The Grand Tour Part III

This is part 3 in the ongoing series detailing my first trip to Europe in the Winter of 2005-2006. This may only interest some readers, be assured, regular posts will be coming. I am transitioning the blog to a different posting schedule, so there might be some hiccups until it gets ironed out. Thanks for reading!

Germany

Disembarking my Ryanair flight after touching down at Berlin’s Schonenfeld Airport (Now the main international airport in Berlin, succeeding Tegel), was my true first experience with being in a foreign place. The signs were in German first, then English, and I knew that people all around me spoke German. The passport agent was kind and efficient, placing my first Schengen stamp into my passport. Making my way to the S-Bahn station, I boarded and realised that I wouldn’t be able to understand the announcements made. I spoke some German, but not enough to understand the train loudspeaker. I would just have to keep an eye on the stops. I know that I didn’t have to change trains, and I was meeting Josh at the main train station in Berlin, the Zoologischer Garten.

Meeting Josh was surprisingly easy, since neither of us had a cellphone or any other means of communication. We simply agreed to meet an hour and a half after my plane landed at the Bahnhof Zoo, as it’s called. This, I realised when I got there, was like saying “Meet me at Grand Central at 2PM on New Years’ Eve.” Luckilly, we happen to bump into each other right after I got off the train. We took the S-Bahn out to the edge of West Berlin, a place called Charlottenburg. There, we managed to find our hostel and were hit by the unwelcome news that our room was not ready and we would have to sleep in the dining room.

The next few days in Berlin were fascinating. Josh spoke more German than I did, so we could communicate. I was introduced to Döner, which I found fascinating, as well as Germany’s liberal drinking laws (drinking a beer on the street is as common as drinking a soda on the street) and love for beer. We celebrated New Years’ with friends of Josh and made our way to a party in East Berlin. We saw Museums, sights, and I just generally took in the fact that I was in a foreign place. A few things of interest in Berlin:

The Wall

There is a preserved section of the Wall which we visited and found very fascinating. To see such a real display of the thing that separated Germany for 25 years was moving. There were other tourists there, but the wall was long enough (around 800m) that you could have some “alone time” with one of the worlds most recognisable symbols of Communism and the Iron Curtain. Being in East Berlin was my first experience with a place where Communism had been. Before leaving, I broke a rule and searched the wall for a loose piece of concrete. I found one in a pea-sized chunk in a small hole in the wall. Gingerly removing it, I placed it in a little vial which I still have.

I found that my experience with the wall was something very profound. There is something about standing and being able to put your hand on something that had a huge impact on the development of a continent, and really, the world.

Dresden and Munich

We were travelling on a Eurail pass, and so I had it validated at the main Berlin train  station, and we boarded our train bound for Dresden. I was excited about seeing it, because it was a major East German city, and it’s a less well known travel destination. We visited the newly opened Frauenkirsch. What truly surprised me about the town was that you could still see burn marks on the buildings from the bombing raid during World War II.

Following that, we left for Munich. We arrived in Munich, and pleasantly found our hostel right away. It turned out to be one of the nicest I’ve ever been to. We had key-card access to a private room and were one or two stops away from the main center of Munich. Our activities in Munich consisted of, during the day, seeing the various museums and attractions (The Residenz remains the single most impressive house I have ever seen), and at night, sampling the beers from various pubs and beer halls thoughout Munich.

Another highlight was our visit to the Deutsches Museum. Situated on an island in the Isar River, it is basically the science museum to end all science museums. The Louvre is the Deutsches Museum of paintings, basically. We spent half a day there, speedwalking, and I’m sure we saw only half of it.

After a few days (and more than a few litres of beer), we left Munich on a train bound for Strasbourg and the French Border. Here, we had one of the most incredible encounters when we met two Americans that actually knew many people we both knew in common. They were University students, but had gone to high school with a good friend of ours. The world is a small one.

Right after Mannheim, we crossed the River Rhine and got into Strasbourg, the first city I would ever visit in France.

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