Baths in Budapest and Blisters in Berlin
- Having a well earned beer after the tour to Potsdam with Terry Brewer (centre, white shirt). The man is a walking encycleopedia!
- (Im) famous signpost at Checkpoint Charlie
- Remaining section of the Berlin Wall
- Monument in front of the Reichstag to the 93 members of parliament who opposed Hitler's political take over in 1933
- The Reichstag
- The Brandenberg Gate, symbol of Germany and the horses which were 'stolen' by Napolean.
- The plaque marking where the books were burnt on May 10th, 1938. The script on the left means 'Where they burn books, they will end in burning people' and was written by a Jewish playwright, Heinrich Heine in 1821; almost exactly 100 years before the Nazis took power in Germany.
- Cool statue in Soviet Statue park near Budapest
- Me being silly in Budapest...
Whew!
So much time...so many train rides...where oh where to begin...
We left DraculaLand about 2 weeks ago; sadly we did not get to meet Vlad but we had a great time there nevertheless. After our day in Sighisoara, we hopped the train for Western Europe and since that time we have been to Budapest, Berlin, Dresden, Saxon-Switzerland, Murren (in actual-Switzerland), Balogna, CinqueTerre, Cannes and now I am writing what is sure to be a rather prolonged Blog Entry from Barcelona, Spain.
Budapest was great fun. We stayed in my favourite hostel ever, the Backpack Guest House which is where I stayed when Lisa and I backpacked together 5 crazy years ago. By the time we left, I think Brad was getting heartily sick of me saying things like ¨when Lisa and I were here we....¨and ¨I remember when Lisa and I went to...¨ Oh well, I got a wee bit of revenge from the whole Incessent-Quoting-of-Braveheart-While-in-Scotland situation at least! Apart from getting to stay in the Jungle Room at the Backpack Guesthouse, there were two main highlights from Budapest. 1) Doing a tour of the opera house, and 2) Going to the Gellert Thermal Baths.
So much time...so many train rides...where oh where to begin...
We left DraculaLand about 2 weeks ago; sadly we did not get to meet Vlad but we had a great time there nevertheless. After our day in Sighisoara, we hopped the train for Western Europe and since that time we have been to Budapest, Berlin, Dresden, Saxon-Switzerland, Murren (in actual-Switzerland), Balogna, CinqueTerre, Cannes and now I am writing what is sure to be a rather prolonged Blog Entry from Barcelona, Spain.
Budapest was great fun. We stayed in my favourite hostel ever, the Backpack Guest House which is where I stayed when Lisa and I backpacked together 5 crazy years ago. By the time we left, I think Brad was getting heartily sick of me saying things like ¨when Lisa and I were here we....¨and ¨I remember when Lisa and I went to...¨ Oh well, I got a wee bit of revenge from the whole Incessent-Quoting-of-Braveheart-While-in-Scotland situation at least! Apart from getting to stay in the Jungle Room at the Backpack Guesthouse, there were two main highlights from Budapest. 1) Doing a tour of the opera house, and 2) Going to the Gellert Thermal Baths.
- The politically aware among you may have noted that we were in Budapdest while there were huge riots opposing the President's recent statements regarding how his government had consistently and wholeheartedly lied to the people and then refused to resign. Here are a couple of photos of the protoestors!
- The Parliament building
The opera house is the second best in Europe - 10 points and a cup of Tim´s (in January) to whoever emails me with a guess as to the best - and is just stunning as per the photos that will soon be loaded.
Hungarian Thermal Baths are incredible. Everyone should go to one oneday. After a fun but hectic few days in Budapest, B and I got up super early so we could make a morning trip to the Baths before our train left for Berlin at 1pm. We went to the Gellert Baths, which are very famous (and yes, Lisa and I went there on a highly memorable occasion 5 years ago) and very nice. I soaked off all the travel and train grime in these huge pools of naturally occuring thermal (ie: warm and full of nutrious minerals for the skin and stuff) water, and then went and sat in a steam room that was so hot that the steam was a solid cloud of white and I couldn´t see my hand in front of my face. I also got massaged, which (temporarily at least) eased the sore muscles from carrying my 50 pound backpack around for two months.
