Bayerische Abenteuer

We left for Munich at around 9:00 on Sunday morning. The train ride lasted about 7-8 hours so we got there mid-afternoon. We took a regional train for around an hour to Dortmund (I believe) and then took an ICE directly to Munich. ICE's are really nice trains and we had an entire car almost to ourselves, so it was nice and quiet.

Our hostel in Munich. This is from inside the courtyard.

We stayed in Munich in a castle. It was never actually used as a castle since it was built in the late 1800's by a rich artist who had been knighted by Ludwig II (or something along those lines), but it was still kind of cool.
After getting to the hostel we ate dinner there (it was really good) and then went back into the city for a small tour by Herr Steding. We saw the Isartor, both the Neues and Altes Rathaus, some synagogue, the Viktualienmarkt platz (although it was closed down), the Stadt Museum, Marienplatz, some Residenz opera house or something and a monument of some sort with big lions on it. That tour was pretty quick, and afterwards they distributed the transit passes.

The surfing wave on the Isar through the Englisher Garten.

Five of us decided to walk around some more in the direction of the Englisher Garten. I don't remember what the others did. So Jake, Nick, Kirk, Jackie and I went and walked through a bit of the park. It was getting pretty dark when we decided to find the surfing wave that Paul had shown Jake and I. I didn't think we would be able to find it; it was not a city-sanctioned thing, so I didn't think it would be lit up at all. It turns out it was lit up by a couple of lights plugged in to a generator on the bridge above and there were a few people actually surfing. We watched them for a little while before walking further. We ended up going around the southern tip of the park, seeing an interesting fountain, and catching the U-Bahn back.
The U-Bahn we caught took us to a stop where we figured we would get on the S-Bahn to get back to the hostel. We got off there and found the station was under construction. This meant that we had to go all the way around it to get to the S-Bahn platform. However, on the way there was a cool playground that we spent some time at.

The submarine set used in the movie Das Boot at the
Bayerishe Filmstadt.

The next day we started off by going to the Bayerishe Filmstadt. This is the largest film studio in Europe (maybe Germany, but I think Europe). They have several warehouse-like buildings to shoot films in, a couple of which have been made into places for tours to go. It was kind of neat. One of the things that happened on the tour is there was a scene of a person stealing a car to be acted out. Eve stole the car and Herr Steding and Kirk were the policemen that ran her down. It was fairly funny. They also have a lot of things from the movie Das Boot. It makes sense I guess given that the movie is the most successful German films of all time. Not having seen it, however, I was not too excited about it. We did get to walk through the submarine set they used though.

The view of part of Olympiapark from the Olympiaturm.

It was a decently nice day outside (although I thought it was a little too warm), so we went to Olympiapark afterwards to go up in the Olympiaturm. It's basically just one of those really huge towers that every large German city seems to have. It was pretty neat because the wind was blowing very hard the whole time, making it much cooler than on the ground. We stayed up there for a while and I took several pictures, only a few of which turned out.
Eventually everyone else decided it was time to leave. I think I could have stayed up there for quite a while. They wanted to go to the BMW showroom sort of place that was next to the park, and then go look at a couple of clothing stores that have traditional Bavarian clothes. Since we only had three transit passes for all of us, I didn't have all that much choice. The BMW cars were kind of boring, I though. I don't really know enough about cars to have any interest in super overpriced ones. We then went to the clothing stores. Everything they had was very expensive, so I lost interest pretty fast. Some of us also went to a furniture store that Herr Steding said was fun to look around in. It turned out to be kind of an Ikea for people who have thousands of euros to spend on everything in their overpriced apartment. Some things were kind of interesting, but mostly not so much. We soon went back to the hostel for dinner.

From the Marienbrücke.

The next day was for Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau. They are both about two hours away from Munich by train. They were kind of cool, but more interesting, I thought, were the mountains. Just looking at them made me want to climb them all. We obviously did not have time for this, but we did get to go out to the Marienbrücke behind Neuschwanstein. It's a really scenic bridge in pretty much every sense of the word.
We got back to Munich after supper at the hostel was already done, so we went instead to some little Asian restaurant. I got some sort of curry which was really good. After that, everyone else went back I think, but Jake and I went walking around. We walked for quite a while and only realized after 10:00 or so that I had the key to the room. So we headed back, with a stop to squish some coins on the S-Bahn tracks.

Some large hall at the Residenz Palace.

Wednesday we went to the Residenz palace and the Deutsches Museum. The Residenz was absolutely massive. It is apparently the largest palace in a city in all of Europe. They have a large treasury collection of shiny things along with the preserved rooms. I felt it was far too large and repetitious, although it was interesting at times. I really wanted to save my attention for the Deutsches Museum though. So I went through the palace pretty fast (although that meant I, and Jake who was also moving quickly, saw more than some others). We ate lunch in the courtyard afterwards and then went right to the museum.

