Berlin: Un Cuento de Dos Ciudades

We spent the most time in Berlin; a complete week.  At first glance, it was a great amount of time where we could relax and get to know the city.  Compared to all of the other cities, however, it was a long period of time for sight seeing.  We were located in a great location as we were near Checkpoint Charlie: a border crossing between East and West Germany.  Although the countries weren't actually in power, the two countries had it manned until 1989 when the wall fell.

On our first day, we went and bought essentials: food (as to not spend too much money), shaving cream and a razor (because I had a beard or as close as I had ever gotten to having one), and we did laundry.  On the second day, we decided to do another walking tour of Berlin.  It was a tour that was supposed to last 3 hours that ended up taking 5.  We walked all over Berlin, which is a big city, and learned so much history about the Prussian Kingdom and, obviously, about World War II.  Berlin has an incredible history in such a short period of time and we didn't even mind that the tour ended late; it was free!  We even continued afterwards.

Our tour guide asked if anyone wanted to get beers after the tour and most of us said yes and we grabbed beers and headed towards the river right in front of the giant cathedral.  Our tour guide even called it the real Berlin experience because it is a common activity for young people and we were participating in it.  We found out that Berlin is an extremely international city.  Our tour guide was Irish and we met an Australian, another American, a Canadian, and two actual Germans.  It was an incredible night and a great way to start to our week.

The next night, we participated in a bar crawl after we climbed the Radisson Hotel to get the best view of the city.  This recommendation was actually made by our tour guide because you see all of the monuments for 10€ less than the famous Televison Tower and the TV Tower even shows in the pictures.  We timed it perfectly as when we were leaving the top it started to downpour and we ran to the metro.  By the time that we exited the metro, it had stopped raining and we made it back to our hostel to prepare for the bar crawl.  We stayed out until 4 AM which was late for some of us, but we had a blast.  It was incredible because while we were walking back to the hostel, the sun was coming out and we took a picture at Checkpoint Charlie with the lilac sky in the background.

We didn't think that we would want to do anything the next day, but we went walking by a strip of the Berlin wall that gave you an insight for Jews before and during the war and then the Berliners after the war.  It's incredible what other humans do to each other and this was in the 20th Century!

Now, if you haven't traveled with me, you might not know that I love castles and palaces.  I guess I just see them as potential future houses.  It turns out that a 40 minute train ride from Berlin is a town that has a garden of palaces that were either used by the royalty or used as summer homes.  We spent the majority of the day there seeing the gardens and the palaces, but we only went in one of them: the New Palace.  This was the last residence of the Prussian Kings before they were exiled to the Netherlands.  It reminded me a lot of Versaille and the Vienna Palace meaning that there was a clear sense of luxury and money put into the design.  It would make a great second house.

After the palaces, we decided to get dinner at the best kebab place in Berlin at a restaurant called Mustafa's.  It's lest of a restaurant and more of a stand and we're not talking about shish kebob, we're talking about pita bread full of shaved meat, lettuce, and sauces.  Well, in this particular stand, you bring your 3€ and not only do they include the original ingredients, they stuff it with peppers, eggplant, and add a spicy sauce.  It was one of the best kebabs I've had in my life and I ate them a lot in Spain.

Sometimes surprises happen and you just have to go with it.  This instance happened our last full day in Berlin.  We had climbed the Reichstag (German Parliament) and didn't know what we were going to do for dinner.  As luck would have it, one of the directors of my study abroad program saw that I was in Berlin and she invited us to Spanish tapas for dinner.  Obviously, I was over the moon.  This was an authentic Spanish experience where all of the employees are natives.  The food was magnificent and cheap.  It brought back memories of Spain and for a second I forgot in what country I was.  I even got to practice my Spanish although only sentences here and there as Emma doesn't know the language. I was in heaven.

REflecting back on Berlin, it was definitely a livable city as in I could see myself living there.  It would come in a close second to Spain as a place where I could see myself.  Maybe if they had more authentice Spanish tapas...

Praga: La Vengaza del Golem

Our next stop on our Eurotrip was Prague.  Prague was a top locale on my list because of all of the rave reviews from others that had gone there.  It did not disappoint as it has an enormous old part of the city and our hostel was inside of it.  It took five minutes to get to the main square that was so cool and quaint that we would just sit there to take it all in.

This trip started early as we got to our hostel at 9:00 AM when check-in was at 3:00 PM.  The hostel was so accommodating that they allowed us to drop off all of luggage, gave us breakfast, and wifi.  Reception even recommended a Free Walking Tour to pass the time that started at 11:00 and went until 2:00.  We took her up on that offer and went on the tour.  This decision turned out to be a great one as we got acquainted with the city from our very first moments in the city.  We toured the historical center of the city, saw the Prague Castle, and met the old Jewish section.  Our tour guide even told us the story about the golem created to protect the Jews but ultimately caused too much destruction and they had to destroy it.  We saw the synagogue where Rabbi Loew created and destroyed this clay monster.  I loved the story so much that I bought myself a little golem of my own.

After the tour we got typical Prague goulash with a pretzel.  We also wanted to try our palette with Prague beer as it is very well known.  We ordered the pilsner but got confused with our units and order 1 Liter each.  We were shocked to see how big the liter mugs were and even more surprised that it cost around $5.  Why's that? Well, the Czech Koruna is pretty weak right now and $1 is 24 czech koruna.  We were so happy! This city was the complete opposite of Geneva.

