I got into Munich late at night and even though the hostel was less than 200m from the train station, I still got lost getting there. But I got to walk past a local Circus in town: Krone Circus. I could tell even before I saw the signs that animals were around. The smell was very powerful. The hostel I stayed at was 4you. It wasn’t too great. The toilets were dirty, the showers terrible (hot water though), and the rooms packed full of beds. By far the worst hostel I’ve stayed in so far. But the people it hosted more than made up for it.

In the morning I got up to do the walking tour of Munich, by the same company: SANDEMAN (really advertising it, can you tell). There was even a pickup from our hostel. We met in the lobby and walked to the rathaus or townhall of Munich. There Harriet, from New Zealand, became our tour guide and we waited around learning the history of Munich for the townhall clock to go off, as it does on the hour.

Back in the day, there were no bathrooms so people would have to use the drains in this street as toilets. But that posed problems. One could lose his seat while going outside. So the beer hall installed toilets under the table. All one had to do was open his button fly, point, and shoot into the holes underneath the table. This presented another problem: backsplash. So the customers would carry a stick. To warn their neighbors they would wack their legs, then guide the urine down the stick and into the hole to prevent backsplash. Eventually real bathrooms were added away from the seats and women were allowed to enter. But the local loyal customers still have their own tables here and if you sit there and that customer comes in, they can move you off their table. There are even private lockers which hold these customers steins. Germans take their beer drinking seriously.

So the Australians really, really dig Oktoberfest. Almost the entire island/continent emigrates to Munich for this 16 day event. The increase in population in the city increases by more than 16 million during these days. Well, when people get drunk they often lose their way and sometimes their things. Inevitably, passports were lost. But Australia does not have an embassy here. So every Oktoberfest, they set up a temporary consulate inside the British embassy, solely for the purpose of helping drunk Australians return to Australia. That’s awesome. I wish our government would do stuff like that.

This is where the tour ended so I went exploring now.

It took almost two hundred years from this point to actually build the tunnel because threats of invasions by both countries among other wars kept stopping progress.

I was lucky to get to see an electricity demonstration. Although, I couldn’t stop laughing.

By this time it was getting dark so I headed back to the hostel and asked some Australian girls that were on the walking tour if they wanted to grab some dinner at a local Beer Hall. They said they were going to Chinese food but that I was welcome to join them. And so I spent the evening with Elie, Eleanor, and Emilia, and had a delicious dinner, with great company.

The next morning Elie and Eleanor decided to go to the castle while Emilia and I got on the Dachau tour, the only concentration camp to be open the entire 12 years of the Third Reich. SANDEMAN’s offered this tour and sadly, I forgot our tour guides name. And I wanted to remember it too because he said something I really respect. I’ll paraphrase: Remember, the holocaust was not antisemitic, it was antihuman.

It was a rather short ride to Dachau on the train, about 20 minutes. I didn’t know it was that close to the city center.

 

 

 

 

 

WARNING

The following four images are somewhat graphic. Specifically: 1, 2, and 4. 3 isn’t, but it’s hard to see it without seeing the others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Upon returning to Munich, Emilia and I hung out with two Australian guys we met on the tour today: Samuel and Ryan. Samuel started his own web site hosting business a few years back and is doing rather well now. I don’t know what Ryan does. But their both great guys, really fun to hang out with. If I had met them earlier on my trip I would have asked if I could travel the rest of the time with them. As it is though, Sam’s flying out the same day I am.

We all decided to go to the city museum. And were mildly surprised at what we found when we arrived.

There was an exhibit of Nazi photography during the war.

Photos captured by soldiers keeping photo albums basically. Although, there was one disturbing sequence of photos. It showed a soldier getting his leg amputated by way of saw and without pain killers. I only went through it once.

Then we jumped over to the other side of the museum to see the circus exhibit. It was a history of circuses and the exhibit had costumes of people as well as advertisement posters from each era of circus: traveling and stationary. I found it fascinating seeing when certain animals started being used in the circus and by whom. We didn’t get to see all the exhibit though because we plopped ourselves down in front of a silent movie playing in one corner: “The Circus” starring Charlie Chaplin. And it was exactly the cheering up we needed. We were all busting up laughing and ended up watching it for almost an hour. We would have watched the whole thing but the museum staff kicked us out because the museum was closing. I highly recommend that movie, maybe even over Avatar. Then we walked down the main old street deciding what to do next.