The Cray I in the Deutsches Museum.

I had been looking forward to seeing the Deutsches Museum for quite a while. It is the German equivalent of the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, but it happens to be the most visited museum in the nation and I think it is larger. Jake, Jackie and I stayed at the museum till close. Everyone else bailed about 45 minutes earlier (I have no idea why). We saw several exhibits, one of which was the computer one. It was kind of neat because it had lots of huge old computers and memory of all kinds. Many of the displays are also in English, so it was not too much of a problem to understand things. It was very enjoyable.

The Biergarten down the street from the hosel. With
old German guys playing jazz.

After dinner at the hostel, several of us went to a Biergarten down the road from the hostel. It was kind of neat. I split a pretzel with Nick and got a Späzi. There were some old guys playing a lot of jazz music and the sort. It was certainly interesting to hear Louis Armstrong sung with a German accent.

Thursday was our free day for museums or shopping. Jake, Jackie, and I all went back to the Deutsches Museum (there is enough there to fill several days) for the afternoon. In the morning we got Weißwurst with Phil, Nick, and Kirk. The Weißwurst was very good and the five additional hours in the museum were well worth the three euros. After the museum closed, we went to a store that Herr Steding said would be interesting since it has all handmade things of all kinds. It turned out to be more of an overpriced junk store where I think most things were factory produced. We also went to a delicacy grocery store right next door. That was kind of interesting, but didn't take very long. We were meeting at six at Marienplatz to go to dinner with the whole group. That was interesting. Like in Wittemberg, we went to a traditional sort of German restaurant. The food was very yummy. All of us except Kim and Ashley went right back to the hostel afterwards (they went to the Hofbräuhaus). Jake and I went and walked around the area and talked for a while.

The medieval stone-arch bridge in Regensburg where we
met after eating.

The next day we went to Regensburg. We left early in the morning and got there around 10. We dropped our things at the hostel and Herr Steding gave us a tour of the city. It's where he went to college, so he is decently familiar with the town and knows a bunch of its history. After the tour, we went back to put our things in our rooms and then we parted ways. Jake and I wandered around. The guys and Jackie planned to meet at a famous sausage restaurant right on the river for dinner. The rest of the girls ended up going to some Thai or Chinese restaurant. We met up afterwards to go to a Biergarten that Herr Steding recommended. We stayed there until after dark, then went back and went to bed pretty soon after. We left the next morning early and spent most of the day on the train. It was just one train this time heading right back to Münster. At Cologne at bunch of really noisy beer-drinking men got on. That was annoying, but luckily we didn't have to deal with it for very long.
We got back around four to nice cold, rainy weather. The entire time in Munich, we had Fön. That is a certain weather pattern that happens sometimes that makes the Alps visible from Munich (and from our hostel window!!) and means warm weather. Apparently Münster had similar weather the whole time we were away, but now it's back to the nice coolness.

Politik und Köln

Two big things of interest have happened since spring break. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of battery, so I cannot supply many good pictures.
First of all, Angela Merkel came to speak in Münster. This was kind of a big deal: like when Obama went to Decorah. A lot of people went to the Domplatz to see her, including Jake and I. I don't think anyone else from our group went (lame)...
Angela Merkel is the Bundeskanzlerin or Federal Chancellor of Germany. From what I understand, she is the closest to our president. She is the one with a lot of power that is also head diplomat and, to some extent, figurehead for the state. She was coming here because there will be an election in Nordrhein-Westfalen (North Rhine-Westfalia) for the Ministerpräsident (basically the governor). Frau Merkel came here to support her party, the Christliche Demokratische Union (Christian Democratic Party), in a political rally. Something interesting about German politics: the CDU is one of the most right-leaning parties. They are considered to be fairly conservative. However, from what I understand, Merkel would agree with Obama on quite a lot. In other words, our liberals are fairly close to Germany's conservatives (I had this conversation with my host father before spring break). But that's enough politics for now.
So Jake and I went to the Domplatz right after class, so at about 4:00. Merkel was not set to speak until 6:00, so we just went to look. There was a lot set up: a beer and sausage stand, a CDU stand, a big inflated thing, and a large stage, all surrounded by those temporary crowd control fence things. So I went home to eat Mittagsessen, planning to come back in time to see Merkel. Jake stayed in the city and worked on things (it would be an hour bike ride both ways and there were only two hours, he figured, not much point in going home and coming back). I met Jake again at about quarter after five in the city. We went to the Domplatz again to find it much more crowded. There was no longer much chance of standing inside the fencing stuff. It wasn't so bad though. At about half past, the candidate, Norbert Röttgen, spoke. All he talked about was debt. That and how the incumbent, Frau Hannelore Kraft is evil and just added lots of debt (my host brother apparently went to the rally too and, when he got home, complained that Röttgen was boring since all he talked about was "Schulden").

Frau Angela Merkel at the CDU rally in Münster.

