Sorrento

So Since my last post I've been in Vienna, Bad Gastein and Ljubljana (the capital of Slovenia). We took a 2:30 am train from Ljubljana and arrived in Sorrento 5 days ago. We were planning on going to Rome but we've been here for 5 nights now and heading to Rome tomorrow. Going snorkeling this afternoon... I'll fill in the blanks later. Oh yeah and the photo album to the right has been updated so feel free to click through it.

- J. Ryan Sowell

Prague

Modern Prague is a combination of fair tales and Communism. It holds the world record for the largest medieval castle, it was under communist oppression until 1989 and the modern Czech Republic wasn't established until 1993.

Now when we decided to go to Prague it was simply a decision based on proximity and rumors. I had heard whispers about Prague for years, but I hadn't really talked to anyone about it extensively. Anyways long story short I had no idea what to expect.

We awoke in Munich bright and early Wednesday morning and boarded the train. We had our own cabin for much of the trek and were able to sprawl out and sleep a good bit on the way over. No air conditioning, which seems to be the norm in the Czech. Anyways we made it to our hostel (The Czech Inn) with out any issues. It was a good thing we bought a metro ticket though because they were actually checking them that day.

The hostel was one of the nicest and cleanest I have been in yet, it had a very modern design with metal bunks and concrete showers with wonderful waterfall style shower heads.

The first afternoon we simply made our way to the Old Town and got our bearings.

The next morning we joined the "Free Prague Tour" it was a good deal we got to see a lot of the inner old city and learn some history and fun facts about Prague. For example: 95% of "Euro Trip", the sniper scene of Triple X and part of Mission Impossible I were all filmed in Prague. Prague also had a strong protestant following well before Martin Luther and of course there is always the the defenestration of Prague (google it if that wasn't covered in your western civ class). One of the most morbid facts though is that the Jewish district was not destroyed by the Nazis because Hitler wanted it to be a future museum showing how the Jews lived. Consequently the synagogue and much of the jewish district is still in tact and was the home of Franz Kafka.

After the tour we made our way to Prague's own Eiffle Tower... The Tower actually over looks the city from a nearby ridge (read: straight up hill hike) it was built by the tourist club in the early 1900s and was inspired directly by the famous Paris icon (it is much smaller though). So we hiked up to the tower and enjoyed the sights, afterward we made our way to the world's largest medieval castle in the world. We watched the changing of the guards and saw the window where the defenestration of Prague acutaally took place. After a long day of sightseeing we retired for the afternoon and prepared for an evening out on the town.

Nick and I along with a few other people we met at the hostel partook in the Backpacker's Underground Pub Crawl. We had a great time, met people from UVA among other places and it ended near our dorm so we were able to walk home.

The next morning we headed out for Vienna

Munich update

Pictures from munich coming soon

Munich

Munich:

From Euro 2010: Germany and Beyond

Friday afternoon was our last night in Freiburg. Bright and early Saturday morning the Pike guys and I set out for Munich. We had a brief change over, but all in all it was a smooth ride. Fully packed down with all of my belongings in my backpack this was the first time that I wish I had packed a little lighter, the luxury of having a home base was now gone, I was essentially on my own once again in Europe. We arrived in the late afternoon and spent the evening exploring the city center. Munich is a beautiful, clean city with a rich history and elegant pedestrian shopping districts. The town hall has one of the most entertaining clocks I’ve witnessed in all of Europe. Three times a day (9, 11 and 5 o’clock) various figurines dance to the chiming of bells for more than 5 minutes. The display consists of a Bavarian and French knight jousting on horseback, after two or three go-arounds, much to the crowd’s pleasure, the Bavarian knight knocks the French knight off of his horse. The defeat is then celebrated on a level below with a cooper’s dance to keep away the plague. We just happen to come across this spectacle as we passed through the Marien Platz square. After a bite to eat we retired to our hostel, Wombats, for a few drinks at the bar and some World Cup Soccer.

