Marc's Public Blog - Trips

After 23 days in Germany, including a 2 day detour in Austria, that was the end of our trip. Jennifer would happily have added a few more days to match the Rick Steve's book recommendations, but at the same time, after 20.5 days of touring (2.5 days were my conference), we were also tired :)
With hindsight being 20/20:

Another day in Dresden to see all the museums that were closed on the moday we arrived, would have bee lovely.

Munich had so many worthwhile museums that it was easily worth another day (mind you, the BMW museum and factory tour did burn 2/3rd of a day, but that was worth it)

I'm sure we missed other worthwhile cities, but you can't be everywhere, after a while you start OD'ing on churches and museum anyway :)

Rick Steves will invariably put 3 stars on anything Nazi and/or Jewish memorial related, but you only need to see so many before they become redundant (I think we saw 5 or 6 of them total, and it felt like more than necessary). For one, going to where Hitler's house was in the mountains in Obersalzbe (Eagle's Nest) was a total waste of half a day that would have been much better spent in Munich. Similarly, taking us to where Hitler's bunker used to be in Berlin where there is absolutely nothing left of it, and not mentioning anything about the beautiful German and French Churches that were just 7mn away by foot, did not make sense to me but it's invariably Rick Steve and his heavy bias in that direction.

I'm not a huge fan of driving on boring public roads, but Germany was about as good as it could have been. Hightlights on driving:

Autobahns were great, except for all the sections that were closed for rebuilding: in too many other places, we got stopped by a red light to share a single lane with oncoming traffic, each side taking turns, and the Autobahn was often slowed down as everyone merged on a lane or two while the other side of the road was being rebuilt. Bad timing I guess.

Germans are pretty respectful of rules, but did not seem overly worried about speed limits on freeways, when they existed. I was totally ok with that :)

However, their lane discipline, getting back over to the right after passing, and proper signalling, were a delight. If only US drivers actually had a of proper training with a real instructor, and real rules starting with always signalling, and lane discipline (stay to the right, unless you're passing or there is no one behind you).

We got way too many umleitungs (road detours), to the point that we started hating that word :)

The last few days, we were able to get around with trains, and there were quite descent

2400km, not as many as the 3700km we drove in France

About food:

German and Austrian food, I'm not sure (sorry). It wasn't bad and I like sauerkraut, but I've sadly had better choucroute in France than the 4 places I tried in Germany and Austria (but maybe I got unlucky each time?). Also, some restaurants took up to 15 minutes to even take our order (they were busy) and often 45mn or even 1h to give us one dish. We quickly learned never to order an appetizer or a dessert if we wanted to get back to our room some decent time, which is sad. But speaking about desserts, the ones we ate were good.

The food options at a beer garden in Salzburg were much more limited if you did not consider a pretzel "dinner" :)

The breakfasts we got were mostly the same in all the hotels we went to, but overall we enjoyed them, a good selection of meat, cheese and breads for sandwiches. Hot chocolate just about everywhere and espresso for Jennifer in most locations. Honestly, those were often the best meals of the day.

The food was a bit disappointing overall. Germany is supposed to be known for sausages, so I tried them in different places. At time they gave me most basic and boring hot dog like sausages, a few times, I got somewhat better sausages, but nothing really earth shattering. Along with the rest of the food we ate, nothing really brought me any fond memories outside of a flamenkuche I was able to find somewhere, but those are actually from Alsace, which is now part of France :)

Germany does have fancy restaurant where the food was better, but they were a bit hard to find, and we often didn't have the 2H+ necessary to eat there, not counting reservations, so all in all food was not what ended up being one of our best memories of Germany.

My other thoughts on Germany:

First, German people, outside of some museum goons, were all very nice and helpful. They also spoke English quite well overall, much better than what you'd expect and get in France or Italy for sure.