Eventually Merkel got up to speak. I actually don't remember what she talked about for the most part since, by that point, I was kind of bored and did not have very much attention left to pay to her. But it was pretty cool. Unfortunately, I did not get a good picture because my batteries decided to die. But so the picture here is the best I was able to get. If you look at the full-size, Frau Merkel is visible in the black and red, pretty much right underneath a sign of her.

The second thing of interest that has happened since spring break is a little excursion. Last Friday, a few of us decided to go to Cologne (Köln in German). The primary reason for this was to see the Kölner Dom (the catherderal of Cologne) which is the tallest Gothic construction in the world. It is tall enough that when you get out of the train station and see it (it is only a few hundred feet from the door), you look up and up and up and don't believe that it is a real building. It rather looks like some sort of illusion. Nothing should be able to be that big. But it is.
So we saw the Dom. We also climbed up to the viewing platform close to the top of one of the towers. It was pretty neat. After that we went to a museum about ancient Roman stuff (Cologne was one of the primary cities of the Roman Empire of this area). It was kind of cool, but it got very repetitive: I can only see so many busts of supposedly different goddesses and bowls of supposedly different regions or areas before it gets redundant. After that, however, we went to the chocolate museum. That was pretty neat. It talks a lot about the history of chocolate and how it is made. I enjoyed that very much.
We stayed in the chocolate museum until the close (Jake and I liked that one whereas Phil and Nick liked the Roman museum-so it was all good). Then we went wandering a little bit. Nick wanted to take a picture of a certain hotel because it had a funny name (Hotel Ace, but in German). So we looked for it, found it, and found that the name had changed. So we just walked back to the train station, ate, and left for home on the 9:20 train I believe. It was lots o' fun.
Well that's all for now.
Bis später,
Marcus

Osterferienreise

We started off going to Paris. Because we waited a while to reserve train tickets, we had to do some silly things to actually get there. We were planning to leave in the morning on Friday, but all of those trains were full. So we ended up leaving at about 9:00 pm on Thursday and arriving the next day, after five trains and three hours in the cold in some train station, at about 10:00 am. It was an experience. But we got to Paris and just seemed to accidentally find our hotel. It was not our first choice place to stay, but by the time we got around to booking rooms, it was the best thing left. It was a two person room with a bathroom included. Not bad.

Our hotel in Paris. Not our first choice, or second or third choice, but it was good nevertheless.

Once we got checked in to our hotel, we saw quite a lot in the first day. We went immediately to the Notre Dame cathedral, saw a little, really famous, English bookstore called Shakespeare and Company, took the subway to the Eiffel Tower, walked to the Arc de Triumph, walked around till we ended up in Montmartre, which neither of us recognized, and then took the subway back to the hotel. Notre Dame was interesting, really big, kind of neat, but mostly disgustingly commercialized to the point that it should not be considered a church anymore. They kind of desecrate it with all of the machines to buy Notre Dame coins and various things. The bookstore was not much better. It seems it is mostly just a gathering place for noisy American and British teenage girls, thinking they are deep because they like the look of bookshelves packed with books they will never read. The tower was pretty cool, although at this point we did not go up into it. It was also, of course, very touristy but it isn't such a problem with such a beast.

Notre Dame cathedral. Although it almost hurts to call something so for-profit a cathedral.

We wandered past the Arc de Triumph and decided the admission was too much. I'm not exactly sure what it gets you anyways since we could still go right underneath it. I was not too disappointed though. We wandered for quite a while until we got to this hilltop. We saw a neat looking church from several streets away and decided to go to it. When we got closer, we realized that it was on the top of a big hill. So we climbed up and found perhaps one of the largest, most expensive tourist traps I have ever seen. It was still interesting to walk around a little bit and see the little restaurants that have salads starting at €18. Paris is certainly a place for the rich.

From the Montmartre. It gave a pretty good view of the Eiffel Tower at night.

Right after seeing the Eiffel Tower sparkle at 9:00 we went to the hotel and to bed.

The next day we decided to go to Versailles. It was not so bad, just more expensive than usual because supposedly there was some special event going on that day. Because of this, we only saw the palace itself and not the gardens. It was very ridiculous. After Versailles, we went past the Louvre to check the hours; we planned on going there on Sunday. When we got there, we saw a big huge line and also saw that the first Sunday of each month was free. From there, we decided we wanted to find the poor/middle class part of Paris, everything we had seen so far being only for very rich people. We decided to go South. We did, found it was still full of places like Gucci, and got a little bit turned around. We went back to the hotel to eat, and then wandered East. We ended up walking past the border of Paris, but I think we found middle class areas.

