Iglesia de San Antón

As we explored Granada, we happened upon the Iglesia de San Antón. The church is a baroque church founded in 1534 by the Franciscan Terciaries.

It reminded me of the ornate Catholic churchs often seen in Rome.

The Resting Place of Royalty

Next we, explored the Royal Chapel, one of Granada’s most historically profound spaces. Here lie the remains of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, the Catholic Monarchs whose conquest of Granada in 1492 marked the end of nearly eight hundred years of Islamic rule on the Iberian Peninsula.

Inside, a magnificent marble mausoleum sculpted by Florentine artist Domenico Fancelli depicts the monarchs in recumbent poses – Ferdinand in armour with his sword, Isabella in simple dress with her hands folded to symbolize humility.

The symbolism of their burial in Granada was deeply personal to Isabella; the city represented the culmination of her life’s obsession, the final Christian victory over the Islamic kingdoms that had ruled the Iberian Peninsula for centuries.

Adjacent to the Royal Chapel stands the Granada Cathedral, a grand Renaissance structure that dominates the city centre, and was built on the site of the city’s former mosque.

Artisanal Flavours of Granada

As we wandered through Granada’s narrower shopping streets, we discovered small artisanal shops selling local specialties that quickly became personal favourites. Candied nuts – pistachios, almonds, and walnuts coated in crystallized sugar – were impossible to resist, their nutty sweetness a perfect afternoon snack as we navigated cobblestone alleyways.

We also found Turkish delight, those jewel-like cubes of gelatin dusted with pistachios or coated in chocolate, a confection with roots stretching back through centuries of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern trade. These small shops, tucked away in corners we might have otherwise missed, represented the kind of authentic local commerce that rarely makes it into guidebooks – the sort of place where shopkeepers know their craft and take genuine pride in what they produce.

The Albaicín

We ventured into the Albaicín, Granada’s oldest neighbourhood, which occupies one of the city’s three main hills and feels like stepping back centuries into Islamic-era Granada. The Albaicín is immediately recognizable as distinct from modern Granada – its labyrinthine street layout, and narrow cobblestone alleys all follow the pattern established during the 11th century when the Zirid dynasty first settled here.

UNESCO designated the Albaicín a World Heritage Site in 1994, recognizing its rich legacy of vernacular Arab architecture harmoniously blended with Andalusian styles. Walking through these streets, the remains of the Alcazaba Cadima fortress walls, historic gates like the Puerta de las Pesas, and churches converted from mosques stand as reminders of Granada’s storied past.

During our exploration of the Albaicín, we stumbled upon a small artisanal perfume shop. Inside, the proprietor had created a compact museum documenting the historical methods of perfume production, with displays showing traditional distillation apparatus.

Ascending to the Sacromonte Caves

We decided to walk from the Albaicín up to the Sacromonte caves, climbing further up the adjacent hill overlooking the city.

The neighbourhood gradually transformed as we ascended – the tightly packed streets gave way to buildings with whitewashed façades emerging directly from the hillside, with good viewpoints of the Alhambra.

Sacromonte Caves: Architecture and Living Conditions

The Sacromonte represents a profound chapter in Granada’s history linked to the Roma people, originating from South Asia but historically misidentified as Egyptians, hence the term “Gypsies.” Roma communities settled in the Sacromonte from the 16th century, living in the caves due to social exclusion and developing the flamenco tradition there.

We spotted fruit trees near the cave dwellings: pomegranates, and tangerines that would have provided sustenance. They also coexisted with animals within and around the caves.

The caves are architectural responses to environment and marginalization: whitewashing the limestone interiors with plaster to regulate temperatures through hot summers and cold winters. This cooling technique influenced nearby houses as well. Forced displacement in the mid-20th century due to natural disaster risk ended the community’s residence, turning the caves into tourist sites while the Roma were pushed out. Seems strange that now that they are gone, the government is earning money from their story – and not the Roma.

Walking the paths, the views of Albaicín below and the Alhambra above framed the neighbourhood’s complex history.

A Culinary Experiment

We dined at Atelier Casa de Comidas, a Michelin-recommended restaurant with an open kitchen near Granada’s centre. The tasting menu included some fascinating dishes that showcased a blend of local and innovative flavours. One starter featured tomate fermentado con caballa – fermented tomato paired with rich mackerel, that offered a fun texture with a balance of acidity and umami.

The menu also included a refreshing gazpacho anisado con quisquillas, an anise-flavoured cold tomato soup served with small shrimp, paired with a homemade green curry of arugula and the citrusy note of finger lime.

On the heartier side, gurullos con morro de ternera Pajuna y thermidor de cigalas paired beef snout and a rich sauce usually reserved for lobster, enhancing the seafood-meets-land narrative. The veal snout was mildly interesting, but not my preferred flavour profile, nor texture.

The main dish of lomo de jabalí curado en Koji y botánicos was wild boar loin cured in koji fungus and botanicals, served with saffron pear, and a Romaine sauce

Despite the refined technical execution and creative flavour pairings, we enjoyed the meal, but ultimately found the overall flavour profiles less aligned with our personal tastes.

The Alhambra Generalife Gardens

Our final day was devoted to the Alhambra, Granada’s UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the finest examples of Islamic architecture. We started at the Generalife gardens, the summer palace and pleasure grounds of the Nasrid emirs.

Meaning “Gardens of the Architect” or “Gardens of Paradise,” the Generalife features tiered terraces with flowers, and fruit trees – pomegranates, figs, citrus – and flowing water channels and fountains that create a cool, sensory landscape.

Water’s central role symbolizes life and paradise in Islamic art.

The Alhambra Nasrid Palace

Inside the Nasrid Palace of the Alhambra, intricate mosaic tiles formed geometric and calligraphic patterns.

The palace’s crown jewel is the Court of the Lions, with its marble fountain supported by twelve stone lions channeling water in four directions, representing paradise flowing to the world. The Alhambra’s advanced water system animates its fountains and pools, blending engineering with artistic expression.

Surrounding halls feature plaster honeycomb-like muqarnas vaulting, engineered to play with natural light dynamically throughout the day. These domes and vaults are built from thousands of small, modular plaster pieces that fit together like a complex three-dimensional puzzle. Each piece is precisely carved and assembled, allowing the ceiling to achieve both its structural integrity and intricate, stalactite-like appearance.

This technique is not only decorative but also serves as a unique architectural solution that distributes weight evenly and creates celestial effects as light filters through.

See more of Granada here

It was a really faithful creation of the actual Gringott’s bank from the movies – complete with the goblins moving about too. It was really like being teleported into the Harry Potter universe in the movies. And like the movies, the people in the photo frames talk and move too.

The ride itself is a 3D motion-simulated thrill ride. Riders go through the ride experiencing a short Harry Potter 3D film with a roller coaster integrated into it. The coaster follows a track with drops and at times converts into a motion simulator that shakes depending on what’s happening. When a troll on screen “grabs” the roller coaster and “throws” it, the rider experiences the movements in real life. The plot itself immerses riders in the Harry Potter universe, fighting the forces of Lord Voldemort, riding through underground vaults, and facing dragons.

