Traveling by Car? Bike?

I never thought it would have been possible that riding in a car would feel odd.  However, after eight weeks of planes, trains, buses, metros, boats, and cable cars (not to mention feet), a car felt out of place.  Uncle Tim rented a car which gave us freedom to wind our way from Berlin to Amsterdam over the next few days.

I’ll preempt the questions by saying no, I didn’t personally get to drive on the Autobahn (I wasn’t on the rental agreement), and no, we didn’t drive as fast as I would have hoped given the lack of a speed limit (but it was entertaining to see others flying by).  I also enjoyed all of the wind turbines scattered throughout fields along the highway – Germans are so far ahead of us in generating (and conserving) energy!

We drove across Germany stopping for a short time in Goslar, mainly to take in the charm of an old, traditional German town, eat some lunch, and laugh at the “fat people” statue.  Our end goal was Munster, the biking capital of Germany.

We spent the entire next day biking around Munster – one of Aunt Noreen and Uncle Tim’s loves, but not mine.  However I was game for an adventure, and so we ventured out of the city to a very pretty schloss (essentially a manor house) surrounded by a moat and weeping willows.



It was while riding through the city’s downtown, however, that I had my first disagreement with my bike.  I was happily riding along, taking pictures and dodging pedestrians when I managed to clip a the corner of a bench with my pedal, sending me flying off the side of my bike and onto the road.  Luckily, it was almost as amusing then as it is now, mainly because the damage was minimal – minor cuts on my hand, arm, and knee – and we were able to continue on our way after I dug out a few bandaids.  The second disagreement came when I slid out while breaking on a gravel trail, but I was quicker to react and jumped off rather than wipe out with my bike.

The photo that led to the wipe-out

Despite my misadventures, I enjoyed Munster and managed to survive the day without coming to despise bicycles (which was fortunate, given the plans for the next few days)!

Double Museum Day

Marking where the
Berlin Wall once stood

It is simple to spend an entire day indoors, walking at a ridiculously slow pace, reading plaques and looking at artifacts.  Our second day in Berlin was spent like this, wandering first through the German History Museum and then through the Checkpoint Charlie Museum.

The history museum had an amazingly large collection; knowing that I would never get through the whole museum in the three or four hours we allotted, I went backwards in time.  I only made it through the 20th century and still had to skip and skim parts of the exhibit!  It was very interesting to see how the German museum explained and portrayed the events and artifacts from World War II, since I had only ever been exposed to history books and museums from the United States' perspective.  In my opinion, it was a very honest look at their history and an acceptance of the past.

Checkpoint Charlie was a completely different type of museum.  Where the history museum (and pretty much every other museum I've ever been to) was well structured, laid out in logical order, easy to read (as long as it was in English), and well maintained, the Checkpoint Charlie museum was pretty much the opposite.  A private museum, it was disorganized, cluttered, redundant in some places, and thrown together in a few old apartments near the actual border crossing.  However it was also one of the coolest museums I've ever been to.

I should mention that the museum focuses on the successful escapes of people across the Berlin Wall from East Germany.  The posters read like stories, only made more effective with the photos and apparatus that surrounded them.  Seeing two suitcases with the sides cut out and a mannequin folded into the available space to make it across the boarder on a train... looking at two surfboards on top of a car with the middles cut out, a mannequin lying inside... getting to search a car for the hidden passenger, only to find the mannequin under the seat's fabric instead of foam filling... it was amazing to realize that these people were trying to escape a wall that was only torn down in 1989.

The actual checkpoint was just outside the museum.  There were "guards" there (for photo opportunities) standing in front of the guard hut and nearby was the large sign warning people about crossing the boarder and leaving the American or sector.

Detours and More Friendly Faces

Frauenkirche in Dresden

In case there is anyone who hasn’t given up on my blog, here’s the next installment, shortly to be followed (by the end of this weekend) by stories of the last week of my trip. 

Sara and I parted ways (after a 4:00am wake-up) as she headed to Prague’s airport and I jumped on a train to Dresden.  With only a few hours before the next train headed to Berlin, I explored the city and the history museum.  The city was completely destroyed during World War II by firebombing; some of the main landmarks were rebuilt to their original glory, including the main Frauenkirche (a Lutheran Church), but in this case, not until the end of the 20th century.  In the history museum, the photos and artifacts that were preserved from World War II were shocking to see, especially those of the city as rubble.

Welcome to Berlin!

Upon arrival in Berlin, I met up with some friendly faces - my Uncle Tim and Aunt Noreen and a few friends of theirs I had met on last year's Grand Canyon rafting adventure.  My aunt, uncle and I spent the remainder of the day walking down Unter den Linden (the main boulevard through the city), taking in the main sights, most notably the Brandenburg Gate.

After a fabulous dinner, we headed to the Reichstag Building (house of parliament), where we stood in the line to go up to the glass dome. 

The Brandenburg Gate

The benefit of traveling with older people manifested itself faster than I had anticipated when an employee who was checking the line spotted us and informed us that we could skip the line and go in the side entrance since my aunt and uncle were elderly.

The audio guide told us what we were seeing (although it was a bit harder to spot things as it was nighttime) as well as informing us about the sustainable design elements of the dome itself.  I was fascinated by both but took more pictures of the sunshade and the column of mirrors to direct sunlight than the light-up buildings outside!

The Reichstag building by day.

The sunshade and mirrors inside the Reichstag's dome.

It was a wonderful start to the last bit of my trip – traveling with family, eating delicious dinners at restaurants, and sleeping in hotel rooms.  Definitely a change, but it was an enjoyable one.