After dinner, Elie and Eleanor came from the hostel to join us for dessert. They had just gotten back from the castle excursion.

Then we hung out, talked about random things, and had a grand ole time.

Returning to the hostel and dead tired but determined to stay awake a bit longer, I taught everyone how to play Nertz, and we played cards for the next few hours. It switched to a game of B.S. and to finish it off a game of Ultimate Fish. We said our farewells, although I hope any of them come to visit me in the states. They were all really cool people.

I slept for a few hours and boarded the 7am train to Zurich.

The end of my trip was approaching.

I woke around 10am to find out that I had more time than I thought left at the apartment before I was kicked out. I decided to make good use of the extra time and go to the Pergamon Museum on Museum Island. I got there around noon and the queue was about half a futbol field long. But I met some friendly Irish men in Berlin for the New Year’s parties and we talked about our experiences the night before. It surfaced that all of us were amazed at how many people were down at the Brandenburg. Their names were Connell, Colin, Brian, and alas I forgot the last one’s name. But they were pretty chill. We got into the museum rather fast, less than an hour of waiting.

I took the free audio guide as did some of them. As it was an individual thing, we said farewell just in case we didn’t see each other anymore and we each went to explore the museum.

But through the market gate was the exhibit I came here to see. Artifacts from Babylon. Babylon, from 2300BC. That’s legit.

At this point, I looked at my watch and realized I needed to get back so Susanne didn’t lock the doors on me with my stuff still inside. But when I returned to the apartment, Urs had come back from Switzerland and I was welcome to spend as much time as I wanted. So I stayed the rest of my time in Europe in his apartment. No, not really. But I should have. Urs knows Berlin like the back of his hand. And not the tourist parts that one can familiarize himself/herself with by picking up one of those tourist maps. I’m talking about the real Berlin, the living Berlin. Urs bought this apartment over 10 years ago and has seen East Berlin evolve since the wall fell. He knows the history of the underground clubs and bars that have arisen over the years and moved farther away from the center maintaining their identity while other more proper bars, and flagship stores continue to populate the center area. Oh, and he has some really cool music. And a pretty dope setup in his house. Floor speakers in every room all connected to one central system so you can rock out throughout the house as you pass from one room to the next. When I came back in the evening after buying my train ticket, I could hear his music from the lobby of the apartment building. It was bumpin’. Lucky for me he invited me to dinner, so we rolled out at about 9pm.

He took me to this Indian food place where he was pretty much a celebrity. Urs walks over to the table he wants to sit at and we sit down. The waiter takes his and my orders for drinks while I peruse the menu for some foods. No sooner had the waiter disappeared around the corner with our food orders, does he return with our dishes sizzling from the kitchen. The two dudes at the table next to us were not thrilled (they were sitting there when we arrived and had not yet gotten their food; they got their food within a minute of us getting ours though). On top of this great service, the food tasted amazing and the music was cool too. I got Tandoori chicken and tried putting some spicy pepper sauce on a couple of bites. Everything was delicious. And I learned a lot about Berlin, the unique clubs it houses, one of which saw the birth of techno music. Now I must go back to Berlin and go to that club.

Afterward, we stopped at a bar near his flat called Erdbeer. It’s a play on German words as Erdbeere translates to strawberry. So the walls were painted red. The seats were super old and deteriorated, the lights were dim, none of the fancy bars that Urs argues does not have as much life in it. He convinced me of such. This place had a personality of its own and the atmosphere was warm and friendly, people of all ages lounging and conversing throughout the bar. The building it’s housed in was originally a butchery and so one can sit back where the meat hung up (the meat is no longer there though). I’m now convinced Berlin is one of the most living cities I’ve visited. I’m gonna have to come back for sure and go to all these cool places.

What’s more is that a lot of this sort is really close to his flat. The Erdbeer bar was literally just around the corner. Anyway, I had a great last night in Berlin and immediately fell asleep upon returning back to the flat as I had to catch a 454 train to Prague in the morning.

