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Published: November 20th 2006
Hello Everyone!
Good news! Laila said yes to Fred at the wedding so that was a big relief. It was great to go back home for a month to see all our family, unfortunately we didn’t get to see as many of our friends, but we were quite busy helping with the wedding. Before we knew it we returned once again to Europe for a month, but this time we had a new side kick. Our great friend Alan was going to be touring with us for two weeks of traveling fun. The first time Alan visited Germany was with me on the same exchange back in ‘97 so we had always wanted to go back and have a little reunion trip—now it was finally happening! Germany was on the itinerary, naturally, as well as exploring two new territories: the Czech Republic and Poland.
We were on separate flights from Alan—he flew to Munich via Atlanta and arrived at 7am, and we flew to Munich via Chicago and arrived around 9am. Our Chicago connection was actually a seven hour layover, which we thought would be dreadful, but the travel-bug in us kicked in and we decided it was plenty
A reunion with old friends
Alan, Ben, Thomas, and Christoph (left to right)of time to get out of the airport and see some sights. The Chicago Metro not only made it easy but cheap to get from the airport to downtown (a day pass was only $5), the only thing was that it took 45 minutes one way—good thing we had enough time. I had been to Chicago once before for a job interview and toured a bit, but this was Heather’s first time so we did the usual sights: the Hancock Tower, Sears Tower, Wrigley’s Building (thanks for not hiring me), Lake Michigan, and of course got ourselves a piece of Chicago Deep Dish Pie (pizza). We made it back to the airport with time to spare and had a great flight to Munich.
Once in Munich we found Alan waiting for us at the exit where Heather threw out her theatrics like we hadn’t seen him in months and started shouting his name. After the redness cooled off in his face we had our bags and were off to meet up with our long-lost friend Christoph. Chris was also part of our exchange and he was gracious enough to let us crash at his place for a few days
while we all celebrated Oktoberfest together. Our first day there he had to work, but that was ok because we just laid down and took a much needed jet-lag nap for the rest of the afternoon. That night we were greeted by another buddy from the past, Thomas, and we all went out for dinner and drinks, but not too late because the next day was the opening for Oktoberfest.
Chris made sure that we started off Oktoberfest the way a true Bavarian would, with a weißes Wurstfrühstück (white sausage breakfast). Afterwards we headed to the Oktoberfest tents and it was nothing like we expected. We were told there were tents, which were more like gigantic beer halls where people drank copious amounts of beer, but we weren’t told there were also carnival rides. It was sort of like a blend of a State Fair and a Beer Fest, not sure if those two are the best combination—getting drunk and going on a rollercoaster, but I guess the kids can play while the parents get drunk. It’s fun for the whole family!
We knew it would be difficult to get a seat in a tent (usually have to
Now that's a work out!
Not 100% on the count, but we think she is carrying 11 liters of beer! For two weeks these servers carry around these arm loads of beer. How much do you think that weighs? reserve months in advance), but we got into a tent and found standing space where we eventually heard the 12pm start bell of the Oktoberfest, the parade went by, the beer began to flow, and the music started. After all the tables received beers, I eventually got a waitress to give us some beers (rule is if you aren’t at a table you can’t get a beer, but I put on my Ben-charm and worked a little magic) and soon learned that the Oktoberfest is not the best destination for budget travelers, about US$10 per liter of beer! We ran into some other old acquaintances, Tine, Katrin, and Judith, from our exchange days at the beer tent and it was great to catch up and chat with them all day!
We didn’t stay too late because one, we were a little drunk (especially Alan...just kidding), and two, Chris invited us to another party where I was able catch up with another friend of mine named Steffi. Heather and I spent all summer in Europe, but I think I had ran into more friends from the past in those last two days then I saw all summer…it was great! The
The Gingerbread Cookie Necklace Shop
Or whatever you want to call it. Some of the cookies were gigantic! next day we returned back to the Oktoberfest, this time less drinking and more sight seeing, but didn’t stay too long because we were heading towards Memmingen, actually a small village outside of town called Erkheim where we both stayed on the exchange, to catch up with Alan’s host family.
Alan’s host partner, Martin Stich, just finished up with school in Ulm, so he was going to be in town as well and would join us for some of our further travels. Martin picked us up from the train station and took us to his family home where we were greeted with open arms. Unfortunately, we were unable to stay with my host family because they were out of town, but staying with the Stich family was just as great. That night we caught up with the parents as well as Alan’s host sister Juta (sounds like Utah) and had a great time talking the night away.
We stayed in Erkheim for 3 nights and had a great time. We went out for Mexican one night, ate duck for the first time another night, and on our last night we joined a celebration at the local tennis club
The Dancing House in Prague designed by Frank Gehry
The building was designed to resemble a man and woman (Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers) dancing and caused a lot of debate in Prague, but Gehry prevailed! and had some local drinks…too many of them at that. One thing is for sure, during the time we spent in Erkheim, we stayed up entirely too late and slept in entirely too long, but it was worth it! The last night there we stayed out until 4am, still had to pack, and our train was at 8am! The 2 hours we did sleep were not enough and made for one hellish train ride.
After too many hours on a train, we made it to Prague and were excited to check out a new city. The train station wasn’t the most inviting, it was a bit rundown and much need of reconstruction, but we eventually found our bearings and jumped a tram to the area of town our hostel was in. I made the mistake of writing down the address incorrectly, but after running around for 30 minutes I realized that the address wasn’t building number 38…it was 28. The fact that we couldn’t find a sign for the hostel was even more confusing, until we had the right address and saw it was nothing more then a spray painted stencil in the window and with the name Heaven
Hostel. With a name like that it had to be a lovely place...or maybe not.
