London & Surrounds: the Eye, the Tower, an enigma machine, and more than one henge!

November 29, 2018
by Dan and Christina

~Christina~

Once seated on the Eurostar I fell dead asleep and woke up on the other side of the channel at international arrivals in St. Pancras. From there we made our way to the Piccadilly line and to Uxbridge to visit with my friend Chamini. Chamini is a friend and neighbor from my Japan days, and we got to see her briefly earlier in the trip when we had a long layover in Heathrow.

 

When Chamini got home from work we headed out to The Fig Tree pub for dinner and drinks. I got a pie! Christmas decorations were also in full swing.

 

The next day while Chamini was at work we knocked about the house, then I made my way to Southampton to give a talk to a local chapter of my professional organization.

 

I spent the night in Southampton, and in the morning before going to the university to give my talk, I got to eat a full English Breakfast at my accommodation! There were the usual (for an American) things, like sausage, bacon, and yogurt, but there was also deep fried toast (!), baked beans, fresh tomatoes, and sauteed mushrooms. Asking some Brits later, it sounds like this is more of a special weekend type affair, not a typical daily meal.

 

After giving my talk I returned to Uxbridge in the afternoon. That evening Dan, Chamini and I went to try out a local Asian fusion restaurant Javitri, and tried the famous butter chicken aka Chicken Tikka Masala, which is now considered one of the national dishes of England? It was only okay in my estimation, but later another restaurant would change my mind…

 

The next day the three of us went into town where we paid a visit to Paddington Station and the Paddington Bear statue, got a pint, then saw the Sherlock Holmes house gift shop at 221B Baker St. a formerly fictional address, but no longer!

 

From there we had a nice walk, taking in all the Christmas lights, and made our way to meet my friend Keri! Keri and I were lab mates many moons ago back in college, and we probably had not seen each other since she graduated (she was a year ahead of me) over 10 years ago. Keri’s boyfriend Paul (who was also wearing Feiyue shoes) joined us as well, and we chatted over drinks and got some fish and chips.

 

And here I present to you a photograph of three PhD scientists. Isn’t that nice! So good to see you again Keri, and so nice to meet you Paul! I hope we see each other again soon.

 

After that our little trio returned to Uxbridge to turn in for the night. The next day we paid a visit to a boot sale. The Brits don’t have garage sales, they have boot sales, where traditionally stuff is sold out of the boots (trunks) of vehicles. It’s not a place to buy boots. This was a mix of tables in doors and proper boots out in the parking lot.

 

Next up, we paid a visit to the London Science Museum, where we saw some cool exhibits including historic calculating machines, an enigma machine, and various communication system exhibits, just to name a few. It’s a high caliber museum and free, and I highly recommend it.

 

From there we went to Camden Market to see the sights and get a bite to eat. We enjoyed the food stalls, walked around, had a coffee, the finished up with a pint at a cool indie pub called Black Heart.

 

After that we returned home for our last night in Uxbridge. Chamini, it was lovely to see you and catch up! Thank you so much for having us to stay!

 

 

~Dan~

It was raining the next morning when we departed from Uxbridge. Christina went to the airport to pick up our visitors: my parents and little sister! I headed off with our bags to check into our Airbnb (referral sign up link if you want to score both of us some $$) in the Shoreditch neighborhood.

I preparation for their arrival I made a ploughman’s lunch, which is simple yet delicious. I bought it exactly one at a pub before realizing that it’s the easiest pub food to make for yourself. It’s some bread, a huge slice of butter, an even huger slice of cheese, some raw onions, maybe some ham, and pickles.

The pickles are the tricky bit if you’re outside of the UK. There are two types of uniquely British pickles that I’ve come across. The first is Branston’s, which are diced root vegetables in a kind of BBQ type sauce. The second is piccalilli, my personal favorite, which is a mix of veggies, including cauliflower, in a spiced mustard sauce. It’s all just snack food, but it feels good when an entire country supports me in calling it a meal.

When Christina and the family arrived we settled in and had a nice chat over the food.

 

To keep everyone awake and stimulated so they wouldn’t fall asleep too early, that night we headed back to Camden market. It was a big hit with the family because of all the great souvenir shopping. They had some good deals on souvenirs and the Brits have wonderfully calm markets. The bargaining was easy and no pressure from any of the vendors. We arrived a bit late in the day so some of the shops were “shutting”, but it was still a great outing.

 

The next day we started some whirlwind touristing. In general I think it was pretty manageable for the family, but it was definitely a higher tempo than Christina and I were used to. The first day we went out to see the Tower of London. First off, it’s not a tower so much as a castle, but you say flat, I say apartment, so whatever. On the way we stopped by some ruins of the old Roman wall from the days of Londinium.

