pictures, pictures, pictures

I've posted another hefty batch of pictures onto my picasa.

They are of Nuremberg, Prague, and Olympia, Augsburg, and Theresien.

Nuremberg and Prague I've already written about. Olympia refers to the Olympic park where the '72 Olympic Games were held in Munich. Augsburg is an old medieval (and older actually) city northwest of Munich that I took a day trip out to. Theresien is where Oktoberfest is held every year inside of the city. The pictures for these three places tell as much of the story as is really necessary so I'll just point you to those. Viel Spaß!

Shane

Our Last Full Day Together

Today we woke up in Prague, ate breakfast in the hotel again, and hit the road back to Munich. I don't really know why, but we set out with only general ideas of where we needed to go. So of course, we got seriously lost in the Czech Republic, again. But it was a good opportunity to get to stop at random gas stations to try and get directions from people that didn't necessarily speak a language common to any of us (and by common to any of us, I mean either English or German). The drive back to the highway took us through a bunch of tiny little towns, through the hillside, in some cases with a view of mountains, so it was really a beautiful drive. Once we got back into Germany we stopped in Regensburg which is a nice little Bavarian city somewhat known for having some neat castles and stuff like that. And one fact that I've always liked, Regensburg means "City of Rain" in German... and very near to Regensburg in Bavaria still is a city called Feucht which translates as "Wet." Anyways, we actually had no idea what was in Regensburg to do and we all were pooped to begin with so all we did was stop in a shopping mall, get something to eat, and then continued back to Munich. Back in Munich we dropped off the car and I took Ian and Dave to a little beer garden by the River I've been to a couple times. I made them have O'batzda mit Brez'n (Mixed Cheese with a Pretzel), and of course a little beer to accompany the food (or was the food to accompany the beer?). In the walk back to the train station we picked up some pizza, stopped for some ice cream, and then just went back to Garching for the night. Overall I thought it was a really nice day, but pretty uneventful so not much to say beyond this. Tomorrow Ian flies to London, and then Dave the day after so for our joint adventures, that's it for now. So chances are my next update will be back to 'normal.'

8/1/07
Shane

Prague Revisited

After waking up and eating breakfast at the hotel (a breakfast which could only be described as "weak sauce"). We used the metro line to get back into the city center, or just south of the center in order to meander northward and hopefully stumble upon things to see. Holy Crap! Most of the day was spent in this "northward" progression and the first part of we really had no clear goal, so we just ran into things. Every building around every corner had this really neat and unique architecture to it and half of them had awesome sculptures just in the middle of two people's bedroom windows, and I felt like it had to have some equally unique and neat history behind it, but since none of us knew a single thing about the history of Prague we had no idea what to think of anything. I wanted to take a walking tour so that we could get some of that information from a local while seeing the sights but the idea didn't take. It was actually frustrating to me to be seeing all this really amazing stuff and not knowing a single thing about it beyond "ooh, that's pretty." It felt as though I wasn't actually there, but instead took a look at someone else's snapshots of their tour through Prague. This is almost the exact reason I'm writing all of this right now. All I have taken from Prague is pictures and personal experiences, no cultural exchange, no further understanding. So I'm trying to preserve those aspects I did get to hang on to.

Eventually we decided on going into the direction of the castle to see how far we'd get before fatigue set in. Before we crossed the bridge to get to the proper side of the river though we ran across a building which I could only assume to be a museum that was littered with statues, of who I could only assume to be philosophers, striking the most majestic poses ever. Only pictures can truly explain just how majestic this was. But let it be known, I want a statue just like one of these on my tombstone. Don't even need a grave really, just the statue somewhere. On our ascent towards the castle we ran into what I think was the sort of garden in front of the current Senate building. It had, again, some really awesome statues, fountains, and a crazy looking wall that I still don't understand beyond the pictures I took.