The centerpiece of Diagon Alley is Gringotts Bank, with towering dragon statues guarding the entrance, with the one at the top breathing fire every fifteen minutes. Diagon Alley also features wand shops and pubs selling butter beer.

Throughout the area, there are various locations that interact with wands allowing guests to perform “spells” ranging from making water fountains spray water to levitating objects.

We also got to visit Springfield from the Simpsons. I didn’t go to any rides here, but it was cool just to see the different elements of the show in real-life like Duff Beer, Kwik-E-Mart, Krusty Burger, Moe’s Tavern, etc. The attention to detail here is excellent.

I also felt like compared to before, there’s now a noticeable shift towards motion simulator rides with 3D movies. Back then, the rides had to rely on physically built special effects, like for example, when Terminator statues would light up or when a character got thrown into the screen in the movie and then suddenly appear in real life running away. Maybe I’m just nostalgic for the way things were. One thing’s for certain is that these 3D movies allow for special effects that weren’t possible before.

See more of Universal Studios here

The “Aix” in Aix-en-Provence is actually pronounced just like the English letter “X”. It originated from its original name Aquae Sextiae named after the Roman consul Sextius Calvinus. Today, it’s a university town. Near our AirBnB, most people that were out looked like students and were all young and trendy. Maybe this was why the café nearby even expected tips, while all the other places we’d visited didn’t (though that café was pretty hipster with its dishware made of recycled coffee grounds) .

Fountains make a prominent appearance throughout the city – people refer to it as the city of a thousand fountains. The most prominent is the Fontaine de la Rotonde. Even though nobody around stands to admire it (other than us), the hustle and bustle of the city gravitates around it.

Aix-en-Provence is also known for Paul Cézanne, an artist who was born there. Small little studs embedded in the street lead people to see places of significance in his life, such as the house of his birth, but not all the spots are clearly marked and people have stolen the studs in some parts.

Along the path is a confectionary called Maison Brémond 1830, known for its calissons, a candy originating from Aix-en-Provence. I’d only read about calissons from the tourist map from the tourist info centre, and here we stumbled upon a place for them without intentionally looking (it was even its flagship store of which the address is printed on the box).

The candy itself is mostly made of ground almonds, sugar, some citrus with a crust of icing. It’s quite simliar to marzipan, but fruitier.

It’s kind of pricey though – about $20 USD for a box of 30. The packaging is quite nice though – I kept the box after as a souvenir.

The one thing we missed here were the lavender fields nearby. Unfortunately, by the time we visited in September, the fields had all been harvested so we didn’t get to see any.

Powered by calissons on the drive, we headed over to our next destination, Marseille. Marseille is the oldest city in France and is also the second most populous. It was originally settled by the Greeks before the Romans took it. Because it’s a large city, naturally we were wary of pickpockets – we even saw people secure their bags and pockets if they had to pass through narrow spaces with lots of people. The parking lot we parked at had such tight security that there was an office of people looking at the security cameras constantly, and people could only enter the parking garage by foot if they had their original parking stub.

We walked along the stone wall of Place d’Armes to take in the sights of the city on the water.

The Place d’Armes is connected to the MuCEM (Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations), and it had a cool architecture to it. Originally when we were looking at what to do, we considered the MuCEM, but all the pictures online just seemed to show the cool architecture which was in the free part.

Marseille is also known for its soap. Traditionally it’s made from 72% olive oil, sea salt, alkaline ash from sea plants, and water. Lots of souvenir shops we’d encountered thus far on the trip were all selling the Marseille soap, but now we were here at the source.

Other stuff like coconut oil or scents can be added to the soap to change how bubbly it gets or its fragrance, but then it no longer considered to be Marseille soap.

The olive oil is supposed to be gentle on the skin, and the locals like it so much that they don’t just use it for showering. They’ll even shred the soap and mix the flakes with water to make their own laundry detergent.

We wandered around the city looking at the different soap stores and picked up a bunch of different ones. They had all sorts of sizes, even big slabs for people to chop up however they wanted.

I got to try the soap myself – it’s not very oily, not bubbly, didn’t lather well, but it did feel good on the skin. I can understand why people in North America prefer other soaps like the ones from L’Occitane.

The Fer à Cheval soap didn’t lather well, but the Marius Fabre one did. It could have been that one soap was older than the other, but there’s no way for us to know.

For dinner we got to try bouillabasse, a type of local fish stew. It’s served with grilled slices of bread. The idea is to pour the stew on the bread and eat it together. It’s a cool concept, but the stew is only as good as the fish that goes in it and in our case, it wasn’t all that interesting. I personally would have liked it to have a thicker consistency. The local herbs and spices helped a bit though. More high end places will even charge 50€ for it.

If we had more time, we would have liked to visit the basilica and cathedral. The architecture was just asking for us to visit.

Check here to see more photos of Aix-en-Provence and Marseille

Someone told me that the pastries were really good, and they were totally correct!!

This is the Danish Parliament building. They also allow a small number of people to go up to the top of that tower for free!! We did have to wait for about 20 minutes though, but I think that was a not so well known destination.

Everybody says that Nyhavn is a must-see destination. It’s definitely gorgeous, but everything around here is super pricey!!

Amalienborg is the home of the Danish royal family. Sometimes people see the Crown Prince of Denmark going in an out of the palace dressed like a normal person. The building with the dome at the back is the Marble Church.

These palace guards walked right by me!! Can’t imagine wearing the full uniform on a blazing hot day…

Next up, was a chill bike ride around the city going at a slow 10 km/h. The weather really cooperated with us! It was a weird change going from wearing a full bicycle kit while riding my roadbike to wearing street clothes and riding this commuter with a basket on top…

Randomly stumbled upon this really cool looking fountain, known as Gefionspringvandet.

We rode through this old school star-shaped fortress that has been turned into a nice greenspace!

North of there was the Little Mermaid statue that everybody talks about. Everybody says it’s a must-see attraction, but the most underwhelming. They make it look so big in the pictures but in reality it’s tiny.

We rode past a military installation and saw this interesting sign… They’re really up to date with this drone stuff.

I was in Copenhagen around the same time as Chester Bennington from Linkin Park passed away. He even left a mark on the people in Copenhagen.

There’s a reason why people say Copenhagen is the bike capital of the world.

The white buildings in the distance is Paper Island – a hipster place to hang out and eat food.

It’s so busy here…

To my surprise, I found an ostrich burger… It definitely had a light taste. I’ve heard it tastes a lot like beef, but I didn’t get that impression.

Next, we went to Freetown Christiania – an area that the people there self proclaim as autonomous. The area was formed by squatters on land used by the military. Today it is a kind of like area where the police in Copenhagen don’t really enforce their jurisdiction (although they can), and it is governed by the people who belong to that community who have created their own rules. All the houses have graffiti on them, the paint on the walls is slowly flaking off, and every house has tons of advertisement posters painted on them. The people in the community are either hobos or hippies and sometimes it’s hard to tell which – and they’re probably all high as a kite. If you’re looking for a wild party, you’ll probably find it here. It’s a shame that I wasn’t allowed to take photos inside.

Inside the city hall, there is an astronomical clock. The fastest gear completes a revolution every ten seconds and the slowest every 25,753 years. I have no idea what kind of information it shows, but I can appreciate the mechanisms as someone who studied mechanical engineering!