I was a bit nervous about the ticket line at the Tower, but we were in low season and there was exactly zero line for tickets or to enter. We joined one of the free tours lead by a Yeoman (beefeater). While the tour wasn’t super dense with information, our guide was quite entertaining. It was definitely worth the wait, though if it had been actively raining it would have been a bit miserable.

 

The tower of London has some notable features, and one in particular that I would like to mention. They keep a number of ravens with clipped wings at the tower to satisfy some superstitions. One of them decided to glide into the chapel as our tour group was entering. For myself, who am ever so slightly scared to death of birds, it was not entirely a welcome experience. There was also a bit of a kerfuffle when one of the ravens swooped down to snag some school kid’s lunch.

After the tour we wandered on our own. We saw the crown jewels of England. Again there was no line, but apparently there is often a lengthy wait. You get shuffled through rather quickly, but presumably I saw the Kohinoor which England stole from India (or some of their neighbors, depending on who you ask, but I know that India is particularly sour about the situation). Man-made diamonds are far superior so I don’t really care for these things, but I do have a bit of a beef with England for holding on to precious items stolen from its colonies, especially when they are kept in places with entry fees.

From there we visited the area dedicated to torture. I was quite pleased that this exhibit didn’t go into too much detail and was kept small. Finally, we made it to the white tower. Again, not a tower so much as what I would call just a building. But it was one of my favorite exhibits, full of armor and swords and generally cool castle stuff. It was easily my favorite part.

 

When we left the Tower we took a Thames river ferry from the London tower down to the London Eye Ferris wheel. The ferries are part of the public transportation system, incredibly slow, and pretty expensive, but it’s a great tourist thing to do. They are also super posh with a cafe on board and everything. I’m not really sure if they are used in a practical sense for anything but tourists.

At the London eye, I took a break and the rest of everyone went on the ride. I was a bit glad to have the family around for this part. I’m not a huge fan of Ferris wheels, but Christina is. They got on at probably a perfect time. The first half of the ride was during the sunset and the last bit got them some views of the city being lit up for night. They also got a great view of Big Ben covered in scaffolding for repair. JK.

 

For the next activity we broke up into boys and girls. The girls headed off to afternoon tea which consisted of massive pillars of cakes and sweets. Christina had been very excited about having a proper English tea, and my mom treated her for her birthday (thanks Mom!). They went to the Wolseley, which Christina selected based on this London afternoon tea review article. It was everything she had hoped for, including a fancy multi-tier tray.

 

Meanwhile, my dad and I headed off to a pub for a few pints, and we all reconvened at the Lego Store near Piccadilly Circus which has some pretty pretty cool displays.

 

The next morning we woke up early to catch the changing of the guard at Buckingham palace. I personally found this to be a miserable experience, but everyone else found it amusing to various degrees. My view was more or less restricted to a sea of tiny mobile phone screens in front of my face. There is lots of pushing and shoving and mounted police shouting at the crowd during the ordeal [Note from Christina: Listening to the mounted officer offering loud verbal beat downs to transgressors was actually very satisfying for whatever reason]. Even during low tourist season in the rain, it was packed. I highly recommend that you never go. But if you do, this guide was pretty useful.

 

From there we got lunch and then we went to visit the Churchill War Rooms. I have mixed feelings about the museum. On one hand, it’s cool to get to go through the actual bunkers were much of the Allied war was directed from. It’s nearly perfectly preserved, since the bunkers were abruptly abandoned at the end of the war. My favorite part was a room full of graphs tracking estimates of various war time supplies of the Nazis.

So that part was pretty cool, but the main museum section was dedicated to Churchill. I find the guy pretty interesting, but I felt like the museum was a bit incoherent. On my own I would have probably prioritized going to the Imperial War Museum because it’s free, but also would have covered more aspects of WWII.

 

That concluded our London visitation, as we had another big destination outside of the city: Stonehenge. This was one of the more logistically challenging aspects of the trip, but I am really glad we did it. While there are some tour companies that take you from London on a day trip and they aren’t too expensive, but we aren’t generally big fans of organized tours. And with 5 people it became economical just rent a car, since there’s no direct public transit available.

To rent the car we went through Enterprise at St. Pancras station. They were really great to deal with. There is one office with like 5 different companies all set up there so it’s probably all about equal. One thing to note about car rentals in London is that the city center is a congestion zone and if you enter it, you’ll be charged about 12 pounds for the day. St Pancras is right at the edge of this zone. Luckily it’s a straight shot out of the city to get to Stonehenge, but you want to be careful not to accidentally make a detour into city center.

