Czech Republic (Eurotrip_2012)

                After leaving Germany for good we arrived in Dresden, Czech Republic at about 5 AM for a quick layover, where I marched up to the vending machine on platform #9 and ordered my breakfast. After buying a cherry flavored Capri Sun and some shitty peanuts, I received a two week old package of processed salami infected with mad cow disease for free. With my stomach still rumbling and the trash can on platform #9 a little bit fuller, Bridget, Margot and I boarded the train to Prague.  We got into Prague Central Station at around 6 AM on October 10^th and my first objective was to find some free wifi. I had used AirBNB to book a room in an apartment that was occupied by a young man named Ondra, who is a Czech native. However, I had booked the room starting the previous night and since we were stuck in Hof I was forced to send a frantic message to Ondra late the previous night, after he had already spent half an hour waiting for us at the train station, telling him that we would actually be arriving in Prague the next morning. After finally attaining some free wifi with a very weak signal, I crawled through the AirBNB website to find a message from Ondra informing me that he wouldn’t be able to meet us at the train station and bring us back to the apartment until 8 PM that night. So there we were, exhausted beyond our wits with fourteen hours between us and some sleep. So we did the only logical thing we could think of, we saw the city!

              After storing our bags in a locker at the train station the three of us walked into the heart of the city. We stopped at this restaurant where they had a TV screen displaying the chefs making your food and enjoyed a nice Czech brunch together. After finally curbing our hunger and forcing our eyes to re-open with massive amounts of coffee we walked a bit farther down the walking street to drop Bridgett off at her hostel. After saying good bye to our travel buddy we continued along the walking street that we had previously been on and ended up right in the middle of Staroměstské Náměstí  (Old Town Square). The entire square is surrounded by historic and beautifully decorated buildings. The first site on the square that we decided to check out was the astronomical clock, which has so many informative hands and circles on it that reading the time is completely impossible. However, the clock is decorated with two figures on each side of the clock, one of them being a skeleton, and a golden rooster perched just above the clock. Every hour this clock does something unique, the roster cock-a-doodle-do’s while the three figures dance to the side of the clock and the skeleton rings the rope that is supposedly attached to the huge bell. It lasts about five minutes and although I thought it had been a little over hyped it was still something that was pretty cool and definitely something that you don’t see every day.

                The next thing that Margot and I explored on Staroměstské Náměstí was the baroque style St. Nicholas Church, which was gorgeous. In contrast to the rich & vivid colors that we saw at the churches in Russia, this one was covered with paintings and ceiling frescoes that utilized light & mellow colors. In addition, the paintings weren’t all over the walls and ceiling either, instead they were spaced out with clean white walls bordered in golden designs in between them. It was beautiful in a completely different way. It was a cozy, clean and modest church that while relaxing still had a certain splendor. For instance, there was this amazing diamond chandelier in the middle of the church that was left over from the period of 1870-1914 when the church was Russian Orthodox; the hundreds of diamonds reflecting light all over the walls are in the shape of the Russian coronation crown.

After sitting down and gazing up at the ceiling frescoes for a while we left St. Nicholas Church and walked across the square to the imposing Týn Church, which was built during the 14^th century. It has two huge 80 meter tall towers looking down on Staroměstské Náměstí and unlike St. Nicholas Church across the street this one is decorated with a striking collaboration of the colors black and gold. The walls and ceilings were pure white, but all of the small altars, the main altar, and the organ (which happens to be the oldest organ in all of Prague) were decorated in black with gold designs running across them. Hanging above the main altar is a sculpture depicting the crucifixion of Christ, also decorated in black and gold, and on both sides of each of the twelve columns lining the side of the church was a tomb with a lavishly decorated black and gold altar behind it. In addition, this was the first church in which I’d noticed that all around the walls of the church was a collection of paintings telling the story of Christ’s Crucifixion. It was a collection of about twelve paintings depicting the story from the moment his attackers came to get him until his lifeless body was brought down from the cross and the Virgin Mary began mourning his death. This is something I’ve noticed a lot in the Catholic churches I’ve seen since the Týn Church and I always like comparing the quality of these depictions. The black and gold designs worked incredibly well in this church and it turned out to be just as impressive and imposing on the inside as it is from the outside. 

After the church, we simply wandered around the square taking in the sights and enjoying ourselves before we did a little bit of window shopping on the square and in the surrounding area. After being continuously hassled by the employees who we kept telling that we were, “just looking around,” we left the touristy area and came across the Powder Gate, which was one of only thirteen entrances into Prague’s Old Town when it was built in the 11^th century. If you pass through the gate and continue on the same street it leads you directly to the Old Town Square, so guests of the city would use this gate on their arrival in order to be immediately introduced to the glory of Prague. It was originally called the New Tower but changed its name in the 17^th century when it was used to store gun powder. It definitely appeared to be an 11^th century structure, with its blackened stone structure crumbling to pieces all over the sidewalk below. After walking through the gate, in the opposite direction from Old Town Square Margot and I got the chance to see the glory of the inside of a Czech post office. While Margot bought stamps for all her post cards I searched for the building's non-existent bathroom.

After successfully sending Margot’s post cards we walked over to the National Museum and the National Bohemia Museum, spending five minutes at each; which was just enough time for us to discover that they were both closed for renovation, one for two months and one for five years. Instead of blaming Margot and myself for insufficient research into the openings of these museums, I blame Prague for not having either of their two most popular museums open at the same time. I took this as a sign that we should take a break so we ventured into a Starbucks where we knew we could use the restroom, utilize the wifi, and where I ended up sleeping on a table for a good hour in a half (note that I had been up for 33 hours with just a short two hour nap on a cold train station floor in Germany at this point).

After walking up with the Starbucks emblem on the table imprinted on my forehead I felt even more exhausted than when I fell asleep, but since we still had five more hours till Ondra would come pick us up, I agreed to go to the Communism Museum with Margot. This turned out to be by far the most informational experience of the day, as my brain was bombarded with information about the Velvet Revolution and the Soviet Occupation of Czechoslovakia. I found it comical as I read about how the communists installed set prices for food in Czechoslovakia but found that the demand ended up far outweighing the supply when half of the food was put aside and sold under the table to wealthier merchants, benefiting the very people that the communists were trying to hurt. Way to think that one through, Stalin. Then the museum got really morose when I started learning more about the immense brutality that the Czech people had to endure during the occupation.

The Soviets had already stated that they would not hesitate to occupy any country included in the Warsaw Pact if they attempted to establish a pluralist system with several political parties representing different factions of the capitalist class. True to their word, in August of 1968 the Soviets invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia after Alexander Dubcek (the then leader of Czechoslovakia) initiated political liberalization reforms known as the Prague Spring. The 1968 occupation served as an opportunity for the Soviets to enact the Brezhnev Doctrine, which from what I understood pretty much melts down to forcing bordering states to adhere their national interests to those of the Eastern Bloc. In 1969 a twenty-one year old student named Jan Palach committed suicide in Wenceslas Square (in front of the National Bohemia Museum) in order to protest the occupation and to make a statement to the Czech people, telling them not to give up in their battle for freedom. And finally, after years of bloodshed and forced occupation the Velvet Revolution occurred in 1989. On November 17^th a peaceful protest was held in Prague and met by police suppression and brutality; over the course of the next month the number of protesters swelled. After the collapse of the Warsaw Pact the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia relinquished power on November 27^th and in December of the same year the borders with West Germany and Austria were torn down and the first largely non-communist government since 1948 was established. In June, 1990 Czechoslovakia had its first democratic elections since 1948 and in 1993 the country split into Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

After greatly enhancing my knowledge on the Soviet Occupation in Czechoslovakia the sun began to set and our stomachs began to resume their rumbling state.  Margot picked out this restaurant near Staroměstské Náměstí called Svejk and while popping inside we discovered that we were the only ones at the restaurant. Enjoying the solitude we each ordered a Pilsner Urquell, a very popular beer in the Czech Republic and most of Eastern Europe, and with the time remaining until we would see a bed at just over one hour we began to drool over the anticipation of finally getting some sleep. Margot ordered Mrs. Muller’s beef and cream sauce and I ordered goulash with these potato dumplings, which in contrast to what I’m used to in a dumpling looked like a really doughy and soft potato bread. We split an order of potato pancakes for dessert and took a stroll down to Staroměstské Náměstí to see the square under the moonlight.

Content with our day of sightseeing in Prague we finally made the walk back to the train station to pick up our bags and took the metro to meet Ondra.  When Ondra eventually waltzed down the stairs to come pick us up we promptly introduced ourselves while letting out a big sigh of relief and while riding the tram back to his apartment we began to learn just how cool this guy actually was. He was born in the southern part of the country but his parents moved to Prague when he was really young and he’s lived here ever since, he has an American girlfriend from California who is currently working in Berlin, and wasn’t at all afraid to talk politics. Once we got back to his place we began a discussion that my exhausted brain limped through, sustaining only minor casualties when I completely forgot what we were talking about or couldn’t put together a comprehensible sentence. We compared and discussed our school systems as well as American study abroad programs, he told us all of the hilarious stories about previous Airbnb visitors, and we inquired to know more about the Czech attitude towards the Russians. I found myself surprised when Ondra told us that Czech-Russian relations aren’t actually as bad as one might think.  He said that the Czechs are one of the few people that understand how to properly do business with the Russians and even though they have a complicated history the younger generation holds no resentment or anger towards the Russians for the occupation that their ancestors endured. It seemed so weird hearing this nonchalant attitude towards the Russians after spending two hours at the Communism Museum seeing how awful the occupation was for the Czech people.

We also got a run down on Czech culture and Ondra gave me insight into the difference between his American friends and his Czech friends. In America, whenever you invite your friends to a future event, whether it be playing basketball, attending a party, or joining on a road trip, they always initially say yes, but when the day of the event finally arrives nobody shows up. Which I couldn’t find to be more true! But in Czech culture, under the same circumstances all of his friends initially give outlandish and creative reasons why they won’t be able to make it to the event, but when the day of the event finally comes around, everybody that said they couldn’t come shows up. What this says about our two cultures I don’t know, but it would seem that neither of us is capable of holding our friends to their word and that the Czechs end up doing a lot more cool shit with their friends than we do. After finally saying good night to Ondra we took to our rooms and upon finally seeing the blessed bed immediately passed out from happiness, not to regain consciousness until twelve hours later.

After a week bursting from the seams with fun in Trebur, spending the night in a freezing train station in Hof, and seeing half of the entire city of Prague on two hours of sleep, we found ourselves beyond exhausted when we eventually woke up on October 11^th. And although I know I will get absolutely no sympathy for this, and rightfully so, traveling is a hectic and draining business. So I’m not in the least bit embarrassed to say that we spent this entire day in bed just working on applications, blog posts, emails, and planning the next leg of our Eurotrip. At one point we left the apartment for an astonishing fifteen minutes so that we could grab some groceries from the local store, acquiring the ingredients for making lunch, dinner, and some insanely cheap carbonated wine that came in a two liter plastic bottle to keep ourselves company.

