Bern, Switzerland

Arriving in Bern Switzerland I met up with my couchsurfers’ (from Zurich) cousins’ friend named Beat. A nice young man with good knowledge of the city. We waited at the train station during a downpour for our bus back to his apartment. We chatted for a bit and I was fortunate enough to write a bit on my blog. Once the rains subsided enough he took me for a tour of Bern. A beautiful city with a lot of history and gorgeous buildings. There were several funny statues around, including a pair of legs and a fountain with an ogre eating children.

While waiting in the Train Station I took a picture of their “Royal with Cheese”. Right after I took the picture a polite French speaking McDonald’s employee yelled at me.

One of my favorite signs

There were many great viewpoints along the way to the “Bear Gardens” an area where bears are kept for public display. Fortunately their original concrete prison was being renovated to be a much more pleasant living environment closer to the river. We stopped in at the resturant for a drink and headed home. Luckiliy for me he really enjoys cooking, and I was fortunate enough to eat another fantastic meal.

In the morning I headed for Zermatt, gateway to the Matterhorn.

Sedrun, Switzerland

Something great about Switzerland is that everyone wears hiking boots.

The train ride to Sedrun was breathtaking. The train traveled along cliffs high in the Alps giving all the passengers spectacular views of rivers, valleys, mountains and birds’ eye views of some of the towns along the way. I was absolutely mesmerized by the sheer beauty surrounding me. My couch surfers from Zurich had invited me to stay with them at their parents’ cabin in Sedrun. When they showed me to the room I would be staying in, I could not believe the view from my window. It looked like something out of a fairy tale. Shuttered windows, perfect drapes and wooded framed windows opening up to a gorgeous view of the Alps brought a vast smile to my face. I had arrived just in time for dinner. Christine made some excellent pasta before we headed out to join in the festivities of National Day.

How cute is this…

We found our way to the center of town where it seemed like everyone was gathered to celebrate. The area was decorated with Swiss flags, and the state flags. In addition there was a band playing traditional music and they were serving sausage and beer. We jumped right in and got ourselves some of the local brew, and brats. The music was strange but I enjoyed listening to it and being a part of another countries national day.

Children are given Swiss flag – paper lanterns with a candle inside. Once they were lit, they started walking down through the town to a giant bonfire with us in tow. While standing near the bonfire it was really cool seeing the hillside with a scattering of lanterns from all of the children. After the sun went down fireworks began from all areas. Also, bonfires started to appear everywhere. You could see bonfires on all of the surrounding hills, and on some occasion’s fireworks accompanying them. It was a fantastic night.

We headed back and went to sleep rather early. In the morning after breakfast I headed out to catch a train back to Zurich. Along the way the train stopped in Disentis for a bit. I decided to get out and do some exploring even though it was starting to rain. I began walking around the very small town and admiring the quaint buildings and churches. I started walking around the outskirts of a church to find one of my friends’ last names, Loretz. I was surprised to find it several times. By this time the rain has started to become a downpour and I was totally soaked. My coat kept me fairly dry, but my shoes were seriously soaked, and I was pretty cold. I headed for a nearby monastery to get out of the rain for a while before heading back to the train station.

I enjoyed my ride back through the Alps to Zurich where I caught a connecting train to Bern.

Munich, Germany

Heading to Munich Germany we met Carolyn, one of Carmens friends at the train station. Her sister is living in Munich and we had a place to stay for a few days, which was great! We headed home and got some more much needed sleep. In the morning, or afternoon ish. We got up and did some exploring around Munich. We headed toward a square and had a bit of food and enjoyed the pleasant day. We kept walking and we got kind of thirsty, I eagerly suggested the HaufBrauHaus, the famous beer hall in Munich. I could tell the girls were not as excited as I was, but still the idea appealed to them. We wanered around the town and finally found it, it was in fact a hall filled with people drinking beer. Just as I had imagined a beer hall to be. I ordered a plate of schnitzel with potato salad, my favorite, and of course the obligitory 1 liter beer in a stein. About a hundred years ago when my dad went to Germany he had visited the very same place I was at. On his book shelf at home he might have a stein stolen from the HaufBrau. I of course needing to follow in my fathers footsteps decided that this stein was mine! As a group effort we smuggled it into a purse and headed out quickly. Very happy with my stein.

The next day we woke up and headed to see two castles in Germany. One of which was called Neuschwanstein, the other, well i forget at the moment, but it was pretty as well. We had a nice train ride through bavaria and hiked up a hill to the castle, we did not go inside because, well it costs money and im cheap. It was very impressive from the outside, and the view from a nearby trail was well worth the extra hike. The other castle had fewer tourists around it which made viewing it much better.

