Amsterdam, Prague, Berlin and Munich madness!!

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After we had our sad goodbyes with Murkin and Durkin on the transport bus, we made our journey to Amsterdam. We checked into our hostel and headed straight into the red light district for some prozzie hunting. We had some trouble initially, but we eventually were able to find them. My favorite thing is the way that the ladies are segregated according to their major selling points - colour, size and attractiveness. I think we were in the good areas, hard to know though - you don't want to make too much eye contact. I found their cat-like reflexes amazing, it was as if they knew as soon as someone was looking at them. We then thought it would be amusing to go and see a "show" but awkwardness was on the cards and we ran into Nicks cousin near the entry. "HEY strangers. What are you up to tonight?" "Uhhhhhh. We were just. Uhhhhhh. Checking, uh, stuff". So we didnt go and see a show. The thought of being busted again was just to painful. I'll always have the show of 2003. The following day we went on another free walking tour. Our tour guide was an interesting character. I thought that he was

talking
like
this
to
garner
effect...

But he spoke that way for the entire three hours. Odd.

The free tours are a fantastic initiative, the idea behind them being that the tour guide provides you with a tour around the city that they have chosen to live in (we have found that all guides, except one, have been from another city) and that they will provide you with stories and history in an entertaining fashion. If at the end of the tour you have enjoyed it, they ask you to tip them. This is great! If they are terrible you don't feel bad about giving them 5cents and if they are good (which for some strange reason a guy from the Amsterdam walking tour was and tipped him 50euro) then you give them what you think their time is worth. The only issue is that the companies who run the free tours also have off shoot paid tours which means, for example, that they would have a red light district tour you can pay for. In turn this means that the free walking tour that you have taken only covers the red light district for approximately 2.35 minutes. As you may recall, we did some of these off shoot tours in Spain and were rather disappointed with them. I am sure that in Amsterdam they would have been better, but we weren't willing to sacrifice our precious euros and potential cheese eating time on chance. Speaking of cheese... after the walking tour we went to a cheese shop and sampled all their cheese and left. Both the cheese and the rebelliousness tasted delicious. We then returned to the Red Light District to find new alley ways and ladies of the night. However, we just saw the same windows with the same women.

Our last day in Holland we took a day-trip to Rotterdam. We walked around for a while and as it's getting dark quite early now we settled on going to a miniature railway museum (trains are cool! What of it?!?!?) which was pretty awesome and then went to go and see the one and only windmill in Rotterdam. To be honest, I think we failed a little in Holland. Not enough cheese was consumed and we saw far too few windmills.

Our last day in Amsterdam we decided to go and get our beer on and visit the Heineken Experience. We had both been before and thought it was pretty good... but at the end of the day we just wanted a cost effective solution to the beer problem. When we got there I was happy to find that the Experience was 4.5 times better than the last time I was there. I made a minor mistake and drank Wort (I think its hot barley and water)... yuck! When we reached the end, we consumed our beer with haste. It was delicious. Good preparation for the long night train ahead where we moved our world tour onto Prague.

The train ride to Prague was an interesting one. We arrived at our Harry Potter-esque carriages (YAY!) and were quickly joined by our cabin-mates for the evening. Inner mantra reads: please don't let them speak English, please don't let them speak English, please don't let them speak English. Sadly, my mantra didn't work and they were 50 year old man hating bogans from Broken Hill, Australia. Great. So we were treated for the evening to having our beds made, provision of medical advice (we are still sick, can you believe our luck?) and offers of cuddles. It was quite amusing actually, especially when they kept saying rather loudly to one another and at the same time giving Nick an evil glare that "We requested a women only carriage, but you're ok Nick". I think that they wanted to be besties for the evening, drink tea and talk about riding wombats but we got out our cheese (we bought some afterall) and the laptop and settled in to watch La vita e bella. If you haven't seen the movie, you should rap yourself across the knuckles. What an amazing movie. I cried at the end and unfortunately the 50 year old bogan surrogate mothers did not miss it. Finally it was bed-time and we could get some shut eye. Or could we? Speaking of wombats, have you ever heard one snore?

Morning finally arrived and our surrogate mothers rose early and spoke loudly to each other as if they were in separate carriages. They put the frighteners into us when they said that we would be arriving in 10 minutes. But I had changed the time, and set my alarm.. and it hasn't gone off... how could this be? Turns out they were idiots and made us get up an hour and a half early. Thanks ladies.

We arrived in Prague, sought out our accommodation and spent the afternoon in a tired haze. We decided that there was no point in going and doing the Prague walking tour today as anything that we heard would go in one ear and out another. So.. being rather stinky the final resolution was to go and do some washing. That night we crashed into bed ready for an early day tomorrow with a huge breakfast and a walking tour.

