Goodbye West, Hello East: Meine Neue Wohnung

Hopefully this statement doesn't disappoint, but the travel blogs are over. Finished. Fertig. Kaputt. I've settled down in Berlin for the summer - the same city I have lived in for the last 6 months but haven't necessarily spent all of my time in due to spur of the moment trips in an effort to see Europe. But now that that's out of my system - not that it needs to be - I'm staying in the city I love for the remaining 3 months of my stay, and in turn decided long ago to move to the East, a decision that finally came to fruition a few weeks ago. And now that I have, here's a quick update on my new living situation.

While Charlottenburg provided an enjoyable experience for the spring, in stark contrast to the bland and nothing-to-do nature of Friedenau in the winter, East Berlin easily tops both areas on the "better places to live" chart. Prenzlauer Berg, more specifically, probably sits somewhere on that chart in between "really damn cool to live in" and "just plain funky." Maybe the word funky went out of style quite some time ago, but I'm bringing it back. Due to the hip art crowd, European cafes lining each and every street, unescapable music scene, unending number of young people, and plethora of bars, funky probably works pretty well. It's really not just Prenzlauer Berg, although I would like to claim it exclusively for my own ego, but it's a whole combination of the already mentioned plus Friedrichshain and Mitte - hence: The East. Do not be alarmed, 20 years ago did not magically disappear and simply slide out of the history books. The wall did fall. But as significant to world history as the fall of the wall was, what it was not able to accomplish was to dissolve the cultural difference between the East and West. And thank God for that. The East, filled with all of the afformentioned entities, has a cultural presence, a vibe, a feeling that cannot be escaped. You cannot walk down a street in the East without being bombarded with colorful graffiti lining the walls, street musicians jamming out with a saxaphone or trumpet, people lining the sidewalks enjoying an espresso or fresh baked roll, or some form of weekend festival. The East has a personality and character that can only be imitated in the West, rather a character that is avoided in the West due to pretentiousness and pride. It's not that the West is a bad place at all, or that the people are cold, boring, or uninteresting. It's just that unlike the West, the East embraces a distinct personality - it has a personality - that emits from every corner, every hidden away bar, and every artist that practices his or her craft. If you haven't yet caught my drift, the East is a cool place.

The other distinct difference in my current living situation, beside direct location, is, well, my living situation. Due to the strained and confined rules of my university's program, we were required to live for the school period with a host family. Both experiences were rewarding and I enjoyed both, but as a college student, living with a single lady in her mid-50's is not exactly what one would call ideal. Therefore, I moved into a student apartment comprised of myself plus 3 other students. It's undoubtedly a much more desired situation, much more comfortable, and I actually feel like I live in my own space versus living in someone elses home. The makeup of the group is also quiet diverse: a 30-year old Italian girl, a 24-year old Portuguese guy, and a 22-year old French girl. It's a great, laidback, free thinking and fun group that suits my own personal preferences way better that the elderly and relatively conservative outlooks of my previous living situations. (No offense intended with the "elderly" comment to my loving grandparents back home - you're young at heart). With the four of us in the apartment, combined with the nicely balanced male to female ratio and our multinational dynamic, it makes for great conversations, interesting perspectives, and an exciting group to live with for this summer. It's been a great 3 weeks living here so far and I have little doubt in my mind that anything will change for the remainder of the summer. And, if anything does, I'm still living in the East.

Stockholm

It's been a crazy few weeks, so I'm behind on blogs, but here's a quick 2 cents about Stockholm. A little over 2 weeks ago, after spending 3 days in Dusseldorf and Essen for an internship seminar, 5 of us took off for Stockholm for a guys weekend in the Nordic land. The crew: Jake (Flex), Kendall (Speed), Andreas (Slick), Remi (Boss), and myself (Doc). After sleeping Friday night in the airport, we caught a 6am flight and headed out to Stockholm.

Upon arriving, we walked the streets a searched for a hostel, which we finally found. First of all, Stockholm is incredibly expensive, one of the most expensive cities in the world, so we paid 16 euros a night per person for literally a 6x7 ft. room. It was incredibly claustrophobic, stuffy, and no windows, but it was way cheaper than anything else we could find. After dropping off our bags, we walked to Old Town Stockholm and wandered through the cobblestone streets, around the Royal Palace, and chased the blue suited men around for the changing of the guard. We watched the changing of the guard for about 20 minutes and ended up at the front of the Royal Palace. It was quite comical though when Remi, upon asking the guard what would happen if he jumped the gate into the Palace lawn, was told that the real guards would be called to arrest him if he did not leave after being asked politely. Apparently, security is not really an issue in Sweden and the guards "guarding" the Palace are only novices and the real guards sit around somewhere else. After following the changing of the guard, we found a great underground tavern to eat lunch and then left to explore the city more. We went through some very cool independent abstract art galleries, browsed shops, and just hung out in the city. Stockholm is nice for the fact that the entire city is comprised of small inlets of water that surround small islands. Having a city surrounded by water easily makes a city more beautiful, so we walked up and down a lot of the streets along the waterways throughout the day. Around dinner time we headed back to the hostel for a quick power nap before going out to the clubs. The great thing about Stockholm nightlife, or Stockholm girls rather, is that they dance with you. Makes it a great thing when you roll to the club with 5 guys all wanting to dance with the female species - definitely would not work out in Berlin. We ended up having a great night at the clubs that was much better than the club scene in Berlin. One last note - we left the club at 3:30 in the morning and the sky was entirely bright. Due to Stockholm being so far north, it never gets completely dark and you can always see some of the sunshine on the horizon.

