Am I the only one who thinks it's weird that the English, Spanish, and German words for "Germany" are all so different? Like there's no similarity at all. I'm sure it's really different in other languages too...who came up with that?
Anywho, WOW! Germany! Both Hayden and I have ancestors from Germany (along with, turns out, like half of all Americans) so we felt a little more connected to the country than the others we had visited. Upon our arrival in Munich from Zurich, we went a little crazy buying food from the market because comparatively, everything was SO CHEAP! In reality, the food was probably regular price, but it felt good not to spend an arm and a leg for a good meal.
Oh, Germany...where do I begin?! I had no idea how much history we would learn in visiting just two cities in Europe's strongest country (economically). We promptly met up with our CouchSurfing host Robert, and MAN what a ball of energy! This guy was probably the best host we had our whole trip. He's about my parents' age, divorced, working for the bank as a genealogist helping with wills and lineage and whatnot (SO cool), and every year he goes to a big medieval convention where he spends a few weeks living as if it were the 1600's. His house is decorated with legit knights armor and other random, really old artifacts. The guy is related to the royal family of Germany...like what? He was such an interesting person and LOVED taking us around the city and telling us all about it.
I didn't know much about Munich before we visited, but we soon learned that it was like Nazi headquarters for a long time...I had no idea! It's basically the city where it all started, and there was a sort of eerie feeling as we walked the streets that were once almost completely obliterated by the Allies near the end of the war. Walking around with Robert was fascinating. He pointed out Hitler's office building, the Eternal Flame Monument to the victims of Nazism, and other interesting locations that just made me shiver a little, like this brick wall that is still damaged from flying shrapnel.
I think the country likes to leave some things like this unfixed as reminders, like the little plaques in the ground, of what happened as a pledge to never let it happen again.
This is one of my favorite WWII stories we learned while abroad. This little alleyway is located just before Odeonsplatz where the Feldherrnhalle is located. The Feldherrnhalle is a replica of the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence (which we also saw) and became a symbol of Hitler's movement. Passersby were required to salute the structure, but those who disagreed with Hitler's regime would turn left down this road (Viscardigasse) so as to avoid having to salute. The gold line is a symbol of the resistance and was actually really inspiring. Robert said his grandmother used to walk with grocery bags in both hands so she'd never have to salute at any location around the city.
The morning of our first full day, we boarded a train to the Dachau concentration camp. Of course, it wasn't the cheery, fun, carefree activity we were used to having in our travels, but we felt it would be really important and life-changing to get more up-close and personal with one of history's darkest times. All of the WWII museums and monuments in Germany are completely free of charge because the country does not want to make a profit on something so vile. We picked up an audio guide, which was really helpful and informative. We walked through the building where the prisoners would check in and remove all of their belongings. We read the biographies of so many Jews, Roma people, and political dissenters who passed through those halls and into the camp. I had no idea about the horrible science experiments they did on the poor people...so inhumane. I cannot imagine how people could be so cruel.
Here's us standing in the courtyard where they would take roll every day. They would make the prisoners stand there for hours in whatever harsh weather, and anyone who fell or couldn't stand still would be shot.
The whole place was really eerie and sad, but nothing got me like THIS room did, or the rooms just before this one. Here are the cremators, where the Nazis would burn the bodies of the dead. To get here, we had to walk through several gas chambers which just made my heart drop. I believe there is a special place in heaven for those who had to endure this awful torture.
Of course, not all of the victims of the Nazi regime are known by name, so there is a grave dedicated to the thousands of unknown people who were killed.
It really was such an eye-opening experience, one we will certainly never forget. I am glad that Germany has sought not to cover up its dark past, but to make it part of a very public conversation in an effort to prevent anything like it from happening ever again. I think the USA could take a page out of their book.
I feel weird moving on so abruptly after such a sad section, but we gotta talk more about food, obviously. What is Munich most famous for? Their biergartens, of course! We couldn't leave Bavaria without visiting one of their famous biergartens. This one was located in the English Garden, interestingly the name of the main park in Munich. Basically, you enter the restaurant area, grab some heavy food (mostly potatoes, sauerkraut, bratwurst, and pork knuckle) and fill up your giant keg of beer (see the guy sitting right behind us). I mean, people are drinking like that just right in the middle of their workday! Europeans are just a liiiittle drunk at all times, it's amazing. Anyway, it was quite the experience! And honestly looking around I noticed a lot more fat people that I was used to seeing in Spain and the other countries that serve less fattening food. But hey, it was good for an afternoon to stuff my face with some yummy pork knuckle and potatoes!