These were really cool fountains that i ran though. The tops of them spin around. and like the dufus I am I hit my shoulder on one of the pilars and scraped myself up pretty badThis is the castle that insipred the castle in DisneylandAll in all I had a great time at the castles. We headed back to Munich and ended up at Augustiner, another beer garden not too far away from where we were staying. We got some great food, sauerkraut and saussage and of course more of the giant beers in the steins. Oh and who could forget the giant pretzel.The next day Carmen and I went to a park and had a picnic lunch, I saw that the beer was very cheap and got one, I forgot the bottle opener and had no metalic objects with me, so trying to use a coin I scraped my hand pretty bad. I have discovered that in Germany they have a beer called Radler which is Beer and Lemonade mixed together. It is very good, probably the best beer in the world. The park we were at was actually a beautiful park where people for whatever reason have found that they can get naked and sunbathe. There is no big lake around, just a small creek flowing through and a hoard of naked people in the middle. We stayed along the outskirts and wound up at another Beer Garden! It was outside and filled with people. They were playing traditional music and the men were wearing leiderhosen. I got a Radler and a pretzel, while Carmen enjoyed her Coke. People were playing music from inside this ... thing

 

That night we left for Prague, Czech Republic via train.

Berlin, Germany

 

We arrived in Berlin in the morning via the strange train from Poland. Berlin was beautiful. As I got off the train I realized that my bag lock was stuck again! If you remember from India I had a lock for my bag that I had to bust open with a can opener. Carmen brought me my sisters old lock (identical to the one I was using earlier) after several days it too became stuck. So, being skilled at breaking apart locks with a can opener, I reached into my bag and pulled it out, starting to pry it apart on a bench in Berlin. I was successful at breaking into it and destroying the lock.

I was very impressed by Germany, it was very clreean and organized as I figured it would be. We caught the S – Bahn into town, (S – Bahn stands for Schnell Bahn, or Fast Train). We wandered around for a bit and then found the Berlin Wall.

Their was a historical marker with some information about the wall and the division of Germany, and about the art along the wall. They had hired twenty some artists from other countries to paint on the wall. Some of the spaces were very interesting, some cute and some confusing. My favorites were of course the ones with Batman on them.

and who could forget Mr. Potato Head!

The area where the wall is the longest and has the paintings is called the East Side Gallery

After the wall, we basically explored Berlin for the rest of the day. It was beautiful. We saw the gates at one end of the city, many of the historical buildings and sights. Along our way of exploring we decided to try to get some German food at a local resturant. We were reading a menu in German doing quite well and about to order when the waitress realized we wernt from around these parts.She asked if we  wanted to trysome Berlin food, we said of course and give us whatya got. The drink below is Beer. Green Beer, very tasty with a hint of lemon lime in it. The food we got was a giant piece of pig. I say pig and not pork because it still had the skin and some of the hair on it! She warned us that it would look disgusting but taste… Amazing! She was right on both things.

We could not find any couch surfers that could host us in Berlin, as they were all either out of town or busy with other people. We tried looking for hostels but found that they were about 20 € a head which would have been about the price of a hotel room, very expensive. So, I had a crazy idea, why not take a night train someplace and sleep on the train see the place for a day and then come back to Hamburg Germany. So, the next train to Copenhagen Denmark was our decision, however it was overbooked so we had to wait until the train at 5.17AM, we slept in the train station…

and woke up at 5.15am and then ran to the train, which left right as we got up to it. CRAP! We missed our train! No worries, we got on the one that left about an hour later…

We were then on our way to Denmark!

Sofia, Bulgaria

Arriving late put a bad taste in my mouth for the city because unfortunately the night highlights the negative aspects of a city just right and as you all know, first impressions mean everything, even for a city. On my first real day here in the city, I wandered around trying to find cool things to look at. I of course tried really hard to avoid any museums or churches that required money.  Which by now most of you know that I am fairly good at it. I wandered to one of the grandest churches in the city, Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, and I saw St. Sofia Church, the Russian Church “St. Nikol” and I saw a government area which is the administrative headquarters for Bulgarias presidency, every hour on the hour the guards changed. I was very hungry walking around and wanted to find some food, unfortunately the alphabet here is Cyrillic which I of course do not understand, at first I was a bit worried that I was going to have to point to something in the middle of a menu and hope that it was good. But at a stand selling kebaps and burgers I met a man who spoke English, he gave me a hambuger type thing. There was a lot of stuff on it, and it was amazing! It was like a cross between a Burger, a Gyro and a Turkish Doner Kebap, there were french fries on it, taziki sauce, mayonnaise, meat, ketchup, more mayonnaise cucumber, chili powder/sauce not sure which, and some other stuff, it was amazing.

I walked back to my couch surfers apartment, which I found after wandering through some neighborhoods that looked a bit sketchy. I finally found the National Military Museum, which is next to his house. Its great, you can wake up and look out the window and see a Mig, or a tank looking at you, or trucks with rocket launchers on them.

After Simon returned home we went out for a bite at a local ale house, it was very clever in that they had poor spouts for the beer at each table with a meter that measures the amount you drink in liters, at first we thought it was measuring in money, so we were mislead and unfortunately did not enjoy the end result of that. The food was great! Fairly inexpensive but delicious. Later we took a crazy cab (the driver must have been from India, because he had a total disregard for the lanes) to a student area of the city where after a while we went “cosmo” bowling, it was a lot of fun, bowling in Bulgaria. After bowling we walked by another stand that sold the crazy burgers, I of course needed to get one of them and man was it good!