Probably the best thing about Saturday night in Stockholm was that we met 2 Swedish girls that agreed to show us around the city the next day. We met up with them at a park in the city mid-day and then walked to a carnival like area where we grabbed lunch at a hamburger spot. Afterwards, we decided to rent peddle boats and go out for a couple hours on the waterways of Stockholm. It was awesome to hang out on the water for the day as the weather was nice and the city is great to see by water. Basically, that was the entire day Sunday. Met up with the girls, hung out in a couple parks, went out on the water, and then called it a day. That night, we had nothing to do so we went to a theater and saw Angels and Demons, a relatively boring but relaxing thing to do in a foreign city. The night, we went to the lounge of our hostel and played cards for hours until catching a 3:45am bus in the morning to the airport for our Monday morning flight back to Berlin. While both our outgoing and incoming flights were at ridiculous times during the day, when you get a flight for 20 euros round trip you're definitely not complaining. Overall, Stockholm was a cool city, a pretty fun weekend, and established the crew known as LXG: Slick, Speed, Boss, Flex, and Doc.

Paradise

We had a few phrases for the week.  One: "We did this trip right."  Two: "I can't believe this is my life right now."  And three, my personal favorite: "We're living in paradise right now, but we actually are in Paradise."  If you can get the double meaning of the third phrase, that one sums up the trip best.  After a week in paradise staying at Paradise Beach, I would say with almost certain confidence that the 3 days spent in Mykonos were some of the best of my life.

Nash, Kendall, Aria, Remi, and myself flew out of Berlin midday Thursday into Athens.  Immediately upon arrival, Nash and I had only a short time between landing and our ferry departure so we quickly hopped in a cab and headed to the port.  Kendall, Aria, and Remi wanted an extra day to see Athens, so they came to the island a day later on Friday night.  For Nash and I, our ferry set sail at 6:30 as we boarded for a 4 1/2 hour ride to the island of Mykonos.  We had deck seating for the ferry so we sat on the top floor of the ship and played cards, ate dinner, and laid around as we made the journey across the Aegean Sea.  The best part of the boat journey, besides the fact that it got us to the island, was that we had the most incredible sunset I have ever seen.  There were clear skies and for probably 40 minutes you could watch the sun slowly dip below the sea level and beyond the other islands as the sky lit up with all sorts of pinks, yellows, oranges, reds, and blues.  I guess I haven't really seen that many sunsets in my life, but I'll be giving a big round of applause to the sunset that one day tops this one.  After a last hour in literally total darkness surrounding the ship, we arrived at Mykonos at 11pm and caught a bus to our beach cabin in Paradise Beach.  Immediately upon arriving, we threw our things in our room, caught a quick shower, and took the 30 second walk to the beach bar.  The best thing about our beach cabin, other than the fact that it was ridiculously cheap, was that we stayed literally 50 meters from the beach.  So upon reaching the beach bar, we immediately started meeting people in what was probably my favorite aspect of the trip: everyone spoke english.  It was not that everyone spoke english when you asked them, but they were already speaking english.  Paradise Beach is a huge party spot full of Canadian, American, English, and Australian tourists, so it was awesome to be able to talk to anyone.  After meeting a few people, we headed to the club around 1 and danced the entire night.  The club had one of the coolest setups I have yet to see: a huge turquoise pool with the dance floor surrounding it, a view right out onto the beach, and some of the most fun bartenders yet.  After a long night of dancing and meeting new people, we got back to our cabin around 5 and crashed only to wake up at 9 the next morning.