We could only include two drivers on the rental and since my mother made the reservation, I was the second driver. Christina and I had gotten used to driving on the left in New Zealand, and I had some additional practice biking in Japan. The catch was now we had a manual transmission. I can drive a manual, our dear Harvey was manual, but with the driver on the right hand side of the car and operating the stick with my left hand, I was uncertain how difficult that switch would be.

As it turns out, it was pretty easy. If I wasn’t already used to driving on the left side of the road, it would have been a lot more stressful. But I had that part down. The shifter and pedals are all in the same orientation, i.e. not mirrored. So it’s still a little backwards and shifting with my left hand was a little awkward, but I just tried to shift without thinking about it and let instincts take over. It worked out just fine.

So we had the car for one day. We got up bright and early and headed off to the small town of Avebury. We were recommended by two people to go here, one of them an archaeologist, because it’s home to an enormous (but less famous) henge and you’re able to walk right up next to the stones.

 

To visit the Avebury henge it’s necessary to pay for parking at the Red Lion pub. It was super cheap, probably because it was off-season. The inn itself has a really epic thatched roof and we had a quick lunch there after our visit to the henge. They had great fish and chips and everyone was super friendly to us yanks.

 

We rushed off from Avebury and did some drive by touristing of the Silbury Hill. I dunno, it was a big mound. It’s not possible to climb and we were tight on time, hence the drive by on the way to the West Kennet Long Barrow, which is an ancient burial tomb that you can go inside. It was most notable to me because it reminded me of the scene in Conan the Barbarian where he finds his sword. CROM!!!

 

 

Then we hustled off to Stonehenge. It was not very crowded this time of year and so there was no waiting and hardly any crowds. Apparently they’ve changed the access recently. There used to be a road going very close to the stones, but now you have to take a shuttle bus from the visitor center. There’s no hot dog stands or tchotchke shops adjacent to it, as we had heard. It was crazy cold and windy when we visited, but we were super lucky that it had stopped raining and we even got some really beautiful lighting before sunset.

 

 

After sunset we headed off to Stonehenge Inn nearby, where we got a crazy good deal for a large 5 person family room. It was a classic inn sort of experience. We checked in and went downstairs to the pub for some dinner and drinks. In the morning we got a classic British breakfast (beans on toast and all that, see Christina’s discussion above).

 

We took off early the next morning to return the car before we headed off to Paris on the Eurostar. We actually got there early enough that we had a few hours to kill. Christina and my sister went off for some conveyor belt sushi and across the street to King’s Cross station to see Platform 9 3/4. It was a total mess with huge crowds of people to look at a wall with a shopping cart buried in it that is no where near any of the actual platforms.

 

[Note from Christina: Just for fun I am throwing in a vintage photo. This is me, at King’s Cross, aged 15, in early 2000.]

That concluded our travels in England! Next up, the family goes to Paris!

 

 

Brussels, Belgium: beer, mussels, comic strips, and Atomium

28 November, 2018
by Christina

We arrived to Brussels armed with information for how to leave the airport on foot, and found our way to a small pub nearby in Cafe’t Hoeskske. There we drank Chimay and ate a cold sausage dish while waiting for the friends we were staying with to get out of work. The pub owners also permitted us to bring in kebab from a nearby shop (since the kitchen was closed) while we hung out, which was nice.

When he was finished with work, my friend Jean-luc came to pick us up. I met Jean-luc at a professional event way back in 2009 and we’ve stayed in touch since. Once back at the house we got settled in and had a home cooked dinner with Jean-luc and Geneviève. Over the next several days we got to have several family dinners, including with their two children, which was really lovely.

The next day we took the train into town to do a little touristing. We took a walk around town and to see the famous Manneken Pis, which is a small statue/fountain of a boy peeing that has become incredibly popular, as you can see by the quantity of tourists. He even has a huge wardrobe of clothes (he was dressed in a blue robe the day we visited him), with some of the garments having been gifts from other countries.

From there we walked further to the Grand Place, which is the central square in Brussels, and it has some truly epic and beautiful architecture, including the City Hall which is the largest building on the square.

Right off the Gran Place we went to the chocolate shop Leonidas, and got some freshly made Belgian chocolates, which were delicious. We ended up preferring the more traditional chocolate and caramel focused flavors, and were less fascinated with the fruit flavors, though we did give some a shot.

Next up was a visit to Jeanneke Pis, a small statue/fountain of a girl squatting to pee, though this one isn’t as popular as Manneken Pis, but does get quite a few visitors nonetheless.

She is also adjacent to the Delirium village, where there are several bars and cafes run by the Delirium brewery (you know it as the one with the pink elephant). We stopped in and tried the Guillotine, Tremens, and the Christmas brews. We agreed that the Christmas was the best of the set.