When Heather and I needed a hostel this summer in Europe (when we weren’t couch-surfing), we used the website hostelworld.com and found it easy to use. A nice feature of the website is that it has reviews from people about where they stayed which gives you a pretty good idea of what to expect. For the Heaven Hostel all the ratings were excellent and it looked like a good choice, but it was absolutely the worst place that we had ever stayed.
The room was supposed to have seven beds, but there were nine, two of which shouldn’t be considered beds (which two of us were stuck with). The other beds looked like beds, but once you laid on them you found out that the mattress had been used so much that there was no padding between you and the bars, but that wasn’t the worst part. After the first night we were walking around town and these red marks showed up on my arms, neck, back, hands, all over, and they began to swell up like a mosquito bite. Through out the
A view of Prague taken from the Eastern Tower on Charles Bridge
Prague is a very unique European city because it missed out on most of the bombings of WWII preserving it's old beauty. day, more and more appeared, and I decided my bed or pillow had bugs and I needed to change bedding, pillows, and the mattress. I approached the owner of the hostel and asked for assistance, but she said that it wasn’t bed bugs, just mosquitoes. I questioned her why I was the only one out of 4 that had a single mark, but she stuck with her mosquito story and refused to change my bedding. I decided to take it into my own hands and found a free bed, lifted the mattress off and about 30 bugs crawled out of it! Well, in the end, we left pretty upset and it only took a couple weeks for the bites (or whatever it was) to go away.
As for the city of Prague, it was fantastic. The four of us had a fun time checking out all the local sights and enjoying the local eateries and pubs. Martin’s father purchased us a guidebook on Prague right before leaving Erkheim and it provided us with many great places to eat as well as drink. We also had the pages of our Let’s Go book photo copied and they too provided us
with much to see and do.
We passed on taking public transport our first day and learned that walking around Prague is the best way to see the city. One tourist attraction that everybody goes to in Prague is the Charles Bridge and we thoroughly enjoyed our time there. The bridge is just a little over half a kilometer, has 30 statues that line it sides, but the real joy is looking at all the vendors trying to hawk their art work and musicians performing to make a living, many of which were very good! There are towers on each end of bridge and we paid to climb the one in the east around 5:30pm to watch the sunset in the west. After the sun went down and Alan and Martin were finished holding each other, we found some food then headed to a local bar that we read about.
The description for the bar was something like “walk in to a small ordinary looking pub, go to the back and head down the stairs. Follow the path for about 20 meters and you will end up in some old underground tunneled wine cellars that stretch out in
Prague's own Astronomical Clock
Upon the hour hundreds gather to watch the clock do it's thing, which wasn't that exciting and doesn't warrant a second viewing. every direction.” It was almost like a big maze and easy to get disoriented, but we found some seats and tried some local drink from the bar. The special at the bar something with a name we don’t remember, but it basically translated into young wine that hadn’t been filtered. We tried it, didn’t like it, and eventually moved onto good old reliable red wine. We all drank a bit, had fun chatting the night away, but it was late and we needed to find our way to the hostel.
Heather decided that she was going to be navigator and find the way back by using some short cuts. We took all these back streets, alleyways, staircases, but Heather was able to get us back to the hostel all in one piece, well except for Martin who almost broke his back in an attempt to be a ninja. Martin thought it would be a good idea to try and kick me and Alan by performing a double drop kick. He said in his mind it worked out, but after his attempt (which missed the both of us) he was lying on his back on the cement and looked in
a little pain. He eventually jumped up, and we laughed about it all the way back to the hostel.
The next morning, Martin wasn’t laughing anymore because he could barely walk and was in a bit of pain. That day we were going to the Prague Castle but, unlike out first day, we had to use public transportation since Martin was having mobility problems. The Prague castle is the largest medieval castle complex in Europe and sits on top of a hill overlooking the entire city. It’s a bit pricey (well for the budget traveler) if you want to view all the sights, but we only wanted to view a few of the buildings and ended up paying only about a quarter of the price. It could easily take 4-6 hours to tour the whole compound, but we did it in fewer than two because we were off to our last Czech Republic attraction, the Bone Church.
The Bone Church to tourists, but the Kostnice Ossuary to the locals, is a church containing from the remains of about 40,000 dead people. When we arrived, we expected a much larger church, but it was quite impressive to say the
A stack of remains
These bones were intricately placed so they required no adhesive to hold them in place. least. Here is the quick abridged story of the ossuary: In 1278 some guy brought earth to the ossuary from Golgotha or Calvary, which is the name given to the hill Jesus was crucified on, he then sprinkled the earth on the church grounds and it became a holy place where many people wanted to be buried. Then the Black Death spread bubonic plague and thousands died and all wanted to be buried at this church. Bones started piling up and a monk decided to get creative and started making works of art from the bones and, after many years and many other monks continuing the work, the Bone Church was created. We took a lot of pictures of the church and headed back to the city for our last night in Prague.
The next day Martin headed south (back to Erkheim) while Alan, Heather, and I headed north to our next destination, Krakow, Poland. We had a great time in Czech Rep, minus the bed bug incident, and would recommend travelers who want to venture into the east to make a stop here. We had a blast having Martin with us, but we still know how to have
fun with the three of us, so look forward to our next blog where we tell you about the beautiful city of Krakow, the sobering visit to Auschwitz, and our visit to a chapel made of salt that is 130 meters below the ground.
Love Ben and Heather
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Aunt Kathy
non-member comment
mmm
Looks like I need to wish your liver good luck! Hope to see you at Thanksgiving? But looks like you may not be around. I will eat some extra turkey, Danish Dessert and Brown sugar pudding, and a bunch of homemade noodles for you! Love ya Aunt Kathy