While we could have slept in Friday morning, who wants to sleep in when you have a gorgeous beach a few steps away.  So we got up early, had a quick breakfast, and by 10 were laying in beach loungers looking out onto the ocean while sipping on fresh squeezed pineapple juice.  We literally laid around on the beach the entire day, arriving there at 10 in the morning and not leaving the beach once until 8pm.  The beach had tons of great aspects.  First of all, I have never seen ocean water that is actually clear.  On the entire island and at Paradise, the water was completely clear and you could swim as far out as possible and still see to the bottom.  The only negative aspect of paradise beach is that it is a small pebble beach, where as all the other beaches we saw on the island the next day were sand.  This didn't really matter though as we were either laying in chairs, swimming around in the water, or hanging out at the beach bar.  Paradise Beach, especially for college students, is the perfect location.  It's one of the top 5 party beaches in the world, has incredibly affordable housing, and more entertainment than imaginable.  However, while on the beach Friday morning, we were wondering if we just came the wrong time of year or if the beach wasn't actually as cool as we had originally thought because when we looked around at 1pm there was almost no one on the beach.  But at about 2, that completely changed.  The chilled-out beach grooves that the bars were playing turned into club beats, and within about 30 minutes every chair on the beach was taken.  We realized had we not set an alarm this would have been us too after being exhausted from the club the night before.  At 4:30 every day, the Tropicana Beach Bar throws a party which officially starts off the party day at Paradise and doesn't end until the late hours of the morning.  Spending an entire 10 hours on the beach was pretty awesome, especially when you have beautiful views of the ocean, are surrounded by thousands of people your same age, and are in Greece for the first time in your life.  When we finally left the beach at 8 that night, we were wondering if you could really top the first day we had just had.  Luckily for us, that wouldn't turn out to be a problem.  So we grabbed a quick 30 minute power nap, then met up with Aria, Remi, and Kendall as they arrived at 11:30 to the resort.  Once we had the whole crew together, we went back to the beach bar to start off the night where we met some Canadian girls who then went with us into the town of Mykonos.  We first went to small little Australian bar called Down Under which we had heard about through a bartender we met at Paradise.  Plus with the free drink coupons she gave us, there was no way we could not go.  After hanging out for a couple hours, we walked down the street to Scandinavian Bar which is recommended by literally everyone in the town.  So as a repeat of the night before, we danced all night until catching a ride back in to Paradise in the morning where we hung out on the beach for an hour or so and watched the sunrise.  Quite a nice way to end a night of partying, as the sunrise is almost as spectacular as the sunset.  The only downside - going to bed at 7 am and then waking up the next day at 9 does not do so well for your sleep.  But hey, you only live once.

Why did we again decide to get up at an absurd hour the next morning?  Actually for quite a good reason.  The one thing Nash and I decided we had to on Mykonos before we came was rent ATV's.  Paradise Beach, just like our beach cabin, had great prices for all day 4-wheeler rentals.  We strolled over to the rental spot at 9 Saturday morning and rented the ATV's for only 17 euros for a whole 24 hours!  Our plan for the day was to beach hop - just pick out a beach on the map and drive there, spend an hour or so at each, and then go to the next.  Mykonos has just under 20 beaches, and we made it to 7 different ones on Saturday.  My favorite beach of the day was Elia, located on the southeast corner of the island.  It had extremely fine white sand, beautiful water, and cliffs surrounding the small cove that it was set in.  The close runner-up for favorite beach of the day was Super Paradise, set in an extremely deep cove, so it felt very secluded and also made the water warmer than other beaches on the island.  Basically the theme of the day was to cruise the island on the 4-wheelers while enjoying spectacular views and the feeling of freedom that comes with driving ATV's, lay around on the beach while juggling the mini soccer ball that I brought, and in general just enjoying life.  We saw so many beautiful beaches on Saturday, and the experience of getting place to place on an ATV is pretty irreplaceable.  The island is relatively small, so we were able to get from one side to the other in about 25 minutes, that is if we didn't make a wrong turn somewhere due to the complete lack of road signs, road names, or a remotely decent map.  It didn't matter though as every time we got lost we ran into something else, plus it just meant more time cruising around which was great in itself.  We ended the 4-wheeler day by going into the town of Mykonos where we walked the streets, grabbed dinner, and enjoyed the natural scenery.  The town is very typical of Greek architecture: white-washed buildings, blue, green, and turquoise stair railings and window shutters, and grayish stone streets.  Mykonos also has the most beautiful pink flower trees that hang over the narrow walkways throughout the city.  The city itself is much like a maze as all the streets wind this way and that and it's incredibly easy to get lost.  Overall, the shopping in Mykonos wasn't anything special as it was all high-class stores or little all-the-same souvenir shops.  But the town itself was beautiful and completely worth seeing during the day since we had already seen it the night before.  At about 8pm, Nash and I arrived back to Paradise where we took a quick shower and went back to the beach bar to start the night.  This night we met a couple guys from New York, a few English guys, and a huge group of Australian girls.  We all decided to go back into the town and repeat the night before.  So we again started off at Down Under with free drinks thanks again to our bartender friend and then to Scandinavian Bar for more dancing.  After we all decide we were a bit tired of the club, we went back to Paradise in the middle of the night and continued with a beach party until sunrise.  It probably sounds like exactly the same night as Friday, but with meeting new people and having a different group from the night before, it was entirely different.  But another great night, another 2 hours of sleep, and another 9am wake up the next morning.

