Monthly Archive for September, 2006

The Hofbrau House

Published on September 28, 2006 in Life. View Comments

When we came back from Dachau, Erik and I headed right to the Hofbrau House because I wanted a cold drink after a place like that and we also didn’t have a place to stay that night! Our hostel reservations started the next night. So we found our way downtown and checked it out. There were streams of people coming in and out, but we managed to get into before security stopped people.
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The inside of the Hofbrau House is just crazy. It’s like a mini-Oktoberfest. We found a seat at a beer barrel converted into a table and were served pretty quickly. Some potato dumplings, coleslaw, and some kind of meat along with of course, the HofBrau House DunkelWeizer(dark wheat) beer. I enjoy the meal and beer, and soon enough we’re talking with the table next to us. Some blokes from the UK were there, along with a German from North Germany who was celebrating his birthday, along with a bunch of other random people. We spend the rest of the night talking about anything and everything, before Erik and I head out in the night. We wander around for awhile and eventually make our way back to the train station. To our surprise, the entire train station was full of drunks! Everyone from Oktoberfest heads back there and crashes until the Polizei kick them out around 5AM. We got kicked out too. From there, we did some more wandering until the hostel let us into our rooms later in the day.

A Pause At Dachau

Published on September 28, 2006 in Life. View Comments

We left Berlin in the morning and got into Munich in the early afternoon. We didn’t have any plans, but Erik really wanted to visit Dachau, so we threw our luggage into lockers at the Bahnhof(train station) and hopped on the next train! As it turns out, Dachau is barely 15 minutes outside of the city. We got off the train and grabbed a taxi because we really had no clue where to go.

We got to the camp around 3PM, so we had about 2 hours before it closed. A movie was just about to start inside the museum section of the camp, explaining the camp and the Holocaust, so we ran and saw that. We came out of the camp and then just started taking everything in. One of the first things I immediately realized, was that I had been here before. When I was living here in Germany before, I know I had gone to a concentration camp, but I couldn’t remember which specific one. I knew it was this one. I checked out the special prisoner barracks, behind the museum, where they held the very important people.
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From there, I headed out into the main courtyard area, where rollcall was taken. There were about 20 or 22 barracks lined up in the camp and every morning, every prisoner had to come to the courtyard for counting. They were forced to stand for hours sometimes, in the rain or the harsh sun. If anyone couldn’t remain standing, they were dragged off for punishment.
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There are 2 barracks still standing as examples, you can walk through and view them. The tiny beds were forced to hold 8 or 10 people, there was always massive overcrowding. Everyone was forced to use public restrooms without any privacy.
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I headed toward the end of the camp, exploring some area I didn’t remember that well. There is an active church built into the ground at the very end of the camp, along with a nunnery too! If you head off the to left side, you can find the crematorium and gas chambers. It’s a very small building actually, with 1 or 2 smoke stacks. The main gas chamber is open and you can go inside of it. The inside of the gas chamber was the most somber place in the entire camp for me, actually seeing a gas chamber is very horrifying. The interesting thing is that most experts contend the gas chambers in Dachau were never actually used for exterminating people, mostly for fumigation of clothes. It was quicker and easier to just build mass graves and kill using guns.
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At this point, it was around 5PM and most of the museums and open areas were being shutdown. I met up with Erik and we headed back to the train station and eventually, Munich. Dachau is a very somber place, it’s amazingly quiet. There weren’t too many people there that day, but everyone was silent. I was the same way, just lost in reflection. It’s important to have memorials like these, so the past is never forgotten.

Berlin Part 2

Published on September 27, 2006 in Life. View Comments

For our third and final day in Berlin, we checked out some of the more interesting things we had noticed from yesterday’s tour of the city. We started out going to the Egyptian Museum to check out the different collections. The top floor was the actual Egyptian part and the bottom was more Greek/Roman relics. I tried doing the audio tour, with the personal device and headphones, which turned out to be really helpful. I loved the bust of Queen Nerfertiti the most, it is probably the most famous artifact the museum has, it dates back to 1350 BC. We toured the bottom part of the museum too, and then wandered around some more.

Eventually we made it over to the Deutsches Technikmuseum which was simply amazing. German technical museums are simply the best I’ve ever seen, the building was like 6 stories high and HUGE! They had an entire Norwegian viking ship inside, multiple boats, planes, trains, everything. Everything has notes cataloging and explaining itself, although they were in German, they still helped. You can walk inside and touch everything too. They had a brewery too, but it was already closed by the time we came. I would highly recommend this place.

From there, we headed to the Sony Plaza, some giant half indoors/outdoors plaza that Sony built or something. They had a Sony store, along with lots of cafes and lights, but our main reason was to see an IMAX 3D show. We ended up going to see the Cirque du Soleil show. I would love to see it live, but 3D was almost as good. German IMAX theaters are another great experience that I would really suggest, the huge screen, booming speakers, and of course 3D, are awesome.