After our epic breakfast the following morning we were greeted by an excited Czech local who desperately wanted us to come on his walking tour. Sure thing. Why not? We thought and followed him into the centre of town. The walking tour guide was the best we have had. Firstly, he was a local and secondly he made the tour all inclusive and interactive. He took us around which such enthusiasm and gave such life to the stories the tour was over in what felt like a matter of minutes. We looked around the Old Town Square, the Powder Tower, the Astronomical Clock, walked through the Old Jewish Quarter and heard stories about WWII and Prague Castle.

After the tour we returned back to St James' Cathedral to see a rotted hand. The story goes that there was a thief who entered the church and upon seeing some jewels decided that he was going to steal them, as he reached up the statue of Madonna grabbed his thieving hands never to let go. When he was found the following day, it was decided that the hand was to be sawn off.. and not the hand of Madonna. It is now hanging from the roof in the cathedral for all to see. we also returned to the Old-New Synogogue in the Jewish district to find the Golem. The Golem is a creature which was made out of clay from the river Vltava and was brought to life through rituals and Hebrew incantations. The Emperor begged Rabbi Loew to destroy the Golem, promising to stop the persecution of the Jews. To deactivate the Golem, the rabbi rubbed out the first letter of the word "emet" (truth or reality) from the creature's forehead leaving the Hebrew word "met", meaning dead. The Golem's body was stored in the attic genizah of the Old New Synagogue, where it would be restored to life again if needed. According to legend, the body of Rabbi Loew's Golem still lies in the synagogue's attic. I'm sorry Cat and Steve, it was not to be, we did not find him. Good recommendation though, twas a rather cool synogogue.

Prague was so very pretty. We have found that despite us being amazingly fortunate to have such amazing weather in Europe, it's still been hard to take photos as there is a sort of haze in the sky in the distance. Barclay just cant hack it Bread. Just cant hack it.
At the end of the walking tour we were getting rather lonely without Toitle and were frustrated at the lack of toy shops (read: adoption agencies) to find us a new friend. I eventually decided to man up and forget the language barrier and demand a new friend to a local. They pointed me in the direction of the local agency, Sparkies. It was here that we were pleased to find our rather special new travel mascot, Phillip. He is a rabbit, but don't tell him, he isn't old enough to understand the intricacies of inter-racial families. He is still a little shy and has thus far only had photos with us, but don't fret, we will have him out and proud soon.

Early morning train from Prague to Berlin and upon our arrival it becomes apparent that I have fallen in a big big way for this absolutely gorgeous city. If you haven't been here... why not?!? It is just spectacular. I could go on.. and on... and on for hours about how awesome it is. We are staying at a hotel just outside of a train station and both the underground and overground train networks here are fantastic. We settled into the hostel and went to get ourselves a German kebab for dinner. This mission was successful I suppose, if only because I got deep fried haloumi. I love, LOVE haloumi. On our way back we saw that there was a comedy club near us that was having an English speaking night. So we thought we would give it a go. There was the MC and three acts that each had two short shows each. The MC was an Australian woman who reminded me worryingly of Lyn Scully (if you dont know who this is, shame on you!). The three acts were a guy who wore a boot with an overly large heel and was a pyromaniac, a woman whose act was almost entirely made up with insane facial expressions whilst playing the cello and a man over the age of 60 singing songs about how he wants us to go back to his room.. I presume for a game of Scrabble. The show was pretty good. Some of the skits were very very funny and others were just strange. We have to remember though, that the Australian sense of humour is quite different to the German sense of humour. Notable mention goes
to Rebecca Carrington's (look her up on YouTube) ultra strange skit about wanting to be the cello version of Madonna. The highlight though was her attempt at breaking into the Indian market by singing both male and female parts of an Indian song - played on the cello. She was remarkable.