The road to the castle was a little on the steep side but once we got to the top, surprise surprise, it was amazing and huge. We all went back into picture mode since we again had no idea about the history of any of this stuff. We went picture crazy on the gates, a church on the inside of the gates, and everything else we stumbled across. At the top we kind of just sat around for a little bit to let our minds be blown. I'm still not even sure whether we saw the actual castle tower or not. When I first started exploring Prague I thought to myself that as nice of a city as it was I don't think I could bring myself to live there. It seemed as though it could really start to get to you. But then at this area I started to change my mind. The city can seem a little crazy, but they still have places around that retain their peaceful qualities. Not a whooole bunch, but just enough to make it seem livable.

We started looking for a place to eat while heading towards the general direction of the metro. Our food solution was to stop in two different restaurants along our way, each time ordering one meal and splitting it three ways. Worked out well I'd say, as we got to try some fairly varied things from completely different restaurants. On our journey back to the metro we kept on running across more awesome-ness of the city but by this time it was too dark for pictures to come out. For example, the Charles Bridge, which is an old gorgeous bridge with tons of statues lining it took us nearly half an hour to walk a tenth of a mile because of our (mostly failed) attempts to take so many pictures. After that we headed back to the hotel (although first had some sausage type thing at a little stand that I think we'd all rather forget about). Sitting here now I am positive that two days was not enough to see anything here. I feel like a day could have been spent in the castle alone, not just two or so hours. And the first night we were here we passed by other interesting things that we didn't come close to finding again but we didn't stop to explore because we were being hurried to go eat. In the end I think it serves as a small taste of the city and I'll have to come back at some point to really see the rest of it. There was simply no way to get as much out of it as possible in two days.

Shane
7/31/07

Ian, Dave, meet Germany. Germany, Ian and Dave.

Ian and Dave showed up on Friday, hence the day was almost completely filled with shuffling around baggages and people between the airport, Garching, and their hostel. Dave and I had a pretzel and a beer at the Viktualien Markt before Ian's flight came in but then met up with Ian at the airport, dropped off his stuff at my place, and had some Bavarian food in the city, i.e. Sausage and Beer.

Saturday I met them at their hostel and we headed to the concentration camp at Dachau. Well at first we headed to the actual city of Dachau, and since I had never been there before and had no idea where to go, I was naturally appointed as navigator. I decided to get us lost in the city center for a while before asking for directions to the camp. Upon asking, I discovered that the best way to get there was to take a bus from the train station we had gotten off at at Dachau. We were able to find a second best option by hopping a couple buses (buses which crossed at " J.F. Kennedy Platz") and met Robert out there.

Dachau as an experience was really neat and I would even say powerful. Everything is so perfectly preserved that at first it's a little too nice looking. But after living here for as long as I have I can definitely imagine Germans putting all the TLC in the world into making the lawn look gorgeous while ignoring heinous crimes behind them. Alles muss ordentlich sein. Not that Germans as a people are amoral, just that their attention to detail seems to sometimes prevent them from seeing the big picture. But that in itself is quite a strong stereotype that would be impossible to extend to the whole population. It'd be like saying every American drives a Hummer to work wearing cowboy boots and carrying a rifle.

Beyond that I really have no idea how to describe the experience... so I'm actually not even going to try. Miraculously my camera batteries were dead that day too so I don't even have pictures to refer to. Maybe it's better that way.

We used some information posts to find a tiny Bavarian Restaurant that was ridiculous to find (by German standards). We got into one of those situations there where the waitresses either didn't speak English, or I had somehow fooled them into thinking that I speak German, so I became the representative for the group. The place had no menus, and only three dishes, which she described to me in German while I tried to translate, and keep the details in my head, before explaining back to the group. A lot was "lost in translation" but I was able to get out "Schnitzel with French Fries", "Noodles with cheese", and "Turkey something." There being 4 of us and three dishes we ran the gamut. Despite the difficulties, that place was really good, and perhaps my favorite place I've found in Munich so far.