That night back at home we got to enjoy a dish known as “Raclette“. This involves melting cheese over potatoes, accompanied by deli meats and salad. The modern way to do the melting is a fancy contraption with little wedge shaped trays to put the cheese in for heating. It is a cold-weather Christmas time food, so it was a little early for it, but it’s the kids’ favorite, and for good reason. It was wonderful.

The next day we went out for a run with a local running club, which was on a picturesque trail through the woods. It was cold, but the foggy fall weather in the forest was stunning.

When we were home from the run and got cleaned up, we were in for a real treat: Geneviève showed us how to cook mussels! It involves mostly washing of the mussels repeatedly in the sink, discarding any that have broken shells, and then cooking them in a large pot with butter, veggies, and wine, and no added water. It was delicious! And something we will likely prepare at home assuming we can find a good supplier of mussels.

On our third day, we went to visit Atomium: a enormous structure/statue of unit cell of an iron crystal that was constructed for the World’s Fair back in 1958. (Can we have the World’s Fair back? It also gave us the Eiffel Tower.) I thought it looked really cool in the sort of grey hazy weather, even if it wasn’t the most comfortable time to be outside.

From there we headed back into city center to see the European Parliament Hemicycle. It’s free to visit, you just have to go through the security screening to get into the building. They have an app that you’re supposed to be able to use for a tour, but it was un-downloadable on the provided free wifi. Keep trying guys! We thought the hemicycle itself was very pretty and sat to enjoy it for a while.

Something I found amusing on the way out, and imagined couldn’t be a coincidence was the park adjacent to the hemicycle building with a bunch of ostriches with their heads buried in the dirt… except one. I couldn’t find a plaque, so I don’t know.

I did find a few articles online as I prepared this post, and one of them states that “No one seems to know anything about the 12 ostrich sculptures that stand in the Parc Léopold next to the European Parliament. Seven of them have their heads buried in the sand, while the other five are standing up [I didn’t notice the other 4 evidently]. One English tabloid newspaper saw the birds as symbolising the European Union. But they got the story wrong. The birds were put up as a reminder that the park was originally a zoo, founded back in 1850 but closed in 1900.” But why ostriches? Hmph. Not sure I buy it.

The next day we went to see the St Michael and St Gudula Cathedral, which is beautiful architecture and a lot of stained glass. There’s also a lovely pipe organ, though we did not get to hear it. Entry was free!

We got some classic Belgian snacks after that, waffles and frites (no, they’re not French fries!). Weirdly, there was this creepy frite statue out front of the shop that was exactly like one we saw in Egypt at a long-haul bus stop.

We then took a tour of the comic book route around city center. Comics are a very important part of Belgian culture, and there are many murals of famous comics all around town, as we noticed on the way to see Manneken Pis. I’m not very familiar with many of them, but I found a suggested route here and it was a nice walk. Here are just a few of the murals I saw.

That evening we met up for drinks at Brasserie du Lombard with Jean-luc, Geneviève, and my friend Anna, who also works in Brussels, and I am still kicking myself for forgetting to get a photo! Blast! But it was lovely to see Anna and to introduce her to JL&G, even though she couldn’t stay long. Afterwards we went to have dinner nearby at In ‘t Spinnekopke and enjoyed a delicious traditional Belgian meal (I got the boulets), complete with profiteroles.

On the way back to the metro we encountered the final of the pissing statues: Het Zinneke. This one is not a fountain like the other two, but it’s counted as part of the family.

The next morning we bid farewell to JL&G before heading into town. It was really wonderful to get to spend time with you guys! We had a great time, thank you so much for everything!

Our next stop on our journey was London, via Eurostar, but before our train left we got to go to lunch with a friend that I made in Japan, where we stayed to together at the Sakura House in Kyoto for several days. Kathleen doesn’t live in Brussels, but she was in town so we got a chance to catch up! Good to see you again!

After that, we hopped on our train and we were off for the UK!

Berlin, Germany: currywurst, running on the tarmac, and the Bundestag

November 20, 2018
by Dan (with short interlude by C)

From Vienna we took a train to Berlin with a short layover in Prague. We have visited Prague several years ago and thought it would be fun to see it with a new perspective. All in all we didn’t have time to see much. We spent most of our time wandering around with our bags in search of a place to eat.

Prague seems to be pretty dead (during November) on Saturdays, especially outside of the main tourist area. And since they aren’t on the euro, we had to find a place that could accept a credit card for payment, which further reduced our options. After much walking up hills, we finally found a small little place to some pilsner and snacks.