The next day, we decided to check out the Jewish museums, which is a string of synagogues and museums all under the same ticket.  It was a very emotional journey as the main reason that these buildings and artifacts were spared during the German occupation of the Czech Republic was because Hitler wanted to save this city as a tourist attraction for people who wanted to see an extinct religion.  Thankfully, it is used as a museum, but for a persevering religion with a rich history.  Doing these museums took up the entire day.  At night, we met a Mexican and a Venezuelan and went out with them.  I was so excited to use Spanish again.  Not having constant conversations in Spanish is definitely going to give me culture shock when I get back home.

The next couple of days were filled with sightseeing.  We walked around the main plaza that had my favorite attraction: the astronomical clock.  This enormous clock tells momre than the time; it tells you the position of the sun, the phase of the moon, and even the astrological sign of the moment all based on complicated math problems from 1410.  Yeah, it made us feel pretty stupid too.  I was so torn because I wanted the clock to be my souvenir, but after hearing the story of the golem, I changed my mind.

We also climbed up to Prague castle, the largest palace in Europe today.  We got another ticket that allowed us to go into many places including the lavish cathedral in the center and the palace itself.   We even entered a small street that resembled diagon alley and is where many famous Czechs lived.  Unfortunately, good weather didn't accompany us and we got a little wet.

After 4 days in Prague, when we had to leave, I decided that I could've studied abroad there, but it wouldn't be a city that I'd live in.  This little city is very touristic and caters to the tourists so much so that it was impossible to find a typical Czech experience.  I don't think we met even one Czech.  It was still a beautiful city though that I could have walked around for many more days.  Next off to Berlin!

Ginebra: Se Paga Triple Por Un Kebab

The beginning of our sibling adventure started in Geneva.  Emma and I had planned a massive Eurotrip through 6 cities in one month.  I was working in Spain and she had recently graduated from college.  Being in two different countries, we needed to time our flights to arrive at nearly the same hour to meet up.  We wouldn't have any wifi or smart phones to connect us; we had to rely on good old fashioned timing.  Emma did have to suffer through a 12 hour layover in Amsterdam, but all her exhaustiveness went away when we saw each other in the baggage claim on June 2nd.

Without saying anything, we both had one thing on our mind: food.  After checking into an Air bnb, we went to the only open restaurant on Tuesdays after 11:30 PM, McDonald's.  Here, we received our wake up call that Geneva was flipping expensive.  Our meal cost over $25, more than triple the prices in America and Spain.  This realization became the norm and we immediately became conscious of what we were spending.  Although we tried, it didn't help too much seeing as everything had unified prices.  We tried not to let this get to us, however, we had a budget and we couldn't drain it all in our first city.  In order to do this, we chose to do more walking.

Our first full day in Geneva, we walked the old district.  It was a great test for Emma's new FitBit as we were walking up and downhill all day.  The old town is also in between the center and where we were living so we went up and down several staircases.  We saw the first big church of Geneva which had reached the level of cathedral.  We passed through the gates and noticed it's massive size for such a small town.  After, we entered the oldest house in Geneva called Maison Tavel.  This turned out to be a perfect start to our trip as it gave us the entire history of Geneva starting from the Ice Age to current day Geneva.  Up to now all of this was free and we were learning a lot.  Then we went to the archaeological museum to see the remnants of the first church upon which the cathedral was built.

We also saw two very famous monuments of Genva: the flower clock and the Jet d'Eau.  The former is the second largest flower clock in the world.  A flower clock is exactly like it sounds except that the hands aren't made of flowers. It makes sense that they once had the largest in the world since Switzerland is known for its impeccable watches.  While looking a little above the flower clock, you see a never ending stream of water.  This is the latter monument: the Jet d'Eau.  Originally, a method of releasing the water pressure within Lake Geneva, it is now a principal symbol of Geneva.  It's incredible seeing this jet of water tower over everything and it even became a reference point for when we got lost.

Finally, we went to the Clock Museum.  This museum is dedicated to Patek and Phillipe, two famous watchmakers of Geneva.  They showed us a great collection of watches that were hundreds of years old and later showed us some of the most impressive watches that this famous pair made.  Finally, they told us about the most complicated watch in the world and how it works.  A lot of that went right over my head, but when I was watching the video, I thought I could reproduce the watch in my very own workshop.  And that's how we concluded our first day.  It turns out that outside of food, you don't really need to spend a lot of money in Geneva.  However, the second day, we did spend a little bit more. 

One of the few things that we did know about Geneva was the United Nations.  So we chose our second day to go to the Palais du Nations, the European center of the UN.  This didn't cost us money to get to as wee walked the long trek to the palace, however, we  we did pay the cover charge for the guided tour, which was totally worth it.  The Palace of Nations is such a beautiful building, and this branch of the UN deals with many humanitarian issues and peace efforts.  The tour was really informative and we enjoyed every minute.  On the way back to the apartment, we followed the river and then stopped to have lunch.  We took a break and watched the gorgeous aquamarine waters that reminded us so much of Lake Winnepesaukee.

The next two days we took really slow getting to know the beautiful city of Geneva.  Although not very touristy, it did have it's special nooks and crannies like the parks next to the river Rhone or the Mediterannean style Carouge.  We saw the sights less travelled and made living in Geneva affordable.  Our second stop was Prague!