A sure lowlight was the stupidity of security rules in Munich preventing me from taking my fanny pack with all my money, phones and other stuff I care about, in a museum for "security reasons". What a bunch of crap, are they trying to compete with US TSA in totally pointless "security" measures? (more details in the blog post on Munich)

Similarly, telling Jennifer that she could not carry her light jacket/layer around her waist and had to check it in, and go back to check it out if she needed it later in a different colder room, was just a complete joke. This happened in 3 different museums in different cities, and they were hassling Germans too, so it was not targeted at her specifically.

On the sightseeing standpoint, it was really nice. The amount of diverse and pretty castles they had beats France in my opinion, and France has some nice castles too. On the catholic church standpoint, some were the prettiest ones I've seen the world, bar none. The amount of varied and beautiful art in them was unbeatable, and that includes what I've seen in Italy.

Germany is also full of very nice palaces that were built when they were jealous of Versailles, and let's be honest in saying that many were pretty incredible, not in size, but in the quality of art in them. Sadly at least half of them also did not allow any pictures which is not quite acceptable in my opinion, Versailles allows pictures, they should too, at least in places where the visits are not in mandated tours.

On religion, Germany has been torn between Catholics and Protestants, but the part I didn't know is that unless you specifically declare you are atheist and/or renounce your current religion in writing, you are required to pay 8% (!) of your taxable income to the church. Ouch, talk about lack of separation of church and state... But the bonus for us was a multitude of beautiful churches (well, at least for the catholics).

I do however have to get Germany absolute credit for how they have been handling their troubled history. Every place I saw was to the point, didn't hide anything, and while it did point out that many Germans obviously did not agree with what Hilter was doing, it was also almost impossible to oppose him after a short while. I was very disappointed at Japan and how they flat out lie about their history so that they don't look bad and don't have to admit fault, and they have plenty of it. Germany was an exact opposite of that.

Another thing we saw in multiple places was how Germany leads the world in solar production per capita despite the limited sun they get compared to some better located countries. Good for them!

we saw many solar farms on the side of the road

So, despite some of the speed bumps due to over strict rules, it was a very nice trip through a country with varied history and culture, resulting in lots of different things to see. Well worth it.

2016/10/04 Germany Day 19-23: Berlin

π 2016-10-04 01:01 in Germany2016, Ntrips, Trips

The last 5 days of our trip were spent in Berlin, although 3 of those were spent at Linuxcon Europe. We only really had about 2.5 days to visit Berlin, which was almost enough, but only given very long days (we found some museums that closed at 20:00, or even 22:00 depending on the day).

Our first nights were at the intercontinental berlin, which had a great breakfast but wasn't super nicely located for sightseeing:

very good selections

During lunch the first day, we had a quick walk to a nearby church that had been badly damaged by bombing, walking by the zoo:

One evening, we had a party next the Berlin tower and AlexanderPlatx. We had a rooftop party, but it was so cold that we only went out for a few pictures and stayed inside the rest of the time:

The first day after the conference, We went to the Deutsche History Museum, which was both unique and excellent. I had never seen a museum that recounts the entire history of a country, but that's exactly what this one did:

from prehistoric times

to the story of religions (germany started the protestant fork of christianism with Martin Luther who translated the bible in German after finding the catholics way too corrupt and willing to sell absolution)

to the invasion of good parts of Germany by Napoleon who in addition to growing France's borders, was also wanting to get rid of kings and queens in Europe and actually did help several people get rights similar to France's déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen

France however tried to be a bit too greedy and in the end lost its army after trying to go too far, resulting in France even losing some of its territory to Germany (Alsace and Lorraine) in 1870

A description of WWI where the war stalled and France got Alsace and Lorraine back

The resulting conditions put on Germany after WWI that caused hyper inflation, unhappy people and ultimately helped allow the rise of the nazi party

A good description of how Hitler and his accomplices were able to slowly take control of the government, first legally and then by removing whatever legal rights were left, including freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and competing political parties

from there, the same description of what the nazi party managed to do before the end of WWII

Sadly, once Germany was occupied by the 4 victorious countries, Russia was losing so many people to the west with its economic policies that weren't working out, that they built the wall in and around Berlin, to stop the exodus

and it's only by 1989, that they admitted that their policies had utterly failed, that their people didn't want to participate, and that they finally allowed them to cross the wall

said wall was fairly quickly taken down by the population as a bad memory of 30 years, to the point that the government had to protect a few pieces of it to be kept for historical reasons.