Definition: In Europe, New Year’s is called Silvester. Hence, New Year’s Parties are called Silvester Parties.

I went to the biggest Silvester Party in the world on New Year’s Eve 2009. Some skeptics say it was number 2 in size, but those nay sayers are doubters. This party was held from the Brandenburg Gate to the Lady of Victory. A distance of more than 1km separates these two landmarks. And filling every possible spot in between these two famous monuments: people, thousands and thousands of people. We totaled in excess of 1 million people. And where was I?

I came straight from the theatre and arrived around 7:30pm with the intention of checking it out, then going out to dinner with Susanne & Bea, and returning afterward. Let’s just say I never made it out for dinner. It took me some time to figure out how to get into the center area inside the fence, but with a little work and some people skills I worked myself up to the fence to ask those around how to get in. Just as I got there, I feel a push from someone behind me. Turning around, I notice a smiling girl holding onto my jacket. She says, “They wouldn’t let me through, but they let you through, so I came along.” I now had a friend, who brought other friends, to enjoy the party with. Her name was Denise and she and her 3 companions were from northern Germany near Hesse. We made it into the center inside the gates, and the dancing began.

At first, bands played short sets, and it took longer to set up and clean up than their sets. In between DJ’s would spin some vinyl and we got a mixture of hip hop, techno, rock, oldies. In the beginning of the night they played Killers’ Human, and at the end, they played a remix of it. The first band to last a long time was this one:

People of all shapes, sizes, ages, and faces came to this party. I was amazed at how nonviolent it was. If people ran into someone else, both would turn and give hugs yelling, “Happy New Year” in various languages. Berlin brought a lot of happy drunks into their city for this party. New Zealanders came, Australians, Irish, Scottish, British, French, Germans, Americans, a whole bunch of people. Those were the ones I met though.

I took some videos of the night because I thought they would better represent the fun I was having. Here’s the first, Pink’s “So What”:

The Crazy Frog even made an appearance:

I was really pleased, and so were many others, as when the clock stroke midnight, they played a set of Michael Jackson’s songs which lasted almost 8 minutes. It was great.

And the music never stopped. Well sometimes. But they kept singing this German song the lyrics of which were: “It’s two thousand ten and we’re not gonna stop partying. Gonna party all night…

Then Captain Jack showed up again. He was the first performer that I saw, and most of them came back in the wee hours of the morning. He sang a lot more during the night:

The bass on the video sounds terrible because it was too much for my camera mic to handle. And when I say too much to handle, I mean it was deep, and pounding on my chest, so that I could feel it more than hear it. Absolutely fantastic. This makes up for me missing Love Fest this year.

They even played some ABBA:

So I danced for almost 8 hours and didn’t eat anything for 12 hours as I had a curry-wurst right before Avatar (15:50) and finally a bowl of cereal when I got back to the flat around 4:15. It was weird though, after 9pm, the hunger just sort of went away, and I ate the cereal because I thought I should, not because I was hungry. All in all, it was an awesome night. I’m thinking about flying back next year. I’m also thinking about the money needed to fly back. Anyway, I made some really fun friends and danced all night. Not a bad way to spend New Years. I got some short hours of sleep at the flat and then woke up to a new year: zweitausend zehn.

I arrived in Berlin in the morning after having to rig a bed sleeping on the seats in the train. After meeting Susanne, my second au pair, at the corner near her brother’s apartment in East Berlin, I took a shower and we went out with Bea, her friend, to do some low-key exploring of Berlin. Susanne’s brother Urs lives in East Berlin and so she and her friend were spending New Year’s there. I luckily got to tag along. We walked to Alexander Platz where one Berlin Wall Exhibit was displayed.

The exhibit was powerful and had some very moving photos of the events that eventually culminated in the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The guards had no idea what was going on, and the higher ups were watching opera at the time and could not be contacted so the guards called the only person they could get a hold of who told them first to wait around a bit and the crowd would disperse, which it did not. Next he told them to allow anyone through who had papers, and there were 2 tourists over for the day who had papers so the guards let them through. With the gate open, the guard in the middle of the street looked back at the crowd, shrugged his shoulders, and stepped aside as millions of people rushed through to start one of the largest parties ever. At the end of the long weekend, they returned home but the wall was down. The East German government had lost its mandate and its control over the people quickly disappeared.

