Those of y'all who know me, this is no surprise. But it's interesting, I was reading elsewhere here that some intrepid young traveler has arrived in Prague for a 12-day stay. I just cannot imagine staying in one place for that long! And, of course, with the surprise windfall of two extra days next week, I've every intention of cramming in at least one more city. :) Stay tuned. Yesterday we saw more of Praha (Prague) than I ever imagined possible. We headed off to Pražský Hrad (Prague Castle) with every intention of spending the entire day there. On the way, I thumbed through the Rickster's guide and he says that most of the castle sights are skippable. We were pleased to take his advice, and of the critical five he recommends, we even skipped one ... read more

Well, we're getting by OK not speaking the local language, but there sure is a difference (for an English-speaker) between not speaking German in Germany and not speaking Czech in Czechia. No, I couldn't understand a word of spoken German, but at least I could make some sense of signage and the names of stores. In Czech, nothing looks or sounds familiar (I don't remember enough Russian to get into any kind of Slavic groove), so there's no faking it. Even if the workers in all the shops speak excellent English (as is widely claimed in guidebooks), we'd like to figure out which stores to go into first! The practical upshot of this is that we're sticking to tourist paths, where English signage is more common... at least for tonight. No matter how many times I ... read more

Today we sandwiched a day trip to Leipzig on our way from Berlin to Dresden. This seemed like a really clever idea until we arrived and realized it was a Montag (Monday) and there was a strong chance that the Gedenkstätte Museum in der „Runden Ecke“, the entire reason I wanted to come to Leipzig in the first place, might be closed for the day. My Lonely Planet guidebook seemed to confirm that it would be. We saw the Nikolaikirche (site of regular freedom demonstrations before the Wall came down) and Tomaskirche (resting place of J.S. Bach) before venturing out to Runde Ecke just in case. Boy, am I glad we did. The door was open, and the big sign outside said "täglich": daily! (Not only that, but my very own printed notes also said "täglich", ... read more

We discovered that we both have a museum limit of one per day. Standing in one place reading all the exhibits really wipes out our feet and makes the rest of the day a lot less fun. Fortunately, we discovered this after we managed to see most everything we wanted. We started the day with a leisurely breakfast in our neighborhood near the Haeckescher Markt (no, for some reason, they don't use the "ä" on any of the signs for it). We then revisited the Brandenburger Tor and Pariser Platz for some better photos (I had camera-battery issues yesterday), plus a look at the Reichstag. The line to get into the glass dome was horrendous, so we skipped it, but did enjoy a street-performance-art piece involving a life-size fluorescent orange marionette operated by ~6 young presumably-Germans. ... read more

Or, perhaps, eine Ostberlinerin. (I can do the grating Boston accent, too, y'all know I can.) We have a spectacular studio apartment on Linienstraße in East, yes East, Berlin. Words cannot even describe how cool it is to be in the East and how ridiculously normal a place it is. The proprietors are Rick-approved and we're pretty sure he has steered us well. Today we took the IC from Bahnhof Altona in Hamburg to Bahnhof Zoologischer Garten in Berlin, a little over 2 hours. Bf. Altona is definitely the way to go if you want a seat on this train. Poor folks who got on at the Hauptbahnhof or later were wedged, standing, in the corridors and stairways the entire time. We added insult to injury by leaving our reserved seats empty while we sipped kaffee ... read more