Munich

Next (and last) on our trip was Munich, yet another German city I'd never been to.  Seriously, for having lived in the country for two years as a child, and having traveled there three times as an adult (before this trip), how did I manage to not have gone to these cities?!  

We had a slight adventure on our train ride from Berlin to Munich.  We'd booked a direct ticket so that we wouldn't have to lug our suitcases off and on to several trains.  Once per trip is enough stress for my mind and my back.  It was going to be a long ride--6+ hours.  On German trains, you can pay extra for an assigned seat, or you can take your chances on finding seats together.  We took the chance and didn't book assigned seats.  We got seats together straight away, and after an hour, we were able to move and get seats together with a table.  This was great, because with the wi-fi on the trains, we could get work done on our computers with plenty of space to set up the "office."

Well, about 4 hours in, I notice (despite my headphones), that there was a lot of commotion and noise.  We were stopped in a small town, and nearly everyone was getting up and getting their things to get off.  It seemed slightly chaotic, which is weird for Germans.  After seeing the confusion on our faces, someone explained, "The brakes are stuck.  This train is not going anywhere.  We must all get off.  There is another train for Munich right now...if you cannot get on that one, there will be another in 30 minutes."

Ugg.  So we packed up our computers, quickly put away all our things, and got off the train in Nowheresburg, Germany.  We stood out on the platform in the cold, windy rain, confused about where to go to get on the other train to Munich.  Before we figured it out, the train conductor announced that they'd fixed the brakes, and we could get back on our original train.

Here's what is weird/funny about what happened next.  All the Germans dashed to get back on the train...I would assume to score a good seat within the non-assigned seating system.  Nope.  Everyone went back to where they originally were...leaving the rare table seats open for me and Maple.  I'm still not sure that I understand why we had to get off and back on if the brakes were that easily fixed...but I wasn't thrilled about having to lug my suitcase off and on for what seemed to be almost any reason at all.

That said, we arrived in Munich a few hours later, happy to be done with trains for a good long time.

One day while there, we went to take an afternoon walk to see the city and get some lunch.  We stumbled upon a restaurant that it turns out is a pretty famous one in Munich!  You can read about the Augustiner HERE.  I ordered Bavarian wild boar meatballs with mushrooms and a German type of pasta.  It was delicious!

The inside was beautiful to look at!

The outside of the building.

Next, we headed to .  Here's a funny story for you... Maple is notorious for pretending she speaks the local language.  She's really good at making up gibberish with the accent of wherever we are.  So when we had been back in Bonn, she couldn't remember how to pronounce the name of one of the cities we were going to, and kept calling it Glockenspiel.  I thought it was one of her made-up words. Later, when I was reading about the top things to see/do in Munich, I read about the famous Glockenspiel--a giant cuckoo clock in the tower of the town hall.  I got so excited to tell her that the word she made up is real and actually exists!... only to learn that she already knew the word had existed and had used one of the few German words she knew to refer to the town we'd gone to.

Here's the town hall (called a Rathaus) with the famous Glockenspiel.  We didn't hang around to see it cuckoo at us.

Those people in the middle green part move around when it cuckoos.

We wandered around until we found the Marienplatz ... It had this giant maypole for festivals.

What was amazing was that even though it was a weekday and 3pm, the square was filled with people drinking huge steins of beer.  This fountain had probably 12-15 people around it, all with their beer steins just sitting on the edge of the fountain.

I was trying to get a picture of all the beer steins when I noticed that guy's hat.

I mean, that is one awesome hat!

All of a sudden, the church bells began ringing and it was so beautiful!!!  Just from this one spot we were standing, we could see 3 churches with bell towers that were sounding out the hour.  But we knew there were even more all around.  It was so pretty to listen to!

We stopped into a tourist souvenir shop to buy some gifts (for others and ourselves).  One of the main things this store sold were decorated eggshells.  The egg is blown out of the egg, and then other decorative holes are punctured into the shell, and it is dyed and then hand painted.  They were so beautiful and obviously so fragile.  Well, you know something had to happen, right?!