This was probably the best meal on the entire trip. A sampler of the most Danish food ever at Skindbuksen. When we went in, we were the only people inside who looked like tourists and everybody else looked local, which was a good sign, but we stood out. The owner of the restaurant came by with a giant plate of delicious food and loudly said to us, “this is what we eat in Denmark, you should try this!”. For a brief moment, our interaction with him gathered the attention of the entire restaurant, while it felt like all the locals were just judging us tourists… It was a tad awkward. BUT the food was absolutely delicious. There was pickled herring, deep fried fish filet, smoked salmon, roasted pork, and pork filet! The other tables were looking at our food with jealousy.

At the bar in our hostel, we met someone who was working in Silicon Valley as a software engineer who happened to be working and travelling. She told me she graduated at UC Berkeley and so I asked her if she had seen the Amazon store there (this). She told me how awesome it was to have something like that there and to her surprise, I revealed that I am actually one of the engineers who worked on it!

That’s it for Copenhagen!

Photo album: Copenhagen

The first destination for the day was Rockefeller Center. This is the place where a giant Christmas tree is placed during the holiday season. The front of it, by the fountain with the statue of Prometheus, would also be a giant ice rink. During the summer, an outdoor restaurant takes its place.

There is also an observation deck at the top known as the “Top of the Rock” that we didn’t go to. They advertise that from up there, people can see an unobstructed view of the whole city.

The inside looks quite nice too!

I guess the designers of Rockefeller Center really like mythological characters because apart from the fountain with Prometheus, there’s also a statue of Atlas.

Beside Rockefeller Center is Radio City Music Hall, an entertainment venue that, for a time, was a really popular tourist destination. It is said that the hydraulics used for their stage were so advanced for its time, that the US Navy used the same hydraulics when constructing aircraft carriers during WWII.

Also beside Rockefeller Center is St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I always thought everything in NYC was really modern, so I didn’t expect such historical architecture.

It happened to be a Sunday that day, so the inside was filled with people attending church.

Our next destination in the afternoon was the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum. That place was so interesting for me that it would make this post super long, so I think I’ll save it for a separate post.

More photos here

On Thursday, the day before we went to Rome, I learned from a colleague at work that the organization that ran the U-Bahn would go on strike on Friday. Knowing that we had to go to the train station the next day, we had to figure out an alternative route.  It just so happened that the nearby town of Ditzingen was only about 3 km away and from there we could take the S-Bahn (these ones weren’t on strike) to the main train station.  It took about 40 minutes to walk there, but it was necessary.  Along the way, we walked past a bunch of farmland that connected the two towns.  It seemed like we didn’t have to walk very far to reach the rural area.

We arrived at the main train station about an hour earlier than we needed to be so we just sat down for beer before beginning our trip.  Our train to the airport in Baden-Baden took about 2 hours and flying to Rome from there took about an hour and a half.  We arrived at the hostel pretty late in the evening, so we didn’t do much sightseeing except go to the nearby Piazza della Repubblica.  Since Rome was so hot, we were sweaty all over and it made good sense to take a shower when we got back to the hostel.  The worst part about it was that the water was freezing.  For some reason, the hot water didn’t work.  We talked to the reception about it and they said we’d have hot water by morning.

We didn’t get hot water in the morning either.  I followed my friend’s strategy for taking cold showers that he used during this stay in Uganda.  It pretty much worked by standing in the cold shower for as long as possible and then getting out.  It was really uncomfortable.  I didn’t really feel clean, but that had to do.  When we got ready, we took the metro to Vatican City and that’s where the real sightseeing started.

When we got on the metro at Termini Station, we couldn’t help but notice these people standing against the wall of the metro tunnel in the area where people got on the train.  It seemed as if these people were scoping potential victims for pickpocketing.  My friend let me borrow a pouch that I could tie around my body and was hidden under my shirt, so I wasn’t worried about getting pickpocketed.  I noticed that these people kept staring at other people as they walked by.  It seemed super suspicious to me.  In order to avoid these people even more, we boarded the metro at the end of the train, where there’d be the least concentration of people.

Vatican City

When we walked out of the metro and walked toward St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, we could see into it a little bit, and it kind of prepared us for getting our minds blown when we saw the whole thing.  From the plaza, we could see the Apostolic Palace and St. Peter’s Basilica.  As I expected, my mind was totally blown away by how awesome the place looked.  We proceeded to the line up to see the inside of the basilica.  At that time, I thought the line up we were at was for the Vatican Museums, but apparently that was somewhere else.  It was only after we waited in line that I realized that we were in the wrong place.  We had an online reservation for 11 and we only figured out where we needed to be at about 10:50, so in those 10 minutes, we walked about a kilometer around the outside of the Vatican in the burning heat just to make that deadline.  We got in though.

We had bought tickets for the Vatican the day before so we didn’t have to wait in line for tickets when we were there.  Even if it cost us an extra 4 euros each, it was totally worth it.  The line up looked like it was going to take hours.

Inside the Vatican Museums, it looked like people just wanted to see the Sistine Chapel and the other exhibits didn’t really interest them.  I can understand since a lot of the statues and busts that they showed there are of people that are of no particular significance to most people.  Most people probably don’t even understand the paintings everywhere.  I know I don’t.  To me, these exhibits just look really cool and that is about it.  I don’t know the history behind them at all.  Maybe the only painting there that I sort of knew was the one of Euclid.  The painting of him showing off geometry in the street is in pretty much every single math textbook.

The museum was set up such that there was a linear path for everyone to follow and near the end of the path would be the Sistine Chapel, the highlight of the visit.  In this part of the museum, guests were not allowed to take any photos and also had to be silent in the area of worship.  Most tourists obeyed these rules except for a select few who insisted on taking photos (myself included).  Every now and then the guards would call out for everyone to be silent and many guards patrolled around the crowd telling people to put their cameras away.  I too got caught by one of the guards when I tried to take a photo, but all he did was tell me to put my camera away.  Some tourists though, kept using the flash and made it so obvious that they’re taking photos.  Little do they know that they were slowly destroying the paintings.  At least I know how to take photos without the flash.

On the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, was the famous painting of the Creation of Adam where God can be seen giving the spark of life to Adam.  I was surprised that this painting blended in so well with the others.  I had originally thought that this painting would be much more prominent.  It seemed that way because the painting was so famous.

After finishing up the Vatican Museums, we went back to St Peter’s Square to see the basilica.  By now, all the tourists were out and about and as a result it took us about an hour of waiting in line to reach the security checkpoint for the basilica.  It sucked because it only took us about 15 minutes when we were there earlier.  We had pretty much already waited, but were forced to wait again.  We found that the church required a certain attire to get in.  People wearing shorts, tank tops, and short skirts weren’t allowed in.  Luckily, I had jeans on and that was allowed (although it was awful wearing them in 30+ Celsius weather).

The wait was worth it though because St. Peter’s Basilica was the best church I had ever seen.  When we got inside, we immediately noticed how beautiful everything was decorated.  To make it all better, the position of the sun was just right so that the light shone into the church as glory rays.