After this we headed towards the English Gardens where we promptly passed out in the grass for a couple hours. After that was the Chinese Tower where they have live music, beer, food, and also wireless internet... who would have thought. We stumbled upon a blockparty inside the city that was really neat where we had our dinner and listened to some Germans singing English music before the rain called it a night for us.

The next day Ian and Dave procured our valiant Steed and we headed off in the direction of Regensburg. Or we would have, but I had left my passport in my guesthouse in Munich. Those things can be handy this side of the globe, so we turned around about 30 minutes into our journey to grab it and by that time we decided on just cutting out Regensburg from this leg of the trip and headed towards Nuremberg instead where our Hotel was.

Somehow we ran into some sort of Block Party again! but it was really neat and all types of food (not just Sausages and Doener like at the other one). I had myself some Flammenkuchen (flame cake). I had no idea what it was at the time, but now that I've been educated by the Germans here I can tell you that it's a dish from the area of Germany near the French border which is like meat and cheese on a thin bread which is then thrown into a really hot oven for maybe 5 minutes (cooks really fast because it's really really thin) and then a large group of people are supposed to eat it really quickly since it gets cold really fast (again, it's really thin). Or that's how they'd do it in those regions. Here they just treated it like a pizza. But it was still quite good and recommendable. Ian and Dave went for some Curry Wurst (Curry Sausage), their sausage intake for the trip at this point at about threat level Orange, despite me trying to convince them that Germans don't eat nearly as much sausage as they had been doing and they have much more varied and different types of food, many of which had less risk of keeping ME up at night.

Overall, Nuremberg is a nice quaint little town. I felt fairly comfortable there since it's still Bavarian and more and more I feel like a "Bavarian"... or at least a permanent tourist of Bavaria. My vocabulary is especially southern, to the point where I think if I spoke normally to a northerner they would say something like "where the hell did you learn German?" Nuremberg was also unique enough in its own right to stand out from Munich to me. Both are nice nice places. The night ended with a bunch of wandering, some Doener eating, and some sleeping.

I think I've got no more narrative about this phase so I'm going to revert to some nice randomness which seemed to work out in the past.

-One day in Nuernberg and I seem to have met more non-English speaking Germans than in Munich two months of Munich. It would be expected that there'd be a little bit more but it seems like more than I imagined. Poor Ian and Dave don't always have it easy since I'm not always around and not always able to translate.
-I'm starting to build a taste for Pilsener beer... but still doesn't compare to a good German Helles or Weissbier.
-Prague seems to be a huge destination for German Tourists. Most signs are written in Czech and then repeated in German and English. (This point was explained to me later on. The Eastern bloc was a good vacation spot for West Germans since everything was so cheap by comparison, and East Germans couldn't go into the West so it was basically their only option.)
-I like the sound of Czech... it's a little softer and not so "wavy" as Russian and also uses the Roman script so it's actually somewhat possible to read.
-I've really had to go out of my way to not be sold all sorts of things in the middle of the street in Prague, legal and illegal. Scariest part is that they start by speaking English. Although nobody I've met recently has guessed me to be American... but I'm not sure if that's because only the people really bad at guessing guess or if it's not perfectly obvious. I usually get spoken to in Italian or Spanish if the person's native language doesn't yield good results.

7/30/2007
Shane

Prague

We drove to Prague from Nuremberg, using directions from our Nuremberg hotel to our "Prague Hotel". Everything about Prague makes it nearly impossible to navigate through it. Imagine Boston's crappy layout, but remove most street signs, and those that you leave are as far as we were considered a random collection of letters and accent marks, which just happened to be repeated identically in our map. To make it worse, no street is longer than about 3 blocks worth, where it changes name to something else equally foreign to us. So if you're trying to follow a map driving on one road, you look up to see what road you just crossed, and when you look back at the map you're on a new road. The names change so quickly that at first I was convinced they were just the names of the buildings, not the street signs.

