Tours of Munich

Our first day in Munich we took what else, but a free walking tour, our forth of those if you’re keeping track. Our first stop was The Glockenspiel in Marienplatz, this clock is a little bit cooler than the clock in Prague. The statues move in a circle depicting a wedding scene and celebrating the end of the plague.

 Our tour guide, Travis, was a unique fellow. He dressed in the authentic Bavarian style, lederhosen.

He took us to many major sites including the street where the Beer Hall Putsch took place. After the tour we climbed to the top of a church tower to get a better view of Munich. We could even make out the outline of the Alps.

 

That night we decided to go on a Beer Challenge tour put on by the same company as the free tour. They took us to 3 major beer halls, most notably the Hafbrauhaus. They taught us a German drinking song, history about beer gardens, and a new party trick with a liter mug.

At Hafbrauhaus they waiter carried 13 liter beers at one time.

 

The breweries we visited serve beer that follows Reinheitsaebot also know as the German Beer Purity Law. There are only six breweries that follow these laws today and are therefore the only breweries allowed to serve at Oktoberfest.

The next morning we took a tour of Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp. Dachau served as a prototype or model camp for all the other Nazi concentration camps. This camp was built mainly as a male work camp unlike Auschwitz, which was a death camp.  Over 200,000 prisoners were kept at Dachau over the 12 years it was in operation. 

We walked through reconstructed barracks that were built initially built to hold only 50 prisoners. Due to the evacuation of other camps, Dachau became severely over crowded and at times held over 300 prisoners in each bunk.

They also reconstructed part of an electric that was used to keep prisoners from escaping.

Even though Dachau has a very dark past, we were glad we went on the tour because we learned a lot and saw first had the physical and psychological terror the Nazi party inflicted. The surviving prisoners of Dachau wanted the camp to be turned into a memorial to serve as a learning device so we may never forget and repeat the tragedy of the Holocaust.

Munich has been one of our favorite cites but we are looking forward to heading back to Italy!

Good Ole' Prague

The morning after we arrived in Prague we headed out to catch the free walking tour offered by the same company as all the other tours we have taken. This tour was led by Ben, this is the third city that he has been a guide in.

 

Our first stop was the Astronomical Clock in the Old Town Square. The clock is famous not only because it chimes every hour but also because it has moving statues. When this clock was built the moving parts were very advanced, although now it’s pretty lame. There was a huge crowd around it so Ben had a plan for all of us to start cheering and clapping as soon as the clock stopped moving to try and get the whole crowd to cheer with us. This was funny because the clock really wasn’t that cool so everyone was confused to why we were cheering.

Our next stop was St. James Church where legend goes a thief tried to steal a necklace on the statue of the Virgin Mary. The statue came to life and grabbed the thief’s hand. The clergymen found him the next day, they decided that this was a miracle and could not damage the statue so they cut off his arm instead. To this day the arm of the thief hangs from the ceiling of the church.

To illustrate the story, Ben picked two people from the tour to play the Virgin and the thief, Stasia was picked to play the thief and had to reenact the story in front of everyone.

 

We also saw the Charles Bridge, the oldest bridge in Prague, was built by King Charles to withstand the floods.

After the tour we headed up to the Prague Castle, the oldest castle in the world! The view of the city from the Castle was so beautiful.

The next day we planned to visit the Old Jewish Cemetery and the Powder Tower. The cemetery contains almost 12,000 tombstones within a square block although the number of people buried there is believed to be much greater. The cemetery dates between 1439- 1786, during this time this was the only land the Jewish people were given to bury their dead. Walking through the crowded piles of tombstones was eerie and disturbing.

The Powder Tour was built 1475 to replace the old gate of Prague. The tower earned its name because it was used to store gunpowder. To get to the top of the tower we had to climb a steep spiral staircase. Today the upper gallery offers a beautiful view of the city center and Prague Castle.

Jessy’s wheel broke on her bag on the way to find our hotel. The streets are all cobblestone and very bumpy. We went back to find the wheel and she tried to reattach it but it was still loose. So on our long journey to the train station to leave Prague Jessy had to carry her forty pound backpack on her back.

Berlin: Poor But Sexy

We arrived in Berlin after our relaxing night train and went straight to our hostel to refresh and then explore another city with another Fat Tire Bike Tour!

 

Our tour guide, Charles, took us to all the main sites in Berlin…

including Checkpoint Charlie, a remaining portion of the Berlin wall, and many other historical sites. 

He talked a lot about WWII and explained how the Berlin Wall came to be and how it fell.

 

The Berlin Wall was constructed overnight separating families and people from their jobs and homes. Many of these people were not reunited for 28 years. Now there is a line all around the city showing where the wall used to stand.

We were very surprised by the economy in Berlin. Many of the buildings have still not been rebuilt. To hide all the empty space they wrapped large pictures of buildings around scaffolding. Charles liked to make us guess if buildings were real or fake. During the tour we stopped at an authentic German beer garden.  We were very excited that they had pretzels but disappointed the Germans eat their pretzels with butter and not cheese.

 

On the bike tour we met three girls from Baton Rouge, Louisiana and made plans to meet them the next day.

The next morning, we got up to go meet Sara, Caroline and Aimee, our friends from the bike tour. There was a Cultural Festival going on in Berlin so we all decided to check it out. There were many streets filled with vendors selling food and crafts from every culture.

We tried some new food and shopped around until it was time to get on the train and head to Prague.

A Day In Amsterdam

We arrived in Amsterdam really late and went straight to our hostel to do laundry and go to bed.

The next morning we woke up early and walked to meet up with a group that offers free tours.  The tour was really interesting. Aly, our tour guide, took us around the city explaining Amsterdam’s history from the founding to current day. She told us how Amsterdam got to be such a liberal city where so many things are tolerated.

 

 Amsterdam is one of the few cities untouched by WWII so the architecture is mostly original. We found it very interesting that many of the houses are leaning sideways and forward. The sideways leaning is due to the foundation being built on sand. The reason they lean forward is a more bizarre story. People were taxed on the width of their houses and therefore built them very narrow making the staircases steep and skinny. To get furniture into the houses they constructed pully systems to pull the furniture in through the windows. The problem was the furniture would scrape up the front of the house in the process. To solve this problem, the people of the city started building their houses to lean forward. Many years later they discovered that lengthening the pole of the pully system could solve this problem in a much simpler way.

After the tour we went to see the Anne Frank house. The museum is connected to the actual annex where Anne and her family hid for two years. There were eight people hiding in the small area, which was hidden behind a bookcase above Otto Frank’s company. The Nazis removed all the furniture after the family’s hiding place was betrayed. Otto, the only surviving member of the family asked that the rooms never be refurnished. The museum had many personal belongings along with pictures and videos of close friends of the Franks as well as Otto himself. Visiting the museum was very unsettling to imagine what Anne and her family went through.

After our busy afternoon we worked up quite an appetite. We found a cute corner café that served delicious mini pancakes!

 

On our way to the train station Jessy stopped for a popular snack in the Netherlands, a cone of French fries.

Our next stop was Berlin and we had a long way to go so we booked a night train.  We got a couchette which is a small room with six beds in it, 3 stacked on top of each other.  At first, they looked very uncomfortable but after we settled in we realized how tired we were and fell right to sleep!