It seemed like every single part of the church had some sort of decoration.  There was hardly any section of white space.  There was always a statue or some sort of engraving.  I was totally blown away by this sight.  I tried my best to capture the beauty of the glory rays.  In the ray of light, I could see small particles of dust floating around that I never managed to capture with my camera.

The sight of this church instantly made me believe that the look of all the churches I’d seen to simply be inferior.  It’s almost as if I no longer see a point in visiting any other church when I know that this one is just going to be the nicest looking one.

Walking through the Town in the Evening

After leaving the Vatican, we went to the Spanish Steps to meet the walking tour that we learned about from our hostel.  The tour wasn’t very good for me since I had so much trouble understanding the tour guide’s English.  He didn’t speak very loudly either.

From the Spanish Steps, we walked to Piazza Navona. Along the way, we saw some Roman ruins and also the most beautiful fountain ever – the Trevi Fountain.

The Roman ruins we saw were of the Pantheon and the Temple of Hadrian.  Over the years, much of the Temple of Hadrian had collapsed and the only remaining parts were just the pillars. 

Next was the Pantheon.  We couldn’t go in at the time because there was a service going on, but we went back later once it ended. 

Our next stop was the Piazza Navona, the location of a very beautiful city square.  It was surrounded by very traditional Italian architecture and a very beautiful church with an Egyptian obelisk in front of it.

Once the tour ended, we went back to the Pantheon to wait for the service to finish.  We knew when it ended and timed it so that we only had to wait a few minutes.  Many other tourists knew this too, so the crowd of tourists just waited outside and just stormed in when it was time.  When we went in, the smell of incense was still in the air and it gave the Pantheon a good smell.

After all the walking around we got really hungry and ate at a restaurant in the nearby city square of Campo de Fiori.  At that restaurant, we got to try some delicious Italian pasta and beer.  That beer tasted so good at relaxing.  Definitely needed after walking in the baking heat all day.

After eating, we revisited some of the sights along the walking tour at night before heading back to the hostel.  The next day, we would visit the Coliseum and the surrounding Forum Romanum.

More photos here

Using the Germanwings “Blind Booking” promotion, which randomly (kind of if you don’t know how to work the system by seeing which flights are full) selects a destination from a predetermined list for passengers at a fixed price.  Using this promotion, we got to fly to Vienna.

We were even planning to go to Budapest as a day trip from Vienna, but that turned out to be too expensive, and that there was plenty in Vienna to see.

Flight to Vienna

While waiting for our flight at Stuttgart International, we saw two double sized Foosball tables set up to go along with the Women’s World Cup Soccer.  By double sized, I mean that instead of only four rotating sets of players per side there were eight per side.  They took up so much space that one had to quickly hop to the other size to control the other set of players.

We played this for a little bit until the rest of our party arrived.  Once everyone arrived, we went to get our boarding passes and then to the security checkpoint.  One thing that really surprised me there was that the airport security wasn’t very strict at all.  All I did was go through the metal detector and got my backpack checked by the X-Ray.  They didn’t open it up/search it or anything like that.  They didn’t do that to anyone.  They didn’t check my bag for liquids either.  People could easily smuggle prohibited items on the plane.  Once we passed the security checkpoint, we waited until we could board.

We boarded a small Airbus A319, which looked like it could probably only fit about 100 people on it.  I noticed that each passenger was given a barf bag (I’ve heard of people getting nosebleeds while flying, but not nausea).  On one side of the barf bag, there was a chart that showed at what levels of nausea would cause one to puke and the caption that was written for the top level was “the price of our competitors”.  I’m guessing that their price is so low that people will puke?  Either way, I thought it was pretty comical.  To be fair though, Ryanair typically has lower airfares in my experience (I hope I didn’t sound like I’m advertising these airlines).  The flight itself took only about an hour.  The plane went up to 28000 ft. briefly before having to descend again.

Food

Since we arrived in the evening, we got hungry pretty quickly after dropping off our stuff at the hostel.  We looked around for a restaurant to try some Viennese food.  Apparently, Vienna is known for their Wienerschnitzel.  With that in mind, that’s what we ordered.  Every single one of us in our group ordered that except for the guy who was vegetarian.

What puzzled me about that meal was that the restaurant served the schnitzel with rice.  I thought it would be served with something like potatoes.  I guess that’s the choice of the restaurant.  It didn’t matter to me though since I just wanted the schnitzel.  The schnitzel itself was basically a huge piece of boneless pork coated in breadcrumbs that was fried (not deep fried).  I thought it tasted good, but it wasn’t amazing to me.  Pork isn’t that high up on my favourites.

A Bit of Relaxation (Kind Of)

After our meal, we went to a park to relax a little bit by throwing a Frisbee around.  It was kind of strange to me since we hadn’t done any real sightseeing yet and it seemed as if the others went to Vienna to throw a Frisbee around.  They even went to the grocery store to buy a few six packs of beer!  We all had the impression that Vienna was a really classy city, but what we were doing didn’t really seem classy at all.

While we played Frisbee, we noticed an insane amount of flies, mosquitos and other pesky insects.  Apparently, the others encountered the same thing when they biked to Austria one time.  These flies flew around in groups and were so annoying, especially the mosquitos that kept buzzing around my ear.

Schloß Schönbrunn by Night

After about an hour of Frisbee, we walked a little further to the schloss.  The schloss used to be the imperial summer residence back in the day.  It is now one of the most famous monuments and one of the most visited attractions in the country.  Since we arrived really late, the schloss had already closed and the guard there told us to leave when we tried to enter.  We ended up taking pictures from the outside.  Since there was nobody around to take a group picture for us, we set up an improvised tripod using the box from a six-pack of beer and used the camera timer.

Afterward, on our way back to the hostel, we came across two guys from Prague asking us if the park was a good place to sleep.  We were all kind of puzzled since we figured everyone would just book a hostel or something like that.  When we mentioned going to a hostel, one of the guys just made the subtle finger rubbing gesture to show that it was out of their budget.  While talking to them, a friend of mine with a beer in his hand just said “na zdraví”, which meant “cheers” in Czech and the guy was really surprised that he knew it (we learned that from Prague).  We ended up directing them to the park and then went back to the hostel to meet up with another friend who was joining us later on.  He came by train since he decided to come with us after we had already arranged our transportation.  Once we met up, a few people in our group decided to go a bar and somehow ended up back at the hostel at around 3 am.

Wien Mitte

The next morning (glad I went to sleep instead), we took a trip to the city center, which is usually where a lot of the touristy stuff is.  One of our friends decided to take a nap at the hostel instead since he came back so late the night before.  The first place we went to was the St. Stephen’s Cathedral.  What annoyed me a lot here was that the cathedral was under maintenance.  The face of the cathedral we were supposed to see had a large construction cover over it.  The inside, however, was super nice.

After seeing the church, we just walked in a random direction until we saw something cool.  The worst part about walking that day was that the temperature was at least 30 degrees Celsius.  It was like walking around Las Vegas in the middle of summer (ok maybe not as bad).  I didn’t pack any shorts and ended up partially rolling up my jeans.  I even took some paper to make a fan out of it.