We then did exactly one tourist thing: we went to see the very odd Zizkov TV tower. Besides falling hopelessly in love with pilsner, this tv tower is one of the things that I remember most vividly from the first trip to Prague. It’s a weirdly shaped building, like something you would definitely build in Sim City. Apparently people hated it at the time and to make it more likable they added giant crawling babies to the side of it. I think it’s quit emblematic of Eastern European weird and silly. Unfortunately the babies were removed last year for maintenance and haven’t made their way back onto the tower yet.

[Baby-free photo is Christina’s, baby-ful photo is grabbed off the interwebs for your comparing pleasure. You can find more by image searching “tv tower babies”]

After that we made our way back to the train station to continue our journey to Berlin.

We arrived in Berlin late and I was a bit sick, so Christina rushed out for some groceries. The one thing that I find unbearable about Germany is that exactly everything (i.e. grocery stores) is closed on Sundays. I think there is a large enough Muslim population that they would work something out to have half of things closed on Sunday and others closed on Friday. Anyway, I’m glad we arrived with this knowledge from our previous trip to Munich, and that we were able to stock up for Sunday.

When looking at places to stay in Berlin, most affordable options seemed far from the city center. We ended up far on the west side of town at the Schoeneberg location of the Happy Go Lucky hostel. I was not happy with it. It is effectively a massive hotel (hundreds(?) of rooms) where the rooms converted into dorms. There was also no kitchen for guest use, which didn’t help the Sunday food situation. [Note from Christina: The staff we dealt with were very nice, but it was nothing like what we had wanted.]

The crappy hostel, bitter wet windy cold, and being sick weren’t a great start to the stay in Berlin but it all turned around from there. Berlin is a place that a lot of people really rave about, so I was suspicious, but once we started exploring the town, I ended up really liking it and wishing we could spend some more time getting to know the place.

Our first day out, we went to the “abandoned” Tempelhof Airport in the center of the city. I was expecting more abandonment than we found, but it was a lot of fun. This is the airport that was used in the Berlin Airlift to supply the Western half of the city with supplies. It was closed in 2008, but it wasn’t really abandoned so much as re-purposed. Supposedly there is a museum in the terminals, but we couldn’t find this and just encountered a lot of offices and closed doors.

It took a bit of wandering to find our way into the airfield, which was our main objective anyway. We found an entrance along the northern side of the field. Perhaps if we walked around the western edge we would have found the museum? Anyway we just wanted to just go for a run on the tarmac.

It’s a pretty large loop and with the wind and cold on that day we weren’t able to go for long. On a nicer day it would have been awesome to run there and even better to bike. I brought my small skateboard, and we determined that it is not compatible with Christina, who took a tumble off it. The best would be to do wind sports there, if we had that sort of skill/equipment. Because yes, that is a thing that happens there, and we did see someone out windsurfing (on skates?). There are also all sorts of community gardens and little parks.

After the run we went to look for the local specialty: currywurst. We visited Curry & Beer which was recommended to me by someone I met in Bosnia who used to work there. It’s not listed on google maps, but the location is 16 Warshauer. It was a really nice shop with pretty reasonable prices and the owner is really sweet. It’s also in one of my favorite parts of town. [Black frites! Made from fried, truffled, mashed potatoes?]

Now, what is currywurst? It’s a sausage sprinkled in curry powder and then covered in ketchup. So much ketchup. Its really simple and surprisingly delicious. Probably not something I would crave very often, but really nice if you want something different and cheap. We had them a few times at different street vendors. They are also usually served with fries but additional sauce for the fries, like ketchup or mayo, costs extra. That blew my mind. It wasn’t just a couple cents either, it was as much at 0.80 euro. But don’t worry the currywurst is plenty saucy.

Curry & Beer was right next to this re-purposed warehouse district, which we visited next. I actually don’t know what the area was, but it was everything that I imagined from Berlin. Old warehouses covered in graffiti that are probably “the coolest nightclubs in all of Europe” *said with strong German accent* where you have to stand in line for many hours and wear all black and look to be the most serious nihilistic party person (this last bit was actual, albeit paraphrased, advice for getting into a Berlin nightclub). Basically it was a perfect parody of the Berlin that I had in my head. So rarely in life do naive expectations match the real world that I found this delightful.

The point of this excursion during the day was to find a teledisko, which is a telephone booth converted into a mini-night club. You pay a couple euros and then select a song from the touch screen outside and the door will unlock. Inside you can fit maybe 3 people and try to dance to the song in a tiny space with a fog machine and crazy flashing lights. Probably it would be quite silly fun in the middle of the night of drinking. As it was, we went in the middle of the day and picked a terrible song (you have all of spotify to choose from so come with something ahead of time).