It was growing dark by that time, so we tried to find a party! Our German friends in Heidelberg had given us a “Berlin Culture Guide” from like the 80s, in full German mind you. I managed to decipher where some bars/clubs were in town, so we headed to the way outskirts of town. We found some random place with music playing, we knocked on the door, and got buzzed in. We walk in and we are the only ones there! After grabbing a beer, we talk with the bartender and learn a really important lesson: parties really don’t start in Germany until like 12-2AM and then go until the sunrises. It was already like 11:30PM, but we couldn’t stay up anymore. We head back to our hostel and crash. In the morning, we woke up, took our time, and headed to Munich for Oktoberfest!

Berlin Part 1

Published on September 26, 2006 in Life. View Comments

We left Monday morning for Berlin. We hadn’t really planned to go to Berlin, but we had 3 days to spare and a train ticket to use! We used the German ICE(Inter City Express) trains for the first time, they are awesome trains. They get up to like 250-300KM an hour, everything outside is just flying by, but the train is completely still. We also found out that the tickets we had did not include seat reservations! Standing around the entire ride was annoying, but bearable since it was only 4 hours maybe. We learned our lesson quickly.

We pulled into the main train station late in the afternoon and used a taxi to find our hostel. It was some random place we found on the internet, 20 Euros a night. We showed up, called the manager, he showed up 15 minutes later, we paid in full, we got keys, and then he left. It was very sketchy, but we had our room for cheap, so we were happy. We walked around for a few hours while daylight was left, went to the giant Television Tower which was impossible to miss, and grabbed dinner at typical German beergarden. A beergarden is just an empty yard with lights, a bunch of collapsable tables and benches, and lots of cheap beer. You can just relax and enjoy your beer in the company of friends, they are great.

Tuesday morning we woke up early and headed up to the Television Tower first. We did some research on getting around the city and picked up a “CityTourCard” for 15 Euros which gave us unlimited travel on the subway and buses for 2 days. It also granted many discounts on touristy things, which was perfect because we immediately used the card to buy a cheap ticket for an all day bus tour of the city! The bus tour took us around, showing us everything of interest while we learned the layout of the city. The busses came every 20 minutes, so we could hop off at a location of interest, check it out, and get on the next bus! By 8PM we were pretty tired, but we had seen all the main tourist points, Checkpoint Charlie, the remains of the Berlin Wall, the Brandenburg Gate, Museum Island, and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

The Memorial was one of the most interesting things to me, it just recently built between 2003 and 2005 by Peter Eisenman. it consists of a giant grid of 2,711 concrete blocks of different heights and lengths which you can walk through and find your own way. I was just amazed and totally confused by this at first, but then I found that at the far back corner of this monument was the entrance to a museum! The ground beneath the blocks was hollow, with a museum underneath, detailing the unique lives and journeys of several different groups of Jewish people during the Holocaust. It has many different diary accounts from people, detailed family history, and stories that I have never heard of. This place was very interesting and one of the things I remember best about Berlin.
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How Things Change and Party Friday

Published on September 22, 2006 in Life. View Comments

For the next couple days, Erik and I just toured all over, checking out random things in Heidelberg and seeing how things had changed. One of the biggest differences were the military bases. The military was the reason I was originally in Germany, my Dad worked for them, so I knew all of them well. There are 3 main military bases: MTV(Mark Twain Village), PHV(Patrick Henry Village), and Campbell Barracks, way off in the woods. MTV was where my Dad worked and also where I went to school for 1st through 5th grades.

The big difference was that all the bases are now walled up and barricaded all over. MTV is more of a residential base, it has many apartment buildings that formerly just sat out in the community interspersed with other German buildings. Now they all had 8 foot tall walls with barbed wire. The main reason is probably 9/11 and the government freaking out. I know we have to protect ourselves, but walling ourselves off from everyone else seems a bit extreme… I also found that I can no longer get inside the base! They used to have American MPs(military police) guarding the entrances, now there are German security forces. You need a military ID to get on the base, they used to let you take guests with you or use your passport to get on, but not anymore. I was really disappointed that I wasn’t allowed back inside the base…

Friday night, there was a whole group of us hanging out, Gregor, Daniel, their friend, Erik, and I. We went and bought a case of beer at the local store. The cheapest beer available was called Oettinger, so cheap that the Pfand(bottle deposit) was almost as much as the beer itself! We also found out, none of our German friends knew what beer pong was, so we just had to show them!

For those who don’t know, beer pong is like table tennis, but with cups and beer. We played beer pong for awhile, waiting for the sun to set and the night to come alive. Once it was dark, we grabbed the beer and headed downtown. Germany has no open beverage laws, which let us drink where ever we pleased. One of the popular spots in Heidelberg is down by the Neckar river which runs through the city, the Neckarwiese(river side). There were about 200-300 people just hanging out and drinking, it was a great way to practice my German and just talk casually with people my age. I had a great time!