It was great! But after the baths, we proceded to the train station and got on a crazy-long train ride to Munich. We were only in Munich for a couple of hours, in between train rides, but two things occured there. First, we had seriously the worst meal of the whole entire trip: I accidentally ordered a pizza slice that was covered in various disgusting pieces of seafood. Even when I wasn´t vegetarian, I hated crab and squid and all that gross stuff, and now it´s 100 times worse!! Even after picking off 500 pieces of yuckiness, there was still a slight fishy taste mixed amongst the tomato and cheese...blah...yuck!! But, thankfully, we were able to use the Horrible Pizza Experience as wonderful justification for treating ourselves to a large beer or two (maybe even three) to kill the after-taste. So, while we did not acutally make it to the Munich Beer Festival, we did contrive to have a beer in Munich while the beer festival was going on, which is pretty close, right?
We made it to Berlin quite comfortably the next morning and Andreas, very kindly met us at the train station at the disgutingly early hour of 6:50am, and drove us to his apartment; the luxery of not having to walk or take our bags on the metro was highly enjoyable. Then, after a yummy breakfast and a shower, our day in Berlin began.
Our Berlin Day is, without doubt, one of the highlights of the trip so far. Following the advice of our Let's Go Europe Travel Guide, we decided to go on a walking tour of Berlin with a company called "Brewer's Berlin Tours". The tour booklet stated that it would be an 8 hour tour, begining at 10 am. We figured they were exagerating for dramatic effect, as least a little bit. But, nope! the tour not only met the 8 hour claim, but exceeded it by an extra 2 hours!!! By the end of it our feet were sore, and our heads were so jam-packed with information, we needed 2 full beer with Andreas to decompress before we could go to sleep. I cannot overstate how good this tour was: We learned SOOOOO much from our guide, Terry Brewer himself. Anyone going to Berlin would do themselves a great disservice not to go on this tour.
Let me share some of the things I learned. This is just some, mind you, because Berlin is so crammed full of history you can't help but bump into it every time you turn a corner. It is truly a fascinating city.
1) The fact that Hitler was mean to Jewish People hardly needs re-stating, but something that shocked and appalled in Berlin was the fact that the Jewish population there still needs protection. All Jewish monuments, synagogues, and schools have armed police at the doors. A school that we visited had glass doors that were bazooka proof. We even saw a small group of girls from a Jewish girls school being led, by a police officer, accross the stree from their school to thier playground for gym class...
2) On May 10th, 1938 the Nazi Party organized a Book Burning event. Books written by Jews, Communists, and disenters of all ranks were burned by the hundreds. The fire was located on a square in the centre of Berlin, which was bordered by a church, a university building, a library, and an opera house. So, surrounded by faith, learning, knowledge and culture, the Nazis destroyed thousands of books. The only bright side to this event is that, currently, every 10th of May students, members of the public, and vistors gather at the same square where this event occured and read passages from the books that were destroyed.
3) Hitler was democratically elected as Chancellor within a minority government in early 1933. On the 27th of February a fire was set in the Reichstag (it has still not been defintively proven who set it, but it is known that it was arson) and Hitler used this event as his leverage to convince his fellow politicians that there was a Communist Plot in the works, and that he needed full control of the government in order to quash the threat. He, therefore, was able to enact the Emergency Powers Act, which essentially gave him full dictatorial control of Germany. The Act remained in effect until his suicide in 1945.
4) The 93 members of the Reichstag who opposed Hitlers use of the Emergency Powers Act were the first people to be sent to concentration camps. The camps were located in Germany and were funded and guarded by members of the Nazi party. The Treaty of Versaille limited the German military to 100,000 men only, however the Nazi party itself had an army of approximately 4 million men!