On Sunday, Nash and I had to get up at 9 in order to return the 4-wheelers by 9:30 so not to get charged for another full day if we were late returning them.  After doing so, we grabbed another quick breakfast and went to the beach (actually breakfast is at the beach so we were already there) to lay around on loungers.  I was actually shocked at how awake I felt, so we played cards for a while, listened to some beach grooves, and just hung out as the beach was again completely dead until about 2.  Aria, Kendall, and Remi met us on the beach at about 1 and we hung out for the entire day again at Paradise, this time under grass umbrella huts since most of us were slightly burnt from the previous days.  After another day of laying around and just hanging out with good company and the people we had met, we left Paradise at 6:30 to catch our 7:00 ferry back to Athens.  It was a shame to have to say goodbye to Paradise, but the memory and legend that Paradise is will live on in my memory forever.

Nash stayed behind in Mykonos for another day before he had to catch a flight back to the states on Wednesday, but Remi, Kendall, and I explored Athens in a quick half-day on Monday before our flight back to Berlin.  We walked from our hostel to the Acropolis and the Parthenon and saw those sights before browsing for a couple hours through the tourist shops and streets of Athens.  Athens as a whole is a relatively dirty city and I would highly recommend for anyone who goes to Athens to not spend more than 1 or maybe 1 1/2 days there.  The main sites to see are definitely worth seeing, but spending too much time there is definitely a mistake.  Go to an island instead and soak up the Greek beaches and beauty, which in my case was absolutely the right choice and I'm very glad I limited my time in Athens and maximized my time in Mykonos.  Overall, Mykonos was an incredible trip and there is no possible way I will ever forget it in my entire life.  I can be 85 years old one day and completely senile and delirious, but I guarantee I'll still be remembering and telling stories about Mykonos.  It was a priceless trip, and like I said before, I was living in Paradise, but I was actually in paradise.  Cheers to you Paradise Beach: Mykonos.

Zurück nach Berlin

Between the crazy weekends traveling from city to city, I actually have spent at least some time here in Berlin.  And if you haven't heard my impressions of this city, this culture, and this experience since winter quarter, wow have they changed.  And definitely for the better.  Not that I ever had a bad impression of Berlin or the people here, but with the arrival of spring and warm weather, everything looks different.  So rather than telling a continuous story of my past few months here in my home city, I'll just hit a few key points here and there.

Weather: April was off the charts.  Literally, and I'm not exaggerating, every single day was 70F and completely sunny.  After enduring a ridiculously cold winter with seeing absolutely no sun, the month of April was much needed.  Not to mention all the things I got to do because of the weather...

Parks and Biking: While I now live in Charlottenburg as compared to Friedenau last quarter, you might as well say that I actually live in the Tiergarten or Schlosspark Charlottenburg.  If you look on a map, the Tiergarten is a massive park in the center of the city which is great for picnics, laying out, sleeping, and almost any and all outdoor activities.  There's also a really nice Biergarten that sits on a pond on the southwest corner of the park.  Schlosspark is on the back side of the Schloss Charlottenburg and wraps around a big lake.  Both parks are great to hang out in and I do pretty much all of my work in the parks.  The other weather-inspired part of my life is that due to my excessive biking habits back on Stanford's US campus, I terribly missed riding my bike so I bought one here.  Berlin is incredibly easy to bike as it's extremely flat, so I basically ride my bike everywhere throughout the city.  To the parks, to get groceries, to school, to shops, and the list goes on.  It's great to have a bike because you see so much more of the city than when you ride the U-bahn (it's underground so you miss a lot).  I really feel like I know the city so much better just because of having a bike.

Wohnung: Apartment in English.  I moved to Charlottenburg at the end of March, which is on the west end of Berlin.  I like my new spot much more than my old place in Friedenau.  The entrance to my apartment is in between two restaurant entrances, and my entire street is filled with shops, bars, bakeries, and more restaurants.  It's great to be able to walk 3 blocks up the street and have 3 grocery stores to choose from, a shopping mall, and plenty of other shops.  Plus I'm located a block away from the U-bahn and center S-bahn line, so I can get to the bars and clubs in the east in just 20 minutes and to school in 25.  Basically, it's a great location and I love living there.  Also, my host mom works as a professor at a university in Paderborn, about a 3 hour train ride from Berlin, which means she is only home every-other weekend so I basically have my own apartment.

People:  I have met so many more German's for a couple of reasons.  One, my German is much better.  Even though everyone here in Germany speaks great English, it makes it much more comfortable to talk to people when you can speak their own language fairly well.  As a tourist, you don't mind asking people if they speak English, but since I live here, it's much nicer to just talk in German.  Two, I swear German's are now much more talkative and friendly now that the weather is nice.  Not that they were unfriendly before, but in the winter no one would speak or smile on the U-bahn, but now it's loud and full of energy.  Then again, I've noticed this change in myself being much more outgoing and lively with sun and warmth every day, so I guess it's just a weather thing.  And just like myself, people here in Berlin flood the parks.  I thought that people used the parks when I was in Madrid, but nothing like here.  There are thousands upon thousands of people in the parks every weekend and it's awesome to see so many people outdoors just enjoying life.