 

Half of me enjoyed the shit out of this relaxing day since it was literally the first day since August 8^th that I hadn’t spent exploring a new city, but the other half of me was anxious to get back out there and see more of Europe’s endless list of incredible sites. This ‘break day’ also gave me my first chance to actually look back on this amazing trip that I’d been experiencing and I suddenly released how fast yet long this trip has been. In one aspect it’s been such a long trip; whenever I think about where I was and what I was doing a week, a day, or even that very morning I’m aghast at how long ago these events seem to have occurred. Every day is just so jam packed full of experiences and events that when I look back on where I was a week ago it feels like it was over a month ago. But then when I consider the fact that the trip is over half over and I’ve only been on the road for just over two months, I realize how quickly the trip is actually passing me by. I wish I could put the metaphorical brakes on this drive through Europe and somehow make it last another year.

The next day we woke up refreshed and ready for another two and a half months on the road before deciding to trek through the rain all the way out to see the Prague Castle. We spent an exorbitant amount of time exploring the seven Royal gardens that surround the Prague Castle, reading something new about each bush and tree that we passed. By the time that we eventually made it to see St. Vitus Basilica it was already in the process of closing, but we made due by circling the Basilica and admiring its impressive exterior and taking pictures from a distance. We continued walking within the castle walls however and achieved breathtaking views of the city’s skyline from the castle’s advantageous vantage point. After wandering through the fortress and down its gigantic stair case, which leads you to the Vltava River, we crossed back over to the heart of the city in search of the Old Jewish Cemetery. But as luck would have it, the cemetery was also closed for the day.

With darkness approaching and our hunger returning, we decided to grab some dinner and immediately noticed this cozy looking restaurant called Golema and decided to give it a try. On our menus we read a very interesting story about the Golem and its connection to the Jewish faith. According to the story on our menus, there was a rabbi named Yehuda ben Bezalel who lived during the same time as the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II (so sometime during the second half of the 16^th century). He created a servant out of clay, which he made come to life by writing some magical words on a piece of parchment (called sem) and placing it in Golem’s mouth. He served the rabbi proudly and humbly, never growing tired, or hungry, or thirsty. Every Friday night the rabbi would remove the sem from Golem’s mouth, which reduced him to a heap of clay on the ground, where he would remain until the end of the Sabbath when the rabbi replaced the sem. However, one time while preparing for the Sabbath the rabbi forgot to remove the sem from Golem’s mouth. When he started reading the first psalm at the synagogue, his neighbors stormed in with dread in their eyes. Golem had become angry and taken to destroying all of the rabbi’s possessions, but “not only did he destroy the rabbi’s possessions but also killed everybody.” The rabbi was split between finishing his reading of the psalm so that the Sabbath could begin and stopping Golem. He raced home to discover dead cats, dogs and chickens everywhere. With his trembling hands the rabbi removed the sem from Golem's mouth where he was returned to a heap of clay. While the town’s folk cheered, the rabbi was busy running back to the synagogue so he could finish reading the psalm and begin the Sabbath. He never returned the sem to Golem's mouth and ended up hiding the heap of clay somewhere inside the synagogue, where it remains to this day.

In addition to learning the awesome story behind Golem's existence, the restaurant had a great atmosphere. There was this really old man on the piano playing everything from Chariots of Fire to What a Wonderful Life to Hallelujah during our entire dinner. And for food, I had deer with a cranberry sauce and a Budweiser. Now I know that you’re thinking, ‘what the hell is Everett doing, he goes all the way to Prague and has a fucking Budweiser with dinner?’ Well just calm down right now because it wasn’t the Budweiser that you’re thinking of, this was a Budvar Budweiser. You see, Budvar is a Czech brewery that started brewing Budweiser in the town of Ceske Budejovice (pronounced Budweis in German) in 1895, nineteen years after Adolphus Busch choose the name randomly off a map for his American beer. However, in the 19^th century the international sale of beer wasn’t fathomable for either brewery, so in 1911 they agreed that Anheuser-Busch couldn’t sell Budweiser in Europe while Budvar couldn’t sell Budweiser in North America. But as Anheuser-Busch grew rapidly, the draw to selling beer in Europe grew stronger and stronger until they eventually started selling the American Budweiser in most European countries, using the name Bud instead of Budweiser when appropriate. Since the fall of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, Budvar has been pushing their product harder and harder into western European markets, where the two beers have been butting heads. The past twenty years has been full of lawsuits and arguments over the matter and neither side is a clear winner as of yet. My take on the matter was that both of the beers are decent, not excellent, and could each use a little more flavor.

After dinner at Golema, we walked across Charles Bridge with only the moon and its reflection off the Vltava to light our path and illuminate the thirty baroque statues lining the sides of the bridge. The bridge was constructed during the second half of the 14^th century under orders from King Charles IV, which is why at the end of the bridge you’ll find a statue of the king fully clad in his armor looking very heroic. The bridge was the only means of traveling across the Vltava River until 1841, making it a vital connection between the Prague Castle and the Old Town across the river. We entered the bridge walking underneath the Old Town Bridge Tower, which is said to be one of the most incredible gothic style buildings ever constructed and meandered across the river before returning again. It was a really old and unique bridge and I thought that my experience with the bridge was enhanced during the night time rather than being diminished. After checking out the bridge we took the metro back to Ondra’s place to get some more rest.

We woke up on Saturday the 13^th and caught the metro out to the Prague bus station, intending to catch a bus to Terezin to see what remained of the internment camp that the Nazis used during WWII. Terezin had an interesting story though, because even though it was a camp used to detain Jewish people from Prague and all of Czecholslovakia, it didn’t have a gas chamber and was instead used as a half-way point for Czech Jews on the way to their demise at camps like Auschwitz or Treblinka. In fact, the Nazis often shipped the majority of the Jews held here away and cleaned the place up, using it to show foreign countries and organizations like the Red Cross that they were treating their prisoners well. The prisoners were warned that if they acted out during these visits then severe punishment would result. The people here still endured malnutrition, disease, and cramped quarters just like everywhere else, but it was effectively used as a smoke screen to fool a lot of people for a long time.

When we arrived at the bus station we checked the schedule and saw that our bus would be leaving from platform seven in thirty minutes. So we walked over to platform seven and plopped our butts down on the bench, watching the ancient buses struggle their way into motion and the rusty bus stop fall to pieces around the spider web fractured windows as my watch's hour hand completed a full 360 degrees. After eventually consulting some Czech natives who had just asked for information from one of the bus employees, we learned that the bus wasn’t actually coming for another two hours. Since it was already noon at this point we decided to just go to Terezin the following day, instead catching the metro out to more efficiently visit the Prague Castle.

This time we bought the full tickets so that we could explore the castle and its buildings to the fullest extent. We finally got to go inside St. Vitus Basilica, which was just as amazing on the inside as it was on the outside. The gothic structure whose construction started in 1344 but wasn’t completed until 1929 is the seat of the archbishop of Prague. When the church was raised from a bishopric to an archbishopric, then King of Bohemia, Charles IV, intended the new cathedral to be a coronation church for when he would become a Holy Roman Emperor, a family crypt, a treasury for the most precious relics of the kingdom, and the last resting place for the patron saint Wenceslaus. However, due to the frequent deaths of the building's architects, fires, war, and money insufficiencies the building took almost 600 years to be completed. But all of that hard work and determination was definitely worth it because the St. Vitus Basilica was absolutely incredible. The stained glass windows were beautiful, the extravagant tombs were eye popping, and the ceiling frescoes were breath taking; I was in awe when I finally stepped out of the Basilica.

After St. Vitus we went into the old Gothic floor of the Royal Place to see the exhibition ‘Story of Prague Castle,’ which was a museum about everything and everyone who was ever connected to the Prague Castle. I learned about Duke Vaclav (Wenceslas) who was born in the year 907 and assumed power around 924. Strongly influenced by his grandmother, the princess St. Ludmila (who was murdered by her daughter-in-law in 921), he restored unity to the land and tried to avoid conflict. However, when he decided to pay tribute each year to the Emperor Henry II, Wenceslas’ brother Duke Boleslav I protested against it. This dispute was settled in 935 when Duke Boleslav I invited Wenceslas to his castle and murdered him in front of the church, entombing his brother several years later in the Rotunda of St. Vitus at the Prague Castle. Eventually, the cult of St. Wenceslas emerged and in the 12^th century St. Wenceslas became a patron of Bohemia, making him the eternal ruler, lord of all the property, territory and people in the land. Any particular ruler from that point on was only a temporary representative of St. Wenceslas, whose body is still entombed at the St. Vitus Basilica to this day.

I also learned about St. Sigismund, who was born sometime during the 5^th century to Gundibald, the King of the Burgundians. Although he was known for his religious fervor, he believed the insinuations of his second wife when she claimed that his son from his first marriage was plotting to kill him. He immediately had his son strangled to death but felt so bad about it afterwards that he imposed a harsh punishment on himself (though I can’t believe that any punishment could rectify the murder of your own son). In 523 the Franks invaded the land and captured Sigismund, throwing him into a well a year later. He was venerated immediately after his death and his wrongdoing was thereby atoned for. In 1356 Charles IV relocated Sigismund’s remains to the St. Vitus Cathedral and was from then on considered one of the patrons of Bohemia.

After exiting this exhibit, we looped around and took a quick tour through the Royal Palace. The first room that we entered was the huge Vladislav Hall, which was constructed in the 15^th century under the rule of King Vladislav Jagiello. The magnificently large hall was also very drab, with no banners or coats of arms or really any color whatsoever. The ceiling was constructed of huge wooden beams, while the walls and floor were made completely out of grey stone. It reminded me more of the grand hall that I imagine Lord Frey would have inside the Twins rather than the lively Czech Hall that is still used for the elections of the president of the Czech Republic and national ceremonial gatherings. The next room that we went in was the Land Rolls Room, which contained all of the rolls containing the laws of the land. The thing that I found odd though was that the state wasn’t given power over land disputes until centuries after the land rolls had been established. So why were they called land rolls? While trying to wrap my head around that question my empty stomach prompted my mind to fall victim to the distraction of the word ‘roll,’ allowing my thoughts to quickly fade off into a day dream full of rolls and massive quantities of food. To make things worse, the next room that we went into was called the Diet Room, which was constructed in 1627 and was where proceedings of the Diet used to take place. With my stomach rumbling we made our way into the final portion of the Old Royal Palace, the Ludwig Wing, which contained the offices of the Czech Chancellery and in 1618 witnessed the defenestration of two governors and a scribe who were thrown out of the very window that we were standing next to.  This event lead to the uprising of the Czech Estates which became the first conflict of the Thirty Years’ War. Luckily for Margot, when she suggested visiting St. George’s Basilica before heading back into the city to grab some food I found the top notch security of coat hangers wrapped around window handles was enough to keep me from defenestrating her as well.