From Euro 2010: Germany and Beyond

Sunday morning we got up at a reasonable hour and made the trek out to the Dachau Concentration Camp in the Munich suburbs. It was honestly one of the most powerful experiences I have had in Europe as of yet. We wandered through the museum which was the former maintenance building originally built by prisoner labor. Dachau was the first of countless concentration and extermination camps across central and eastern Europe. Upon arrival you walk through an iron gate with “Work will set you free” (in German) written in the bars. Officially, these camps were meant to instill work-ethic and values in its dissident residents. Dachau was not a death camp (Auschwitz was the camp for that) it provided a forum for inferior ethnicities and political prisoners to serve as the labor force behind the Nazi government and later the war effort. To outsiders (based off of propagandist news paper clippings displayed in the museum) the camp was there to protect good Germans from bad influences and few knew how horrible the conditions truly were until it was liberated by the allied forces. Occasionally the camp officers would open the camp to corporate executives (using the labor) and party leaders to show how the work and good living conditions were indeed helping Germany retrain her lost infidels. This of course is where the happy little news articles came from. The camp layout consisted of a large central building overlooking two columns of barracks about 10 deep. The barracks were 10 meters wide and 100 meters long with bunk rooms and large enough to maybe fit 50 people in each room stacked 4 shelves high. Two of the barracks have been recreated, all that remains of the other bunk houses in their raised gravel foundations. The planned capacity was around 6,000 people but by the end of the war there were easily double that in the compound. Surround the facility was a 15 foot high electric fence with barbwire along its interior, about every 200 yards or so there was a guard tower which housed a trigger happy SS guard ready to snipe anyone that got too close. On the other side of the fence was a mote like canal and the crematorium. The ovens used to burn the remains of the dead (often from starvation and disease) are still fully intact, for years they ran continuously but at the end of the war due to the shortage of coal bodies were pretty much just piled up or thrown into makeshift graves. The crematorium was a stark reminder that the holocaust truly did occur and its scars still run deep in modern Europe.

From Euro 2010: Germany and Beyond

After our exploration of the Camp we made our way back into town. Germany played England that evening and much to our delight, England lost. People were celebrating into the night, but not on the scale of madness we witnessed in Freiburg. That evening we made our way to the Houfbrau Haus for a beer in one of Germany’s most famous brew houses. It was here that Hitler actually made some of his first campaign speeches, and where the Nazi movement really began to take hold. Complete with beer maids, a band decked out in lederhosen and 1 liter steins of pilsner this establishment truly is a tourist Mecca. After Houfbrau we went back to the hostel and spent the evening playing pool and enjoying the late night happy hour. The next morning the Pike guys left bright and early for home via Frankfurt I was left on my own for the day, Nick was to arrive the following morning.

From Euro 2010: Germany and Beyond

On my day alone in Munich I made my way over to the Olympic park and BMW complex. Since it was Monday, the museum was closed so I hiked around the park and went up in the Olympic Tower (think Seattle Space Needle). It was a pretty slow day honestly, the view from the top of the tower was spectacular and I was able to see where the Munich Massacre took place, but all the museums are closed on Mondays so there was not a whole lot to do. I ended up just walking through the English Gardens (really big Central Park) and wandering down the ritzy part of town. Made it back to the hostel worn out from hours of walking and retired for the evening.

Tuesday morning Nick Averwater arrived in Munich, his plane landed around 8:00 am and I was expecting a phone call from him to wake me up, but my service was horrible in the room and I eventually woke up to a later text message. I met up with nick in the lobby ate breakfast and showered then set out for the day. I pretty much took him where I had been the day before. We tried to get a tour of the BMW plant, but they were sold out of English tours and I just don’t think a tour in German would be worth it. So we explored BMW world and the museum. The World is a delivery showroom, event and expo center. In the World they had all the new models on display along with exhibits on new
technologies such as hydrogen vehicles. Across the street is the BWM Museum.

From Euro 2010: Germany and Beyond

It traced the history of BMW from a WWI aviation company to its current position as a automobile manufacture. They had motorcycles and cars dating back to the 1920s and everywhere between. One of my favorites was the Z8 used in the James Bond Film: The World is not Enough. You may remember it as being cut in half by a giant saw halfway through the movie. I inquired about this slicing and the guide assured me that a model was used in the film production. So now seeing as I have toured the plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina and visited the headquarters in Munich, I can safely assert that I have consumed more BMW propaganda than the average person. After BMW we hopped back on the metro and walked through the English Gardens. There we had a beer and some food at The Chinese Tower Beer Garden (One of the largest Beer Gardens in the World). We finished the afternoon following the river through the garden down to the end where the people surf. Yes, there is a fast and constant wave over some rocks coming out of an inner city canal that produces a large wave. I had never heard of city surfing before but now I had.