One thing I noticed that was very common was that the locals here really liked wearing fedoras and giant hipster glasses (more prominent at least, but it’s not like they’re everywhere).  Even better was that they looked good in them.  It really added to that impression of classiness that we had from the beginning.  Even the H&M stores looked classier than the ones in Germany.  The way the Austrians spoke German sounded a lot nicer too.  It sounded more “clean” because they spoke slower and enunciated more unlike the Swabian German that I’m used to hearing.  Apparently, Vienna is tied with Vancouver for cities with the best quality of life.  I can see that.

Memorial for Mozart

Afterward, we headed to the Hofburg Palace.  Along the way, we came across a memorial to Mozart.  It was a statue of him posing majestically and in front of the statue was a garden with flowers arranged in the shape of a treble clef.

I guess when it comes to Austrian music, Mozart is a big deal since he was born in Salzburg.

Maria-Theresien-Platz

After we walked a little bit more, we reached the Maria-Theresien-Platz. This area contains two of Vienna’s major museums: the national history museum and the art history museum (more classy stuff).  While I was there, I took a picture of both buildings, but looking more closely at the pictures, it seems like the two buildings are almost identical.

At the center, there was a giant statue that basically acted as a giant shade and a lot people just crowded there.  It was reallyyyyyyyyy hot that day.  While headed to the Hofburg Palace, we came across a public water fountain, which gathered a rather large crowd of people.  The funniest thing about that water fountain was that it had the words “Wiener Wasser” (literally “Viennese Water” in German) printed on it.  Maybe I’m immature, but I still think it’s funny.  Maybe even funnier, the water from that machine tasted really good.

Hofburg Vienna

Eventually, we ended up the Hofburg Palace, the former home of some of the most powerful people in Austrian history, such as the rulers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Currently, it is the residence of the President of Austria.  In contrast to the Schloß Schönbrunn, this was their winter palace.

Outside the palace, there was the Volksgarten for people to enjoy.  In the garden, there were flowers (typical of a garden I guess), and the Theseustempel, which was intended to be a replica of the Temple of Hephaestus in Athens.

After walking around this area, we reached the government district of the city.

The Parliament and Rathaus

Although we only walked by the parliament (why we didn’t spend time there I don’t know), I did manage to get a quick shot of the building.  Walking a little further, we reached the rathaus (city hall).  Both of these buildings had really impressive architecture.  Looking back at the photos, the Austrian parliament building bears some resemblance to the German Reichstag and the rathaus bears some resemblance to the Munich Rathaus.

When we were there, the city had set up a giant screen and a bunch of chairs for the open air theatre for opera and concert films.  We planned to check it out later, but we never got to that.  We also met up with our friend who chose to nap at the hostel instead of coming with us to see the tourist sights (sucks that he missed out).

The Burgtheater

Across from the rathaus, was the Burgtheater, one of the most important German language theatres (the ones for plays and not movies) in the world.

Near the top of the building, there were busts of famous playwrights such as Goethe and Schiller.  They even had a bust of Shakespeare, even though he wrote English plays.

Liechtenstein Museum

Our next destination was the Liechtenstein Museum.  Along the way, we passed the University of Vienna and the Votive Church.  Eventually, after walking several blocks, we reached the museum.

The museum mostly contained old works of art and also a really impressive horse carriage used by family members of the House of Liechtenstein.  Also in the museum was an old library.  The interior of the library looked like something out of Harry Potter – full of old books (but without the dust and the screaming people).

Somehow I don’t think I was supposed to take pictures of any of these things.  I took a close look at a lot of these books, and there were titles from a variety of genres like science and literature.

Mozart’s Requiem at the Karlskirche

Knowing that later in the evening, we would be going to see Mozart’s Requiem being performed at the Karlskirche, we went back to the hostel to wash up before heading out (we felt so sweaty and gross for pretty much the whole day).  While we waited for the others, we played a few games of Pool at the hostel.  Originally, the concert was supposed to be at the Vienna State Opera (at least that’s what the website said), so we were kind of disappointed when we found out that the performance would be at a church (even if it was near where Mozart died).

After we bought our tickets, we proceeded inside and enjoyed the design of the interior of the church.  When I walked in, I was totally surprised by how impressive the inside of the church was.  I did not expect something so amazing, especially the design of the altar.  The bright light around it made it even more amazing.

While listening to the concert and the sound of the violins, I felt a strong urge to take up violin.  It’s also something I always wanted to learn, but I wasn’t sure if I’d end up sticking with it.  The concert wasn’t quite as I good as I expected it to be.  I felt that the concert in Prague sounded a lot better, but it might have been because of the acoustics of the room.  The church we were had didn’t have very good room acoustics.  However, the singers sounded really good.  Despite that, the audience liked their performance a lot and clapped for a few minutes.  Some people even stood up and clapped.  After the concert, we came out in the middle of a thunderstorm some distance away.  I tried to take photographs of a lightning bolt, but I couldn’t react fast enough with the camera to get the shot (even on long exposure).

Wombat Hostel Bar

For some reason, when we got back to the hostel at night, we went down to the bar and started drinking.  Maybe it was because we wanted to take advantage of their amazing deal for shots – 1 shot for 1 euro.  We ended up having six shots in an hour – not counting the Jaegerbombs we had before that.  We ended up mixing a lot of different shots together like Tequila, Whiskey, Vodka, Schnapps, and Gin.  I forgot the last one.  Now that I think about it, the last one we had was Sambuca, which tasted like liquorice and it sucked, but I think the Schnapps were worse.

The coolest part about the Jaegerbombs was how the bartender arranged them.  He arranged the glass of red bull in a line while a shot of Jaeger sat in between two glasses.  He knocked over one shot into another and they all fell in the glass of red bull like dominoes.  After having so many shots among all of us, we could almost build a pyramid using only shot glasses.  We could have, if someone didn’t break one.  When the bartender saw us, he was really surprised at how many shots we had, but I think he just felt super uneasy at how we tried to build a shot glass pyramid.  At the end of all of that, I didn’t really feel dizzy – maybe the alcohol hadn’t got to me yet.  The others then decided they wanted to go out to another bar, but I declined and went to sleep instead.  I didn’t feel like coming back super late and not having energy for the next day’s adventure.

The next morning, I found out some of us came back at around 3, while others came back at around 4 or 5.  One of our friends didn’t even end up sleeping at the hostel and ended up sleeping outside at a cafe.  That was REALLY bizarre.  I would never do something like that.  Because they came back so late, some of them ended up missing the hostel breakfast and slept in until around 12 pm.

Those of us that had breakfast got to enjoy a great breakfast buffet.  The hostel had a sandwich maker so we stuffed as much stuff in our sandwich as possible and got the whole sandwich toasted.  I never thought cheese, salami, ham, cucumbers, and peppers in a toasted sandwich could be so good.  I think I had around 3 of them.

Schloß Schönbrunn by Day

Since we weren’t able to go to the schloss at night that day, we returned to the schloss after we had the breakfast at the hostel.  Just like the day before, the temperature was super hot (probably about 35 degrees or so).  From the outside, the schloss just looked like the same setup as the Neues Schloss in Stuttgart.  It had the same U-shape and the fountains out front.  However, we found that the schloss had a giant garden in the back, kind of like a smaller version of the one in Versailles.  It also had a labyrinth with walls of hedges and also had a zoo. 