So we walked down the street and stepped inside St. George’s Basilica which was built in 1142 after a fire had destroyed the previous structure. Underneath the main altar is the tomb of Ludmila of Bohemia, while the shrines of Vratislav and Boleslaus II of Bohemia were also inside the church. The historically old ceiling frescoes were gorgeous but in need of much renovation, and we found the church also odd in regards to the flat roof that we literally hadn’t seen in any church since we’d arrived in Europe. It was still a gorgeous church and definitely worth our time to visit it. After exiting the Basilica we decided to take a brief stroll down the Golden Lane, which is this really tiny street with even tinier houses dating back to the 15^th century that got its name due to the large quantity of goldsmiths that used to reside within the quaint little houses that shared a close proximity to the Royal Nobility that they were working for.

After thoroughly visiting the castle we decided do some quick crystal shopping across the street, but without anything jumping out at us we took the metro home empty handed, stopping along the way to grab some groceries. We ended up just cooking dinner at Ondra’s place and enjoying half a glass of the worst wine I have ever had in my entire life. Since we had run out of the plastic bottled wine we decided to get some more, this time splurging on a one euro box of white wine whose taste and smell I can only describe as a mix of urine and tortillas, which very well may be because that’s what the wine was made out of. It was hands down the worst wine I've ever had in my entire life.

The next day we woke up early, or at least it was early when compared to the previous two mornings that we’d spent in Prague, and got ready in a fury, trying to catch a 10:30 bus out to Terezin. We cleaned up the apartment and lugged our bags all the way down to the metro, where we rode it out to central station. There we ditched our bags in a locker and then rushed down the stairs to hop on the metro again to take us to the bus station for our ride out to Terezin. As we ran down the stairs we found the metro waiting for us and hopped on, only to realize that we were on the wrong side of the tracks right before the doors closed and jumping off. It was now 10:25 and sensing defeat we decided to just catch the metro out to Vysehrad, which is another lesser known and less touristy castle in Prague, and then catch the 12:30 bus out to Terezin. We wandered around inside the castle walls shuffling through the cemetery, side stepping around the huge Basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul that we’d been spotting all over the city the past few days and wondering what it was, and skipping along the top of the embankment walls.

After the castle we grabbed some sausage and hot chocolate and ate it on the go while we took the train out to the bus station once again. But our bus schedule ended up being different from the one posted at the bus station, maybe because it was Sunday, so we had accidentally missed the 12 o’clock bus and the next one wouldn’t leave for another hour in a half. Disgruntled, we agreed that our trip out to see Terezin just wasn’t meant to be and decided to spend the day down at the Jewish Corner instead. Here we saw the Maisel Synagogue, which was dedicated to the Jews that were killed by the Nazis during WWII; the inside was covered with the 80,000 names of Czech Jews that were murdered. Then we saw the Old Jewish Cemetery, which was used from the early 15^th century until the late 18^th century and was astonishingly different from any cemetery I’d ever seen before. There were gravestones everywhere! Occupying the space that would usually only contain one grave stone were probably ten grave stones, and the whole cemetery was one big lump, slopping down from the center. The reason for the lumpish hill and the exorbitant amount of grave stones cramped into the cemetery is that there is actually twelve layers of graves in the cemetery. According to halakhah, the collective body of religious laws for Jews, Jewish people must not destroy Jewish graves and they are especially not allowed to remove any of the tombstones. So when the cemetery was running out of space and purchasing extra land was impossible, they simply put more layers of soil on the existing graves  before burying their dead and all of the tombstones were consequentially moved up to the top layer of soil. After the Old Jewish Cemtery we saw the Klausen Synagogue, which was dedicated to the traditions and ceremonies of the Jewish faith, the Pinkas Synagogue, which was dedicated to the history of Jews in the land of the Czech Republic since the 10^th century, and the Spanish Synagogue, which was just plain gorgeous. The entirety of the churches and exhibitions within the Jewish Corner gave a very well rounded informational overview of the Jewish faith and its history in the Czech Republic and ended up being a great way to spend our last afternoon in Prague.

After seeing everything that there was to see in the Jewish Corner we took a short metro ride back to Central Station and caught our train out to Kutna Hora, a place in the middle of nowhere that Margot really wanted to see but hadn’t gotten around to explaining why just yet. When we arrived, we looked at our map and the coordinating directions and set out in the direction that we thought our hostel was in. Eventually we stopped, looked around, looked at the directions again, and stared walking in the opposite direction. Then we stopped again, examined our surroundings, and came to the precisely calculated conclusion that we didn’t know where the fuck we were supposed to be going. An hour after our train had dropped us off at the Kutna Hora Central station we were right back where we started from trying to compare maps and figure out why we couldn’t figure this shit out. Eventually, I realized that the map made no sense because we were in the wrong part of town; we needed to take another train to get out to the Kutna Hora Mesto station. So we hopped on this little local train that was like 80% plastic, barely broke 10 KMPH, and at one point the train had to completely change direction so that we could change tracks, which meant that we came to a complete stop, the conductor came running through the middle of the train, and then we set off in the opposite direction. Eventually we found ourselves in the correct part of town and took a brisk stroll through the cold night air until we reached our final destination. However, the fun wasn’t over yet, because the hostel wouldn’t accept credit cards, which of course meant that I had to walk around town in search of an ATM. Returning successfully we checked into the hostel, which was really actually a hotel, and went across the street to get some pizza. With our delicious home-made pizzas we each had a glass of local wine and some slivovitz, which is a plum brandy that is very popular in the Balkans. The drink falls into a category of drinks called rakia, which is just flavored brandy, and is something we would become well acquainted with later in our trip while in Hungary (however the drink is called pálinka in Hungary).

The next morning we woke up early and ate our free breakfast of bread, ham, an orange, and this apple pie kind of thing, before setting out to see what the town had to offer.  We walked the twenty minutes over to the Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady which was actually a really unique tourist experience. We were allowed to go up to the second floor, walk through the innards of the Cathedral, and get an amazing view of the inside of the church from the vantage point just above the entrance where the organ is usually located.  Here, once again I saw the story of Christ’s crucifixion painted all the way around the Cathedral and started doing a comparison of which European Cathedrals I though did the best job with these story paintings. The best one I’ve seen so far was at a church in Hungary where they were all carved out of a piece of wood. The church also included the skeletons of St. Vincent and St. Felix inside of a glass tomb on either side of the main altar. And all of this for just a $1 entrance fee.

After the Assumption of Our Lady we walked a couple hundred meters down the road to the Sedlec Ossuary, which is why Margot had thankfully dragged me all the way out to Kutna Hora. The entire inside of this church was decorated with the bones from over 40,000 dead human skeletons, it was mind blowing!  In 1278, an abbot of the Cistercian monastery in Sedlec was sent to the holy land by King Otakar II of Bohemia and returned with a handful of dirt from Golgotha, where the crucifixion of Christ occurred, which he sprinkled over the abbey cemetery and thus made the now hallowed ground a highly desirable resting place. However, due to the influx of dead bodies that the church received during the 14^th century from the Black Death and during the 15^th century from the Hussite Wars, the cemetery was eventually over run with dead corpses.  In 1400 a Church was built with an Ossuary to take care of the mass graves that were unearthed during the construction and in the early 16^th century a half blind monk was given the task of exhuming and stacking the remaining exorbitant quantities of bones still buried in the church's cemetery. And finally, in 1870 a woodcarver named Frantirek Rint was hired by the Schwarzenberg family to decorate the Ossuary with the thousands of bones that occupied it.

After the Ossuary we figured that we would stop by the Church of St. Barbara, realizing when we finally glimpsed it around the corner that we were totally unprepared for such magnificence. St. Barbara is the patron saint of miners, which is why the Church of St. Barbara was so appropriate for a town whose prosperity was totally reliant on the silver mines that it contained. Construction of the Church was started in 1388 but wasn’t completed until 1905, halting for a period of sixty years during the Hussite Wars. I can’t tell if it was the double arched flying buttresses that encircle the entire exterior of the Church, the amazing view over the valley that lies directly beneath the church, or the magnificent frescoes painted all around the walls behind the main altar but this church totally blew me away. Unfortunately, we were in a hurry to catch our train at this point so we didn’t get to spend as much time here as I really would’ve liked, but that’s just the way it goes when you’re traveling.

While walking back to our hotel to grab our bags we happened to walk past the city’s Memorial for the Black Death, which initiated a conversation about why we’ve seen so little memorials or museums surrounding something that ravaged an entire continent. Failing to come to a common conclusion we caught the tiny local train back to Central Station to catch our connection to Valtice, finally we were going to wine country.

We got into Valtice at about 6:30 PM, which meant that it was pitch black outside. After taking another local train from the main station which was occupied by nobody that I felt comfortable asking for help and felt like it had the exhaust pipe hooked up to the window right next to my face, we started walking down the deserted dark streets of Valtice looking for the non-reviewed and only hostel option I could find when booking our trip here. Starting to feel a little skeptical about the place that we were supposed to be staying that night, I found comfort in the fact that the houses in this area had BMWs parked out front and … well I guess that was the only thing I could possibly find comfort in while walking through the eerily quiet pitch black streets that were leading us to god knows where. But sure enough when we arrived at the address there was this lady taking the trash out who enthusiastically ushered us into her house when I asked if this was where the hostel was. As Margot and I quickly found out, this wasn’t as much of a hostel as it was a bedroom on the top floor of this lady’s house; and since her English vocabulary was extremely limited, the check in process turned out to be quite difficult. However, while the owner, Dana, was running around trying to explain all of the maps and brochures she had on Valtice with her broken and mostly incomprehensible English, Margot once again saved the day when she finally asked the lady: "Pa-Russki?" (Russian). “Ahhhh Dah Dah Dah,” she said while letting out a huge sigh of relief. The two of them then proceeded to pour over the maps and brochures while I studied the floral pattern on the wall for an hour in a half, but of course Margot filled me in on everything later.

The next morning we woke up and before we even left the room Dana was knocking on the door asking if her new friend Margot was awake yet. I couldn’t help but chuckle as Margot went out to have another lengthy conversation with Dana, but was pleasantly surprised to hear that she’d offered to take both of us Crystal shopping in the nearby town of Lednice with her personal car. After shopping in Lednice, which turned out to be an experience in and of itself, we went to do the one thing that I had dragged Margot out into the middle of nowhere to do, a wine tasting. The Czech National Wine Salon is a collection of the 100 best wines in the country, all of which were currently contained in the wine cellar of the Valtice Castle, and for less than $20 Margot and I were allowed two hours in the wine cellar tasting them all. I had no idea what I was doing and simply followed Margot’s lead, swirling my wine around, smelling it, and staring blankly at a spider web chart that was supposed to tell me all about the wine I was now drinking. Hindered by the extensive use of Czech and the non-existent use of English, I couldn’t really get into the technical part of the wine tasting, but fortunately two Slovakian women who did know what they were doing helped shed a little wine tasting knowledge on us.

After this we walked around the town in the chilling weather checking out a couple more buildings and churches before we went back to Dana’s, had a cup of tea, and hoofed it down to the train station. Here we caught our exhaust infested local train to Braclav and then caught our train down to Vienna.