From Euro 2010: Germany and Beyond

We made it back to the hostel just in time for a few Happy Hour beers and a few games of pool. Seeing as Nick was jet lagged and we had a 9:01 train in the morning going out wasn’t on the agenda. Well for better or worse we were coaxed into going on a pub crawl. The crawl itself was nothing to excited but we ended up hanging out with some people from just about every English speaking country. We met some girls from Australia, Canada and England the company was great. The “crawl” consisted of going to this sketchy hole in the wall bar half way across town. We stayed at the hole in the while for quite some time and then “headed out.” Our first stop was the Haufbrau House which was fine, but it was one of the only places I had been before. We then went to an Irish Pub and then back to the Hostel. In all it was a pretty lame crawl, but we met some fun people. A hot train ride to Prague awaited us the next day.
Posting soon… Prague
- J. Ryan Sowell

Last Week

I am currently in Munich, but last week concluded my time in Freiburg with UT. All in all it was a pretty calm week. We arrived back in Freiburg Monday morning safe and sound. That afternoon Georg led us on a hike to meet his parents and explore the vineyards around his home town of Kaiserstuh. Thanks to our 7:00 am arrival back in Freiburg I missed the 10:15 train. Consequently I had to take the next train (30 minutes later), but it worked out ok, I was able to skip the hike up to the vineyard and rode with Georg's parents to the top of the hill. Also conveniently upon my arrival a snack consisting of Bretzels and Sausages was being served. Topped of with a glass of white wine, it truly was a great afternoon.


Tuesday was our hike in the Black Forest. We took the regional train just outside of Freiburg to a small ski village. From there we hiked though the woods and to a small restaurant. I had a goulash and some authentic Black Forest cake. All in all it wasn't too strenuous of a hike and I really enjoyed the cake!



Wednesday through Friday was pretty slow as we began to wind down the trip. On Friday we had a going away cookout and Saturday it was off to Munich!

- J. Ryan Sowell

Berlin

Berlin was honestly one of the most interesting weekends I have had as of yet during my time here in Europe. We woke up early to catch the 6:57 train to Berlin. We rendezvoused at the tram stop next to the Vauban housing complex. Everyone made the 6:08 tram and we were on our way. Then about two stops down the line Eric realized that he had forgotten his Passport. He darts off the tram and as he steps out the door Chris tosses him his phone (Eric’s phone had fallen victim to a taxi the night before). The rest of the group made it to the train station, we had a nice McDonalds breakfast and casually made our way to platform number 1. All the while Eric was in a mad rush to make it back to the train station. Seeing as it was so early the tram only runs every 15 minutes or so, and it takes about 18 minutes on the tram to get from Vauban to the train station.

We waited on the platform… 6:35: the 3 tram goes by and no Eric, 6:45… no Eric. The train arrives and seeing as it is a high speed ICE train it only stops for about 3 minutes. We look up and see the last possible tram Eric could have taken arrive. We wait a moment and then like a bullet, we see Eric swim move, duck and dodge his was though the crowd to make the train with only one minute to spare. He had made it!

The train ride was not unlike any other ride. 5 of us sat in a 6 person cabin the entire way alone and the other 2 sat in another cabin. It was more than a 6 hour ride, but direct. Most of us slept, I discovered I could buy a wireless internet subscription, so I passed the time wandering though the world wide web. The train ended up getting delayed by an hour or so outside Berlin so I think we ended up in Berlin around 3:30. Germany had just lost to Serbia when we set foot in the divided capital. The festive World Cup mood had been abruptly deflated. This probably worked in our favor though, it would have been very stressful trying to navigate around the city to our hostel with thousands of people celebrating in the streets (and the subway).