Behind the garden, at 60 meters in elevation higher, there was the Gloriette structure. From there, we got a nice view of the whole city.  Inside the building was a cafe and it had really delicious ice cream (although it was kind of expensive).  Outside the building, a bunch of people set up tripods with their DSLR’s and everyone had these filters for their lens to tweak with the color of the photographs since the sky was so bright.

We could even go up to the top to get an even better view.  On our way up, we bumped into someone we knew from Bosch, but at the time I didn’t know for certain who that was.  It was only afterward when I realized it and by that time, it was already too late to say hi.  When we finished seeing the Palace, we took the metro to Danube Island (Donauinsel) for a bit of relaxation (hard to call it that when the weather feels like fire).

Donauinsel

The metro station here was in the middle of a giant bridge and when we walked out, we saw two people just sitting on the edge of it.  All of a sudden, one guy just jumped into the water and started swimming.  And then the second guy followed and made a giant splash when he hit the water.  It must have been at least 25 meters or something like that.

On one side of the shore, one could see the older part of Vienna and on the opposite side, the newer part.  There were quite a few high-rises on waterfront property.  On one shore, there was a set of trampolines set up over the water and that was really cool.  The whole area had tons of tropical themed cocktail bars and seafood restaurants.  That really gave the place a huge tropical vibe.  One of the things that people do in tropical areas is swim in the water and that’s what some of us did.  I didn’t though.  I don’t even know how to swim (I wouldn’t swim in a dirty river anyway).  None of them brought any swimming trunks or anything like that, so they just went in with underwear (kind of strange if you ask me).

While people swam, I walked around exploring the area and saw a TV tower.  Near the top, there was a walkway that protruded from the building and apparently it’s used for bungee jumping.  I don’t think I’d have the balls to jump off that.  After everyone finished their swim in the river (it was a little bit dirty too), we went to the Vienna State Opera.

Wiener Staatsoper

We arrived pretty late, so all the tours of the inside were already over.  We only looked around the outside and figured out what time the tour would be for the next day, which we did end up going to.

We also found out that the opera has a “summer vacation” in July and August.  The only shows there during the summer months aren’t part of the state opera and are just borrowing the location.

Sand in the City

Since there wasn’t anything to see in the evening, we ended up going to the Sand in the City, which was just a collection of cocktail bars and pubs in a place that had a beach feel (minus the water).  The whole area literally had sand all over and many people sat in beach chairs.

Also here was a shisha bar.  People got to take the hookah to their table and just smoked it until it ran out.  I didn’t know what shisha was at first, but I found out that it really is just flavoured tobacco inhaled through a hose from the hookah.  I figured I’d try a little bit.

It didn’t have the pungent odour of cigarettes and just had apple flavoured smoke.  I didn’t really like the taste, but I did learn how to blow smoke rings and that was the cool part.  It’s not something I’d do any again though.  Not long after doing the shisha, I must have had a strong allergic reaction to it.  My nose ended up being plugged for hours and I couldn’t stop sneezing even though I only had three puffs.  When I went to bed, my nose was still plugged.

Tour of the Wiener Staatsoper

The next morning, we went on a tour to the inside of the opera house.  The interior of the building had such an intricate design.  A lot of the design had a theme too.  For example, above the busts of famous playwrights and composers, was a painting of a scene from their most famous opera.  The interior could have looked even nicer, but parts of it were destroyed during World War II.

The tour guide showed us around most of the building too.  One room in particular, the Tea Salon, was a lot nicer than all of the others.  Apparently, the royalty used to use that room.  Nowadays, the room is used for super special occasions or when the media needs a really nice background to show when doing interviews for the opera. 

The tour guide also showed us some of the intermission rooms, which weren’t as nice since they were part of the reconstructed portion of the building.

While there, the tour guide explained to us the history of the place (which I don’t remember), and little factoids like how there’s an underground tunnel to the building that stores the costumes and how trucks deliver set pieces and other materials before shows.  Finally, the tour led us to the main auditorium of the opera house.

Apart from the movie theatre style seats, there were balcony seats all around on many different floors.  The tour guide explained how much different seats in the opera cost and apparently they can go up to tens of thousands of euros.  Behind each seat was also a display for subtitles, since the lyrics of the opera weren’t always in German.  Together, I think the capacity of the theatre could be about 2000 people, not counting the standing spaces.  We even got to go backstage to see some of the mechanisms on the stage.  The tour guide explained how the multiple platforms could move such that the stage scenery could be exchanged on the fly.  Coming to this place was probably the best part of the whole trip.

Flying Home

We ended up killing time at a park with the Frisbee before we had to go to the airport.  We didn’t do much else.  There weren’t anymore attractions that we wanted to see or had time to see.  When our flight came, we went on it and just went home.  We all pretty much had the disappointed feeling of “oh man, we have to go to work the next day.”

More photos here

Here is my next travel blog entry about my visit to Berlin. In a short three days, we managed hit up quite a few places in the city, especially the historical areas about the Cold War and the Second World War. I would have liked to have posted this sooner, but my computer refused to cooperate.

Massive Train Delay

I was always under the impression that the Deutsche Bahn was always on time, but I guess that’s not true anymore. The City Night Line was supposed to leave at 12 AM from Mannheim and arrive in Berlin at around 7:30, but due to a train crash causing a chemical spill in Switzerland, our train took a detour. It arrived three and a half hours late. At first it was supposed to only be a 170 minute delay, but as time went on, the delay went longer and longer. To pass the time, we walked around Mannheim late at night, and pretty much saw the entire city, AKA the schloss, in about an hour. We spent the rest of the time just moping around the station. It was cold at night too and I never expected to be waiting so long so I ended up freezing when I was outside. I tried sleeping on the benches, but that didn’t really work for me, and instead ended up sitting there eating snacks until the train came. Maybe we should have chilled at a bar instead. Because of the long wait for the train, I didn’t sleep too well. It also didn’t help that I forgot to reserve a spot that had a bed, and I instead reserved a reclining seat instead. Because of the late train, the conductors handed out a giant form in pure German for people to fill out to get part of their money back.

Berlin Hauptbahnhof

We arrived in Berlin at about 10:30 in the morning, 3 hours later than scheduled. We all got off the train, still super tired, and started our journey in Berlin. The Berlin main station was the biggest station I’d seen so far. It had a really modern look using glass everywhere they could. Its sheer size allowed for a lot of businesses to open inside the station. The station had three floors with two floors used as train platforms. Coincidentally, it was also the station’s fifth birthday. When we got outside, we could see the German Reichstag within a walkable distance.

German Reichstag

Seeing that we could already see the Reichstag when we walked out of the Hauptbahnhof, we proceeded there first. Since I played so many World War II games, I already knew what the Reichstag looked like. Over the years, the Reichstag underwent a few renovations such as the glass dome that was added after the war. The rest of the building looked so similar to what I had seen in video games and historical photos that as I walked up the stairs, it briefly reminded of me of the guy with the flamethrower in the cut-scene in Call of Duty 5. I also remembered some of the iconic photographs I’d seen such as the soldier waving the flag of the Soviet Union on the roof.