5) When the war ended in 1945 Germany was divided into four spheres of influence: Soviet, British, American, and French. The city of Berlin, which was located entirely within the Soviet sphere, was divided into 3 zones: Soviet, British and American. At first, relations between the WWII victors was relatively cordial and so it was quite easy to move around the different spheres within the divided city of Berlin. Relations between the West and the Soviet Union deteriorated throughout the 1950s. The Berlin Wall, the symbolic and literal division between east and west, between communism and captialism was built in one night! One Night! At about 1:00 am on the 13th of August, 1961 East German troops put up a thick barbed wire fence that separated the Soviet section of Berlin from the other parts of the city. There was no forwarning of any kind, so any Berliner caught on the ´wrong´side of the fence that night had to stay until the wall fell on the 9th of November, 1989. The barbed wire was gradually replaced with concrete walls, and the Wall itself (which wasn´t just one wall, but two with a ´dead man´s zone between the two) was constantly being ´improved´.
6) Checkpoint Charlie was named after Charlie Chaplin.
7) When Napolean invaded Prussia in 1806, he took a fancy to the Quadriga, the statue of the goddess of peace guiding a chariot of horses on top of the Gate, so he had the statue packaged up and sent to France for his bride Josephine. The Quadriga was returned to Berlin in 1814 after Napoleon lost power, but in recognition of the loss and reclaiming of the statue, the goddess of peace was replaced with Nike, the Goddess of Victory.
After Berlin, we spend a wonderful day with Andreas´family in Dresden. Dresden was firebombed to a devastating degree during WWII, but has been rebuilt quite beautifully over the past 50 years. Apparently, German cities were given the choice to use funds for rebuilding to recreate the old buildings as per their original plans or to build brand new ones in line with modern architecture and building techniques. As you will see from the pictures that will be loaded soon, Dresden chose to rebuild along the original city plans. After getting a great walking tour of Dresden from Andreas´father, Klaus, we were taken to Saxon-Switzerland, which is a region of eastern Germany that is stunning and very well known for rock climbing.
Whew! Time´s almost up...
That´s it for this entry, more coming on Switzerland and Italy soon.
TK
Hungarian Thermal Baths are incredible. Everyone should go to one oneday. After a fun but hectic few days in Budapest, B and I got up super early so we could make a morning trip to the Baths before our train left for Berlin at 1pm. We went to the Gellert Baths, which are very famous (and yes, Lisa and I went there on a highly memorable occasion 5 years ago) and very nice. I soaked off all the travel and train grime in these huge pools of naturally occuring thermal (ie: warm and full of nutrious minerals for the skin and stuff) water, and then went and sat in a steam room that was so hot that the steam was a solid cloud of white and I couldn´t see my hand in front of my face. I also got massaged, which (temporarily at least) eased the sore muscles from carrying my 50 pound backpack around for two months.
It was great! But after the baths, we proceded to the train station and got on a crazy-long train ride to Munich. We were only in Munich for a couple of hours, in between train rides, but two things occured there. First, we had seriously the worst meal of the whole entire trip: I accidentally ordered a pizza slice that was covered in various disgusting pieces of seafood. Even when I wasn´t vegetarian, I hated crab and squid and all that gross stuff, and now it´s 100 times worse!! Even after picking off 500 pieces of yuckiness, there was still a slight fishy taste mixed amongst the tomato and cheese...blah...yuck!! But, thankfully, we were able to use the Horrible Pizza Experience as wonderful justification for treating ourselves to a large beer or two (maybe even three) to kill the after-taste. So, while we did not acutally make it to the Munich Beer Festival, we did contrive to have a beer in Munich while the beer festival was going on, which is pretty close, right?
We made it to Berlin quite comfortably the next morning and Andreas, very kindly met us at the train station at the disgutingly early hour of 6:50am, and drove us to his apartment; the luxery of not having to walk or take our bags on the metro was highly enjoyable. Then, after a yummy breakfast and a shower, our day in Berlin began.
Our Berlin Day is, without doubt, one of the highlights of the trip so far. Following the advice of our Let's Go Europe Travel Guide, we decided to go on a walking tour of Berlin with a company called "Brewer's Berlin Tours". The tour booklet stated that it would be an 8 hour tour, begining at 10 am. We figured they were exagerating for dramatic effect, as least a little bit. But, nope! the tour not only met the 8 hour claim, but exceeded it by an extra 2 hours!!! By the end of it our feet were sore, and our heads were so jam-packed with information, we needed 2 full beer with Andreas to decompress before we could go to sleep. I cannot overstate how good this tour was: We learned SOOOOO much from our guide, Terry Brewer himself. Anyone going to Berlin would do themselves a great disservice not to go on this tour.