After a few minutes of dancing we headed to see the East Side gallery which is a large section of the Berlin wall that is covered in murals and graffiti. There were a few really cool murals along the way. If it wasn’t so crazy cold we would have probably spent a lot longer walking the length of this section of the wall.

After that we paid a visit to the Allied museum in Berlin. It covered the post war years and the management and reconstruction/rehabilitation of the western half of Germany  as managed by the Americans, French, and English. A large portion of the museum was also dedicate to the Berlin airlift. In general I found the exhibit a bit too feel-good. It felt like propaganda, but there was some interesting facts to be found. They have a plane that was used in the airlift outside. We were too late to go inside, but the cockpit looked plastered over so maybe it wouldn’t have been too interesting anyway.

Ashleigh, friend of Christina’s from high school, came to meet us there. She and Christina hadn’t caught up since probably 2003, and since then she’s become a zoo archaeologist, which was amazing to learn about. We went out for dinner at Heidelbeere tavern which was full of old stodgy Germans, the sort of cultural experience that I always am excited about. They gave us lots funny stares and sour looks when Christina laughed (this will not surprise you if you have heard Christina’s laugh). It was really good to see you Ashleigh!

The next day we arranged a visit to the German Parliament Bundestag building. It’s free to visit, but needs to be arranged in advance. The visit takes you to a huge glass dome above the place were parliament sits. It’s designed to allow natural light and air into the space below. They say that it symbolizes the transparency of the German political system… but most of it is made from mirrored surfaces so I don’t know if they really thought that analogy through enough. Anyway, it was a really really cool space to walk around and take pictures.

[Note from Christina: So many pictures! It’s a treat as both a hobbyist photographer and an architecture fan. There’s also a free audio tour that knows where you are and gives tidbits based on your location on the ramp, and stops talking if you move away from the thing it’s talking about.]

We then continued with a visit to the Brandenburg gate, followed by tour of the relatively new monument dedicated to Jews murdered in Europe. It was a very abstract memorial consisting of rectangular pillars of various heights. It evoked a surreal and disorienting feeling as you walked through it.

We finished off the day by visiting Checkpoint Charley. It was really silly, and more like a Disney reproduction with some guards standing there trying to get money for taking pictures with them. The most comical aspect was the heavy presence of US fast food chains in the area.

That afternoon we moved to 12 Monkeys minihostel. It was a welcome change from the Happy Go Lucky hostel. It was quite tiny (it only sleeps 12) but cozy. There was a basic kitchen and the staff and owner were really delightful and cool to hang out with. Also the location was far superior in terms of getting into town.

Speaking of transit in Berlin, I was rather surprised. I knew already that German train systems are pretty confusing with multiple tariff zones and a dizzying array of ticket types, but usually with all the frustration comes pretty reliable trains. Berlin had all the complexity and none of the reliability. Trains we consistently late and slow. At best it was comparable to DC’s metro system, which is great, if say you’ve ever lived in Florida and public transit is nil, but it’s kind of an embarrassment on a world wide scale.

~Christina’s Fitness Interlude~

As this is the first real winter experience we’ve had on the trip, I’ve had find ways to cope with the cold and get exercise. Sure, Peru was cold at high altitude, but November in Berlin is a different beast. So I went looking for gyms with day passes, and discovered FitX. They offer two free trial visits with an ID for them to hold (I used my driver’s license). I was somehow allowed to do this, so I ended up visiting twice, in two different locations.

They were pretty standard in most ways as gyms go, but two things stood out. One, they have a card system that lets you swipe in and out AND lets you select and use a locker in the changing area with a prox-card-based locking system. There is also an unlimited drinks station (with a house bottle that costs 3 euro from the vending machine) that offers still and sparkling water, and a variety of fruit-flavored sports drinks. I couldn’t resist so I bought a blender bottled and tried all the drinks. Sparkling mixed with the flower-symbol flavor (elderberry?) was my favorite. Also, the Llama mascot is fun.

My one complaint is that people seemed terrible about putting stuff away in the free weights area (and by people I mean dudes, it was mostly dudes). Bluh. Like, finished doing dead lifts and just leaving the fully loaded barbell on the Olympic lifting platform. Grrr. So much grrr. Overall though, I really liked FitX, and would probably buy a membership if I were to live in the area. And it’s good to know you can use it even as a traveler!

~End of Christina’s Fitness Interlude~

Our path out of Germany was one of the few flights that we took during this trip. We used Ryanair, which is a super low cost airline. It’s one of those discount airlines that try to nickel and dime you for everything. This was the first time that I flew one of these airlines in Europe so I went ahead and purchased the all-inclusive ticket, which is ~3x as expensive as the super low cost ticket that they quote, but I felt it was worth it. That way you know what you’re paying for without any surprises.