The next day, we went to the Louvre. We planned to get there a half hour before opening so as to avoid a super long line. What we found was a super long line, but it only got longer as we waited. We ended up not waiting for very long, so I think we timed it alright. The Louvre was far too massive to see in even a week, so we just saw a few select things. Of course, everyone has to see the tiny Mona Lisa, so we went to that first, before it got disgustingly crowded. From there we went on to other parts of the Louvre, mainly Northern European parts. These were easy because they are very small compared to everything else. We decided to leave after just a few hours. It was free and, after all, one can only take so much of art at a time, neither of us having especially high tolerances for the subject.

The Louvre. Notice, neither of us are taking that stupid posed picture with our finger at the top of the pyramid. It is apparently so popular that there are boxes for people to stand on to make that picture easier.

After the Louvre, the plan was to go to the Eiffel Tower. We were going to do that on Saturday, but it was cloudy out. Sunday, however, was very nice. So we went there at around 2:00. There was an electronic sign there announcing a two hour wait time because of a broken lift. Apparently this was only to get up to the first or second levels, however, because we bought tickets and immediately walked right up. It was pretty cool, so we spent quite a while up there.

Me at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Yeah, and some jerk decided to walk into the picture too.

After the tower, we went back to eat and so Jake could leave. He had booked a tour of the Normandy area for Monday, so he also got a room in some little town for Sunday night. When he left, I walked around for a while. I initially noticed that he had forgotten his water bottle, so I was going to bring it to him. However, about halfway there on the subway, I realized that I wasn't sure which train station he was departing from. So I ended up just walking around Paris. This is when I found the really poor Paris. This was the Paris that it felt like if I identified myself as not from there, someone would most likely come and mug me. This was the Paris where people were selling large amounts of tobacco illicitly on the street corner. It was interesting, but I did not stay after dark.

The next day, I went walking around. I went to the bookstore again at opening to see if it would have anything interesting that I could see without throngs of teenage girls (I figured correctly that they like to sleep in). So I went there and found that, no, there is not much extremely special besides lots of books. It was a lot of fiction and some philosophy-both things to make someone feel profound when it is there in a large quantity. After that, I wandered towards a park that we had seen from the tower the day before. It turns out it was much farther than I predicted, and I did not actually end up getting there. I did, however, find another neat little area, meant, of course, for the very rich, that had a cool little garden and something that looked like an old city (yet clearly was not). From there, I went back to eat lunch. After lunch, I took the train to the park on the very West of the city. It is a very large park, but still it seems impossible to get away from traffic noises. Also, there were some people living there: one man was so established that he had chickens he was raising. I was about to take a picture, but then he saw me. From there, I walked back to the hotel: a large distance by European standards, but only took about 3 hours.

This is how the city of Paris cleans their streets: by bubbling water through the gutters. Not surprisingly, it does a pretty terrible job. They don't seem to realize this though, and shop owners sweep in front of their shops, not into the trash, but into the gutter.

Jake got back late Monday night and Tuesday morning we went to Salzburg. Our train out of Paris, being a French train, ended up coming an hour late. That was kind of irritating as we missed the trains we were planning to take, but it worked out in the end.

Salzburg was very cool. It was also fairly touristy, but it did not feel disgusting like it did in Paris. The first night, we decided to take a break from bread and jelly and peanut butter by going to a traditional German/Austrian restaurant. It was very good although kind of expensive. I think it was worth it. After that, we walked around Salzburg until decently late.

The next day, we got up and decided to go check out the fortress Hohensalzburg. That was pretty neat. We walked around some more after that, climbing one of the bluffs and seeing an abbey up there. That was pretty much it for the day. That night I ended up getting pretty sick.

The next morning I was still feeling very sick, so I did not accompany Jake as he climbed a mountain in the area. That is very disappointing. I spent most of the day feeling sick and walking around a little bit.

The final day in Salzburg we went to the Mozart houses. They were pretty cool and fairly interesting. We also talked a little bit with some other people in the hostel, and listened to some guy play his harp for quite a while. It was a good, relaxing day where not much happened.

The next morning we left for Munich. We planned to meet the Pilgram family there, and Paul said that he would meet us on the platform. We did and it worked out. When we got to their house, we ate some breakfast (that was good for me because I had run out of bread). We sat and talked with him till a little after noon. Then we went and saw a little bit of Munich. Because it was in the rain, however, we did not walk for very long. When we got back, we had lunch (it was about 4:00), and then Jake and I went out walking in the area with Kathy. She showed us some nearby things that were not big touristy Munich things. That night, we had some dinner, and talked with them, mostly Paul, for a while.

The Pilgram's house, Easter morning as we left.

We left them the next morning, Easter. The plan was to go to the Frauenkierche for the Easter service at 10:00. We made it there a little after it started, but that was no problem. Most of the people were standing anyways as it was very much overfull. We stayed through a lot of pretty good music and part of a sermon. Then we decided at about five to eleven to go see the glockenspiel at the rathaus. That was kind of interesting. After that, it was off to the train station to go to Bacharach.