Prior to going to Berlin, I had reserved spots for the roof terrace and the dome (according to their website, people couldn’t go up there without a reservation). Before going in, I had to put my stuff through their X-Ray machine (maybe they’re afraid of terrorists or something). They had confiscated my Swiss Army Knife for the duration that I was up there. At the roof terrace, the staff issued audio guides to every guest. While walking to different areas of the dome, the audio guide would automatically begin talking about parts of the city that one could see from that part of the dome. I didn’t really pay attention to the boring voice of the audio guide and the information that it had wasn’t all that interesting (it really didn’t matter to me if I knew how many rooms were in a particular building or the land area it took up).

Brandenburg Gate

From the top of the Reichstag, we could see the one of the symbols of Germany, the Brandenburg Gate. It is located at one end of the street Unter den Linden, and was used as a sign of peace during the Prussian Empire. Since it is also one of the most famous landmarks in Europe, there were naturally a lot of tourists here. So much so that there were people dressed up in weird costumes to earn money from people taking pictures with them. There were a few people holding American and USSR flags and even people dressed up as Star Wars characters. Near the gate were also a embassies of various countries such as France and the United States. One of the buildings even proudly waved the flag of Quebec (I don’t know why and it wasn’t the Canadian embassy either).

Eastener Hostel

By now, we were already super tired from the lack of sleep and from carrying our bags around all day. We took the city train to our hostel for a quick rest and to drop off some of our stuff. The man at the hostel was super thorough in explaining the rules of the hostel (with his East German accent) and even took the time to give us a map and point of the major tourist destinations on it. Using this map, we were able to find all the places we wanted to go to. By the end of the trip, the map had tears in several places and random folds here and there, clearly showing how intensely I used it.

Ampelmann

While walking around the city, I noticed that the pedestrian traffic light signals had a different design than the rest of Germany. Apparently, the traffic light man used in some places in Berlin were based off of the design used in former East Germany. I thought this Ampelmann guy was pretty cool.

The Remains of the Berlin Wall near Nordbahnhof

One of the locations that the map pointed us to were to some of the remnants of the Berlin Wall. Before coming to Berlin, I had a thought of posing at the wall with a hammer, but I never got one and I don’t think the people would have been very happy with me doing that. The segments of the wall here showed a lot of graffiti along its entire length. The city also preserved the guard tower and showed some of the methods of preventing escapes. Also in the area was a memorial for those who died while trying to flee to West Germany.

East German Cars

One of the peculiar things about Berlin was the fact that tourists can still take rides in cars (known as a Trabant or Trabi for short) that the GDR once used. I looked inside one of them and it just seemed so old and run down. I figure the only reason that these cars are still around are because of their historical/moneymaking value.

Really Cool Old-Style German Font

When I walked through some of the old train stations, I came across a really cool looking vintage font that I felt was so characteristic of Germany. Maybe I watched too many documentaries or something.

Checkpoint Charlie

Taking the train from Nordbahnhof, we made our way to Checkpoint Charlie, one of the border crossings once used before the unification of East and West Germany. The old border crossing booth and the sign telling people they’re leaving the American Sector still remains today. Standing outside are also two people holding American flags. Near the border booth, there is a giant sign with an American soldier on it and on the reverse side, there is a Soviet soldier. On the street, street vendors sold random things like fur hats with the logo of the Soviet Union on it, gas masks, and flags of the GDR and USSR.

Haus am Checkpoint Charlie

Adjacent to the border crossing, there was a museum dedicated to the documenting the border security between East and West Germany. The museum documented various methods of escape such as hiding people inside the hood of a car and using a hot air balloon. Also displayed were tools that people used to escape like special wall climbing footwear and stories of escapes. Seeing all these different methods made me realize how smart these people were. I would have never thought of something like that. Sadly, I was already super tired while walking through this museum and I was ready to just go back to the hostel and sleep. It was still light out at the time. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take photographs in this museum.

DFB Cup Final

While in Berlin, we saw a lot of people walking around wearing stuff from football teams and apparently the DFB Cup Final was to be played in the Berlin Olympic Stadium. To catch the football game, we went to a bar to tune in. While at this bar, I got to try Berlin-style wheat beer. Theirs was different than the wheat beer I usually drink because here, they had beer cocktails. I tried the red and green Berliner wheat beer. The red one had a raspberry flavour while the green one had a woodruff flavour.

The Fernsehturm

The Fernsehturm is the TV tower where people can go up to see a view of the city. It is also one of the tallest buildings in the European Union. We didn’t go here since we didn’t really care so much about the view and we went to see other landmarks instead.

Potsdamer Platz at Night

According to my boss at work, Potsdamer Platz was a must see at night, and after seeing it for myself, I totally agree with him. The beauty of this place was the architecture that looked so beautiful in the night, especially the Sony Center. The roof of the Sony Center was shaped like an umbrella and its color would gradually change between blue and purple.

Französische Straße

Located on this street were the Französischer Dom, Berlin Concert House, and Deutscher Dom. Each of these three buildings have quite a bit of history and are all have amazing architecture. This place is definitely the place to be to see old-style architecture in Berlin.

Fassbender & Rausch Chocolatiers

This chocolatier is quite well known and their store is frequently visited by tourists. What makes it so special is that they built many of the landmarks in Berlin out of chocolate. Anything made of chocolate is cool. The longer I stayed in this store, the bigger craving for chocolate I had.

Führerbunker

During the Battle of Berlin, Hitler stayed in his bunker beneath his New Reich Chancellery. I went to the location of where the bunker once was only to find the area replaced by pretty regular things like shops and apartments. The side of the street here had plaques explaining the history of this area and its use for Hitler’s Bunker.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

Near Hitler’s Bunker was a memorial for the Jewish victims of the holocaust. The memorial had thousands of concrete blocks, or stelae, of varying heights arranged in a grid pattern. According to one of the designers of the memorial, Peter Eisenman, he stated that “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.” Walking through the memorial reminded me so much of Bomberman. The memorial had the grid pattern just like in the game. It would probably also be really fun jumping from one block to the next, but it would have been really disrespectful.

Potsdamer Platz during the Day

To take a break and relax during the day, we went back to Potsdamer Platz for a beer. Now I understand why my boss told me to come here at night instead of during the day. It doesn’t look as nice at this hour.

Victory Column

Similar to the Arc de Triomphe on Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris, the Victory column stands in the end of the street Unter den Linden and is similarly surrounded by a giant roundabout. The column serves to commemorate the Prussian victories in the Danish-Prussian War, Austro-Prussian War, and the Franco-Prussian War. Surrounding the column are other smaller statues. One of the statues, I thought I saw my last name on it, but looking more closely, I realized it said “Roon” instead of “Poon”. What a bummer.

Schloss Bellevue

Located in the Tiergarten District of Berlin is the official residence of the President of Germany. We sat on the grass outside the residence to take a rest and to admire the beauty of the schloss and to watch the bike race that was happening just on the adjacent road.