Anyways we made it to our hostel, Wombat’s, with enough time to unpack and make our way to the restaurant and watch the USA game. We ended up tying, again. Exhausted from our all day trek, we decided to hang out at the Wombar (the hostel’s Bar) for the evening and watch the England game. The idea was that if we stayed in then we would be more likely to get up early and explore Berlin (this of course did not turn out to be the case.)

On Saturday we rolled out of bed bright and early around 11:00, ready to take on what the German capital had to offer us. We wandered around for about an hour looking for a restaurant listed in Lonely Planet. We finally gave up our search and sufficed for sushi and hot dogs.

From the random part of town we had found ourselves in we made our way towards the Brandenburg Gate. On the way we passed by a preserved portion of the Berlin Wall which had been turned into one of Europe’s largest murals.

After the wall we took the U1 line to the Brandenburg for an interesting afternoon of sightseeing, or so we thought…

Upon our arrival at the gate we noticed there was some kind of festival, going on. There was a huge stage set up in front of the gate and some people were dressed up in, well let’s call it a “festive” manner. We had just walked in the middle of one of Europe’s largest St. Christopher Street festivals. It was Gay Pride day in Berlin. Now ordinarily a Gay pride parade is not something any of us would have sought out to partake in, but since we were there we had to explore. So we made our way past the stage, food stands and makeshift souvenir shops towards the staging area for the parade (on the way we also went by a very profound Soviet War Memorial). And by golly a parade it was. They didn’t have floats, they had rolling clubs. All the groups had semi trucks fitted with double-decker platforms. Each truck had its own DJ and about 100 people hanging off every which side of it, dancing and the like. We watched the parade go by for a while, and it truly was an interesting sight. I don’t think I will be attending another parade of this nature in the near future, but it was certainly and experience I will not soon forget.

After the parade we made it back to Wombat’s to get ready for the night. Berlin is supposed to have some of the best techno clubs in the world, so of course we didn’t want to miss out. We hung out in the Wombar for a while, watched some World Cup soccer, and eventually made our way towards a club that we had heard was fun and that we could probably get into (they’re tough on dress-code and the like). We took the U2 line for about 8 stops to the middle part of town, and began to make the 5 block walk to the club.

About 2 blocks away from our destination things turned a sour to say the least. I was walking in the back of the group and had missed a cross walk right of way. Most of the group was already across the street. I watched as a random Berliner with his girlfriend (about our age) lunged at Chris and muscled his shoulder in Chris’s chest. Chris pushed him off only to receive a heavy dose of pepper spray to the face. Confused and concerned by the altercation, Patrick walked up to try and pull the Berliner away from Chris. As he stepped around Chris to get a better angle on the guy, Patrick as well got a shot of pepper spray. Completely flabbergasted, Patrick shouted out, “Ahh… I’m blind! (insert any explicit word you’d like here)” With two men down crying and disoriented, Eric decided it was his turn to try and subdue the assailant. After pulling the guy away, he too was blinded with pepper spray (not without getting about 3 good hits on him though). We now had three blind mice. I jumped in the altercation briefly to pull the guys off each other, but in all honesty I stayed out of it as much as I could. The ordeal finally calmed down, the pepper spray had worn off and Katie had broken a pin in her watch.

Relieved, and flustered we walked the remaining 2 blocks to the club. About 100 yards from the entrance I heard sirens, a moment latter I could see the flashing blue lights reflecting of the rearview mirror of the car parked ahead of me. Three full sized Polize vans pulled up beside us. About 10 officers decked out in riot gear jumped out of the vans and had everyone move up against the wall. Somehow I slipped through the roundup so I sat on a barrier about 20 feet away. The police searched and questioned my friends. The girls told the story and identified our attacker.

It took about an hour in all for the witness statements and report to be written up. After being released from the police we made our way back to the hostel. We got a good night’s rest and set out to see Berlin Sunday.

On Sunday we visited the East Germany Museum, the German History Museum and we went back to the Brandenburg Gate, this time without the Gay Pride festivities. Our train left at 10:22 that evening from Berlin and we arrived back in Freiburg

Update Comming

Berlin was truly an interesting experience. Wrapping up class and what not here in Freiburg... I'll have a couple new posts up in a day or two.

- J. Ryan Sowell