Germany

I spent most of my time in Germany in Munich in the heart of Bavaria. When I wasn’t perusing Russian books in the Bavaria State Library, I was exploring everything Munich had to offer. Since I arrived post Oktoberfest and pre Christmas markets, the city wasn’t very crowded which was a great plus.

 Not surprisingly, I learned from my free walking tour that the city’s history almost completely revolves around German beer. During the Thirty Years War, the Swedish army was paid off by the citizens of Munich with…beer. When the Munich opera house caught on fire what was used to put it out? Beer. Citizens rioted in 1844 when King Ludwig I of Bavria declared a tax on beer. I could go on and on. Naturally, I had to see what all the fuss was about. I popped into Augustiner-Bräu, Munich’s oldest independent brewery and sipped a beer while the Austrian musician next to me befriended me and told me her life story and invited me to all her upcoming concerts. The beer was delicious, probably partly due to the fact that Augustiner-Bräu’s beers adhere to the German Beer Purity Law or Reinheitsgebot (the oldest food safety law in the world). Bavarians consume on average 150 litres of beer a year, and the Bavarians who took me in for the week were no exception. I stayed with my friend Katya, a Ukranian girl I met in Moscow a few years ago, and her landlord, Dieta, a beer loving, Bavarian dialect speaking man who could only say the word “beautiful” in English. Which was lovely (and convenient) since he called almost everything “beautiful”.

Katya and I took a day trip to see the Bavarian alps at Lake Starnberg.

After Munich, I decided on a spontaneous overnight trip to Nuremberg where I set off to find the famous courtroom and quickly got lost. I was befriended by a native who offered assistance and treated me to a delicious Bavarian pretzel on the way. Did I mention how delicious Bavarian soft pretzels are? I then wandered through the street markets up to Alberch Durer’s house museum and the Nuremburg castle.

I ended the day with more sausage and Lebkuchen, Nuremburg's speciality cookies.

The next day, November 9^th, I got on a bus to Berlin and sat next to a German tailor, Marie, with whom I chatted for the entire five hours about travel, life, and Gilmore Girls (always a universal topic). We realized that we were arriving in Berlin on the 25^th anniversary of the Berlin Wall opening, and Marie offered to take me down to the celebrations. She guided me through the huge crowds of people (people who got very annoyed with us and our big backpacks), and we clapped as white balloons placed along the border of the wall were released into the sky.  Beethoven’s Ode to Joy was playing at the B. Gate where Merkel and Gorbachev were officiating the ceremony, but we were too far away to hear it so some members of the crowd began humming it themselves.

While Munich is clean, medieval, and quiet, Berlin is loud, vibrant, and funky. Marie happened to live a few blocks from where I was staying in Berlin, so we were able to meet up later in the week at bar on top of a shopping mall that was also an urban garden, flea market, and outside movie theater.

I met my dear friend Johnna in Berlin (she is teaching English in Germany and had brought her students on a field trip to Berlin that week). Seeing Johnna felt like a breath of fresh air -- a tour guide who could explain all things German, and a visit from home all at once. We explored Turkish markets, independent coffee shops, bookstores, and dove into Berlin’s history in our wanderings. Here are just a few snippets of places that stood out to me in Berlin.

The Berlin Wall was of course one of the most fascinating parts of the city. Here is a view of a remaining portion of the wall where you can see the watchtower and the “dead zone”.

East Side Gallery is a portion of the Berlin Wall that is still standing and taken over by talented graffiti artists. Here is one of my favorite parts of the wall.

Pictured above is a café that makes delicious bagels and lets you read while you eat. Perfect combination!

This is a picture of Bebelplatz, the site of a Nazi book burning ceremony in 1933. Nearly 20,000 books were thrown out of the nearby library and burned in the square. Now, this memorial created by Micha Ullman is an underground room of bookshelves-room for all of the books burned that day. Next to it is a quote by Heinrich Heine from a play written in 1823 and burned that night which translates as “where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people”. Annually there is now a book sale held by the Humboldt University students on this spot.

As you can probably tell, Germany gave me a glorious three weeks full of history, food, beer, and friends (new and old!).