Food: I've diversified.  Well, at least from my pizza, pasta, and chicken breast routine.  I've started cooking a ridiculous amount of vegetables, still eat a ton of fruit, and have strayed away from eating out.  Even though eating out is extremely inexpensive here, you still save a bunch of money by cooking for yourself - plus it's been kind of fun to try and make different dishes.

Sports: I've been to 2 Hertha Berlin games at the Olympiastadion.  It's a great atmosphere, and even though there is an olympic track surrounding the field, you don't really feel distanced from the game.  However, Hertha in my opinion is not that good even though they are having an anomaly of a year and are only 1 point back from first place with 3 games left in the season.  It's been fun though to go to a couple games since live is always so much better than watching through the tv.  I've also been to a basketball, ice hockey, and handball game all at the O2 area in east berlin.  Handball is a funny sport and I would not recommend going and watching a game.  The final score of the game I saw was 28-22, which means the excitement of scoring a goal almost completely loses it's effect.  Plus there are an absurd amount of injuries for a relatively low contact sport.  Anyway, I can't take the sport seriously so I won't be going to any more games.  The basketball game was just ok - clearly not the level to that in the states and no one dunks, literally no one.  Another funny thing - when they show highlights of NBA games on tv stations here, they don't even show dunks in the highlight reel!  It's weird that they're completely against dunking.  Ice hockey was very cool to watch and if the season wasn't already over, I would definitely go to another game.  Way more fun that watching it on tv.  Speaking of tv, it's been nice to have more people here this quarter from the Stanford program who love soccer.  It's pretty standard that every Tuesday and Wednesday night we meet at a bar and watch the champions  league games.  That's been a lot of fun, for both watching the games and exploring different bars throughout the city.

Tourism: While traveling throughout Europe in the Winter, mostly to warm destinations, you would always see tourists roaming the streets, but never here in Berlin.  How that has changed.  Especially with the current economic crisis, Berlin's "poor but sexy" motto is raking in the tourists and tourism is actually higher this year than last year.  Now that it's warm, there are tons of tourists taking bike tours of the city, walking the streets, and I hear so much more English when I'm out in the city.  I like having a bunch of tourists here - it mirrors the shift in the city itself between winter and spring - much more lively and exciting.

Kino's: Movies here in Germany are a different experience than in the states.  First of all, the kinos are way more comfortable here with wide seats and armrests for each person.  However, other than that, the US theaters are better.  German movies start with 15 minutes of food previews, then the lights come back on and guys with trays full of food walk up and down the isles trying to sell you stuff.  Then the lights go back off, another 15 minutes of regular previews, and then the film starts 30 minutes after the time on your ticket.  Also, if the movie you are seeing is longer than 2hr 15min, then there will be a 20 minute intermission in the middle.  And by in the middle, I mean exactly in the middle.  The last film I saw cut out right in the middle of an action scene that had everyone's heart racing and adrenaline pumping, and then after subduing the audience for 20 minutes, picked back up.  It sucks for the films because it really ruins part of the viewing experience.  One last detail with kinos - here you pay a Euro more for seats that are not in the first 10 rows, and you have assigned seats.  So, no reason to get there early.  In fact, get there late so you can skip all the food previews.

That's about it that I can think of for now to give an update on.  I'm sure there is plenty more that I have forgotten, but these are just a few details.  Overall, I love Berlin way more this spring than the winter and feel now like I truly know the city.  You know it's a great city when you leave to travel to another country for the weekend and don't care at all when it's Sunday afternoon and you're forced to return due to your flight.  Even though you had a great time wherever you were, you can't wait to get back to Berlin.

Bamberg Bierdiplom

After living here in Berlin for a grand total of 4 months, it's a shame that I had not yet made it to anywhere within Germany besides here in Berlin! However, now I can officially say I have been to 2 German cities now - or maybe 3 if you want to count Potsdam, which is 100% worth seeing but just a 30 minute S-bahn ride away so it feels a bit like it belongs within "Berlin." This spring, a bunch of us here in the Stanford program met a German student named Udo, who goes to the university in Bamberg but is from Berlin and lives at Wannsee about every other weekend. We've been to his lake house many times for weekend barbeques, hanging out on the docks, and swimming in the lake, but never to visit him in Bamberg. So, after a much overdo trip within the country, we rented cars and roadtripped to Bavaria to stay at Udo's apartment for the weekend and ultimately search for the ever-so-coveted Bierdiplom. While I originally thought I was just going to some random German town of only 70,000 people for a weekend of drinking beer and leaving with funny memories, the trip actually turned out to be much more due to the beautiful city in which the Bierdiplom could be obtained.