And, of course, there are the pretzels. Look how huge this thing is!
After eating we were exhausted, so we headed over to a grassy knoll in the park and took a little snooze. This became a pattern we'd follow in almost every city we visited. Whenever we got sleepy, we'd just hit up a local park and take a nap! I forgot to mention we'd done it in Switzerland, but every major European city has some sort of green area to comfortably nap.
A little haggard looking, but nevertheless, well-rested.
That evening we met up again with Robert who took us out to this little town about 45 minutes outside the city. It was adorable! The perfect little German town that you imagine when you picture Bavaria. Fun fact: there are no speed limits on the autobahn, so Robert was FLYING down the road at probably 120 mph at one point. It was a little scary tbh, but apparently, people are used to driving crazy down there because I don't think they have nearly as many car accidents as we have in Utah.
Anyway, look at how cute this place is! Those onion-shaped domes on top of the towers are so characteristic of the region.
No, this is not a Google stock image, I really took this picture. And those are really the Alps in the distance. The German countryside is pretty easy to take pics of.
The next day we did a little more touring (and eating) before getting on our train to Salzburg. We visited the Documentation Center located right next to the old Nazi headquarters and learned even more about the Nazis and how exactly Hitler rose to power. It's crazy how simple little lies can find their ways into entire societies and ultimately lead to so much hate and destruction.
Aaaaand that's it for Munich! We really really enjoyed it there, in fact, the city is called the "most livable city in Germany" because of its many green spaces, fun nightlife, and community programs. I wouldn't mind living there someday!
Like I've mentioned, after Munich, we went to Salzburg, then Vienna, and then Prague. After leaving Prague, though, we traveled back into Germany through Dresden (which was cool to see, even just through the train window) to Berlin! I was a little skeptical about visiting Berlin...I had heard it was a little trashy and not very charming, but I ended up liking it a lot more than I thought I would. We really learned so much! And the food was delicious and CHEAP. The CouchSurfing experience on the other hand...well, it was bad. Our host was a total slob and didn't stop smoking the whole time we were inside his apartment (unless, of course, he was in the middle of a World of Warcraft game glued to his computer...yikes). He was great to talk to and had a lot of knowledge of the area, but his apartment was disgusting and he didn't really make a bed for us, just made us sleep right on his nasty couch. He's the only one I had to say, "Wouldn't stay again" on his CouchSurfing profile.
Anyway, back to the good stuff. We spent our first evening touring around the Tiergarten and eating the most delicious kebabs...and the cheapest! We quickly learned that the food (and really everything) in Berlin is pretty darn cheap! The cost of living is really low, I guess that sort of carried over from the communist years. Basically, the whole city is just chuck-full of monuments. The place has a pretty dark past, not only with WWII and communism but going back centuries there have been sooo many wars and famines and plagues...I guess, kind of like all of Europe.
Again, we were big-time slackers in the photo-taking department while in Berlin. I'm sad about it because we really learned about and saw so much, but it's just a lot harder to get good pictures in cities than in nature. I'll share what little we have, though!
On that first night exploring the area, we came across these steps outside a church that was completely bombed out during the war. I was confused as to why the pictures of those who (I assumed) died at this spot were so recent...they didn't seem like WWII victims at all. Come to find out, this was the square where there was a terrorist attack at a Christmas market in 2016. I was on my mission at the time so I didn't remember this specific incident, but I do remember when there were several attacks around Europe and it was so sobering to be at the spot where so many innocent people were killed. The line through the steps signifies where the Berlin Wall once stood, kind of cool. There's a line drawn pretty much all the way through the city so you can see where it was.
Like I said, the city is just filled with monuments, and none more recognizable than the Brandenburg Gate.