We were traveling to Belgium and this was not only way faster than bus or train, but it was also significantly cheaper even with the more expensive ticket. It also simplified all the stress about the size of your bag being accepted and all that. The only stress was making sure that we printed off our tickets beforehand. That will cost you 70 euros (!!!) if you want them to print it off at check-in. I really hate stupid games like that, but all in all the Ryanair ticket worked out well for us.

The weirdest aspect of using Ryanair out of Berlin is that you leave out of the Berlin Schoenefeld Airport. It’s not hard to get to, but it’s very strange. Half of it looks like it’s made out of shipping containers like some cool eco-vegan currywurst stand next to the teledisko. The lines were insanely long for everything and at one point we were included in a large group that was led outside into the cold (I put my jacket into checked luggage so this was not fun) like a large pack of confused ducklings, and then told (in German) to walk to some other terminal to check in.

Everything in the airside of the terminal looked like it was under construction and our gate wasn’t assigned until just before boarding. We were shuttled out to the plane and again waited in the cold to board. It was a weird experience, but it all worked out fine in the end.

I really liked Berlin. I think it would be an even cooler place to live than to visit, and I’m quite fond of the place and I look forward to visiting there again.

Vienna, Austria: sausages, waltzing, and famous dead people

November 17, 2018
by Dan

Waiting to greet us upon our arrival in Vienna was a wonderful friend we hadn’t seen in over a year. When we were couchsurfing in Costa Rica we met fellow traveler Kathi, who happened to be from Vienna. So we all made grand plans to catch up in Vienna over a year in the future, and as with most causal plans for the distance future, none of us were totally convinced it would happen… but it did! And it was wonderful!

On our first night Kathi had other guests in town, so she set us up with her friend Felix, who kindly hosted us sight unseen (thank you!!!). He lived out in Ottakring on the edge of town, home of the Ottakringer brewery and the popular Manner wafer cookie. He took us out for some dinner and drinks and we had a great time talking travel. On the way back we found a beer vending machine. They exist outside of Japan! But we couldn’t use these ones because we didn’t have an EU ID card for age verification.

The next day we moved over to Kathi’s place and had a lovely breakfast with her neighbor Sebastian, who turned out to be a regular in the apartment. He made us think of the cool sitcom neighbor, always popping by on some pretext or another to liven up the scene. We had a great time staying with Kathi and cooked a few dinners and ate breakfast together when she was available.

For our touristing activities, we first went out to a few of the local churches. St. Stephen’s Cathedral had really phenomenal architecture. The day we went was a bit foggy and so it was surreal seeing the top of the church disappearing into the fog. The inside was also excellent. The most notable factor was an enormous story book type display thing at the back of the church. I’ve never seen something like this in a church before and I’m not sure of what it was or when it is open, but it was certainly interesting.

We also took a trip to visit the campus of the University of Vienna where Kathi studies. The library was beautiful and the whole campus was ornate well beyond anything that you would expect from a university in the USA. A really cool place to study.

Also nearby the university was another church, Votiv church, and after parting ways with Kathi we went to explore it. The outside just blew my mind. Inside about half of the church was housing some art exhibit that we didn’t visit, but the inside had some nice stained glass.

On our next day in town we took a run along the Donauinsel island on the Danube. It’s an artificial island built from dredging a secondary canal along the river. It was a long cold run, but beautiful and we did alright overall.

We finished the run at Leo’s Wurstel Stand. This is a typical Austrian street/drinking food which usually seems filled with cheese. This particular stand came highly recommended (thanks Sebastian!). It was a great introduction to the wurstel. We went all out and got the Big Mama and a second smaller sausage. After ordering we saw that the Big Mama apparently is intended for 4 people. Guess we shouldn’t have also ordered a wurstel box… but we made quick work of it all.

Vienna has a lot to see and we found a few oddball sights that topped our list of places to visit. The first among these was the Museum of Art Fakes. It is a museum that collect and displays forgeries. We learned a lot here, including that there are different classifications of forgeries. Identical forgeries are replicas of actual known artwork. These can be a bit harder to pass off as actual originals if are known to exist elsewhere. More popular though are forgeries that are done in the style of a famous artist and then passed off as a previously unseen work.

I don’t have the art history background to appreciate any of this, but I loved the stories behind the forgers. Typically they are very skilled but disillusioned with the art world and decide to show their skills by making forgeries. The famous forgers become famous in their own right and often their works will be worth almost equal as originals, but unfortunately they often seem to find themselves facing a lot of jail time and tragic deaths. There was even a forgery of a forgery, a work passed off as the work of a forger who had gotten famous. Amazing. Overall it was a great find.