I had picked out one that I wanted to buy, and had the ribbon it hangs from secured around my fingers, and the shell held safely in my left palm.  With my other hand, I was looking at another shell. The saleswoman was nervous that I was holding more than one in my hands, and so she reached to hand me a bowl to hold the eggs in.  It was a really tight space, and this one tourist refused to move to give us any space.  As I reached for the bowl...I knocked the shelf holding the eggs and several went flying up in the air...and then down to the ground in a crash.

Everyone in the store just cringed.

I stepped aside so that the cleaning woman could clean up the mess.  The tourist still refused to move from the spot, so the saleswoman assumed she had broken the eggs.  I spoke up to say it was me.  She kept apologizing that I would have to pay for the broken eggs, and I said I understood.  When I got up to the counter, that same tourist had gone and planted herself there!  I was sort of ready to push her out of my way.  Anyway, I paid for the broken eggs, plus the one I wanted (which was still safe in my hand...).

A few minutes later, Maple went up to the counter to purchase hers.  I saw that she had one similar to the one I'd been looking at when the crash happened.  I told her there was a prettier one than the one she'd chosen, but she didn't want to leave the line (due to the pushy tourists), and so she asked me to go get it.  As I walked back over to the scene of the original crime, there was a slight gasp across the store...as if everyone thought I was the world's biggest (and dumbest) klutz.  I grabbed the egg, handed it to Maple, and said, "I'm outta here!)

I went outside to wait and got to look at this pretty pretty while she bought her eggs.

The cleaning lady had hid one of the broken eggs in the trash, signaling at me to be quiet about it.  While I appreciated her kindness, I also wanted to do the right thing and pay for what I'd broken.  But I also didn't want her to get in trouble.  So when the saleswoman was ringing me up, she said, "You broke two, correct?"  I answered, "Well, actually, I believe that I broke three."  She responded, "Well, I only saw two, and I think they were from the cheapest rack."  I was thankful for both women's kindness in an awkward moment, and only ended up paying about 15 euros for the two broken and the one that I did want.

On our way back to the hotel (with our treasures in tow) we saw this pretty building...

And this gorgeous door.

It was a good time, and I enjoyed Munich a lot.  Before we knew it, we were back in Italy, and then back in the Middle East.  It was a great trip, and yet we were so glad to be home once that time came!

Berlin

For all the times I've been to Germany, I'd never been to Berlin.  We took a break from work one afternoon while we were there to walk around a little bit so that I could actually see the city.  Maple had been before, so she knew where to go.

First, we went to Checkpoint Charlie.  When the city was divided, there were several checkpoints where a person (with the right kind of passport...) could pass from east/west or west/east.  While there were also Alpha and Bravo checkpoints, Charlie was the most famous one.  It led into the American sector of West Berlin (in contrast to the French or British sectors).  They still have it set up with soldiers and an American flag and the border sign.  

On "the eastern" side of Checkpoint Charlie is an open air museum that shows the history of the wall and the checkpoint.  This map shows how the city was divided.

This wall had pictures and explanations with a timeline about how the wall and checkpoints were built, and things that happened at them during the almost 30 years it was up.

I never thought I'd get my picture taken with JFK!!!

A picture of the standoff between Soviet and US tanks in 1961.

I'm pointing to a "you are here" on the map.

We walked on from Checkpoint Charlie and passed this building that had every single window boarded up!  Creepy.

On our way to the Brandenburg Gate, we passed the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.  It was made of 2711 concrete slabs of different sizes and heights on a field of sloped alleys.  It's really intense to walk through.  A slab could be waist high, and suddenly they're over your head and you can't see anything but slabs all around.

There's Maple's head peeping out.

It was eerily quiet when you were in the memorial.

I lost Maple and couldn't find her.