But despite everyone being at their nerve's end my first impressions were that the city was really quite gorgeous and I couldn't wait to be able to walk around the city once we found our hotel. We got to the address for our hotel, which also happened to be very near the city center of Prague, and certainly the most crowded area, only to discover that it was some sort of monument. This lead us to reconsider the accuracy of our information. After calling expedia, we finally discovered that our address was completely wrong, were able to get some internet access thanks to this really sweet girl working at Europcar, and once we got the real address she helped us locate it on our map. I think we partially owe our lives to that girl. Our wrong address took us to the dead center of the city, hence the worst driving conditions I've ever seen, but the real address took us towards the outer edges (district 10 of 14, instead of 1 of 14). At that point we could smell victory on our drive to the hotel and so the ride was much more fun than the stress induced first section. We checked into our hotel and decided to brave the public transit back to the city to wander a little before the night was over and to get an idea of what we want to do with our one full day in the city. On our way to a tram line we stopped inside of another hotel to buy tickets and saw an old German couple trying to ask the receptionist for help but they spoke no English and the receptionist spoke no German. Ian ordered me to go play translator so I tried to jump in and see if I could help. Essentially they wanted to exchange tickets they had bought so I was able to find out for them that the man that does that wouldn't be available until the following day and they needed to come back then. I felt mostly inadequate, but I think the couple was really frustrated before I jumped in and they at least knew something afterwards so it wasn't a complete bust.

We ended up at a place where the guy had no clue what language we spoke (his first guesses were Italian and Spanish) that served 'set' meals with the description of being Czech. I don't know if they were actually Czech, but it at least was neither German nor American and it was good so who cares. They serve almost exclusively Pilsener beer in Prague, and I'm not a huge fan of Pilsener, but I've been getting myself used to it, and as far as Pilsener goes it was pretty good.

After dinner it was a little on the late side, and we were getting towards the last 40 minute or so of public transport so we walked to a busy pick up point for the trams and started our... debate... about which way to go. I was proposing the 24 line, North... Ian was a big fan of the general Northern direction, and I think Dave was a little partial towards the 9, South. We had fewer maps than suggestions, and were making no progress so I was able to convince everyone to jump onto 24 North as it passed by. As I had guessed, the 24 line goes practically right next to our Hotel and would have been perfect... if we had picked it up going in the opposite direction. Dave saved us a few stops in and we hopped off and started to figure out where we need to go to not be lost in the middle of the Prague for the evening. Nice of a city as it was... not a place I wanted to be lost at past 1 am. We went to a metro during our random scramblings where we tried to ask a worker there to help us with directions and her first sentence to us was "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"! As it turns out, my German helped us more in the Czech Republic than it ever did in Germany.

We spent so much time being completely lost in our first day in Prague that I think we are NOW some of the most directionally apt tourists to ever visit Prague. Have to be. This was only the first day though and I'm really excited to go back to the city in the morning to have a full day of adventure. Yay!

7/30/2007
Shane

The next few updates...

... will be incredibly boring. But what's new about that?

no that's not what I meant to say. I meant to say "... will work a bit differently."

Last week Ian and Dave visited, during the course of which we saw a fair bit of Munich, Nuremberg, and Prague. During most of the trip, while Dave and Ian were keeping up with their respective marriages (Dave to Donna, Ian to Mark), I would scope out whatever semi blank pieces of paper I could find in the hotel and write voraciously about the day. So now I have a stack of numbered papers (many of which have advertisements acquired in Prague, half in English and half in German, for massages on the back side) which tells the condensed story of our trip as best I could at the time. It strongly resembles the basic theme to Vonnegut's "Hocus Pocus" if you're familiar with it.

Anyways I'm going to work on writing and polishing these up a bit and posting them as soon as they're ready. So the next few posts will be these writings, organized chronologically by when I wrote them (which happens to be out of order of how they happened...), and with an extra date telling you when I first wrote them.

I have no working laptop currently, so pictures could be severely delayed, but they will come.

Shane