 

Brussels/Germany (Eurotrip_2012)

Margot and I got into Brussels, Belgium late on Tuesday September, 25^th. However, in order to get into the actual city of Brussels we needed to take a train, so we headed down to the bottom of the airport where the station was. Here we bought a ticket going to Brussels and asked the lady that sold us the ticket which platform we were on, to which she responded, “platform one.” So we took the escalators down to platform one and hopped on the train that was sitting there, only to be told by the man coming through checking tickets minutes after departure that we were in fact on the wrong train. He gave us a nice lecture about how important it was to ask the train conductors when we weren’t sure about something and the importance of paying extra special attention while we were in a foreign country, while we peered up at him from our seats bobbing our heads up and down like two first graders being reprimanded for staying out at recess too long. The humiliation caused from this experience has changed the way we look at public transportation; too scared of having a finger waved in front of our faces again we try to be extra cautious. The man was nice enough to give us a free ticket from Mechelen into Brussels though, which we thoroughly thanked him for before hopping off at Mechelen and laughing the exhaustion and humiliation off. Twenty minutes later we were finally walking the streets of Brussels searching for our hostel's check in office. We found it easily enough and soon we were checked into our room for the next three nights which just happened to be right on the Grand Place. The location was unbeatable and the surrounding view was absolutely breathtaking. Margot had been telling me how a lot of people referred to the Grand Place as the most beautiful square in all of Europe and I finally got the chance to verify exactly what they had been saying. The square is surrounded by the historic architecture that is the guildhalls, the city’s Town Hall, and the Breadhouse (King’s House), all of which are covered with insane statues, gold designs, and stone carvings. The square literally took my breath away the first time that I saw it. And to believe that we almost decided to skip Belgium altogether.

After checking out the Grand Place under the shimmer of the night's lights we went to what I thought was a really cool alleyway jam packed full of restaurants. While passing the first restaurant on the corner we were immediately urged to the point of awkwardness to eat at this man’s restaurant. After checking out the 10:30 displayed on my watch and listening to this man jump through hoops to gets us in the front door we finally broke down and agreed to go ahead and eat there. I ended up getting a Chimay, which is a dark Belgian beer to go along with my huge bucket of mussels. The food was actually pretty decent but the price was outrageous, hence the necessity to antagonize everyone that passes the door of the restaurant. We were way too tired to care at that point and walked home with our pockets a little less heavy than when we arrived before passing out.

                                  

On Wednesday we woke up and had waffles just around the corner at a place called Aroma Café where we had a view directly down on the Grand Place. I got the Ultimate Waffles loaded with bananas, strawberries, whipped cream, chocolate, and powdered sugar; Belgium isn’t world renowned for waffles for no reason because these were down-right fucking delicious! After licking my plate and meeting a couple of newlyweds from Montana/Caribbean, we took a stroll through the streets of Brussels to see the mannekin pis statue, translated to ‘pissing boy.’ I thought it was crazy how such a little statue could cause so much excitement as I saw tourists swarm the streets while cork screws, chocolates, and plastic statues in the shape of a boy taking a piss lined the store windows.

 

Satisfied with our visit we took off on a longer stroll towards the Royal Palace. On the way there we got distracted by this beautiful church called the Notre Dame de Sabron church. The exterior was covered with intricate stone engravings and designs that looked so incredible we decided we just had to go inside and check it out. Inside there were these huge marble sculptures depicting angels and cupids flying over the tombs on each side of the main altar. And behind the main altar was an incredible array of stained glass designs. It was a pretty cool church and I’m glad we popped in for a visit. Continuing along our walk, the next stop was the St. Jacques Sur Columbaud church, which was situated at the Place Royal square right on top of this huge hill overlooking the entire city. Right in front of it was this grand square with a statue of Godfrey of Bouillon riding a horse towards the city. Godfrey of Bouillon was one of the leaders of the First Crusade to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims in the 11^th century. He sold all of his land and property and gathered an army that was the second to arrive to Constantinople. After the successful siege he became the first ruler of Jerusalem, refusing the title as King because he said that the title of King only belonged to God. The only connection to Brussels that I could find was that he may have been born there but he’s still got a cool story. With the statue, the square, and the huge church structure, Jacques Sur Columbaud definitely gave the impression of being a grand cathedral and I discovered that in fact Prince Leopold took the oath that made him King Leopold I, the first king of the Belgians, in 1831 on the front steps of this church. The whole interior of the church was either white or gold, with two marble engraved slabs on each side of the altar again. The one on the right depicted a male saint with a halo who was being dragged down by cupid, while the one on the left depicted a Queen holding her child who was being lifted up by cupid. It was a pretty cool church but I was more interested in the incredible view from the square in front of it. Around the corner from the church was the Royal Palace of Brussels, right across the Paleizenplein Square from Brussels Park. Brussels Park is the location where the famous Battle of the Revolution of 1830 was fought, which forced the retreat of Dutch troops from Brussels, allowing Brussels to declare independence and establish King Leopold I as King of the Belgians. The Dutch King William made an attempt to reconquer Belgium during the Ten Day Campaign but failed to do so. The Royal Palace looked beautiful from the outside with its perfectly manicured gardens, huge stone building and gigantic stone columns forming the grand entrance, but we never managed to find the time to go inside and check out the State Rooms inside the Palace.  

After taking a stroll through the park we made our way down to the European Union Parliament building. To our dismay however, the tours of the EU Parliament were closed, as was the whole building, due to the collapse of a ceiling on the fourth floor. Instead we made our way around the exterior of the building before going over to the Parliamentarium Museum. We ended up spending three in a half hours making our way through all of the museum's exhibits. The bulk of which was spent in the exhibit covering the entire history of every country in the European Union from the beginning of the 20^th century up until 2012. I’d tell you all of the information that I learned here but after receiving a one hour history lesson via blog post I don’t think any of you would continue reading everything else I have to say.

After the museum we meandered back to our hostel before heading back out in search of moderately priced food. Discouraged from the previous nights’ dinner experience we decided to walk in the opposite direction and try to break free of all of the touristy restaurants. Finally we got to a point where we didn’t know where the hell we were & were unable to spot a tourist anywhere in the immediate vicinity. Happily we picked the closest, most delicious looking restaurant and went inside. We made a great choice! I got a Leffe which is a very popular Belgian beer before I chowed down on a huge cheeseburger. The food was excellent and the atmosphere was awesome as well. There were political cartoons covering the wall behind me and this hilarious quote about attaining the status of being a ‘real’ country: “you can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team or some nuclear weapons but at the very least … you need a beer!” Well said, well said.

After dinner we went back to our hostel and hung out for a while before heading over to this really cool famous bar called Delirium, home of the self-deemed best beer in the world. The beer wasn’t bad but I don’t know if it earned best beer in the world status in my book. We had a nice time watching the birthday girl behind us drink a beer the size of her torso through seven straws and meeting some old guy wearing a USA t-shirt and waving an American flag who claimed to be in the Belgian Mob, originally from California and asked us to join him in court the following day to help him petition to regain his American citizenship. I said, “No.”

The following day we walked to the train station, grabbing another delicious waffle on the way, which for some reason I was forced to eat with a fork the size of my little finger, and caught a train up to Bruges. Once we got there we wandered around town simply looking for a tall building that we could identify as something cool and worthwhile to visit, which is honestly a good rule of thumb for any European city. We ended up at the Church of Our Lady; with its tower standing at 122.3 meters it’s the tallest building in all of the lowlands (Netherlands and Belgium) and is the second tallest brickwork tower in the world. After circling the ginormous structure and admiring the brickwork and stone carved designs we decided to set out to find the Clock Tower that we both knew only from watching the movie “In Bruges.” When we finally arrived in front of the medieval Belfry of Bruges bell tower it was just as amazing as we had anticipated. The 83 meter tall building was built in 1240 when Bruges was prospering from the Flemish clothing industry. Falling victim to fire in 1280, 1493, and 1741 eventually a poem was written about the fire susceptible tower, “In the market place of Bruges stands the belfry old and brown; thrice consumed and thrice rebuilt, still it watches o’er the town.” As I learned during our canal tour later in the day, prosperous towns would build their bell towers completely separate from their cathedrals in order to show off their wealth and success. Wandering through the half empty streets of Bruges it’s crazy to think how prosperous and populated this port-town used to be back in the day.

After checking out the bell tower and doing some brief shopping inside the market building connected to it we walked down the street to grab a quick lunch and to buy some tickets for a canal tour. The hour long canal tour was well worth the money; our boat driver was hilarious and intelligible creating a very pleasant experience. I learned everything from which hotel to go to if I wanted to impress my lady friend and walk out with a daughter, to which hotel was used for the movie ‘In Bruges,’ to where you can find a dog resting in a window sill overlooking the canal. Looking at all of the old houses lining the canals you can see that many of the houses appear to have windows that were bricked in and covered up, this is because they were. The city of Bruges used to tax home occupants based on how many windows they had in an attempt to tax the rich more than the poor, however the rich simply bricked up their windows so as not to pay any taxes. We saw the smallest window in all of Bruges, learned that Gargoyles in the middle of houses looked horrific so as to scare away any ghosts or bad spirits, while the gargoyles on the sides of the houses sported friendly faces so as to tell the ghosts that your neighbors were welcoming and accepting, and learned about the traditional Belgian architecture of the buildings.

After our canal tour we decided to buy some Belgian chocolate for our train ride back to Brussels. It was actually surprisingly cheap and probably the best chocolate I’ve ever had in my entire life, I’m still upset that I didn’t buy any more of it.

 

After purchasing our chocolate we went to the Groeninge Museum which had an amazing collection of Flemish art. Flemish art is honestly one of my favorites, with its dark, rich colors and special attention to detail the pictures become very vivid and pleasant to the eye. My favorite picture of the collection was one painted by Gaspar de Crayer. It portrays the kneeling King Saul, who has asked a witch to summon up the spirit of the dead prophet Samuel, who foretells Saul’s imminent death. I doubt that’s what Saul was expecting when he engaged the witch’s services. Along with the entertaining story of the painting, I think it’s a good example of the Flemish style of art. The colors are all dark but Crayer still manages to incorporate great color into the painting, and the detail of the witch’s face and the wrinkles on her head scarf and Samuel’s robe are unbelievable. Eventually the art exhibits progressed all the way up to the modern art age. I was actually embarrassed that modern humans could create such shit after I had just walked through one of the most impressive and beautiful collections of art products I’d ever seen. After looking at two blue lines on a huge piece of white canvas and a picture of a toaster I skipped the rest of the museum, writing it all off as untalented productions of trash.

After the museum we wandered through the town trying to take in as much of the town’s beauty and quaint lifestyle as possible before we hopped on a train and returned to the bustling city of Brussels. Once back in our hostel on the Grand Place, we met an American student named Matt who was taking a weekend trip to Brussels from his study abroad program in Amsterdam. Eventually the four girls he was in town with came over and we all had a great conversation about how Europe had been treating the seven of us, how we all felt about Amsterdam, and what to do in Brussels. Promising to try and meet up with them for a beer later we made our way to this Moroccan restaurant Margot had heard about that was a little off the beaten path. When we walked in the front door I knew we had made a great decision, the ceiling was covered with over a hundred old traditional lanterns. The atmosphere was unbelievable and the waiter was fun and extremely helpful when I had no idea what I should order. Drinking our Moroccan beer we watched the water come out with our food, which appeared to be a volcano of steam and deliciousness. I had ended up ordering roasted lamb with onions and cashews and it definitely deserves a spot in the top three meals of the trip so far. I can smell and taste the food just thinking about it. The actual lamb was really good, but what made the dish so amazing was how well the sauce, onions, and cashews complimented the lamb’s flavor. Ahh it was just so good and got me really pumped for when Margot and I actually go to Morocco. After dinner we decided to just get some rest since we had a big day the next day.