Let me share some of the things I learned. This is just some, mind you, because Berlin is so crammed full of history you can't help but bump into it every time you turn a corner. It is truly a fascinating city.
1) The fact that Hitler was mean to Jewish People hardly needs re-stating, but something that shocked and appalled in Berlin was the fact that the Jewish population there still needs protection. All Jewish monuments, synagogues, and schools have armed police at the doors. A school that we visited had glass doors that were bazooka proof. We even saw a small group of girls from a Jewish girls school being led, by a police officer, accross the stree from their school to thier playground for gym class...
2) On May 10th, 1938 the Nazi Party organized a Book Burning event. Books written by Jews, Communists, and disenters of all ranks were burned by the hundreds. The fire was located on a square in the centre of Berlin, which was bordered by a church, a university building, a library, and an opera house. So, surrounded by faith, learning, knowledge and culture, the Nazis destroyed thousands of books. The only bright side to this event is that, currently, every 10th of May students, members of the public, and vistors gather at the same square where this event occured and read passages from the books that were destroyed.
3) Hitler was democratically elected as Chancellor within a minority government in early 1933. On the 27th of February a fire was set in the Reichstag (it has still not been defintively proven who set it, but it is known that it was arson) and Hitler used this event as his leverage to convince his fellow politicians that there was a Communist Plot in the works, and that he needed full control of the government in order to quash the threat. He, therefore, was able to enact the Emergency Powers Act, which essentially gave him full dictatorial control of Germany. The Act remained in effect until his suicide in 1945.
4) The 93 members of the Reichstag who opposed Hitlers use of the Emergency Powers Act were the first people to be sent to concentration camps. The camps were located in Germany and were funded and guarded by members of the Nazi party. The Treaty of Versaille limited the German military to 100,000 men only, however the Nazi party itself had an army of approximately 4 million men!
5) When the war ended in 1945 Germany was divided into four spheres of influence: Soviet, British, American, and French. The city of Berlin, which was located entirely within the Soviet sphere, was divided into 3 zones: Soviet, British and American. At first, relations between the WWII victors was relatively cordial and so it was quite easy to move around the different spheres within the divided city of Berlin. Relations between the West and the Soviet Union deteriorated throughout the 1950s. The Berlin Wall, the symbolic and literal division between east and west, between communism and captialism was built in one night! One Night! At about 1:00 am on the 13th of August, 1961 East German troops put up a thick barbed wire fence that separated the Soviet section of Berlin from the other parts of the city. There was no forwarning of any kind, so any Berliner caught on the ´wrong´side of the fence that night had to stay until the wall fell on the 9th of November, 1989. The barbed wire was gradually replaced with concrete walls, and the Wall itself (which wasn´t just one wall, but two with a ´dead man´s zone between the two) was constantly being ´improved´.
6) Checkpoint Charlie was named after Charlie Chaplin.
7) When Napolean invaded Prussia in 1806, he took a fancy to the Quadriga, the statue of the goddess of peace guiding a chariot of horses on top of the Gate, so he had the statue packaged up and sent to France for his bride Josephine. The Quadriga was returned to Berlin in 1814 after Napoleon lost power, but in recognition of the loss and reclaiming of the statue, the goddess of peace was replaced with Nike, the Goddess of Victory.
After Berlin, we spend a wonderful day with Andreas´family in Dresden. Dresden was firebombed to a devastating degree during WWII, but has been rebuilt quite beautifully over the past 50 years. Apparently, German cities were given the choice to use funds for rebuilding to recreate the old buildings as per their original plans or to build brand new ones in line with modern architecture and building techniques. As you will see from the pictures that will be loaded soon, Dresden chose to rebuild along the original city plans. After getting a great walking tour of Dresden from Andreas´father, Klaus, we were taken to Saxon-Switzerland, which is a region of eastern Germany that is stunning and very well known for rock climbing.
Whew! Time´s almost up...
That´s it for this entry, more coming on Switzerland and Italy soon.
TK
posted by TK at 9:03 AM
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