Bamberg, located in northern Bavaria, is about a 4 hour drive from Berlin and sits in a valley of some very large rolling hills or small mountains depending how you want to look at it. The best part about Bamberg for me was that it was not destroyed during WWII, so it was the first time that I was able to see traditional German architecture. Berlin, which was completely bombed out during the second war, has hardly any traditional German buildings remaining and the city was completely reconstructed after the war. So, when we as American think of the stereotypical and traditional image of Germany from an outsider's perspective, Bamberg is pretty much exactly the image that comes to one's mind. The entire city itself is a UNESCO World Heritage site (like the castles of Sintra in Portugal), so it's pretty significant in the realm of German culture and history. It's also beautiful due to the river that runs through the city center along many of the old German buildings. So after arriving very late at 1am to Bamberg - we went on an all-day bike tour of Potsdam Friday - we crashed for the most uncomfortable night of sleeping I have ever had in my life. While it was awesome to have a place to stay and I'm incredibly grateful to Udo for letting us stay at his place, sleeping on a wooden floor with only a blanket for warmth and a backpack as a pillow definitely does not qualify as sleep! But hey, as a cheap college student, I was happy and grateful nonetheless.

We woke up the next morning, or stayed up the whole night, and cooked an enormous brunch of pasta with sauce and cheese to give us a steady start to the day. It was rather important to eat a big meal since the rest of the day entailed drinking. Bamberg, besides it's architectual beauty and historical status, is also home to the largest density of breweries in the world. There are 9 traditional breweries, plus one modern one, all of which are extremely old and as the world knows, beer is a huge part of German culture so therefore the breweries are fairly significant. The idea of the Bierdiplom is to spend a day going to each of the 9 traditional breweries and trying the house beer from each. In the past, it was an organized tour, not by a tour company but the Bierdiplom was actually a ligitimate beer tasting event, in which each brewery acknowledge that it existed and gave visitors stamps upon drinking their house beer. At the end of the day, one would have 9 stamps for having 9 historic beers and therefore would have complete the Bierdiplom. However, since it was organized, that meant there was a specified order in which to visit the breweries; as one can imagine, the breweries at the end of the list were likely not so happy to always be flooded with locals and tourists alike all completely drunk after visiting 7 or 8 other breweries first. So, the Bierdiplom lost its official status and the breweries no longer acknowledge the event. However, some breweries out of tradition and good taste still give visitors stamps if they have a Bierdiplom paper (which can be created on one's own just as our's were). So that's a short history of the idea behind the Bierdiplom - try 9 beers, visit 9 historic breweries, see the city while walking from brewery to brewery, and ultimately just have a good time with the friends you are with. So after eating an emormous brunch to prepare us for the day, we headed out to arrive at the first brewery at 1pm.

Our first brewery on the list was Brauerei Spezial. We arrived on time at 1 and ordered our first beer. I think a few of us were a bit nervous about having 9 half liters of beer throughout the day, but it actually turned out to be fine with the walking between breweries and a quick stop for pizza between the 5th and 6th. The first brewery brewed a smoked beer - one of two smoked beers we had throughout the day in Bamberg, and is a beer that can only be found in Bamberg. The first one was not really noticable as it was extremely mild, although dark, and did not have a smoked smell to it. Since it would be a bit exhaustive to talk about every brewery and there are a lot of similarities while each being unique, I'll just give a general overview of the day to give feel for the breweries.  So to start, here is a list of the 9 we visited in order and the year they were founded:

1) Brauerei Spezial (1536)

2) Brauerei Keesman (1867)

3) Brauerei Mahr (1670)

4) Brauerei Maisel (1798)

5) Brauerei Fässla (1649)

6) Brauerei Heller-Trum (Schlenkeria) (1678)

7) Braeurei Klosterbräu (1533)

8) Brauerei Kaiserdom (1718)

9) Brauerei Greifenklau (1719)

Relating back to the historical nature of Bamberg, one thing I found really cool about all the breweries was also the sense of history while in each.  All but 2 of the breweries we visited were older than the United States - which for those of you that are dreadfully awful at history means established before 1776.  Germany is also very proud of their beer brewing history and has a law called the "Reinheitsgebot" or the "German Purity Law" which became official in 1516.  Remarkably, the law existed until 1993, but all of the beers we had still abide by the 1516 purity law.  In other words, the recipes for the beers we drank we old, if not ancient.  Another cool think about visiting all the breweries was that your beers were served in an authentic stein, some glass and some clay, and all poured out of wooden kegs.  The stein's were less significant since every beer you order in Germany is served to you in a glass or stein of the same brand, but seeing the beer pouring out of the wooden kegs was a cool experience.  The most unique beer of the day was at Bamberg's most famous brewery - the Schlenkeria.  It was the second of 2 smoked beers we had throughout the day and this time there was no mistaking that the beer was actually smoked.  When we first got our beers, you could notice immediately that they smelled exactly like bacon.  And, unfortunately, the aftertaste was likewise.  It was definitely not my favorite beer of the day - well, actually it was my least favorite, but since smoked beers don't come around every day then I guess that makes it Bamberg's most famous.  Other than the history behind all the beers and breweries, it was a blast to hang out with other German university students for the day while learning traditional German drinking songs and getting the entire rooms full of people to sing along with us.  So after a long day of bouncing between brewery after brewery, we ended the day with a final beer at 11 to wrap up an awesome tour.