We got up early, checked out of our hostel and stashed our bags in their luggage room before catching a train out to see the Atomium, which is a huge 102 meter tall unit cell of an iron crystal, magnified 165 billion times of course. It was created for the World Fair in 1958 and allows its visitors to ride an elevator up to the very top, where you can gaze out at the Brussels skyline before exploring the nine huge cells as you make your way back down to the bottom. The view walking up to the Atomium was incredible, as was the view from the top cell, but Margot and I agreed that the exhibits in the Atomium’s nine cells were very disappointing. Instead of the exhibits giving us information about the Atomium or the World Fair we were forced to endure even more Modern art. By the time I finally made it to the bottom of the Atomium I was so irritated that I was considering dedicating my life to creating a non-profit organization focused solely on freeing the world of all shitty Modern art. After walking through Heizel Park and admiring the Atomium from a distance one last time we hopped back on the metro and I spent the rest of the day tagging along with Margot as she went out to see the American University campus and surrounding area.

We got back into Brussels that afternoon and did some souvenir shopping and grocery shopping before sitting down for dinner at this small but busy Italian restaurant. Food in Brussels somehow managed to destroy my budget so I was pleased to finally eat a really good meal at a mediocre price. After successfully feeding ourselves we walked back over to the Grand Place to enjoy the free Wallonia (southern part of Belgium that speaks French) Fair concert that they’d been setting up for all week. It was awesome! After watching a band whose singer sounded so hoarse that I thought maybe he hadn’t had any water since the last time he performed and signed off by saying the only English words I heard all night, “Good night Mother Fuckers!,” and a young lip syncing rapper who felt the need to hip thrust the air during all his songs we finally got to some music that I actually really enjoyed. Every once in a while during this trip I experience something so awesome and unbelievable that I force myself to think about how incredibly lucky I am to be doing this. Standing next to one of my best friends in the middle of one the most beautiful squares in all of Europe, with a crowd of French speaking Belgians cheering on an incredible lineup of French artists, I couldn’t think of anywhere else that I’d have rather been. Even though I didn’t understand a lick of what they were saying I could still get into the beat and memorize the chorus for each song. After jumping up and down and having a grand old time we finally said good bye to the Grand Place, grabbed our bags, and caught our overnight train to Munich.

However, it wasn’t really an overnight train as much as it was several late night and early morning trains on either side of a four hour layover in the middle of nowhere Germany sleeping on a cold outdoor bench. After befriending a worker at the train station he lined up all of the trains that needed to leave from platform one before getting to ours so that we could go inside and enjoy some warmth and rest before our train became first on the docket and departed for our next layover destination. I didn’t really mind the midnight adventure but was beyond exhausted when we finally pulled into the massive Munich train station. The last time I had an internet connection, Florian, the man who were supposed to be staying with in Munich, hadn’t replied to me as to whether he would be meeting us at the train station or not.  So my first goal when we stepped off the train was to somehow navigate my way through the sea of lederhosen and hopefully find a free wifi connection somewhere. However, while randomly wandering around the packed train station I heard my name called out and sure enough when I spun around there was this seven foot tall man who was walking over to me with his hand out saying, “nice to meet you, I’m Florian.” How we happened to run into him in the huge bustling train station I have no idea but I was so thankful that we did. He ushered us onto the bus and then brought us back to his place, where he gave us a quick tour, some directions on using the city’s public transportation, and then handed over the keys and headed out to grab a beer with some of his friends. Thankful to finally have our own bed we immediately passed out for a two hour long nap.

After groggily rolling out of bed in the late afternoon we decided to venture out and do our much needed lederhosen shopping. After taking the metro out to a place that was supposed to sell really good lederhosen for a moderate price we split up, Margot heading towards the dirndls and me towards the lederhosen. After trying on several pairs of the leather pants I pin pointed what I imagined ought to be the right size before a really nice lady came over to help me out. She helped me pick out my entire outfit, from the knee high wool socks and the leather shoes to the purple and white checkered dress shirt and my Bavarian style hat. Pleased with my armful of clothes I stomped over to the cash register and plopped it all down in front of the cashier. Two minutes later I walked away with my jaw dragging on the floor shocked by the amount of money that a good pair of lederhosen had just cost me. I met up with Margot who had picked out an awesome red and brown dirndl that actually went pretty well with the lederhosen I had just purchased. Pleased with the totally awesome purchases that we had each just made, we walked down the street to buy our $5 dinner of German Beer and a German noodle called Spätzle. Once we got home we immediately put on our costumes and cooked our German meal thinking that we now knew what it was like to be a Bavarian. Thinking back on how stupid we must have looked, I thank god that Florian didn’t walk into the apartment at that moment. But probably would do it over again if I got the chance, because I looked damn good in those lederhosen.

The next day we woke up early, showered, brushed our teeth, put on our tracht (costumes) and went to Oktoberfest 2012. The pursuing fourteen hours was a gush of pure joy, random friendly encounters, and the purest form of unpredictability that I’d ever encountered. When we arrived at the thereseinwiese, which is the huge park that houses the largest fair in the world, we wandered through the immense crowd commenting on how much of it reminded us of a carnival. All you hear about back home is the ungodly amounts of beer that are consumed at Oktoberfest, but there’s actually a huge part of the fair that is dedicated to rides and carnival games. As we passed a man gnawing on a meter long hot dog I vowed to return after a couple beers and consume one of the lengthy wieners myself. The first beer tent that we entered was a traditional tent decked out in the blue and white colors of Bavaria while the band played traditional Bavarian music and the lederhosen wearing Germans danced on the tables singing along to the catchy songs. After scuttling around the crowded tent asking if we could sit here and if we could sit there we finally gave up and budged our way outside. After taking in a couple breaths of fresh air we looked at each other and agreed that what we had just witnessed looked beyond awesome, we just needed to find our own table so that we could enjoy ourselves just as much as everyone else was. We immediately ventured over to another tent, the Hofbrau-Festzelt, which is the tent for the famous German brewery and drink house called Hofbräuhaus.

While walking around searching for a place to sit down and drink a beer we kept getting stopped by drunk tourists asking, “Could we please get our picture taken with you?” We happily agreed, without ruining their day by informing them that we were in fact Americans, not Germans. Finally, after being stopped once again by a group of Asian tourists we discovered half of a table was completely empty. But upon further examination it turned out that the table was uninhabited because it was drenched in liters upon liters of beer. Standing there weighing our options, one of the serving ladies came storming by with a rag and began to order us to sit down and order some beer. Obligingly, we accepted her demands and sat down at the freshly cleaned off table and ordered, “two liters of beer please!” After we watched the serving lady leave with greedy smiles of anticipation we proceeded to be antagonized by a group of shitface drunk Italians at the other end of the table, claiming that we were sitting in their friends' seats who were out for a smoke. Things got so heated that a security guard eventually trudged over to inform the Italians that Margot and I could stay at their blessed table and that their friends would just have to squeeze into the ginormous space on the bench right next to us. Eventually our giant beers arrived and so did the Italians who had been smoking outside.

With skeptical smiles we introduced ourselves to Paulo and Marco, who took an instant liking to us. Marco kept asking me about America and Paulo became infatuated with Margot, yelling, “Noooooo!! My Friends!!,” whenever one of the jackass Italians on the other side of the table started saying anything. Eventually the Italian who had initially yelled at us when we sat down slammed his ¼ inch thick glass mug down so hard that it shattered, waking up his sleepy friend on the bench and attracting the attention of the security guards, who kicked them all out, including Paulo and Marco. And suddenly the two of us had an entire twenty person table all to ourselves. In addition, the Italians had left two full liters of beer at their table (worth 10 euro each) that we greedily snatched up. With huge grins on our faces we slammed our mugs together while saying, “cheers,” and drank up with the live traditional Bavarian music blaring in the background.

It didn’t take too long to make new friends with an empty table though. Soon enough a German family occupied the entire other end of the table while our three new Dutch friends squeezed into the middle. The Dutch consisted of a seventy year old couple who were visiting a 35 year old lady named Inge that used to be their neighbor. She had moved from Rotterdam to Munich several years ago for a man but eventually they split up, he left Munich and she stayed. Luckily she works as a teacher for a school in Munich, coincidentally teaching English, so communication was finally easy again. With the communication barrier removed we became friends with Inge quickly, who soon enough had us standing on top of the tables singing this German toast at the end of every song:                                                 

                                                   Ein Prosit, Ein Prosit, der Gemütlichkeit
                                                         Ein Prosit, Ein Prosit, der Gemütlichkeit
                                                                      Eins, zwei, drei g'suffa!

                                                           Zicke, zacke, zicke, zacke, hoi, hoi, hoi!
                                                           Zicke, zacke, zicke, zacke, hoi, hoi, hoi!

Which translated to English means:

A toast, a toast, a cozy place!
A toast, a toast, a cozy place!
One, two, three drink!

Drink, drink, drink, hoi, hoi, hoi!
Drink, drink, drink, hoi, hoi, hoi!

        After Margot and I had each consumed four liters of premium Hofbräuhaus beer our Dutch friends departed and the rest of the evening became as crazy as you would expect from a trip to Oktoberfest. It consisted of a couple of cool German guys, a bunch of annoying Aussie’s, several groups of Indian’s (one of which bought me a free lamb dinner), a girl with unknown origins that stole my hat, a man named Matt from Britain, two more liters of beer, a German family which I bought a round of vodka shots for after the beer tents had closed, and another group of German friends who we also had vodka shots with. Needless to say, after spending twelve hours drinking beer inside the Hofbrau-Festzelt and another hour drinking vodka on the carnival grounds we spent the entire next day sleeping, moaning, and drinking large quantities of water. 

 

Finally, after rolling out of bed at the impressive hour of 6 PM we made our way to the Munich train station to catch our night train. With only one day between our departure from Munich and our arrival in Trebur, Germany we completely disregarded the good and intelligent advice of my friend Werner and opted to make the eleven hour train ride all the way up to Berlin instead of making the one hour trip down to some place like Neuschwanstein. We figured it would be a shame to visit Germany and completely skip the capital, especially when it’s been the source of so much 20^th century history. So we boarded the train at ten in the evening, slept little, and arrived in Berlin at 9 AM. Here we stored our bags in one of the lockers at the Berlin train station and then figured out our plan for the day. We had no internet, no map, and really no well thought out plan as to what we were going to do for the next thirteen hours until our train left for Frankfurt. We decided to catch the metro to the one place that we knew and just see where the day would take us. So ten minutes later we were standing in the middle of Pariser Platz staring up at the Brandenburg Gate. The square got its name, which translates to Paris Square, to honor the 1814 capture of Paris by the Prussians and other Allies after the overthrow of Napoleon. The Pariser Platz and the Brandenburg Gate each had a rough time during the 20^th century, falling victim to the Second World War and after restoration had already begun falling victim once again to the East-West Berlin conflict when the Brandenburg Gate became part of the no man’s land in between the east and west dividing walls. However, after the Berlin Wall came down in 1990 the city was dedicated to restoring the Gate and the Square to their original glory. And standing there in 2012 you would have never guessed that such a beautiful square had been reduced to ruins only a short time ago.