Soviet War Memorial

Built using stone from the Reich Chancellery not long after the end of the Second World War, this memorial remembers the war dead of the Soviet Union, particularly the 80 000 soldiers who died in the Battle of Berlin. The memorial is of a statue of a Soviet soldier and on its left and right sides are two 152 mm Howitzer artillery pieces and two T-34 tanks (for some reason, birds like to go inside the barrel of the tank’s main gun). When I looked at the artillery piece, I tried to open the chamber for where the rounds go and tried to change the angle of the gun, but none of that worked. I’m pretty sure they didn’t want people messing with it. Behind the building is a small museum documenting the memorial’s construction and the Battle of Berlin. The memorial used to be guarded by Soviet troops during the Cold War even though it was in the British zone of occupation and now it is managed by the city.

Hackesche Höfe

One of my friends suggested that we go here since this place is known for its beautiful courtyards. It had eight interconnected courtyards, each with its own unique design. Some of the courtyards had tables for people to relax with coffee or beer while others had gardens.

Berliner Dom

Located on Museum Island, the Berliner Dom is a cathedral that belongs to the Evangelical Church. What was weird was that when we arrived there, we saw a group of people there having a cosplay party. There was one guy waving around a flag of the Empire of Japan. I never knew Anime was that big in Germany. Even weirder is that some of these kids were frolicking in the fountain in front of the Dom.

Museum Island

Another well known landmark in Berlin is Museum Island, which is an area with five internationally well known museums. They are the Altes Museum, Neues Museum, Alte Nationalgalerie, Bode Museum, and Pergamon Museum. We didn’t go in any of these museums since none of us were that interested in what the museums had to offer. The Alte Nationalgalerie had a look that seemed to have been inspired by the Greek Parthenon (but I’m not sure). While we were there, the sky started raining for about 15 minutes. It was quite refreshing since it was really hot earlier in the day.

Food

Although we didn’t try any food that were unique to Berlin (such as currywurst), we did splurge for one of our meals, and I found the food we had to be really delicious. Since Berlin is a lot closer to the coast than Stuttgart, I got to enjoy better quality seafood.

New Synagogue

Prior to the Second World War, the synagogue was badly damaged during Kristallnacht and the synagogue could no longer hold any services. Since the war, the synagogue was reconstruct and it is now the main synagogue for the Jewish community in Berlin.

Olympic Stadium

The current stadium was originally built for the 1936 Summer Olympics. Since the stadium was built during the Nazi period, the architecture of the building follows the Nazi style. Apparently, it was at these Olympic games that the tradition of the torch marathon began.

Potsdamer Platz for the Third Time

On our second night in Berlin, we went back to the Sony Center to relax for a little bit again. This time I got to try new kinds of beer such as mango and passion fruit flavoured wheat beer. It had an interesting flavour, but I thought the regular kind tasted a little better.

The Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag at Night

When we arrived here at night, we found this place to be deserted even though the landmarks here looked amazing in the night. It was a good thing for us since there weren’t any tourists around. It allowed me to get really clear shots of these places.

The East Side Gallery

This area contains a continuous segment of the Berlin Wall that is 1.3 km in length. Along the wall are paintings from artists around the world to promote freedom in the world. The gallery also features the iconic political painting of Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker kissing during the days of the GDR. There was also a souvenir shop here that stamped people’s passports with the GDR stamp for one euro. I thought that was a cool gimmick.

The Topography of Terror

To document the terrible deeds that the Nazi regime and the SS perpetrated between 1933 and 1945, an open-air museum was set up at the site of an old SS installation. It talked about how the Nazi’s transported people from conquered areas to the concentration and extermination camps set up across the continent. There was even a special exhibit just on the war crimes perpetrated by Adolf Eichmann. Near the museum were also SS buildings that have been converted to government offices.

Going Home

After three days of travelling in Berlin, we were all very tired and we were ready to go home. We went to our train platform for the ICE Sprinter about five minutes before the departure to find out that our train wasn’t there. We had no idea were it was and we didn’t want to miss the train. Apparently, some arsonists damaged some parts of the railway so the train ended up stopping on a different platform. Luckily, we found out in time and we managed to get on before it left. On the way back, I got to see some fantastic scenery of the German country side.

Souvenirs

I found that it was this trip that I spent the most money on souvenirs. I ended up buying Ampelmann themed cell phone accessories and a full sized flag of the USSR (not that I’m a communist or anything).

More photos here

I really should have posted this week ago when it happened; time did not work in my favor. After having worked for a while, I met a few interns, and I went on this trip with them. We met up in the morning to take the regional express train to Tubingen. Upon arriving, we made our way to the old town. While walking, we saw a river separating the town similar to Heidelberg. The streets also looked similar to many historic German cities. There are probably some distinct differences between each city, but I’m not knowledgeable enough about the architecture of the period. We then took a bus to the main attraction of the town, the Bebenhausen Abbey.

Walking around the monastery kept reminding me about Diablo II (the nerd in me talking). It was quite reminiscent of the Rogue Monastery, but we obviously were not being chased by sword-wielding skeletons. Located in the outer cloister is the tourist information center, church, cemetery, and various historic buildings.

Walking further into the monastery, we came arrived at the inner cloister. A large hallway enclosed the area on all sides, with doors in the hallway leading to rooms for public display. Along the wall were stone plaques dedicated to the history of the place. In the center is a fountain that has been dried up and I don’t know if it is used in the summer. It kind of reminded me of an exhausted health/mana fountain.

The rooms inside the monastery contained information and artifacts displayed for people to see. In one of the rooms, there was a entrance to the catacombs. Maybe if I went down there I’d find Andariel.

The next day, we went to visit Hohenzollern Castle, the ancestral seat of the Hohenzollern family. Two castles had previously been constructed there before, but were destroyed during war or due to lack of care. The castle that remains today was constructed for Frederick William IV of Prussia. The sole purpose of the castle’s construction was as a memorial to the Hohenzollern family and not as an actual residence for anyone.

Along the battlements of the castle stood statues of Prussian royalty. They probably didn’t fight in many battles and since they didn’t look very physically fit to me. They probably just ate a lot.

The castle possesses a lot of defensive structures, but since this castle was built only as a memorial, it was all just for show.

The top level of the castle was the central courtyard. Along the battlements was a view from 855 m above sea level.

We took a tour inside the castle, but unfortunately, they did not allow photography on the premises. The ballroom of castle contained pillars of pure marble even though nobody ever used it. Nowadays, the castle is open for tourists and private functions such as weddings.

Inside one of the rooms were paintings on the wall dedicated to remembering each member of the House of Hohenzollern. In the hallways were paintings of various people and of the two previous castles that were built. One of the paintings was of Baron von Steuben. He assisted the Americans during the Revolutionary War and received a thank you letter from George Washington for his service. Since monarchies dominated at the time, there was talk of choosing a king to govern the United States, but obviously that never happened. At the time, their choice was one of the members of the Prussian royal family.

Some rooms displayed some personal items of the Prussian Kaisers. Apparently, a lot of them liked tobacco and even had a really fancy looking box for tobacco snuff. Despite how unhealthy that sounds, one of those boxes took a bullet for one of the Kaisers and saved his life.

The most significant item was the Crown of Wilhelm II. It contained so much and so many different kinds of gems that it was worth millions. It sat inside clear glass display, but looking closely at it, there was a whole slew of motion detection devices around it for security. Unfortunately, because of my terrible memory, I can’t really remember much more. I thought the castle was Heidelberg was amazing, but this one completely beats it.

Photos:

• Tübingen
• Hohenzollern Castle