Memorial- Berlin

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, takes up over 4 acres of Berlin with over 2,000 concrete slabs (shaped like coffins) the grid is arranged in a sloping field so that when you walk from the street where they are flat with the ground, into the middle where they are far above your head you have a sense of sinking into it all. the slabs undulate slightly so that the sense of symmetry is never found.

Underneath the memorial is a "Place of Information" listing all names of known Holocaust victims.

A city of faces

Everywhere you turn in the labyrinth that is Prague there is a sense of being watched,

door knobs, corners, columns... it seems like everything had a face

Does it bring comfort? Does it produce paranoia?

To have the very walls watching over your every move...

Czech words...

Here is the extent of my new Czech vocabulary;
Ano- Yes
Ne- No
Dobre Den- Good Morning
Dobre Vecher - Good Evening
Prrosim - Please
Pardon - Pardon
Chesky - Czech
Angliky - English
Je Quee - Thank You
Yden - One
Pivo - Beer
Kava - Coffee

Not so very impressive considering I even got a language CD to work on before getting here... My new German vocab is much better... but then again it is oddly more familiar and much closer to English. Here in the Czech Republic I can read signs three times a day (like the words for exit and transfer) and they slide right out of my head like warm jell-o.

Easter Market Dancing...

Geld*

Look at how much money I have in my wallet today! Seriously though... what is this worth? 1200 Czech Krouna is worth about $72.

You see this;

The three coins here add up to 17 Krouna, which is currently about one US dollar.  What can you buy in Prague with one US dollar?  You can buy;
A Banana and a trip to the bathroom
OR
A single postage stamp (to be used within the Cz. Republic, outside postage is 21ck)
OR
well, honestly nothing much else (I've been looking)

The smallest bill here is a 100ck Bill which is the equivalent of aproximately $6.  Most things here cost at least 100ck.  Goulash; 99ck, Beer or Cola is 50ck, a full meal is closer to 300ck-500ck, ($20-$30).  Sadly it is hard to find anything that is free to do... so I'm mostly walking around and doing the public transit sight seeing.  I spent way too much money on a lack-luster concert last night... I hate obsessing over money like this, but I think that the main reason that the Czech Republic has not switched to the Euro is because then it would be horrendiously apparent at how grossly inflated their prices are compared to everybody else.

*Today's German word means Money... because I'm more interested in returning to Germany than to Bohemia I'm working on my German.

Currywurst-Berlin

Berlin's specialty; Currywurst. It is like street food, very akin to the bacon wrapped hot dogs sold in San Francisco's Mission District. However most places are real establishments rather than hot dog carts... and they are all over the city. Some are more trust worthy than others.

First you get a bratwurst cooked in what is clearly very healthy grease;

Then they cut the bratwurst into smaller chunks, cover it in curry powder, serve with fries and your choice of ketsup or Mayo... the dish is to be eaten with a tiny plastic fork while standing up.

It was rather good, and I felt full for pretty much most of the day. I'm sure there was more than a full meal's worth of calories involved.

nahoru*

Prague is maddening and beautiful and intense. The whole place comes with a sort of claustrophobia and it always requires you look Up Up UP! There is just about every type of architecture here and all jumbled together like a mad architect's dream world, streets converge randomly and others just go on and on, up and up with nowhere to turn. It is Easter weekend and warm so it is also crushed full of people local and not. I kept finding that I could not just take pictures becuase I would be taking them in little pieces only to try and tape together later. There is no room to take it all in and the whole city seems to crush in on you. Some buildings have intense Neo-Gothic decorations but are only five or ten feet from the next building. This video is of the old town square, one of the largest spaces by far.




*Today's Czech word of the day means "Up"
--although frankly I am still struggling with "thank you" and "I don't speak Czech"

Verloren*

Crossing over the Czech border, a sense of panic grasps me. While we huddle together in a train nearly out of an old movie about British India (no people on the outside of the train, but just as packed inside) I realize that the announcements are no longer in German. Everything is suddenly in Czech. My only hope for understanding the announcements is from a Bavarian woman who barely speaks Czech or English, while I barely speak German. She tells me we need to transfer now because there is "a problem with China" or so I understand. The houses along the country side stop looking quaint and begin looking more and more like Baja California. Crumbling houses in need of repair, clotheslines hang on ruins, broken windows abound. I did not stop to take pictures. I quickly became so over-whealmed by the fact that we were not even hearing German (much less the occasional English or Italian that you get in Germany) that all sense left me and I just forgot everything but English and 'crazy monkey pointing'. Pils (as in Pilsner Beer) looks like Detroit after the apocolypse, I cannot believe this is a functioning train station and this is where we must transfer... I follow the crowd and cannot even tell what the word for 'platform' must be... worse yet I am looking for Platform 2 but they have written out the word for 2 rather than used the number.

I pray; God oh God please don't let me get stranded in Pils.

*German word of the day is Verloren; lost.

(this is not the station in Pils... this one actually looks a little less run down)

6:20am

I missed my train to Prague.  I went to the ticket booth to see what could be done... the woman at the counter apologized profusely that she could get me to my connection but from there out all of the buses are all booked.  To get me to Nurnberg and then let me hope for a bus would cost 70Euro... Or I could get a direct route to Prague for 42Euro... Wait.  What?  That's what I wanted all along but couldn't get online for any price. Perhaps there is some secret about the glory of riding a bus for four hours that I am missing.

Ok then... so now we wait.

müde*

It's my last day in Munich, my last day in Bavaria... what to do? Yesterday I saw the Residenz Palace of Ludwig (pronounced Ludvich) the second.... I'm pretty sure he was the second, and the Haus de Kunst, which was not as impressive as I was hoping for. I walked and walked and frankly tired myself down for little reward. The Residenz was indeed amazing, but everything after that I was running on nothing. Solo travel in a foreign language is already exhausting, to get lost and find that (although I wasn't so lost the first day) I was very glad I brought a compass. Up was down, in was out and I was mostly spinning round and round. I slept in today. I shall endeavor to stop and eat lunch today. I shall endeavor to walk as very little as possible. Stairs? No! I shall take the escalator and ride it, like an old person. I thought about taking another walking tour today but it looks like a lot of the information will be a repeat of my free tour and I'm not sure I want to walk for three hours at a clip. Today I sit and stroll.

The great question of the day; can I buck up for a real Bavarian style meal? It is mostly a plate full of meat. Salad on the side costs a full 5 Euro extra and most people don't get that... my stomach couldn't take it yesterday, partially because of the walking and partly because of all the cigarette smoke. In Berlin there wasn't so much smoking, but here there are vending machines everywhere and smokers everywhere, it turns my stomach and makes me ever so cranky. I hear that Prague is going to be worse in that aspect (Heaven help me).

*German word of the day means Tired

Munchen cover up

You'll notice that the right side of this building looks a little odd... that is because it is all under construction. In Munich and also in Berlin all construction must cover the scaffolding with what the building is going to look like so as not to detract from the beauty of the city. I rather like it.

Let's play a game

Who can guess what kind of building this is on and what the second from the right symbol means?