Right next to the Museum of Fakes was the wacky Hundertwasser Haus buildings by artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser with architect Joseph Krawina.

We also discovered the tiny Esperanto museum. The idea of a global language fascinates me, but we both kind of thought that Esperanto had died out. It hasn’t and there are a significant number of native speakers. The museum was tiny and, but we did learn a few cool facts. (And Christina got the high score on the Pac Man themed pedagogical Esperanto game, which yes, actually exists.)

The museum attributed the language’s burst of popularity on the expansion of the Austro-Hungarian empire, where the kingdom had a large number of languages existing and a common language with Latin and Slavic roots would be a huge benefit to the empire. Apparently the numerous fascist and communist political leaders of that time were not so supportive and the fuss around the world wars squashed further expansion (aside: same with this brilliant calendar system that was gaining momentum at the same time).

There were also some exhibits on other planned languages and all of it was interesting but mostly the museum was posters from Esperanto summits, books written in Esperanto, and pins that Esperanto speakers were encouraged to wear to promote finding other speakers.

Along with our entry to the Esperanto museum we also got entrance to the Globe Museum in the same building and a papyrus museum down the road, but based on our timing we were only able to visit the globe museum. We quickly realized that we actually purchased entrance to the Globe Museum and it was the Esperanto museum that was included in the ticket price.

The Globe Museum was many times the size of the Esperanto museum, with tons of globes of varying sizes. Some of the early globes were intended to educate Europeans about the people in the new world… usually with super racist caricatures. There were also some really cool devices that simulated planetary motion with fun complex gear systems as well as lunar and martian globes.

Over the course of the week we spent a few nights hanging out with Kathi’s friends. The favorite hang out spots were Huerigers, which are local Viennese taverns/wineries. They have some connection with vineyards that are located within the city limits or have some special contract to serve new wine. I don’t really get it and I think the status and term has changed a bit in recent times, but the point is these are awesome local taverns.

The drink of choice was spritzwine, the mix of the house wine (typically white) and sparkling water. I found this to be a delightful mix and only upon careful reflection did I realize that wine spritzers are actually the same thing and definitely something that I’ve seen in the US. But whatever, it was fantastic especially in a group since you would get two pitchers of each fluid and mix your own around the table. I was told that it’s all the same price to order individual spritzwine, but the ‘style’ is better when you get pitchers to share with the group.

The great thing with the huerigers is that they also serve delicious traditional food. Our absolute favorite was krautfleisch which is just sauerkraut and pork.

One night Christina managed to sneak in a work out at Fitness Club ISC, and she was very happy with the facilities there, particularly the squat rack and gymnastic rings.

Christina also celebrated her birthday in Vienna, so we did a few special things to celebrate. First up was a visit to the Vienna Central Cemetery. Such a traditional birthday celebration, but that’s our Christina. We went primarily to see the burial place of the physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, but the more popular gravestones belonged to famous Austrian music talents like Strauss, Mozart, and Beethoven. Overall the cemetery was phenomenally beautiful. It was a massive place with some really ornate sculptures and a whole seemingly abandoned section that looked exactly like the set of a movie.

After pondering gravestones, we headed off to a Viennese waltz lesson. Christina already knows the dance, but since I’m not so skilled in these areas, a dance lesson was the best way that we could dance Viennese waltz in Vienna. We signed up for a group lesson, but ended up being the only ones there so we go to advance pretty rapidly. It’s a lot of spinning and quite dizzying. I think I held my own. Many circles were made.

For a birthday cake we got the local specialty Sacher Torte. It’s a local invention of a chocolate cake with some apricot jam and a hard chocolate shell. We got ours at Aida, a recommendation from our dance teacher for a place that wouldn’t be too crowded. The Sacher Bakery where it was invented is known for the line out the door. We were very happy with Aida’s and its sacher torte.

In general Vienna is famous for it’s sweets and cakes and cafes as well. The Viennese seem to have quite an affection for cafes and so we visited a few during our stay. They are all over the city. The most notable was Vollpension, which employees pensioners to bake cakes. It’s a noble goal to keep retirees active and to encourage interaction between generations. It was a lovely spot to spend one of our afternoons.

My favorite aspect of Vienna though was definitely the architecture. It was quite similar to Budapest, but just more. More quantity and more crazy statues on every ledge/door/whatever. I usually spend a lot of time looking at my feet when walking, but Vienna definitely kept my head up.

Our last morning in Vienna we got up bright and early for a coffee with Kathi. (Thank you so much luv for having us! It was such a wonderful week!!! xoxo) She had to leave early for work, and after that we made our way to the train station for our next destination: Berlin.