First of all, a big thanks to those who sent their Xmas wishes my way. It was really appreciated, and made the holidays away a lot easier to handle. A lot of people reminded me that even though I was away from family and friends, I was still on the trip of the lifetime, so that cheered me up. After having been on the road for this long and travel becomes the norm, I tend to forget how lucky I am to be doing this. So thanks everybody! I also received a few recurring questions, so I'll answer them for everybody else who may be wondering:
I was in Frankfurt for Christmas and new years, but I'll be talking about that more later
No, I'm not an alcoholic. I know I mention drinking a fair amount in my posts, but it's not like that (stage one: denial). You gotta believe me man! Nah, it's just that going out for a beer or two is a great way to meet friends and get to know people. It very rarely gets to a level of excess – Prague was an exception, not a rule. Besides, I really can't afford to drink all that much. I'd rather see more cities and countries than spend all my money in the bars. All I ask is that if you stage an intervention for me upon my return, please don't make it at the airport.
I seriously don't know how I got to be this handsome, so please stop emailing me about it Matt.
The beard. Some love it, some hate it. I don't have plans to shave it, but I don't have plans to not shave it either. I dunno, I just didn't bother packing a razor, and that's more money I could be spending to extend my trip. It has its pros and cons. The pro is that it makes me look poor and homeless (not exactly an inaccurate assessment), so I tend to get harassed less than most tourists for money. The con is that it makes me look poor and homeless so I actually get some pretty dirty looks on the streets sometimes from people. It's sticking around for at least the time being, so get used to it!
I think I responded to everybody who wrote to me, so I'm sorry if I didn't...it must have slipped through the cracks. K, back to the travel update.
Dammit I gotta quit leaving such big gaps between updates...I've got lots to write about. I ended up staying in Berlin for a few more days after the last post. I did a second walking tour which focused on the Third Reich in Berlin and how one of the greatest human atrocities ever committed came to be. I consider myself well-versed in WWII info, but I still managed to learn plenty on the tour. Worth checking out if you swing by Berlin. After that, I didn't get up to too much crazy stuff. Went to a couple last Christmas markets and explored the city on foot a lot. One night was an interesting juxtaposition of events... I went from skyping home and talking to nuns (happy birthday Vicki) to going out with a couple people from the hostel and stumbling upon a really dodgy part of town, walking past hookers on our way to a terrible bar playing terrible techno. The bar had a flamethrower that shot 4 foot flames out to some sort of rhythm with the techno. How do I know they were hookers? They were standing on the street and had written on the car windows next to them in the snow “Sex – 70€”. Ingenious marketing really. So let's recap...I've managed to talk about Christmas, Hitler, nuns, and hookers all in the same paragraph. I'm kind of impressed with myself.
A couple days before Christmas I took off for Frankfurt. I'd been seeing weather reports for the past few days that were more or less implying it was the end of days in Europe with the amount of snow that had fallen. It was snowy to be sure, but nothing too crazy. These reports made me nervous about getting down there, but aside from some traffic back-up on the Autobahn, it wasn't too bad.
I laid pretty low my first couple days in Frankfurt, replying to my Christmas emails, hanging out and generally being pretty lazy. I was productive on Christmas day and did a couple loads of laundry. Despite spending Christmas itself alone, I had some great company on boxing day and the week after. Tor flew out from home to visit me for the week, and we had a great time. It turns out Frankfurt isn't the most exciting of cities to visit, especially for an entire week, but we made the most of it. It's a very financial/businessy city, with lots of skyscrapers and office buildings. There are some things to do there though and we did as much as possible when they weren't closed. We took several walks through the Romerplatz, which has a lot of old buildings. Well they were re-built to look old. There are very few buildings in Germany that are more than 70 years old due to the massive bombing campaigns in WWII, so if you're looking at something that looks very old, it was probably built recently to look that way. We went to the history museum which had an impressive exhibit of photographs from a German photographer whose name escapes me. We went to the Kleinmarkethall which is market hall (duh) that has a little bit of everything for sale. Its main selling point for me was the many butcher stands in there, which all sold a variety of sausages. Delicious! We checked out a couple obligatory churches, as well as saw the memorial for Frankfurt Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. That was a very moving display, as there are several walls covered in little 3x2x2 inch rectangles with each person's name on them, their date of birth, their date of death (if it was actually known – many were murdered without any records), and where they died. The columns are about 5 high and go all the way across the walls... there are over 11000 names in total which is just an overwhelming sight. I took a few pictures, but that is just one of the walls....I'd say there were 4 or 5 more walls with just as many names.