Next, we went to Pergamon Museum that was open late that evening, and that saved us from the usual lines they have. It's going to be in renovations for many years, but they still had interesting collections from the middle east that were visible:

The next morning, we walked to the Reichtag for a walk to the top dome. Honestly the view was nothing to write home about, but it's a nice building nonetheless:

pieces of the berlin wall

monument to murdered jews

Before doing the rest of the walk, we did a detour to the Wall Museum, with a reconstituted piece of the Berlin wall with watchtower, and no mans land in the middle. The subway also showed subway stations that got closed and became ghost stations while the wall was up (as well as escapes that managed to work out through the subway tunnels):

in some places, the pavement shows where the wall used to be

what the wall used to be like, two walls really

The walk then went to Branderburger Gate and continued the walk:

the bunker hitler finished his life in before killing himself is gone, just a plaque

galleries lafayette

Not on the Rick Steves Walk (and that is a mistake) were the German and French cathedrals by the concert hall. The French one was actually for a sect of the protestants that had to flea from France after persecution from the catholics, and the city of Berlin added a nice dome on top that one can now climb after the rebuild that happened due to WWII:

the french cathedral had a museum

new church tower with bells

just a few steps to get to the top

nice view

the church inside is very basic, as expected for protestant churches

Deutsche Cathedral

We then walked to checkpoint charlie before going to Topography of Terror, the Berlin documentation center, with its own piece of wall too. By then, this was our 4th or 5th documentation center on what the Nazi did, so there wasn't really anything new, but we still went through it in a couple of hours since it was open from 18:00 to 20:00, a bit later than others places that had closed by 18:00:

they had more pictures

some were disturbing: hangings...

shootings, etc...

By 20:00, the documentation center closed, but I had still time to visit the nearby "Mauermuseum - Museum Haus am Checkpoint Charlie". It had some interesting stories on how people escaped east berlin and got across the wall through various means: tunnels, self built aircraft from planes to balloons, ramming the wall with a big bus or truck (that didn't work so well), using fake uniforms, fitting in a suitcase, or a loudspeaker box, and so forth :)

incidently, East Berlin apparently only had one kind of car, for those lucky enough to have one. It's now an icon

someone even managed to hide in the engine bay of that crappy car

original sign from checkpoint charlie

I finally got done by 21:30, it had been a long day, and it was well past time for some rest :)

The next morning we went to the Berlin Dom/Cathedral which opened by 09:00 when everything else was closed until 10:00. Decent view from the top:

By 10:00-ish we headed towards museum island, starting with the Altes Museum, with a nice collection, but again we got hassled for BS like Jennifer being told she could not carry her jacket around her waist and put it on and off as needed. Either she wore it, or she had to check it in. Seriously?

we learned during this trip that Romans started making sarcophagus and mummified some of their people after learning from the egyptians

greeks having sex

By then it was late enough to see a small original watch tower that was used to check the wall

in that location the no mans land between the 2 walls was huge

From there, we headed back to museum island to see Neues Museum, as it's actually called:

yes, egyptian stuff isn't exactly new, but it was in the new museum anyway :)

Next, in case the names weren't confusing enough, there is also an alte national gallery that isn't the altes museum:

After that museum, we went back to finish the Deutsches History Museum, and when they kicked us out at 18:00, we went to the DDR Museum nearby. To be honest, the DDR museum wasn't as interesting, but when we got out, it was night, so we went to enough the night sights and the festival of lights:

And that was it for our visit of Berlin, much to see, especially museums, and it was interesting to see what's left of the wall in person, as well as more history about it than I had learned at home.

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