After admiring the Gate for a while we wandered down the road to see if maybe we could get inside the Reichstag building which houses the German Parliament but were turned away for lack of a reserved ticket. We then spotted five metal Crosses on the side of the walkway and discovered that they were each monuments to those that had died while trying to flee from East to West Berlin. Continuing on we found the Holocaust Memorial which is an entire city block full of 2,711 stelae (cement blocks) that are spread out with varying heights. According to the architect of the Memorial, Peter Eisenman, the stelae are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason. It was definitely an untraditional memorial but I thought that in addition to being simple it was also very expansive and imposing on the city landscape at the same time, which I found very suiting for its purpose. After wandering through the memorial where at certain points the stelae are so high that day turns to night, we went inside to see the blood curdling exhibit that focused solely on the death of the millions of Jews that were murdered by the Nazi regime.

 I don’t think I’ve ever been to a more somber invoking museum, which means that this will probably be one of the most depressing and saddening excerpts from all of my blog posts. I put a lot of thought into whether I should go into depth about what I learned at the museum or not but decided that even though it’s a tough and hard subject to discuss, it’s also a huge part of human history and an intricate part of Berlin and European history. The reason I’m willing to write about these dreadful things is similar to why we have these Holocaust memorials and museums in the first place, so that we will never forget what happened. In all of my high school history classes I think I learned more and focused the most during discussions of WWII than any other historical event we covered. It was the most intriguing because it was the most heart wrenching. Even as a naïve child I understood how disgusting the actions of Hitler and his regime were, and often found myself shaking my head and rubbing my eyes in class. But nothing could have prepared me for this museum's in depth detail of the mass murders and genocide. The museum was split up into four main exhibits; the first exhibit gave general knowledge about the experiences that Jewish individuals were forced to endure, the second exhibit was a room where the floor was covered with letters and journal entries from Jewish individuals between 1941 & 1945, the third exhibit was a room full of stelae coming down from the ceiling where each stelae was covered with pictures and information giving the story of a Jewish family, and the fourth exhibit gave in depth information about what went on at five of the major extermination camps. 

                What I learned from the first exhibit was that the information I had gathered in the classroom didn’t tell the whole story.  While a lot of attention is paid to the gas chambers that the Nazis used, about ¼ of all of the Europeans murdered during the Holocaust were done so by mass shootings. There was this quote from a woman who had experienced first-hand how it felt to line up single file, undress, and literally check in at a desk and hand over all of your belongings before being ordered to stand next to a mass grave and wait. The Nazis had them line up next to the mass graves so that after they shot them the victims would just fall in. The woman had escaped by falling into the grave before the gunshot intended for her went off and hiding under the dead bodies. Something else I learned was how dangerous the transportation trains were to the survival of the prisoners that they were transporting. The Nazis would cram the train cars so full that those inside were forced to stand because there literally wasn’t enough room to move, let alone sit down. In addition, they were deprived of food and water for the long journeys across the European landscape which often caused over half of those being transported to pass away during the journey.

                The second exhibit was probably the saddest of the four exhibits, where I got to read about how worried, scared, and uncertain of their destiny the imprisoned Jewish people were. There was this note written from a mother to her children back home while she was on a train heading to an extermination camp. In only two sentences she had to say good-bye to her children, elaborating that she would be dead by the end of the week and told them to write to their father for he might be able to help them. Another quote was from a girl who was only twelve years old, writing on a postcard to her father that she knew there was no longer any hope. She said that she wished more than anything to still believe in her possible survival but that it was worthless, “I’m going to die father.” She threw the postcard out of the train where a farmer found it, put a stamp on it, and it eventually found its way to the girls’ father. There were quotes about how much the imprisoned Jewish people wished that it was just forced labor they would have to endure when they knew what was really awaiting them. They wrote about how worthless their lives would be even if they did manage to somehow survive, with no family, no home, no job, no anything. And they wrote about how dreadful life was like at the camps, hearing the death of their friends but being able to do nothing about it except wait till it was their turn, and in the meantime the Nazis would force them to burn and bury their friends' dead corpses.

                In the third exhibit I was introduced to a family of four that lived in Berlin; the father, mother, daughter, and son. When the Nuremburg Laws were passed the son was studying in Paris and far enough out of the sphere of influence to escape, the mother was a Christian and immigrated to France to meet up with her son, the father (Jewish) and daughter tried to immigrate to France, the U.S., everywhere, but all requests were denied. They were both put in separate ghettos and eventually each was sent off to extermination camps. The father never even heard of his daughter’s execution before he was executed himself.

                While the first three exhibits were deeply saddening and morose, the final exhibit made me aggravated and irritated. At the extermination camp in Cholma they had a long hallway that the Jewish prisoners were told would lead to a shower, however it lead to the back of an extermination van where the exhaust would be pumped into the back of the van. This form of death took about thirty minutes on average to kill all of the van's occupants. In Belzec the transportation trains would stop in this small enclosed area that had only two huge buildings that unbeknownst to the prisoners were exhaust gas chambers. They were checked into the camp and then told to undress for a shower in the buildings before they would be assigned a location for forced labor. When the Allies were closing in on the Nazis towards the end of the war they leveled the Belzec extermination camp entirely. At Molyj Trosterine the Nazis forced Jewish men to dig graves and then to get in and await the bullet that would kill them. I also read a letter from a Nazi soldier after his first mass shooting at Molyj Trosterine that he had sent back home to his wife and children. It was interesting to get an insight into the mind of a Nazi soldier for once but incredibly disturbing. He told his wife that his hands were trembling when he shot the first person but by the end of the day his aim was so perfect that he was killing all of the Jewish prisoners with his first shot. He gave insight into the brain washing of the Nazi soldiers when he explained to his wife that he had to kill all of these innocent people because if they got the chance they would do the same thing to him and his children. He went so far as to describe the slayings, saying that he and his fellow soldiers would throw the babies up in the air and shoot them before they fell down into the mass graves. In Babij Jar men and women were forced to lie down as the soldiers walked down the line shooting each of them one by one. At one point in Aushwitz, 466,000 prisoners arrived in just a few weeks and all of them were sent to the gas chambers. The level of unnecessary cruelty that the Nazi regime forced the innocent Jewish people to endure is something I will never understand. And even though the museum had sent me through an emotional roller coaster and left me in a very weird place at the end, I’m really glad that I experienced it. Needless to say, when Margot and I finally walked out of this museum with our puffy eyes and clenched fists it took a while before we even felt comfortable talking again. Eventually we relaxed enough to start discussing what we had just seen and spent a good part of the afternoon walking aimlessly around Berlin relating to each other our individual opinions on it.

                Eventually we became hungry and stopped at this restaurant called Meladro, which was dreadful. The waitress wouldn’t let Margot charge her phone at the table because it looked ‘tacky’ in their Applebee’s type décor and the buffet I ordered was disgusting. Fed but unhappy we decided to trek over to see a piece of the Berlin Wall which was on the other side of town. This portion of the wall is called the Topography of Terror and is a piece of the east portion of the Berlin Wall. After walking alongside the immense cement and iron wall, we spent several hours pouring over the out-door museum that ran next to it. In contrast to the museum that we had visited earlier in the day, this one focused on the political aspect of WWII and the Soviet occupation of East Berlin.

         Eventually, as the sun was starting to set over the Topography of Terror we decided to go to Checkpoint Charlie, which was one of the checkpoints that allowed people to go from one side of the city to the other and also played a key role in initiating the stand-off between Soviet and US tanks in October of 1961, just after the construction of the Berlin Wall began. Once we found Checkpoint Charlie we discovered a huge wall covered with information on all of the encounters between the Americans and the Soviets as well as all the American war efforts against Communism. As an American I already knew the majority of the information on this wall but it’s always nice to reinvigorate your knowledge on a subject. When we finally left Checkpoint Charlie it was about 8 PM and we still had a couple hours to kill before our train departed, so we went to the train station, got some currywurst, and relaxed. Exactly at 10 PM our train pulled into the station, we hopped on, and two minutes later we were on our way to the Frankfurt train station, with Trebur as our ultimate destination.

                The reason we were going to Trebur, which is a very small town in West Germany, was to visit a friend of my father's from work and his family. I had only met Werner a couple of times when I was younger and he visited Colorado but I knew from a small selection of memories and all my father's stories that he was a great guy and someone I should definitely visit while in Germany. After arriving in Frankfurt at 4 AM, we made our way to the Darmstadt train station, got picked up by Werner, and thus began one of the best weeks of our entire trip. I could have never anticipated the immense generosity and friendliness that we experienced from the Zillich family in Trebur during our stay. Once we got back to the house we met Werner’s wonderful wife Beate, and friendly daughter, Nina. And after getting a tour of the house, being informed that we were welcome to anything that we needed and to simply ask if we needed anything else, we were introduced to a breakfast table that was set with our first lesson into the German culture. First our cups were filled with fresh coffee, then our eyes rested upon the enormous mound of rolls, and finally we glazed over the vast variety of meats and cheeses occupying the entire rest of the table. We had rolls with raw bratwurst meat, rolls with spreadable cheese, rolls with slices of cheese, rolls with kaltkasse (a cooked cheese that was incredibly thick and you spread about 8 grams of it onto each roll), rolls with chocolate, rolls with jam, rolls with fresh bologna, ham and turkey, rolls with meat that had pieces of other meats inside it, and rolls with raw hamburger meat. Then you had pieces of sausage that occupied the hand that wasn’t holding your current roll and you ate this in between bites into your roll. After breakfast I had completely forgotten about every moment I had ever been hungry before, and then I got served bacon and a hard-boiled egg. Sinking into a food coma I was brought back to reality when Beate offered us all a piece of chocolate. While in Germany my entire food pyramid consisted of two blocks, with meats on the bottom and chocolates on the top. It was amazing!

                Since we got into Trebur on October 3^rd which is German Reunification Day, celebrating the day in 1990 when Germany officially became one united nation again, the Zillich family didn’t have any school or work. So after breakfast Werner suggested that we all take a bike ride around the town, which Margot and I agreed was a great idea. After hopping on my fading neon green 1970’s bicycle we rolled off into to explore the town of Trebur. Our first stop was the local church but it was closed for the holiday so we couldn’t go inside. Once we thoroughly admired the exterior of the church we continued our bike adventure into the surrounding farmland and met some cows that thought they could outsmart their electric fence. After taking in the vast amounts of open space we continued on, passing the town's butcher, which was located in the middle of the farmland and where Werner claimed that the animals came from such local farms that he knew all the names of the animals that he was eating. I thought it was crazy how different it was from the anonymous animals that we eat back home. Continuing onwards we eventually ran into the enormous Rhine River and continued to ride down the trail running alongside the River, passing a nudist colony and arriving at this gorgeous Beer Garden in Langenaue, where we drank apple wine on the shore of the Rhine River in the afternoon sunlight. While soaking in the beautiful view and incredible weather we discussed Oktoberfest, learned that Nina is studying Computer Programming at the University in Darmstadt, reminisced about Werner’s previous visits to Colorado, and Werner told us about all of the awesome things that he had scheduled for us during the week. After finishing off our jug of Apple Wine, which is so strong that you’re supposed to mix it with water, we rode our bikes through the amazing scenery returning to the Zillich home.