The whole idea of Bacharach, planned early on during J-term, was that it had a castle converted into a youth hostel. I could not figure out how to reserve rooms there, however, so we just planned to go and see if there was anything open. After a four hour train ride, we found ourselves standing outside the platform (it really wasn't a station) at the foot of the bluff that has the youth hostel. Luckily, we happened to stumble upon a map of the town that led us up the bluff. It was an interesting climb that reminded me of Philmont, just with not enough trees and too established of a path and too many goats and some other things. But it was decently steep and not easy with luggage. We eventually got to the hostel, found the check-in place, waited in line, and told the receptionist that we had no reservation. Her words: "You guys are lucky. There was a cancellation." We got the one room open in the place: a six person room for the two of us at the cost of €20 for the night. I was not expecting anything even near that good. So we put our things in the room and went outside.

The hostel from the courtyard. Our room is the one with the open window. 

We decided to also buy the dinner, since it was an especially large Easter dinner buffet for €7,50. It was very good and well worth the price, although I ate far too much. After that we walked around Bacharach till after dark. It was kind of neat.

The next day, we discovered the very good included breakfast where I again ate too much. Then we stored our things in the hostel where the receptionist assured us she would watch them, and walked around the hilltops for a couple of hours. Our train did not come until later that day. It was a very nice, very peaceful place and good for unwinding after the busier cities we had been in more recently.

After a couple of hours, we went down to the train station and took a series of trains that eventually got us back to Münster. When we got back, we celebrated successful travels with a scoop of ice cream.

Wir sind nach Berlin und Amsterdam gefahren!

Just this past week we took our second group trip. This time to Berlin and Wittenberg. We were meeting at 8:45 in the main train station. I was late by a few minutes. I actually just got there as they were heading to the platform! (Of course, Frau Steding was going to stay behind and wait a few minutes for me) Anyways, after the ride to Berlin we got a quick introduction to the transportation system and later followed by a quick tour of the surrounding area. The next day the our group went to the Siegessäule. It is basically a victory memorial/tower thing that was adjusted to include three victories.

Siegessäule

We then we to the Jewish Museum were we received an interesting from an enthusiastic tour guide. However, he did know what he was talking about and gave us a lot of history on even the most minor things. That night Marcus and I went our exploring and ran across the Fernsehturm (TV tower) and Brandenburger Tor.

Fernsehturm lite up in green.

Brandenburger Tor all lite up at night

The next morning we got a walking tour from a Berlinerin. She did a wonderful job. There was lots of interesting facts and she spoke slowly and with simple words so that we could all easily understand here. Our tour lead from Alexanderplatz to Brandenburger tour.

Standing in front of the Tor after our tour.

On Monday we went to the concentration camp Sachsenhausen. I really don't know how to describe it. There wasn't much there in way of the barracks, but they did still have a the machine gun trench that was used to murder the prisoners. Standing in that trench, where one would have stood just before being shot dead, was sad, erie, scary, and a million other emotions I can't even begin to describe all mixed into one.


That Afternoon I decided to brighten up the afternoon by going to the Berliner Mauer memorial on the north side of Berlin. Oh, and Marcus came along too but I got the feeling he was only there for the currywurst we would be getting later. ;-) At the memorial, they had a display of sorts that showed what the wall would have look like when it was intact. It was interesting standing on either side (West, East) of the wall and getting a feeling of what it was like for the citizens.

Looking through the crack on the east side of the wall into no-man's-land

After the memorial we went and had the "Best Currywurst in Berlin" as advertised by the Berlinerin who gave us the tour a few days ago.


Tuesday morning was Museum day. That is we get to pick a museum of our choice to go to. Since I was still craving information I decided to go to Haus am Checkpoint Charlie. The Museum had a lot of information about the events leading up the the Berliner Mauer. However the exhibits slowly turned into a big collection of escape stories. One has to search around a bit to find further information on the wall...until they reach the 1980's of course. Then the exhibits shift to the tearing down of the wall, as expected (They also had a complete exhibit on Ronald Reagan including personal life, domestic policy, etc). Overall the Museum was good, but it wasn't good as I was hoping it was going to be.

Checkpoint Charlie

For our last day in Berlin we toured Hochschönhausen, a political prisoner camp run by the Stasi. Our tour covered a lot over the Stasi, their interrogation methods, among other things. However, seeing this makes me feel a little worse for the citizens of the DDR who constantly have the Stasi looking over their shoulders.


The last three days of our trip we spent in Wittenberg. It is a nice little town but I am definitely preferable to Berlin. During our three days we saw the Lutherhaus, the door Luther nailed his 95 theses to, a DDR museum which highlighted home life in the DDR, Hundretwasserschule, and the Elbe (We actually walked over it). The last day we were there, we participated in a service project. I helped out in the Luthergarten repairing tree supports and doing some weeding.


Well that covers most of what we did. Now we are off on Spring Break. First Paris, Normandy, Salzburg, Munich, Bacharach, then Münster. Should be loads of fun.