Not sure how to transition from that, so uh...new years! We had an interesting new year's eve. We were told the Main River was the place to be for fireworks on new year's eve so that's where we went. Tor had read somewhere online that it was a little disorganized and unprofessional. We had no idea what we were in for. We got off the metro at our stop and got a sneak preview of what we were in for as people were setting cherry bombs off inside the train station. When we got out to the square, there was more of the same, with a couple roman candles to boot. Then as we approached the Main river at 11 we started hearing quite a few fireworks going off. We were worried we had missed the show and that Germans do the fireworks earlier or something. We discovered when we got to the Main that there's no actual firework show, it's just hundreds of locals setting off their own store-bought fireworks. It started off with one going off every 10 seconds or so, then 5 seconds or so, and then by the time it was midnight, it was just chaos.... dozens were exploding every second up and down the river. It was quite the show. We even met a German couple standing next to us who had the red Vancouver Olympic mitts on...they seemed to enjoy our bewilderment at the show. One thing I failed to mention is that Tor had a negative experience with fireworks when she was younger, so she doesn't like them being set off around her. So this was pretty much the worst place for her to be. She was a trooper (ha...unintentional inside joke) though and stuck it out like a champ. She even managed to get some impressive video of it when she wasn't screaming and jumping. I guess I'm just lucky to have responsible friends and never have had a negative experience with fireworks take place....
Tor had to head back home unfortunately on the 1st due to having “a job” and “responsibilities”.. whatever those are. Anyways, after seeing her off at the airport I jumped on a train and headed for Munich. Munich was definitely one of my favourite cities so far. It's a bit smaller than Berlin so it's manageable on foot, and it's got a lot more going on culturally and historically than Frankfurt. I explored on foot my first couple days there, taking in the different sites and buildings, and yes...beer halls. Berlin is a modern city because after the war they decided to build everything new and fresh. Munich is the opposite. Hitler really liked the old feel of the city, so they documented how everything looked and was designed, and then it was rebuilt to look exactly the same. My Kiwi friend Alice came out to Munich for a couple days and we went on a walking tour. This was probably one of the best tours I've done, as the guide knew a lot of history and was very passionate about the city. Among others, we saw the famed Glockenspiel in Marienplatz, whose performance was underwhelming. We got sausages and beer, we saw the infamous Hofbrauhaus (gigantic beer hall where the first ever Nazi party took place). We retraced the path of the bierhall putsch, and saw lots of other cool stuff and learned a lot about Bavarian history. Alice had to head back home after that, so she took off to catch her flight from Frankfurt. I made some friends, Andrea and Michelle, on the tour and we decided to head to Dachau the following day. Dachau was the first concentration camp the Nazis built, and was used as a model for all of the others they would build. To say this was a heavy day would be an understatement. It's just incomprehensible to think about what these people went through... there is no way I could ever understand a fraction of it just by reading the plaques and listening to the audio guide. That's not to say I didn't learn a lot though. The site is very well set up with great and moving information at every turn. You can tour the grounds outside as well as go into one of the original former maintenance buildings where there is very thorough museum. One touch that really made it moving was on the audioguide were several first person accounts from camp survivors and liberators... it was chilling to listen to as you walked the grounds. I've made a separate photo album from my trip to Dachau, and will try to caption it as best as possible to give you an idea as to what you're looking at.
That night I needed some cheering up, so I decided to take in the Munich hockey game. I met a couple American guys at the hostel, Nick and Brandon, who wanted to come out too, so we went together. Brandon had never been to a game, so I had fun explaining some of the finer points, whether he wanted to hear them or not. EHC Munich plays its games on the site of where the Olympics took place back in the 70's, so that was cool to see. We got the cheapest tickets possible and went into the arena to discover that in Germany, there is standing room sections for hockey. We had a blast nonetheless. The game was back and forth, and ended up going to a shootout again. The ending was anticlimactic as a player the opposing team took a shot for the 5th or 6th round of the shootout, and the goalie clearly saved it (we were right behind the net in question) but it was ruled a goal anyways. There was a lot of booing and whistling (which, if you've been paying attention, means the same thing as booing over here). The best explanation we could get in broken English was either that the goalie kicked the net off its moorings while making the save (I didn't notice it, but I wasn't looking for it either) or that after he made the save, the goalie kicked the puck in. I didn't see either of these things happen, but it was a weird ending to a weird day. One of my favourite parts of the game was the opposing team's name. Munich was EHC (Eis Hockey Club) Munich, which made sense. The other team was the Wolfsburg Grizzly Adams. Their logo was a bear, but their name was the grizzly adams. I like to imagine they were trying to google grizzly bears and halfway through, it auto-recommended Adams, and they just went with that.
My last night in Munich I met up with the Americans again and had a couple beers at the hostel bar. I had my first full litre of beer (seriously, at least let me get some tim hortons and have a nap before the intervention) which is a lot for one glass. Milk is sold in Litres. Beer should not be. We ended up meeting a couple from Australia who were loads of fun, so we all grabbed some dinner and had a couple more beverages with them. Up next is Bayreuth, which is just outside of Nuremberg. My cousin Lisa and her husband Rinaldo just had their first baby, Lexy, and they're out to visit Rinaldo's brother Osvaldo. So I'm going to crash the party (and Osvaldo's couch) and meet my new cousin. I'm really looking forward to it!
Thanks for reading all this way if you've stuck with it. My longest post so far I think! Here's a bit of a cliffhanger to award your patience... stay tuned for the next post, cause there may be some major new developments occurring that will affect my trip as well as this blog. No, I'm not pregnant.