                Once we arrived we relaxed and ate home-made cheesecake and apple cake made with fresh apples from their backyard while Beate cooked us one of the many incredible meals that we would devour during our week in paradise.

               For dinner I had way too many of these delicious pork medallions with gravy that left me feeling the fullest that I’d been since Thanksgiving 2011. After dinner we had Ouzo (a Greek liquor) which is supposed to help with the digestion of food, except I only had one shot of it when my bulging stomach probably required eighteen shots of digestive assistance. While drinking our Ouzo Werner also taught us the only two German phrases that we would ever need to know while in Deutschland. According to Werner, no matter the situation, if I needed help I should just walk up to a German and ask, “kann ich das essen?,” which of course means, ‘Can I eat this?’ This became a running joke the rest of the week, as whenever I got confused or they asked me something in German I would simply reply with, “kann ich das essen?” The next German phrase that we learned was, “Ich trinke ouzo, was trinkst du so?,” which is fun in German because it rhymes, but in English simply means, ‘I drink ouzo, what do you drink?’ Equipped with our two German phrases Margot and I got the chance to graduate from the Zillich School of German Immersion, however while Margot passed with flying colors I continuously failed, forgetting my phrases time and time again. This is why Margot is fluent in three languages and I haven’t even mastered the English language yet. I did however manage to confuse the hell out of some good looking German girls at a bar in Darmstadt the following night when I asked them, “kann ich das essen?,” and they furrowed their brows before laying out a German sentence that involved the words Burger King and McDonalds while pointing around the corner. After drinking our Ouzo and being introduced to our German phrases we played a game called Poch, which is a French game that Werner purchased during a vacation their some years ago. Essentially it’s a mix between poker and uno and turned out to be a ton of fun. After playing Poch well into the night we finally decided to get some sleep.

                At eight the next morning Margot and I rolled out of bed and stumbled down stairs, where we were met by yet another gourmet breakfast feast. After filling our bellies to the rim, Werner, Beate, Margot and I hopped into the car for a road trip out to see the town of Heidelberg. About five minutes into the car ride Margot and I completely passed out, which became routine during all the road trips that we ended up taking during the course of the week. Once we got into Heidelberg we started out by strolling down the walking street and checking out the shops and architecture. Eventually we made our way to the bridge that was one of the oldest river crossings on the Rhine. Half of the bridge was also destroyed in 1945 by the Nazis one day before American forces entered the city of Heidelberg, although the side of the bridge still displayed the flood history for the city dating back to the 19^th century.

              Next to the bridge was a bronze monkey wielding a mirror that you could stick your head inside and according to the guide of the tour passing by, the reason for this was so that ship merchants that came to Heidelberg were required to pop their head in there before trading with any of the local people. This way they would no longer think to highly of themselves, become just another common merchant, and trade fairly with all the locals.

                After checking out the bridge we made our way up to the Heidelberg Castle, which had a really unique and beautiful courtyard in the middle, the largest wine barrel I’d ever seen(literally had a diameter of twenty feet), and since the town had always been akin to the medicine of the times, it also had an Apotheke Museum. While meandering through the museum I learned that the three main sources of medicine were minerals, plants, and animals. But what surprised me was that included under the grouping of animals were humans, whose bodies were often used for medicinal purposes. I also really enjoyed a painting of St. Sebastian with dozens of arrows stuck inside him. According to the tale of St. Sebastian he lived during the 3^rd century under the Roman rule of Emperor Diocletian, who was actively persecuting Christians. The Emperor ordered St. Sebastian to be tied to a post and shot full of arrows, which was done, however St. Sebastian didn’t die from the extensive wounds. Instead he was brought back to full health and began converting hundreds of people to Christianity through performing miracles. The Emperor became so fed up that he eventually clubbed St. Sebastian to death when he was only thirty-two years old. He eventually became associated with the protection of plague victims and was the most frequently depicted of all saints during and after the period of the Black Plague.

                After the museum we wandered outside into a rain storm and took the mountain tram down the side of the mountain and back into town. Once in town we hoped back in the car for another road trip, this time over to Schwetzingen. Once we got into town we decided to stop for lunch at this beer garden on the town’s main square area. Here we each had a different variety of a beer that was called ‘… knight;’ I had Hell Knight while Margot had White Knight, etc. Our beers were accompanied by three flammenkuchen, which is pretty much a really thin pizza topped with any variety of toppings. It was delicious! After we had refueled we walked over to the Schwetzingen Castle which is really a Palace that was built during the 1700’s. But we weren’t there to see the Palace, we had come to see the incredible and vast Palace Gardens. We walked up the center of the gardens admiring the insane sculpted marble fountains and flower decorations, wandered over to the sdecorative mosque, and even saw the incredible bath house that could have convinced even the most ruthless of six year olds that bath time was actually awesome and not such a dreadful experience.

After wandering through the garden we got back in the car and drove back to the Zillich home, where we had a light dinner of cold meats and cheeses with bread. This dinner was actually very similar to the breakfasts that we had been enjoying the past two days and is called abendbrot in German. While enjoying our light dinner we were introduced to Nina’s boyfriend Marco and his friend Tobias or as we knew him, Liver (pronounced ‘liber’). After dinner the five of us all went bowling in Mainz, where Nina won the first game, Margot won the second and I won the third. It was a much better outing than back in Denmark when the Danes had destroyed us.

 And while drinking beer in between bowling gutter balls Marco convinced Margot and I to go out to a club in Darmstadt that was having a Study Party, which means that students had no cover charge and ten euros of free drinks upon entry. We got to the club a little early in the night so we walked around admiring the Santa Claus and Penguin figures that were hanging out next to their little wooden homes over top a couple of the dance floors before the crowd finally arrived, the dance floor filled up and we all had a great time dancing the night away.

Unfortunately, the next morning we had to wake up at eight once again and I struggled to even make it out of bed and down to the breakfast table. Luckily we were doing another road trip that morning which meant that I was fast asleep in the back of Werner’s car before we even left Trebur city limits. Our first stop was at this monastery tucked away in the beautiful German forest, which also acted as a winery. We only walked around and took a couple pictures before jumping back in the car and chomping down some chocolate while driving over to Eltville Castle, which was built right on the shore of the Rhine River. Once again we independently explored the castle for a while, taking some pictures along the way, before we strolled back to the car and drove to the city of Rudesheim, which is right in the middle of the German wine country called Rheingau.

After tasting some federweißer, which is a strong wine that has a rapid fermenting process and is consumed during September or October of the same year that the grapes are picked, we walked up and down the streets bargaining and shopping for beautiful genuine German steins. After successfully purchasing a couple of steins we drove up through the hillside vineyards to reach the Germania monument at the top of the hill overlooking the vineyards and the Rhine River. Of course the monument was under construction but it was still gorgeous, the view was breath taking, and we got a run down on the history of the monument, including one particular incident when it was used by Hitler for a famous speech. We all know that Hitler loved to give grand speeches in front of masses of people, but he also tended to give his speeches in front of important and historical sites. Since the Germania Monument was erected to commemorate the foundation of the German Empire after the Franco-Prussian War in the late 19^th century it was a huge symbol of national pride for the German people, which also meant that it was an ideal place for Hitler to give a rousing speech to the German people and use this national pride to gain their support.  After gazing out over the wine vineyards and the Rhine River and contemplating whether this was the most beautiful place I had ever been to in my life I was dragged back to the car where we enjoyed another mini road trip over to the town of Wiesbaden, which is actually the city where Nina had been born.

Once we got into town we parked the car in an underground parking garage and came up the stairs right into the middle of this square where I was instantly struck by the view of one of the most impressive and imposing cathedrals of the trip as it loomed over me from the other side of the square. The exterior of St. Bonifatius Cathedral is made entirely out of red brick with stone carvings interlaced as decoration around the entry ways. Since the Cathedral was made completely of brick it had no rounded tops or corners and instead appeared to be more like a spear thrust up towards the heavens. While exploring the inside of the church, Margot and I found it peculiar that they had life size marble sculptures on the altar, since we hadn’t seen anything like that anywhere else. After the cathedral we walked up the street to see the city's Holocaust memorial, which is a huge black stone wall with the 1,507 known names of Jews from Wiesbaden that died during the Holocaust. The memorial is on the site where the Micheleberg Synagogue stood until it was destroyed by the Nazis in 1938. Once again I thought that this memorial was subtle yet moving and accomplished its purpose very well. After the memorial we grabbed a couple fresh German pretzels and munched on them while we visited another smaller church in town and then visited a bar on the main square to grab a beer. After Margot attempted to use a toast that Werner had taught her back at the house, “Prost ihr säcke,” Werner and Beate ushered us out of the restaurant snickering before telling us that the toast roughly translated to something like, “Cheers you assholes!”  When used in the right situation (i.e. a crowd of drunk Germans) the crowd that you chanted it to is supposed to return with, “Prost du sack!,” meaning, “Cheers you asshole!,” however when used at 4 PM in the middle of a quiet bar in Wiesbaden nobody responds with anything but blank stares and confusion.

Once we got home, Beate got to work on yet another one of her incredible meals as we had German pork chops. By the way, in contrast to last night’s dinner, which only consisted of cold food, this night’s dinner meal was called abendessen since there was warm food and it was a much heavier meal. After dinner we played a German card game until Marco, Nina, Nina’s friend Jasmine, Margot and I drove into Frankfurt for a night on the town. We went to this really fancy club that had a glass ceiling, over-priced drinks, and huge black pimp decked out in a red velvet suit. It was awesome! After Marco was done making fun of my dance moves and the group of us was done making fun of an intense make out session nearby, we all danced our butts off on the dance floor until there was so much sweat in our faces that we could barely even see each other anymore. Then we somehow found our way through the streets of Frankfurt to the car and a sober Marco drove us all back home where we proceeded to instantly pass out.

 

The following morning we got to sleep in all the way until ten in the morning before having a delightful brunch (called fruhstuck) and then got ready to go to the big football match between Mainz and Dusseldorf. Before the game, Werner drove Margot and Me into Mainz so that we could see the city a little bit since we wouldn’t have time to come back and visit it again. We meandered up the walking street admiring the unique old buildings and after wandering through a street market in the middle of the city square, we found ourselves in front of the Mainz Cathedral. The Cathedral, which was built before the year 1000, was full of tombs and their decorated altars. It also had a lopsided amount of sculptures and paintings depicting Christ getting taken off of the cross compared to images of his dying body still being pinned up on the cross; I don’t know why this was but it was definitely different from most of the Cathedrals I’ve visited and caught my attention. After seeing the Cathedral we walked back down the street to get the best currywurst I had during my entire stay in Germany. The place we went to had eight levels of spicy and although Margot, Werner and I got the lowest one, it was still pretty damn spicy. In fact, in order to get past the level 4 spiciness you had to be at least 16 years old and in order to get to the level 6 spiciness you had to be at least 18. I’m serious! After licking our plates clean we were off to the football game, which was an incredible and different experience.