Until next time,
Jake

Stätte der Bärn und Luther

We just got back yesterday from a trip to Berlin and Wittemberg. It was a ten day trip all in all, so there is a lot to talk about. Here are some highlights.

One of the first places we went in Berlin is the Sankt Michaelis Gedächtniskirche. It's a church that got bombed in WWII, but they decided not to repair it but instead to keep it as a monument. Unfortunately, the famous part about this church, the tower with a hole in it, is under construction right now, so it is completely hidden from view by scaffolding. However, they did add two pieces to it, one of which is in the picture below. From the outside they look like really boring ugly concrete buildings with lots of little windows. From the inside, however, they look like this:

Sankt Michaelis Gedächtniskirche

After that, we went to the huge department store KaDeWe and looked at the food there. It is a high class department store, so all of the food is really fancy. Plus the food section is huge. After that we were done with everything planned for the day, so Jake and I went walking around and eventually made it back to the hostel, eating some curry wurst on the way there.

The next day we started off by going to the Siegessäule. It is a really big monument from the 19th century that was built to celebrate the victory of three separate wars. It was not initially planned this way, but they kept on having more victories, so they kept on adding to the monument. The picture below is not very indicative of how large the thing actually is. It's right in the middle of a huge roundabout and would be several stories high. We went up inside and climbed up to the top. Once you get up there, you realize that it it one of the highest things in Berlin.

The Siegessäule. It's pretty neat.

After this, we went off to the center of Berlin, ate, and then went to the Jewish museum. We had a tour there, but before it started, we had a while to sit around. So some of us wandered a little bit in the garden right behind the museum. It was kind of cool although it would have been much better if the fountains were working. The tour was interesting mostly because our guide was kind of strange. He was very into the architecture of the place and how it makes you feel. He talked quite a lot, but we somehow did not actually cover all that much. He seemed very knowledgeable, jut a little different and kind of distractable.

The garden of the Jewish museum.

After this, we were done with the day's planned activities so, again, Jake and I went off to explore the city. This time we saw quite a lot more. We walked all around the downtown, seeing the Brandenburger Tor, lots of bit of wall stuff (like in the next picture), the Bundestag, Potsdammer Platz, Alexanderplatz, Unter den Linden, the memorial to the murdered Jews of the holocaust, and some other things. The Jew memorial was interesting because we did not actually know what it was until we got to the other side and saw a sign. All we knew at first was that there were small paper signs on wooden posts saying "enter at your own risk." This did not seem like the most inviting thing, and the steles looked a lot like tombs in the dark. Also, it was not possible to tell what the ground was doing, so walking through it was very much surprising as you could never see what you were about to come across.

Me standing right over the border of east and west Germany!

 We also saw some of the little sections of wall that are scattered all over the city. Here is one with a more modern political statement:

"Next wall to fall wall street" painted on a section of the Berlin wall at Potsdammer Platz

The next day we started by getting a walking tour of some of the more famous parts of the city. It was in simple German, done by a Berliner and former Luther student. It was very interesting, and it seemed to go pretty fast. We started in Alexanderplatz and worked our way through Nikolaiviertel, the reconstructed "old city," down the Museuminsel, Unter den Linden, and finally we ended at the Brandenburger Tor. She seemed very knowledgeable and even told Jake where to find the best curry wurst in Berlin. We were not disappointed when we went there.

The memorial to fallen soldiers (at least that's how I understood it). It's kind of neat because right above the sculpture is a hole in the ceiling, so when it rains, the lady cries.

After the tour we went over and had a tour of the memorial to the murdered Jews of the Holocaust. It is a very interesting memorial, shown in the next picture, with a little museum below the ground. Something that picture does not really portray is that the ground is sloped so that in the middle, the concrete blocks are around 20 feet tall. Also, no two blocks are the same. They are all different heights and they all are tipped just a little bit.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of the Holocaust.

After this, we went to see a Blue Man Group show. It was very entertaining, although we did have to pay a bit extra for it.

Herr Steding got a group picture of us with this guy, but this is the only picture I have of the entire deal. It was pretty funny.

The next day we went to the concentration camp Sachsenhausen. It wasn't very good, I thought, because everything was gone. All we did was walk around and listen to dry descriptions of what was there. That afternoon we had free though, so Jake and I went wandering around more. We had to get the best curry wurst in Berlin of course, so we wandered up in that direction. Jake had also found out from our tour guide where some sections of the wall are still standing. They were in the area, so we walked by those as well. On the way there, however, in a kind of seedy looking industrial yard sort of place, we found this:

Some chunks of Berlin Wall with world dictators on them. Of course two of these are no more.