On Sunday, we woke up around 10 and made our way back to the city center for an incredible brunch at a sidewalk cafe.  We had waffles, yogurt, juice, potatoes, mushrooms, fish, rice, bread, tomatoes, cheeses, sausage, and the list goes on.  It was incredible and one of the best meals I have had in Germany.  After brunch, we made a trek up the hill to the Old Kings Palace and walked around for a while before finally heading back to Udo's apartment to pick up the cars for the drive back to Berlin.  Overall, it was an incredible trip and one of the most fun weekends yet here in Europe.  For a town that I knew nothing about before visiting, I can't imagine leaving Germany without having seen it.

Budapest

Following suit with our Stanford program's trip to Istanbul in the winter, Budapest grabbed the limelight for the spring quarter.  Thanks to a generous donor, our entire program had a fully funded 3 day trip to the Hungarian capital to gain both cultural and educational experiences.  Leaving early on a Wednesday morning, we arrived in Budapest at noon and immediately made our way to a local university to meet with a professor that briefed us on the political history of both Budapest and Hungary, providing a necessary background for grasping the current political system in place.  While not the most gripping speaker, the historical information provided definitely gave an interesting insight into the political apathy that characterizes the Hungarian population.  Although some speakers differed in opinions throughout the week, political apathy was by far the most prevalent and agreed-upon topic across the board.  After meeting with our first speaker, we took a bus tour of the city that stopped at various location where we could get off and see a few sights.  We first explored the Pest side - Buda and Pest are two cities, one on each side of the river, but combined make up Budapest.  We started at Heroes Square, then made our way to Saint Stephen's Basilica, and eventually crossed the river to Buda where we hiked through the small but cool Citadella castle.  After wrapping up a 3 hour tour of the city, which by no means was the entire city, we had an incredible dinner which included the best mushroom soup I have ever had, an awesome piece of white fish, and some radical chocolate dessert that was almost too much to handle.  Definitely one of the very best meals I have had while in Europe.

On Thursday morning, we woke up entirely too early to commute to another local university to meet with two professors who spoke to us about opinion polls in the country, which for me was very interesting being a sociology major.  Again, political apathy took command of the polls, but many other interesting opinions about education, government, and social class.  After the talk, myself and a few friends explored Budapest a bit by going to the local market where I had an interesting Hungarian pizza for lunch (fried bread like a funnel cake with some weird sauce on top - not good, not bad, but interesting).  After exhausting the market, we trekked across the river to Buda where we hiked up a path for some great views of the city before eventually making our way down the river to our mid-afternoon speaker.  This time we met with an economic expert who spoke about the current effects of the financial crisis, which can especially be seen in Hungary since they are in the EU but not the monetary EU, so they do not have the stabilization of the Euro.  Speaking of money, if I thought Copenhagen was ridiculous, then Budapest was incomprehensible.  Definitely not in terms of exchange rate, because Hungary is relatively cheap for everything, but 1 Euro equalled 290 Forents!  Upon exchanging money, I literally had two 10,000 Forent bills in my wallet.  No idea how to even process this, but felt like I was big time for a while, until a sandwich and soda cost 1600 Forent.  So after listening to how the country was/is effected by the economic crisis, I made my way to an island park in the middle of the Danube where I layed around for a while before making my way to yet another phenomenal dinner.  After dinner that although very good included entirely too much meat, we made our way to a rooftop bar to top off the night.

For our last day in Budapest, we again got up early Friday morning to meet with a EU representative from the foreign ministry.  This was by far the best speaker we met with throughout the week who gave us a great understanding of how Budapest functions internationally within the European Union.  After 2 hours which completely flew by, our other journalists which we were supposed to meet with cancelled so we had the entire day to explore the city.  A group of us took an entirely too long metro to tram to bus trip to the southern part of the city to Monument Park.  The park preserves many of the old communist sculptures and although cool to see larger than life statues, the bus rides there and back were actually way more fun and one of the most hilarious parts of the trip just joking around with the group.  After spending 3 hours total getting there and back and only 30 minutes at the park, we had a guided tour through the Hungarian Parliament which had more gold inside than I have ever seen in my life.  After the tour was over, a group of 5 of us made it to my personal highlight of the trip: Turkish Baths.  In Budapest, there are numerous public baths heated by natural underground hot springs both indoors and outdoors.  The Turkish Baths were enormous and had some incredible Ottoman architecture - while lounging in the pools, I literally felt like I was a king just kicking back for a day of relaxation at my personal palace.  Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but it was pretty cool to lay around in the baths.  Wrapping up the trip, we had one last dinner as a group followed by a hilarious Hungarian Elvis impersonator.  Probably more hilarious to see a Hungarian impersonating Elvis rather than him actually being good at what he does, but cheap entertainment none the less.  So that concluded our trip to Budapest.  It was an awesome trip with great scenery and sightseeing plus speakers that were ten times better than the speakers in Istanbul.  Overall, I had a great time and swimming/lounging in the Turkish Baths was by far the highlight of the trip and one of my European highlights as well.  So, until later, that was Budapest.