 I’ve always been a bit pessimistic when it comes to the enjoyment of a football/soccer game, mostly because American soccer sucks and I have no team to route for in Europe. In addition, I’d never been to a ‘real’ football match until this one in Mainz. However, the entire three hours of play time was somehow full of excitement, even though the score only turned out to be 1-0. I unexpectedly ended up getting really into the game. When I got into the stadium and saw the humongous red and white creature that was the Mainz stands I actually felt a little adrenaline pump into my system. “Adrenaline… from soccer? What the hell is going on?,” I thought. But over the course of the game I started jumping up and down when Mainz kicked a ball anywhere within a 40 foot radius of the goal and high fived everyone in our section when they finally did score that game winning goal with ten minutes left. It was an awesome experience and I have a new respect for the game (and those crazy shits back in Boulder that get really into it) that I didn’t have before I left for Europe.

As we left the stadium, still hearing the roaring chant of, “nah nah nah nah, hey he hey, goodbye,” coming from the Mainz stands, we were pumped up enough to go out to a bar in town and have a celebratory beer. After I drank my beer without cheersing with Margot and Werner first I was instantly scorned by my fellow patrons and therefore had to pay the bill. After enjoying our beers, we drove back home and straight into another food coma while eating the sausages, potatoes, and these incredible mushrooms that Beate had prepared for us. After dinner, the entire Zillich family, plus two (Margot and I), Skyped the entire Warner family, minus one (moi). It was really great to talk to my parents and sister again. I’ve been so far removed from Colorado life during this trip that it’s actually become a rarity to talk to my family, let alone any of my friends.  And while for the most part this separation and removal heightens and improves the Euro-trip experience, it’s still great to reconnect with home every once in a while. After finishing up the Skype I taught the Zillich family how to play Texas Hold ‘Em, just in case they wanted to hit up Vegas sometime soon.

The following day, after an early wake-up call and another delicious breakfast we drove to St. Goar on the Rhine to see the Rheinfells Castle. Unlike the typical tourist experience, once you got inside the castle walls there weren’t any exhibits or decorations; instead you were simply allowed to run wild exploring all of the castle’s caves and dark passage ways. It was probably one of the coolest experiences of the trip and I decided this was definitely my preferred way of visiting a new castle. Since we had already booked a boat trip down the Rhine River for that afternoon they eventually had to drag me out of the ancient and awesome passage ways and onto the boat's deck. The boat trip was actually a really enjoyable and relaxing experience. We passed by the Loreley Mermaid, which was part of an old tale in which the passing sailors would get distracted by the Mermaid's beauty and her memorizing song and end up shipwrecked. This is also the skinniest part of the Rhine River, has treacherous currents for the un-experienced sailor, and runs past the bank of a huge cliff, which is probably the real reason why the sailors kept ending up shipwrecked here, but old tales are always fun to learn about and we got to hear the famous song of Loreley. After floating several more kilometers down the river we ended up docked on the shore of the city of Bacharach.

 The first thing we did here was hike up to see Werner’s Chapel, which are the ruins of what used to be a beautiful Cathedral on the hillside next to the city. After learning about the Cathedral's disturbing and unfortunate history we walked around the tiny town taking in the endless amounts of surrounding vineyards, the uniquely designed old houses, and the beautiful German Forest amidst the transition from summer to fall. We got some delicious ice cream in town and then caught the boat back up the River to our car in St. Goar and eventually arrived back home again.

 

That night was our last night in Trebur and Werner had prepared something special for me. We went over to Werner’s friend’s house for dinner, where we grilled some meat out on the grill and watched live NFL football. To this day I have only watched two games of the 2012 NFL football season, and they were during this night. Needless to say, I was really fucking stoked to be watching some American Football and seeing how my Broncos were doing. We watched the Atlanta vs. Washington game before I witnessed the Broncos make a shitload of mistakes as they allowed the Patriots to get an easy victory. Since I haven’t watched any of the games and know none of the scores (I’m taping and watching all of the games when I get back home) I hope they do better during the rest of the season then they did during week 5. At 1 AM when a Bronco loss was inevitable I thanked Werner's friend for being so generous and went back home to say good bye to Nina and Marco since they had to get up early for school the next day. Over the course of the five days that we spent in Trebur, Nina and Marco were the friendliest, most generous and inviting people that I’d ever met. I had an amazing time getting to know the two of them and really hope that they find themselves visiting Colorado sometime soon.

 

The next morning Margot and I woke up, got a quick breakfast and said good bye to Werner. I don’t think there was any possible way to tell Werner and Beate how much we had appreciated their generosity and kindness during our stay. Not only had they taken the two of us into their home for a week but they also took a week off of work to act as our personal tour guides, showing us a huge chunk of the sites in Western Germany, took us to European Football games and arranged for me to see an American Football game, and fed us more food during five nights then we had eaten during the entire previous two months. Plus they were extraordinarily pleasant and fun to hang out with. The whole Zillich family was just absolutely incredible and made my experience in Germany something I will never forget. After forging all of this into a couple of sentences as Werner was walking out the door, we finally said good bye. Beate drove Margot and I to the local train station a few minutes later and typical to the incredible and unnecessary kindness that the Zillich family exerts she walked us up to our platform and hung out with us until our train finally arrived.

We waved a final good bye to Beate and Trebur and a few hours later said ‘hello’ to Fussen. While visiting Trebur, Werner talked Margot and I into visiting the Neuschwanstein Castle in southern Germany after he described it as a fairy castle tucked into the German Alps and I found a hand painted picture of it on one of my steins. That first afternoon in Fussen we checked into our hostel and set off on a hike up the German Alps to see if we could get a nice view of the castle from afar. Sure enough, after about an hour we found ourselves on top of a huge hill at the base of the Alps, surrounded by an incredible array of orange and yellow forest, with the Neuschwanstein Castle and Hohenschwangau Castle off in the distance and the city of Fussen laid out below us.

 It was an unbelievable view and I almost didn’t want to leave, but we had met some Australian friends back at the hostel earlier, named Lily and Oli, and had promised to grab some dinner with them back in town. By the time we got down the mountain side the sun had set and seeing the city under the lights made it even prettier than before. After meeting up with the Australian couple back at the hostel we walked back to the city square and went to this restaurant called Gastof Krone. We went to the restaurant because in their online description it says, “It is tradition in our house to eat with your fingers and a dagger,” plus the waiters and waitresses dress up in old traditional Bulvarian garb. Walking in thinking that this would be a funny place to grab a place to eat I was surprised to find it, in addition to being awesome and funny, really really good. Margot ordered some Mead that was served in a horn and was probably the best Mead I’ve ever had in my life (sorry Max). After trading Eurotrip stories and having some good laughs we discovered that we were the only people left in the entire restaurant. So we paid our check and had a nice relaxing walk back to the hostel before we each went in our opposite directions to get some sleep.

The following day, Tuesday October 9^th, was supposed to be our last day in Germany. We woke up early and caught the bus out to Hohenschwangau which is the name of the city at the base of the mountain that Neuschwanstein Castle rests upon. We then caught another bus up to the top of the mountain where we could walk out onto this bridge that sways over a waterfall and allows an incredible view of the Castle.

After thoroughly admiring the beautiful fairy tale castle we took the path back down the mountain until we had arrived and began our short tour through the Neuschwanstein Castle. King Ludwig II of Bavaria ordered the construction of the castle whose construction lasted from 1869 up until Ludwig’s death in 1886. The King was a very eccentric person which led to him being deposed on the grounds of insanity in 1886, one week after he was removed from Neuschwanstein Castle he was mysteriously found dead in waist high water with the doctor that was assigned to him. One of the King’s most famous quotes was, “I wish to remain an eternal enigma to myself and to others,” and indeed through his death he has accomplished this goal. When Ludwig died only 1/3 of the Castle had been completed and it remains this way today, which means we only toured 1/3 of the Castle. The first room we visited was the throne room. With its mosaic floors, religious paintings, and hand carved wood decorations the room was only missing one thing, a throne. The throne had been ordered by Ludwig himself, however when he died in 1886 his family cancelled all orders and the throne was never completed or delivered to the Castle. We then moved on to King Ludwig’s personal bed chamber, which only had a twin bed since he never married. On top of the bed was a wooden canopy with incredible hand carved wooden gothic Cathedrals reaching up towards the ceiling. And surrounding the bed was a room full of even more intricate wood work. The details were so intricate and beautifully precise that it took 14 men four years to complete the incredible wood designs for Ludwig’s bed chamber. It was also one of the few places in Germany that had a toilet with a flush that connected to the sewage system and running water. The room was also decorated with dozens of swans, this being Ludwig’s favorite animal. The King was also incredibly fond of the composer Richard Wagner, dedicating the Grand Hall to him and including various plays and operas written by Wagner into the decoration of the Castle. In Ludwig’s bedroom the walls were decorated with paintings depicting the Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg opera and in the living room the walls were decorated with paintings depicting the Lohengrin opera. Ludwig loved the Swan Knight character from the Lohengrin opera so much that he would dress up like the Knight and march around the castle. In addition, he named the castle New Swan Stone (Newschwanstein) for it was the residence of the Swan Knight. You can start to see why people thought he was a little crazy. After passing through the living room we entered a unique room for it was decorated like a cave, with stalactites and everything. Then we finally made it to the beautiful Grand Hall, whose surrounding paintings told the story of the Holy Grail. The pine paneled ceilings decorated with horoscope signs and designed with excellent acoustics were never used by Ludwig, who died a week after the completion of the room

   After we finished the tour of the Castle we only had about thirty minutes to catch the bus to get us back to Fussen. So we literally ran down the mountain side, arriving ten minutes early to the bus stop, caught the bus into town and successfully caught our train to Munich, where we then caught our train to Prague. Unfortunately, that’s not where the Germany blog post ends however, because half of the train that we got on was going to Prague while the other half was going to a town called Hof on the East German border. And which part of the train do you think our dumb asses got on? So there we were at 10 PM stumbling out of an empty train car in Hof, Germany wondering why the hell this had become the end of the line. We met up with an Australian girl named Bridgett who had encountered the exact same problem and tried to figure out a solution to our problem. But the best solution that we could come up with was to sleep in the train station and catch the morning train to Prague at 5 AM. So that’s exactly what we did. We played banangrams and shed, encountered two skeptical looking German Police officers that ended up generously keeping the train station open all night long just so that the three of us could sleep in it, and raided the vending machines. And at precisely 5 AM the next morning, we caught our train outta there.

                       (Parting photo is from Bridgett, Margot, and I to the city of Hof, Germany)