you find in these types of cafe's, and the one we found was still serving breakfast. I am a fan of breakfast at any time of day, so I ended up ordering... drumroll... bacon pancakes! They were honestly more of a cross between a crepe and a pancake, but seriously delicious. Wish I had thought of that before! My cousins would have been in heaven! ;)

The Anne Frank House was pretty overwhelming honestly, but definitely worth it. It was my favorite museum we visited in Amsterdam. What moved me the most was where the parents had marked the children's heights on the wall as they grew. Anna Frank also pasted all these random pictures all over her room just like any other teenage girl would do. 

Here I am in front of the house.

May 21, 2010

Day 1: Jet lag makes for fuzzy pictures and questionable observations

When Cat and I first arrived in Amsterdam, we forced ourselves out and about even though the jet lag was pretty strong. I only found out how strong when I got back. Most of the pictures I took that day have the wrong settings and the rest are out of focus! 

We didn't really know where to start, so we went on this free walking tour that I'm really glad I didn't pay for. It was very entertaining, but not very informative as I think our tour guide was making it up as we went along. She gave us tour of the central part of Amsterdam and told me a lot of stuff I don't believe, but probably the most entertaining story was about how the locals (very drunk locals) have a game where they throw any bike not locked to something into the canal. I talked about this with a colleague in Amsterdam, who was nice enough to store my camping gear, so that I didn't have to lug it around Europe. She also said there is a canal boat specifically designed to pull bikes out of the canal with a crane arm! 

Near the main train station in Amsterdam there is parking garage that holds about 3000 bicycles that kind of explains the sheer number of bicycles in Amsterdam. People ride on the luggage rack on the back of the bike, which requires a running start that is pretty hilarious to watch. A mom rode by with a toddler on the back and a baby in front. Probably the cutest thing I saw was a couple holding hands as they rode by.

For the rest of the day we wandered through the streets, taking it easy and finally eating dinner at a nice little cafe called Szmulewicz and watched the sun go down.

May 20, 2010

I'm back!

It's so good to be back in New Jersey. I had an absolutely wonderful time, but it's good to be sleeping in a bed again and showering regularly and eating cheese! Cheese is unheard of in Tanzania.

While I was gone I had access to internet intermittently, but I decided not to spend time blogging. Plus I knew it wouldn't be as effective without the 1500 pictures I've accumulated; however, I did write in my journal almost everyday, and over the next few weeks I plan on posting about all the things I saw and did. I've been editing my pictures from Amsterdam and it seems so long ago that I was there exploring with Cat.

Pictures soon! Promise!