There she is!

You can sort of see the sloping of the ground.

We got out of there and headed on to the Brandenburg Gate.  I've seen a lot of big victorious gates in cities, so I was sort of like...meh.

All over the city, you could see markers of where the Wall had been.  Here's one.

The cobblestone lines on the road below are the marker of where the Wall had been.  This photo showed people sitting on the wall looking at the Reichstag behind, with the modern day Reichstag in the background.

The Reichstag.  Maple told me that they rebuilt it after the war with that glass dome so that the government could never again hide what they were doing...fully exposed to even the heavens.  I think that's cool.

A photo of what it looked like after the war before being rebuilt.

We walked on to the Memorial to the Berlin Wall.  They left a portion of it standing, with some steel pipes to show where it continued on.

This part showed photos of all the people who died at the wall.

On the east side of the wall looking through the pipes to the west side.

Everything about the Wall made me sad.  While we were at Checkpoint Charlie, we discussed how unlucky a family would have been to have owned an apartment on the wrong side of the street.  I hate to think of how the city was divided for a whole generation.  But I was also encouraged to remember as I walked through the city and saw that corrupt governments and division was a part of their past, not their present, and hopefully not their future.  After having spent several weeks seeing the Germans' open, welcoming character to the refugees, I was encouraged to remember that not only can people change...but whole governments and cultures can too.

The same country that cast out a people and divided a people is now working to welcome a people and unite through integration.  That's pretty amazing.

Warsaw, Poland

While we were still in Italy, I said to Maple, "We should take a weekend off while we're in Berlin, and go to Poland."  She looked at me like I was crazy.  Then one of the interns told us that he had gone to Poland on vacation and thought it was awesome.  His comment planted a seed in her mind and once we got to Germany, she said she wanted to do it.  So we began to look up options and found that a little weekend getaway wouldn't cost us that much.  By the time we got to Berlin, we were pretty worn out from several weeks straight of work and no fun excursions, so we were glad we planned it.

We got up super early on a Saturday morning and took a direct train from Berlin to Warsaw.  It took about 6 hours.  The best part was that it was an older style train with separate seating compartments within each car.  The compartments sat six people, had a door that closed...and with no one in our compartment, we could lay down on the bench seats and sleep!  That was worth the early train!

One of my favorite parts of our experience in Warsaw was our hotel.  I unfortunately did not take any photos, which I regret now.  We stayed at the Polonia Palace Hotel, (click the link to see photos from the hotel's website).  It was built in 1913 and was not destroyed during the war.  It is one of the top 2 hotels in Warsaw and is just so beautiful, inside and out.  Bartosh, our bellman, greeted us from our taxi and took care of our bags for us.  He always greeted us when we came in and out of the hotel.  I've never had a bellman before.  This was hands down the nicest place we've stayed on our trips... super comfortable beds, quiet, a great shower, and just pretty.  I was so happy I barely wanted to leave the place and go explore.

But explore we did!  We actually went out straight away after checking in to see some things before the sun went down.  My poor photo taking skills continued as you will see with this next photo, which is of a statue of Copernicus.  He was Polish.  Who knew?  Around the base of the statue on the ground was the solar system, which was cool.  Too bad people thought he was crazy in his day.

I thought these guys holding their abs as they held the building up on their shoulders were pretty funny.  They have great abs, so I guess the pain was worth it.

They also framed a pretty door.

We found a small market that was selling local wares, and we had some fun in the hat section.

I mean, how awesome is that hat?!  From our observations, however, you needed to be at least 60 years old to wear such a great hat, so I need to wait a few more years before I can pull that look off.

We wandered around the Old Town in the dark, and just enjoyed walking around...something we hadn't done much in Germany to that point.  During our walk, we passed a restaurant that served pierogi, which are like Polish dumplings.  We went there for dinner, and I warmed up with a hot fruit spiced juice, which was delicious.  Then we had our pierogi, and they were so good!  There were so many different kinds to choose from that I joked I'd be happy to eat there every meal during our stay.