But it was super cold out so we decided to get some lunch inside but not before snapping this shot:

Then we jumped on a city bus to check out the city from the warmth inside. We stopped at the center to visit the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church which I had been wanting to see. It was a huge church that stood in Berlin but was repeatedly bombed in WWII so that only a small portion of it remains. The ruins were left to memorialize the victims in the war and to remind people of the war so that it won’t happen again.

I saw that ignorance common in many Americans that gives us a bad name whilst in this church. A teenage girl was reading ahead in the exhibit and when her father finally reached the point she was at she pointed and said, “Look at the new modern church (part of it is the thing to the left in the picture above) and now look at the other plan they voted against (a more traditional church that resembled the original but didn’t keep the ruins). I understand that it was the 60’s, well late 50’s and people were sorta out there during that time, and going for the modernism effect, but that other church was way prettier.” Whoosh! The whole idea of a memorial including the original ruins was completely lost to her. Super embarrassing especially when earlier on in the exhibit it said why the ruins were kept. The dad muttered something under his breath and shrugged, either realizing his daughter’s idiocy, or also contributing to that ignorant American mindset.

The next morning I woke to do a free walking tour of the city. It was hosted by SANDEMAN’S company and I highly recommend it. In fact, I switched one of my cities just so I could take another one. The company operates free as well as private tours in 9 cities across Europe. Here is the website: www.neweuropetours.eu The tour guides are energetic and keep the tour funny and give a lot of trivia and cover history of the city in 3 hours time.

Apparently, Napoleon liked the Lady of Peace on top of the gate and stole her. But the Germans didn’t like that so they stole her back. To mock the French, they replaced her olive branch with the Imperial Cross and Eagle and renamed her Lady of Victory. In addition, they turned her head to gaze upon the French Embassy instead of facing down the square, and named the square: Paris Square. The Germans have a good sense of humor.

I’ll include some of the highlights of the tour.

Urs (Susanne’s brother) told me later that people sun bathe on them in the summer time and run through the maze. While some people might get offended by this, I think it’s great. Not only does this memorialize the deaths of so many, but it creates life where other memorials fail to do so.

Funny story about that tower. The East German Government under Kronecker wanted to construct it so that West Germany would always look up at East Germany. Unfortunately, as Berlin is built on a swamp, the East German architects couldn’t get any designs to stand up in the marsh, or if they did stand up, the tower would sink. Kronecker secretly shipped in Scandinavian architects to help them build this tower. And today it still stands.

The tour ended here and I decided to go inside the Berliner Dome. An organist was playing so I was treated with a small concert. I took a video of it too:

Afterward, I wanted to visit the Pergamon and New Museum but the lines were too long and I wouldn’t make dinner. So instead I went back to the French Cathedral and that Christmas market and climbed to the top of the French Cathedral’s tower for some pretty good views.

Then I went back to this chocolate store we had passed earlier because there were some pretty amazing sculptures inside.

I headed back to the flat where I was to meet Susanne and Bea to get ready for dinner. They had made reservations for a delicious Vietnamese place. This is what I ordered.

The next morning was New Year’s Eve Day. My plans were to go visit the Pergamon and the New Museum and catch anything else I missed. Unfortunately, I slept a little late and so after checking out The Reichstag, whose roof access was closed due to bad weather:

I missed entrance to the Pergamon and New Museum who had closed for the holiday. So I decided to check out the park dedicated to Felix Mendelssohn.

Disappointed as this day had become mostly a failure, I stopped at Potsdam Square on the way back home to check it out as I’d heard it was cool. Well the square was pretty bland, but I could see the Sony Center at one end of it. And guess what’s at the Sony Center?

More importantly, there was a movie theatre here. A really good one. The best sound I’ve heard in a movie theatre before. Yes, that means I watched a movie here. Which movie? Oh, I don’t think it’s that hard to guess.

But the curtains were once more pulled back later that night as I went to the largest party I’d ever been to, and had copious amounts of fun. But I didn’t talk like that. Nor did I talk like Akon in David Guetta’s “Sexy Chick” song which I heard for the first time at the party.