(My computer is broke right now, so hopefully if it gets fixed I can put pictures up, but for now text will have to suffice.)

København

After spending over 3 months on the same continent and not yet seeing each other, which sounds relatively insignificant except that this is Europe and you can travel very easily, I finally made it to Copenhagen to visit Nash for the weekend.  Leaving Berlin on Friday afternoon, I arrived in Copenhagen after a short 1 hour flight.  Since Copenhagen is part of the European Union but refrained from entering the monetary EU, I first had to exchange money and was shocked upon receiving 735 Kroner for 100 Euros.  However, while my wallet may have been flooded with 200 dollar bills, it was completely insignificant since everything in Copenhagen is so expensive!  For instance, my first purchase, a 4 zone train ride into the city from the airport, costed 38 Kroner, or over 5 Euro - you can get a day pass in Berlin for 6.40.  Since the city is so expensive, Nash and I figured it would be best to cook dinner instead of eating out.  As you can probably already guess, still expensive.  A case of beer, 3 chicken breasts, a bag of veggies, and a bag of chips cost 200 Kroner - and he already had the rice and soy sauce for stir-fry at home.  But anyway, we made it back to his place after buying groceries and cooked up a nice little meal.  He lives way out in the Copenhagen suburbs in a residential house with a roomate - a family lives on the 1st and 2nd floor but they have the basement all to themselves.  For a homestay scenario, it was a pretty nice setup - full kitchen, living room, bathroom, and a bedroom so not bad for living.  After cooking dinner and kicking back for a while, we hopped back on the train headed into the city for a night at the bars.  We met up with a few of his friends from his architecture program as well as some other people who were studying abroad and went to a couple bars.  Eventually, we decided to call it a night and headed back to his spot, but it was definitely a fun first night out in Denmark.

On Saturday, we made a sort of tour around the city.  We started off with a few games of Backgammon in Christiania.  Christiania is a hippie commune neighborhood in central Copenhagen that is completely separate from the Danish government - upon entering Christiania, you walk under a sign that says "Christiania".  Upon leaving, the sign says "You are now entering the EU."  Basically, the Danish government originally treated the commune as a social experiment and decided that it was not a harmful environment, so present day Christiania has many walk-up-and-order type restaurants, art shops, marijuana stands, street musicians, and residents.  It's definitely an entirely hippie community, but very friendly to the public and a fun spot to hang out.  So after a few games of Backgammon over lunch, we left and walked along the famous street Nyhavn which provides your postcard image for the city.  We also made it up and down a few shopping streets, by the river that runs through the city, and to a few other areas, but really there's not much of anything to do in Copenhagen - or at least that was my impression.  I had probably the most interesting vanilla ice cream cone I've ever had - it was basically half vanilla ice cream and half marshmallow fluff, leaving you dying of thirst after every bite.  After wrapping up a day in the city, we went back to his house and cooked dinner (like I said early, eating out is so expensive that Nash has only eaten out once after 3 months of being there).  And for Saturday night, we made our way back to Christiania where there was a live funk concert, which was a great way to wrap up the day.

Sunday pretty much illustrated my overall view of Copenhagen.  As I had already noticed there seemed to be nothing to do, Nash had no idea what to show me for my last day in the city.  So, upon at least an hour of brainstorming, we settled for going to Tivoli Gardens, even though the theme park did not look all that appealing.  But, with nothing else to do, Tivoli snatched the remaining money out of our pockets as we spent a day at the most polarized - great for the elderly and under 10 crowd but awful for anyone in between - amusement park I have ever been to.  However, we did ride one roller coaster which while not the best was actually fun.  So, we sat around and just hung out in the park for the day, and really didn't do much else.  And that was the trip.  Pretty simple, pretty basic, pretty bland, but fun since I had a friend there in the city to visit.  My overall impression of Copenhagen is extremely expensive, definitely the most expensive city I have been to (7 Euros for a beer at the bar), very small, and pretty basic.  Not the greatest impression, and no real reason to visit if you don't have a friend there, but another experience so no complaints on my end.