This day we had the morning to go to a museum of our choice. Jake and I and some others chose to go to the Checkpoint Charlie museum. It ended up being not very much about wall or GDR stuff, which was disappointing, and instead mostly about escape attempts, with a random wall that was devoted to Picasso and modern art. The others went through the museum really quickly, so after that we went alone to see some other things. We went to a memorial to the Berlin Airlift, the Ritter Sport store, and some other chocolate store which had really ornate chocolate sculptures of various Berlin landmarks. That evening we met up with the rest of the group for a tour of the Reichstag building (the capitol building). That was really interesting although I still don't really understand German politics.

The Reichstag building.

The next day we went to Hohenschönhausen, a former Stasi prison. It was pretty interesting and, unlike Sachsenhausen, there was actually a prison to see still. After that, we had the rest of the day to do what we wanted. Everyone else was doing lame things like going shopping, so we decided to go to a landmark that we had not yet seen that was listed on the map, and to walk back to the hostel from there. I think it ended up being about 10 miles or so, although I'm only saying this based on how my feet felt by the end. On the way, we saw the East Side Gallery (picture below), various famous landmarks again, and the Tiergarten at night. The East Side Gallery is a section of wall that has been preserved and now is used as an art gallery. Various artists are given a chunk of wall to use as their canvas and they can do anything they want on it. I believe it is redone every year. Just outside the Tiergarten we saw two street performers. Instead of playing instruments, though, they were spinning and juggling fire in front of cars stopped at a red light. It was pretty cool although they didn't seem to be making much.

A bit of East Side Gallery. It says "He who wants the world to say how it is doesn't want the world to stay." The full gallery is perhaps half a mile or so long.

The next day we went to Wittemberg. We took an ICE train there. Those are really cool because they are more modern than the others and they go extremely fast. This one got up to 200 kph. Once in Wittemberg, we got a tour of the city. This was again done by a very knowledgeable guide, who, despite the tiny size of the city, managed to give an almost 3 hour tour that was very interesting.

Here is us on the tour being told about the public water system that still exists after 500 years.

The next day we went to the DDR Museum in Wittemberg. It was interesting. It consists basically of different rooms from a house furnished as they would have been in Wittemberg in each decade since the 20's. This tour was entirely in German.

A Nena poster from the Wittemberg Geschichte Museum. This is part of the furnishing of the room supposed to be for a teenager in the 80's.

That afternoon we went to a school that was remodeled according to the plans by the architect Hudertwasser. It is thus appropriately known as the Hundertwasser Schule. It is kind of interesting architecture to some people I guess, but it was still just a couple of blocks, so I thought it was pretty boring.

The next day we did a service project. We had a choice between weeding and taking care of a garden or dusting out an old church tower. To me, there was no debate: I most certainly did not want to breath in gallons full of dust. So we took care of this garden. It is actually called the Luthergarten because it is in honor of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, which is happening in 2017 (because of this the whole town of Wittemberg is currently experiencing a sort of face-lift). But this garden is special because it will have 500 trees. Each tree will be donated as part of a partnership with 500 other churches of all denominations all over the world. We got to weed around the trees and hedges.

The other group, as I said, was dusting out a 500 year old church tower. After we both finished, we all went up in the tower to see the city. This is not something that is normally allowed for the public. It turns out that until the 30's there was actually a family living up at the top. For quite a while, it was their job to watch over the city and ring the bells if there was ever a fire. But living at the top of a church tower couldn't have been easy. They had to bring everything up and down, for instance, using a hand-winch. Also, the children would only go down for the first time when they were four or five years old. Then they would be amazed at how large the world really is.

The church tower.

After this we had the rest of the afternoon free. I really wanted to walk over to the next town which I had seen from the church tower, and Jake and Jennifer were willing to join. So we did just that. There wasn't much to see there, but it was kind of cool all the same.

A cool little roundabout seen from the top of a little hill-park.

We met up again at about 6:00 to go to eat. The program was paying for a traditional German meal at a nice restaurant. It was very good and it was kind of fun to just sit around and talk with everyone. After that, because Kirk just got the urge, a few of us watched O Brother Where Art Thou on Youtube.

A cool little roundabout seen from the top of a little hill-park. I don't know what's going on with the bottom bit of this picture. Blogger is being really mean today.

The next day, Sunday, we left at about 9:00. We arrived back in Münster at about 4:00. Es war schön.

