Bye bye Berlin

Cooking dinner in Helsinki because the food here is too expensive and gross to bother with, ready to fly home tomorrow. I fell in love with Berlin. I could have spent the entire month there and been more than content. easily one of the top 3 cities I have visited. even though it looks and feels slightly seedy, it runs incredibly smooth. Dogs and children look after themselves, everyone is friendly and speaks near perfect English, there are loads of bike lanes and great public transport. even though the city is huge, we still did most of it on foot. I know I'll be back soon.

Museum pass

Bought a three day museum pass and hit about six of the fifty+ museums in the city. Saw the tallest dino skeleton in the world, and entire room filled with jarred animal specimens, massive ancient architecture rebuilt indoors, Hammurabi's original code of laws, the world famous bust of Nefertiti and more classic and edgy modern/ contemporary art than you could imagine. Best 9 euro I spent the whole trip.

Tourist stuff

I couldn't come to Berlin and not go see the Brandenburg gate and the Reichstage. I wanted to go in and tour it but you have to sign up in advance. I did go in the room of silence. The USA needs a non-denomonational meditation room.

Berlin wall

If your country ever builds a wall to keep you from leaving, then you don't live in a very good country.

Berlin

Berlin is exactly how I imagined it. Great art, food, and fashion. This place just oozes cool. The hostel we are at is huge and has an amazing view from the roof. The guy at the front desk told us " the cheapest bar is the street, only rich people go to the bar" so we spent our first night wandering and drinking. I even shared a few drinks (and sang a U2 song) with an awesome homeless dude. So glad we are here for week.

Prague

We ran into our friends on a huge bridge in prague. How odd defying is that?! I'm not really sure the appeal of this city. We have several friends that have been and loved it, I'll be asking them why as soon as we get home. It is pretty I guess, but two days is enough.

Krakow to Prague

Spent the last day in krakow trying to stay out of the rain. Played dress up at the national museum and ate plate-fulls of perogi. We took a ten hour night train and Sunni got stuck by a stinky young kid for 8 hours. She seems to attracting BO everywhere we go. Prague is like some kind of euro Disney tourist nightmare during the day so we escaped to pretty little park and then went to a midnight showing of batman.

Auschwitz Birkenau

Can't go to Poland and not visit the camps. I held it together better than I thought I would: no tears. The museum did shake me up quite a bit. There is entire room filled with woman's hair that the nazis sold to textile companies. When I realized it was real, my knees almost buckled. Birkenau is huge and surprisingly peaceful considering all the horrors that went down there. I can't say it was a good day, but I appreciate the experience.

Salt mine

Went to the salt mines today. Even though they are super touristy, there is still something impressive about the mines. You have to walk down 36 flights of stairs and take a tiny cramped lift back up. Everything is wood so the salt doesn't corrode it. Huge caverns, salt lakes, statues carved by the miners, and a gorgeous salt church.

Krakow

We had the treat of showing up on a day where two huge concerts were going on in old town. One of the bands played killer gypsy punk stuff. Krakow is loaded with people and they don't sleep. People were partying in the streets until 8am! We went to oscar schindlers factory. The museum is one of the best I've been to. There is a decent contemporary art museum next store as well. We met up with our friends again for some good live jazz and more perogies. I can't seem to say no to polish food.