This stands at the beginning of one of Berlin's many busy wide open boulevards. Because the city was originally constructed to make it easy for armies to pass through (I'm not sure exactly what century that was), there are so many wide-open spaces, far more than any other city we visited. I believe the city is the "greenest" in Europe, with the most parks and grassy areas of any other city. It's also probably the dirtiest city we saw...I forgot to mention, the minute we got out of the train, we both agreed it's the most New York City-like place we'd been. If you had told me we were in the US at that moment, I would have believed you. Lots of fast food, smells of urine, and people speaking perfect English (albeit with a bit of an accent). Also, the river is the color BLACK, it's so nasty and there are trash and graffiti all over the place. But, as we learned in yet another Rick Steves audio tour, Berlin is sort of a symbol of a city that is "always becoming, but will never be." Deep stuff.
Just around the corner from the Brandenburg Gate is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. This is such an interesting monument. It covers a whole city block, and it's just all these stone blocks of different sizes and heights arranged in a grid. The idea behind it is that there really is no idea...the meaning behind the monument is all up to interpretation. It's so interesting as you walk down the aisles and see people passing in and out of your view. It's a very sobering place that just commands reverence.
Just across the street from this is a parking lot with a small billboard signifying the spot where Hitler killed himself inside his underground bunker. While Germany is so good at making monuments and museums about the war available to the public, they do not want to glorify Hitler in any way by making his death spot a tourist attraction, so that's the reasoning behind the low-key billboard. There were just a few other people there reading the sign, but definitely not like the crowds of people visiting other monuments (crowds that were way smaller than normal...corona has its perks!).
On our second day in Berlin, we visited the Berlin Wall Memorial. I had heard about the Berlin Wall so many times and I knew it was associated with the communist regime, but I learned so much more about it by visiting this monument. The lines on the ground in the grass mark where houses that bordered the wall used to be. People would escape from the East to the West through these houses - some successfully, some unsuccessfully. It's so crazy to think that a city was split almost totally in half and each half was living in completely different worlds for nearly 30 years. The East was extremely restricted, saw no progress, and so many residents longed to join friends and family on the other side of the wall, while the West was being modernized and progressing with the rest of the world.
This spot was pretty crazy to see: this crack in the wall showed "no man's land," the zone between the East and the West where guards killed hundreds of attempted escapees.
And here we are in front of one of the few segments of the Wall that still exists.
The place really made me appreciate my own freedoms of living in a capitalist society where I have the chance to grow and progress and become the best version of myself without restraint. Of course, capitalism has its drawbacks, but standing next to the Wall, it seems like a pretty amazing thing.
That afternoon we met up with our CouchSurfing host in the Middle Eastern quarter of the city. It was really interesting: there's a whole neighborhood of people from all over the Middle East that was probably the trashiest part of town, but MAN the food was good. As bad of a host as this guy was, he was fun to talk to and hang out with, and he knew where to find really great Lebanese food. So here we are, eating lots of yummy hummus and pita bread.
He also took us on a little tour of the East Side Gallery where the Wall is completely decked out with graffiti art. This is definitely the rough side of town, and we for sure watched a few people snort cocaine, but somehow I didn't feel in danger. Europe is just a pretty safe place to be, I guess!
On our last full day, we did some more exploring and visited the Museum of German History, which was FASCINATING. It sounds a little boring, but the history of the country is anything but. The museum, one of many near the museum island, had artifacts dating from prehistoric times all the way through the Cold War. We were just amazed at how well done and detailed it was! Germans definitely know how to make a museum.
We had both been talking about investing in some Birks for a while, and what better place to buy them than the place where they were invented! We dropped some serious cash on these "souvenirs" but they were worth every penny (so long as they last us a while). So every time we wear these, we're reminded of our amazing European adventures. Pretty cool souvenir, am I right?
We spent our last evening exploring the Tiergarten. Besides getting eaten by mosquitoes, we passed by this huge Victory Column in the middle of the park. That statue on top is ENORMOUS. It's a pretty cool structure, and a really neat ending to a really neat city.
And that's it for Germany! There are so, SO many more things I want to see in Germany. We barely scratched the surface! Someday we want to drive the Romantic Road and see the Black Forest, which is where some of my ancestors are from. I really wouldn't mind living there in fact, Hayden and I both really want to learn German! Maybe someday! That night we boarded another overnight bus (even though after the Lisbon to Madrid ride I swore I'd never do it again) to Amsterdam where our adventures continued!
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