The next day we jumped on yet another free walking tour to be greeted by, wouldnt you know it, another Australian. The tour guide wasn't as good as the guide from Prague in terms of being interactive with the group, but when you consider the amount of information he had to learn for this historic city, you cannot discredit him at all. The tour was fantastic. We began at the Brandenburg gate to learn about the war with the French and then proceeded to the Jewish Victims of War Memorial. The memorial is remarkable; it provokes different feelings amongst almost everyone who goes there and each person derives a different meaning. How the memorial has achieved that is said to be through the design and structure of it being ambiguous - you instinctively form your own view. The area is made up of concrete slabs, all of the same width, but of differing heights. I had a really eerie experience there where when I was walking around there were children laughing. You couldn't see them, and were not sure where they were until you suddenly caught a glimpse of them as they went through some of the concrete slabs ahead of you. It meant lots of things to me, and I found it to be a really emotional experience. Underneath the memorial lies a museum where there are stories of approximately 20 different jewish families, where they came from, what they did and what happened to them. We didn't re-visit the memorial until that evening, but it was the first of one of the 5 highly recommended free things to do in Berlin. We then went onto see Hitlers bunker and the airforce ministry where the German SS force operated from and where the Topography of Terror museum is (another of the 5 free things to do, which we visited the following day). From there we visited Checkpoint Charlie - a site built entirely for tourists. From there we walked around various cathedrals, the Humbolt University (and the sight of the book burning of all materials which contained anti-German learnings) and then Museum Island. All in all (and especially from the fact that I can remember the whole thing) the tour was amazing and something that if you are ever here, you should most definitely do. The tour began our interest in World War II and the Holocaust and from the end of the walking tour we went right back to the Museum for the Jewish Victims. The idea behind the museum is that the travesty which came upon these people should not be remembered as statistics, but that they were people. The person who designed the museum developed it because after the Holocaust he wanted to ensure that the names of his family members who perished were not forgotten. Thus began a whole database consisting of people who registered their family members and their family stories. There is a room in the museum where all is dark except for a screen where a name is written on it, the year of birth and the year of death. The loudspeaker tells you their name, what they did and what happened to them. The amount of names mentioned in this room takes a whole week to listen to in its entirety. And the list of people mentioned is growing by the day.

The next day we decided to go and see the replica of the East Berlin wall. The replica shows you the wall (which is the original) the death strip (where, if anyone attempted to escape were greeted by dogs, men with guns and barbed wire) and the West side. From there we went to go and see the East Side Gallery where there is the longest strip of remaining wall - now covered in murals painted by artists from all over the world. Unfortunately, some people cannot read (when can tourists EVER READ?) and have written messages all over the murals and defaced them quite a lot. Although they are unable to curb this behaviour, there are still people who walk along the mural and clean off the graffiti.

That night we returned to what is undoubtably my favorite museum of all time - the Topography of Terror. You walk into the uncovered headquarters of the SS and from there you can enter the free museum which tells you about each aspect of the Hitler regime. How they took power, who was murdered, why, which organisations were in charge of what, why they discriminated against certain groups, what took place at each concentration camp, what took place in each country, what happened in the downfall of Hitlers regime and what happened to those responsible for the murders of countless people. We spent a good few hours here reading and reading and reading until we could read no more. If you are ever, ever in Berlin this is most certainly a must. Except, don't be a fool like me and forget your glasses! It was a spectacular insight into what could be considered the most horrific actions that mankind has ever borne witness to.

The following day we thought, you know what, enough of this sadness! Let's look across beautiful Berlin (thanks for the recommendation Chris... amazing views!) and then go and visit the zoo! YAY! They had mountain goats, monkeys, elephants, giraffes and pandas! And they had a petting zoo. There were goats in there, except they knew where the food that we fed them came from and I got headbutted from a rather jerky goat.

That night we said a teary farewell to the gorgeous Berlin and swore our return post-haste afore we caught the late train to Munich.

Thankfully this time we were the first into our cabin, got changed into our jarmies right away and crawled into bed. We were bunked with a very excited German and two American girls. We made it known that this was the time for NJ to begin listening to the Deathly Harrows. Sleepy time was upon us, but unfortunately the train kept stopping and starting and turning rather sharp corners, so it took a while to get some shuteye. We arrived in Munich at 7am (earliest we have been up since we left Melbourne... lol) and left our bags at the hostel. We walked into the main part of town, said our respects to the Glockenspeil and promptly made our way to the markets where we could purchase apples and have some early morning beers. We then returned to the hostel to get a few hours shuteye and then were ready. Ready to get on it in Munich. Get ready beer halls.. here we come.

The first beer hall that we visited was just outside the centre of town and had 5.. yes 5 vegetarian options!... and beer. From there we went all tourist and moved into the Hofbrau house and made some friends with some Canadians, some French and we maliciously and successfully photo-bombed some photos from the people sitting at the next table. After a few too many brews we headed back to our place of rest.

In Munich we unfortunately missed our walking tour, but we did make it into the town centre for the noon dance of the Glockenspeil. We also saw quite a few buskers. It has to be said that when Munchers busk, they go all out. It's not your traditional man with a guitar and long hair outside of Eastland Shopping Centre (I wonder what happened to that guy)... but a full act made up of a grand piano, a cello, a violin and a piano accordion. It is upon this basis that I declare Munich a win. Beer + Glockenspeil = Munich win. I am sure there is more to this fine town, but unfortunately thats all we get folks. Off to Salzberg tomorrow.

Well, this was a very very long blog. It was written in the Park Cafe in Munich, with a blanket, my glasses (thanks Nick!) and several exceptionally large beers.

NJ&NJ&Phillip

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