The next day, we were blessed with a gorgeous blue-skied sunshiny day.  The Polish told us it was the first time the sun had shown in about 10 days.  We were so thankful.  We headed out to wander around some more.  There were great doors everywhere.

This building was directly across the street from our hotel.  It was a gift from Stalin to the Polish, and is modeled after the Empire State Building.  If I ever go back to Warsaw, I'd like to go up it to the observation deck.

We headed back to the Old Town to take pictures in the daylight.  During WWII, the Polish held an uprising to fight back against the Nazis, and held their ground for a few days...but ultimately weren't able to sustain their resistance.  Hitler ordered for their city to be totaled destroyed.  The pictures we saw were astounding.  Everything was demolished to the ground.  After the war, the Polish used old paintings and photos to reconstruct the Old Town to make it look like it had before the war.  Amazing.  Honestly, their resilient spirit, as seen from the Uprising as well as their reconstruction, really impressed me for the character of their spirit as a people.

This is the entrance into the Old Town, with the Royal Castle on the right.

Great old metal doors were all throughout the Old Town.

This door with the portal over it obviously caught our attention.

A beautiful clock.

This square is famous for the statue of the Warrior Mermaid, Syrena, and was the main thing Maple wanted to see.  (A warrior princess mermaid?!  What's not to love?!)

There she is, defending the city of Warsaw.

Fun times with this girl!

We went through the Old Town and found this building called the Barbican.  Since that's the name of my favorite kind of soda here in the Middle East, we had to see it.  It looked like an old medieval castle.

We continued walking and stumbled across this monument to the wall of the Jewish Ghetto, built on a portion of the wall itself.

The Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw was the largest in Europe during the war.  Over 400,000 Jews were made to live in a walled-in area that was only about 1.5 square miles.  The gold area in the monument below highlights the area of the walled-in area on the map of the city.

The outline of the wall was laid out on the ground.  Again, the story of the Ghetto is so sad, but the monument was presented in a way to honor the victims that showed their resilience to fight back.

Nearby was a Justice building, and I thought these Ladies of Justice holding up the building were just stunning.

We walked for another 30 minutes, trying to get to a particular Jewish cemetery before sundown.  We missed it by seconds.  I mean, seconds.  We had our hand on the door of the entrance gate just as they were shutting it, and they wouldn't let us in.  Bummer.  There was one more thing we wanted to see, and it was clear on the other side of town.  We grabbed a taxi, pointed to a picture of the statue on a tourist map, and he understood.  Once we got there, we asked him to wait, and said we'd be right back.

We ran across the street to see this stunning statue before that park also closed on us.  Chopin is also from Poland, and they are proud to claim him as their son.  They have park benches around the city that play his music!

I had seen a picture of this statue on the Starbucks mug, and had always found it captivating.  I find it haunting and romantic and stirring.  Seriously, it has moved its way into my list of favorite statues.

Once we had our photos of the statue, we ran back across the street, hopped back into our taxi, and returned to our glamorous hotel for the evening.  Maple went and had a massage at the spa while I took a bubble bath and just relaxed in the big old tub.  A good night's sleep in those comfy beds again, and we were back on our train to Berlin the next day.

It took me 5 months since my birthday, but I finally hit my goal: to have gone to as many countries as my age.  Country #40 while aged 40!  Woot!  #40nJordy for the win!

I loved Warsaw.  I would return and spend a few more days going to their museums and seeing more of their statues around the city.  We had a great time shopping and buying souvenirs.  We both bought Polish pottery as well as an interesting hand carved figurine of a Jew by a local artist.  I think of all the places I never had any desire to go to, Poland took me most by surprise.  Shame on me for blowing it off all these years.  I'd go again and I'll recommend it to others.

Make sure to stay at the Polonia Palace Hotel and say hi to Bartosh for me!