First Post -- 17 Days In...

So, I really will be posting on this blog. It's taken both of us quite a while to settle into our travelling lifestyle, so I finally have time an energy to write something. I'm standing up at a hostel iternet terminal, but it's free so I'll give you what I can.

We're in Prague now. So far we've spent 3 nights in London, 1 night in Cambridge (thanks Laura!), 1 night in Basel, 3 nights in Gimmelwald, Switzerland, 1 night in Interlaken, Switzerland, 2 nights in St. Goar, Germany, 3 nights in Berlin, and 1 night here in the Czech capital. I want to write about everything we've seen so far, but I have a feeling I might not be able to, and if I start back at the beginning I'll probably never catch up, so I'm going to start with my thoughts on Berlin and if I have extra time I'll try to go back to earlier. Sorry if that puts your reading out of order...

Anyway, there were two things that really impressed me about Berlin: how youthful and energetic the whole city seems, and how good a job Germany seems to be doing of coming clean about World War II and getting over it. Our first day in Berlin we started the day (around 11) by taking a free walking tour of the city, which was a lot better than I expected a free tour to be. It was really striking to see how many of the buildings in the city weren't even there 20 years ago. We walked along a lot of the former course of the Wall and almost all of it has been completely reintegrated into the city. They had marked the path of the wall with a line of bricks laid in the ground, sort of like the freedom trail, except much more recent and cooler. I thought it was a really good way to remind people of the fact that just 20 years ago you couldn't even walk from one side of the street to the other. That afternoon we visited the museum of German history, which was a staggeringly information-filled exhibit covering over 2000 years of the history of the German people.This was one of the places Karen and I were both struck by how well they treated the nation's own role in WWII. It was very straightforward and honest about the holocaust and the actions of the Third Reich and seemed to be making a sincere effort to come clean about the mistakes Germany has made in the past.

The next day we want to the frequently-termed-"controversial" Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. There was apparently a big fight in the German parliament about whether to build a memorial to just Jews. I don't feel qualified to comment on that controversy, but I thought the memorial itself was a little weird. It's like a whole city block filled with around 1000 regularly spaced rectangular pillars of varying heights. It was really cool to experience walking through it, but people kept saying that the architect intentionally avoided any symbolism in designing it and that bothered me a little bit. First, because I think it's kind of dumb to intentionally try to avoid symbolism, and second, because I think it's probably impossible to really do. Anyway, the memorial was a little strange, but the information center was really intense and moving. That night we went to the Jewish museum, which I thought was really a much cooler design. Also really informative and moving.

Our last morning we went to an outdoor exhibit called 'Topographies of Terror,' mostly about the Nazi secret police, which was really wordy, but well-done. Interestingly, the exhibit is only outside until they can find enough funding to build a museum for it, but it was along a preserved stretch of the Wall in the remains of a foundation of an old building belonging to the some Nazi secret police organization, which I really thought was cooler than inside. Then we went to check out what's called the East Side Gallery. It's a long preserved stretch of the Wall that's also the worlds longest outdoor art gallery. It's basically a lot of graffiti work on a mile-long stretch of the wall that I thought was really cool. Berlin seems to have a pretty strong relationship with street art, as I saw more tags all over the city than I have in any other urban setting. The gallery was really cool, unfortunately, Karen realized that it was 2:30 and it took about 5 hours to get to Prague on the train, so, since we didn't know what time the last train left, we had better get going. We made the last train at 4:45 with lots of time to spare, but I probably would have gotten myself stuck in Berlin if she hadn't realized that. Hopefully they don't tear down that part of the wall before I get a chance to get back and look at it in more detail.

Also, sometime while we were in Berlin we discovered what may be the best fast food ever. A 'Doner Kebab' is apparently small slices of meat cut off of a giant, slow-cooking roast, then put into a pita with tomatoes and cucumbers and yogurt or hot sauce and eaten like a sandwich. For some reason it's incredibly delicious. If anyone is looking for a new business venture in the US, you should open up a doner kebab stand. You'll be rich overnight.

The cheap, standard beer for most of Germany is Becks. It tastes somewhat better there than it does in the States. They also had Becks Gold and Becks Green Lemon (which I think means lime) that I was afraid to try. I'm going to try to keep up with the cheap beer status in each country we visit, so stay tuned if you're interested.

That's all for now. Probably more on Prague soon, hopefully more on England through the Rhineland if I get a chance.

Happy Halloween!