Bis später,

Marcus

Komm, wir fahren nach Amsterdam

So last week someone decided to go to Amsterdam. It sort of became a group thing with eight of us going total. We left Thursday evening and stayed till Saturday afternoon. The idea was to go to the city without really having specific plans and to just experience the place. That was done.
Amsterdam is known for two things in most of the rest of the world: the coffee shops and the red light district. Red light district is fairly widely understood, but the coffee shops perhaps not. If you want to drink coffee in Amsterdam you don't go to a coffee shop, you go to a cafe. Coffee shops sell coffee, but their main attraction is the weed. This means that many places in the city smell very strongly of such stuff. There are coffee shops all over, including two doors down from our hostel.
Enough of that though. I'm going to talk a little about what we did and then let Jake fill in more details as he wants. We got to Amsterdam at 9:30 or so I believe. It was after dark. Nobody seemed to have a very good idea of where the hostel was, but there were maps outside the train station. The people there are very nice, and while we were looking at the map, some guy from the US stopped and asked if we needed help. About ten minutes after we started walking, I noticed a guy up ahead of us that had just walked out of an alley. This wouldn't be too concerning except that he was not only very disreputable looking, but he started watching us and, once we passed him, started following us. My host family had told me a lot about how Amsterdam has very good criminals, so I watched him very closely the whole time. He followed us for a while, doing a pretty good job at it I think. He was certainly experienced enough to know what he was doing. Luckily, once we turned onto a side street he detached himself and we never saw him again.
The rest of the trip was significantly less nerve-wracking. The hostel was hard to find because it was just a not-well-marked door between a restaurant and a bar.

Our Hostel. I think we were all expecting it to actually have a sign marking it.

 It was very nice for the price considering breakfast was included. The next day, the others wanted to go to the Van Gogh museum. I thought this sounded interesting until I heard it costed €14. That was the end of my interest there. Fortunately, Jake felt similarly, so we went to the city Canal House museum. It is a canal house that was donated to the city in the late 19th century by a very rich family to be a museum. It was pretty cool and much cheaper.

The garden outside the canal house.

 After that we had a lot of time before the planned meeting time, so we wandered around Amsterdam. One of our finds was a really neat cheese shop. It had lots of samples of Dutch cheese (very good), so we ate many of those.

The cheese shop. Pretty neat, pretty yummy.

 We wandered a little bit more and, near the harbor, found this:

A playground on a barge. It was very enjoyable.

That night we went to a bar cause that's what everyone else likes to do. It was pretty boring. They eventually decided to go find another place. We ended up at the place right next to our hostel, which is extremely loud and dancy, so I went and showered. I happened to come back just as they were planning on leaving for a coffee shop. Neither Jake nor I wanted to go to one of those, so we wandered the city some more. That is a very enjoyable thing in the dark.
The next day, we checked out of the hostel and went to a market. It was pretty cool and had lots of cheese and spices. Then we went to a little park (actually the largest on the map). It was kind of nice and was a neat juxtaposition between nature and city. However, the paths were paved and wider than many two-way roads, so it was kind of over-developed I though.

From the park, I'm not sure what this is exactly, but it has the three red x's. Those have apparently been a kind of symbol for Amsterdam for centuries.

After the park, we went to eat. Nick, Jake, Kirk, and I ended up at one of the ubiquitous 5-euro Italian restaurants. It was actually pretty good. When the others decided to go see the red-light district, the same group decided to go to the Amsterdam museum to get a bit of history. We ran out of time there, but it was interesting. After that, we met at the train station to go home. Neat neat.

Bis später,
Marcus

Burgen und Schlösser und Hamburg!

Since Marcus did such a good job of summing up our trip, I thought I would highlight the areas that particularly interested me (And no, this will not me a post dedicated to Miniatur Wunderland, although that would be entirely possible).

As Marcus mentioned, my host mother took us to different Castles around Münster. These were all really cool, and they all featured moats!

Versailles!!! Well the one of Westfalen at least!

Skipping ahead to Monday morning and Miniatur Wunderland. I seriously believe that I could have spent the entire day in there and would not have been bored. It really is much, much more then a model train world, even though that was the basis for it all. It has grown to include car/traffic system, a functional airport, and a harbor (using real water mind you). I stood and looked at the the first two displays for about 45 minutes...until I realized that I only had about an hour left and 5 or 6 more displays to look at, each more intricate then the next! I was able to make it through all of them, however, my camera died 2 displays in. Here are some of the better pictures I managed to get.

Multiple what you see here by 50, and that may be the size of the entire "Wunderland".

I forgot to mention there was a day/night time cycle. Here is a street party at night.

A look from the a model's perspective.

And let's jump ahead to Tuesday when we attended the Maritime Museum. Well I will step back a few hours. Before going to the Museum, Nick mentioned that there was a WWII U-boat base along the river. Jackie and I bit. Unfortunately it was too foggy to see across the river that day, so we wasted a few hours on that.

The Maritime Museum was pretty cool. I was sad that I along had two hours to get through 10 stories of Maritime history. Moving quickly, I was able to catch up with Marcus and Jennifer. We rushed through the rest of the stories just in time to see the largest miniature ship collection. Something like 40,000 ships or more.

One of the many interesting things at the Maritime Museum: A giant ship made out of Legos!

Well, I am going to stop there. Those were the things I found MOST interesting. I would like to write about everything, but that blog post would be far too long and Marcus already hit the highlights of the trip.

I was planning on posting this yesterday, but going through the enormous amounts of pictures I have, took quite longer than expected.

Bis bald,
Jake