Stability is overrated!

My roommate and I did Blind Booking through German Wings. It's an offer that gives you a category of what type of vacation you would like to do, such as "sun and beach," "Western Europe metropolis," or "party central," etc. Within each category are 5 - 10 cities and once you have chosen which category you want, German Wings doesn't tell you which city you're going to until AFTER you have paid them.

We chose "Western Europe metropolis" and ended up going to Berlin. We were hoping for London, but (very reminiscent of a very early post about the power of positive thought) Berlin ended up being 10 times better than London could have ever been!

First of all taking a 7 hour train to Berlin would have cost us 120 Euro's one way. This way our flight was only 1 hour and a 1/2 and was only 70 Euro's round trip.

Secondly, we took one of those free Sandeman's walking tours. I highly recommend these if you ever take a trip to Europe. All the tour guides work off of tips and nothing else and they are really charismatic, plus it's a great way to get a feel for the city so you know where you're going the rest of the time. Our particular tour guide was amazing. I am pretty sure my jaw was dragging on the ground for most of the tour seeing as he could paint a pretty interesting picture of Berlin's history.

And what a bad ass history it has. Berlin has been through a lot over the years and it is still an awesome and vibrant city. Kind of like the phoenix that rose from the ashes, but Berlin has kicked that phoenix's ass 10 fold! What's funny is my mother visited Berlin in the 60's and she has the exact same opinion as I do and that was before the Wall went up and came down. This city completely throws Vienna out of the running and is now my number one favorite city.

The East Side Gallery, which consists of over 100 artists from around the world that have painted the roughly 1 mile stretch of the East side of the Berlin Wall. It's supposed to represent freedom and hope for a new future and changing societal views.

I 100% believe the is an accurate depiction of what it looked like when the East side was finally united with the West side. Our tour guide hit the point home telling us that when The Wall went up at 1 am, August 13th, 1961, if you were a pair of parents who had dropped their kids off with their grandparents that night so you could enjoy an evening out in the city, you would come back the next morning to find that the wall had been erected and that your children from then on would be raised by their grandparents. Or if you were a student living in West Berlin and your school was in East Berlin, you could no longer continue your education there anymore. Examples like these go on and on and are just fascinating b/c you have to wonder psychologically, what it does to a country. How are the parents that had to watch their children be raised by their parents and only visit through slits in the wall able to bounce back from that kind of isolation? I don't know the answer to that, but they did. Which is why Berlin is so bad ass, considering they were also still recovering from being one of the most bombed cities in WWII.

Michael Jackson knows where it's at!!

If you notice the rounded edges at the top of the wall, those are sewage pipes that East Berlin purchased from West Berlin. After trying barbed wire and other gloomy ways to line The Wall, they found that those trying to escape couldn't get a good grasp in order to hoist themselves over because of how rounded the edges were. Can you imagine being he person coming up with these methods? And the irony just really strikes me that the sewage pipes were purchased from Western Berlin!

Humboldt University, where Karl Marx and Albert Einstein taught before moving onto Princeton.

The square where all of the University's books written by those that opposed the Nazi Party, all 20,000 of them, were burned. In the center of the square there is a glass panel that looks underground onto white bookshelves that could hold the 20,000 that were burned in the 1930's. It is also memorialized with a plaque that says "That was only a pre-lude; Where they burn books, they ultimately burn people." - Heinrich Heine (who ironically wrote that, not in regards to WWII, but in a work he wrote in 1820.)

Berlin's war memorial, a woman holding her dying son. Above a hole in the ceiling allows for any kind of weather to pour over it, adding to the darkness of the overall memorial.

Parliament, which was burned down during WWII and resurrected.

One of the last architectural pieces of the Nazi regime still standing. And now it holds the tax office. I'm not quite sure anyone ever really moved out of that building in the first place! It's built to make you feel small while looking at it and this picture only captures a 1/3 of how big it actually is.

Berlin really wanted to create a memorial to honor the Jewish population that suffered during WWII and this is what they came up with. The city wants it to become sort of like a park where people can sit and enjoy the day or a picnic and really integrate it with their everyday lives. It is nameless and the meaning behind it is vague. The artist didn't want any pre-conceived notions about it, which is why he purposefully left out a description.

The only concrete things that we can gain from his inspiration is that the blocks are supposed to look like the Jewish Cemetery in Prague. (Another reason to travel. Everything is all so connected and since I have actually been to the Jewish Cemetery, I completely understood and saw the comparison of the reference to this particular memorial. Compare this picture to the memorial and you will see how lopsided the concrete squares look, just like these gravestones.)

This memorial, as you walk through it, is also supposed to create a feeling of disorientation and chaos even, which is what those being persecuted must have felt everyday. As I walked through it, I couldn't help but feel that exact way because you never knew who was going to round the corner or who you were going to bump into.

The lay-out of Hitler's bunker. Berlin was being bombed 24 hours a day 7 days a week during the last weeks of the war. During the Day the Royal Air Force was giving this city Hell and the American Air Force took over at night. Of course his bunker was 49 feet below ground. So it never got destroyed until years after the war had actually ended and apartments were being constructed above it.

This is the actual spot his bunker was. And according to our tour guide is the designated spot for all Berliner's to take their dog to do all of their business.

When Hitler was found dead with his wife Eva Braun, his will asked that he be burned and buried so he couldn't be paraded around the way Mussolini was after he was captured. But the military was out of fuel and time so they really did a poor job of burning his remains.

And his half-charred body was buried right where that red car is parked. After Berlin was liberated, the Soviets dug his body up and buried him in a small town in Germany, but told the other Allies that he had escaped to Argentina. Soon CIA agents realized the truth and Soviet Politician Yuri Andropov had Hitler found yet again and properly cremated and washed down the Biederitz River.

Lots

And

Lots

Of Beautiful, Gorgeous

German Architecture!

Our tour guide (can you tell I really liked this guy) made an important note that there was a lot of talk about war and such, but that you can't delineate a country because of a 12 year period. And I think sometimes it's easy to do so. Just like America's history with segregation and the Trail of Tears or even (yikes) Bush. It's how you come out on the other side that matters!

Classes end June 30th and all I have to do is make it through an AWFUL Economics class and then I am home free! (Terrible life I know!) July should be interesting as it is a month I am declaring as "Anything Goes!" Wherever the wind takes me, I guess I will go. It's a weird feeling having nothing keeping you anywhere. It's bittersweet, the instability of it all.

And in 12 days I will be 23 a pretty unstable age, no matter where you are!

Oh yeah - Boston Bruins are beyond amazing! They absolutely deserve their 176,000 dollar bar tab! They made it worth waking up at 2am and staying awake until 4 or 5am every other day to stream their games! They made New England proud!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Self Portrait

It doesn't interest me if there is one god

Or many gods

I want to know if you belong - or feel abandoned;

If you know despair

Or can see it in others.

I want to know

If you are prepared to live in a world

With it's harsh need to change you;

If you can look back with firm eyes

Saying "this is where I stand."

I want to know if you know how to melt

Into that fierce heat of living

Falling toward that center of your longing.

I want to know if you are willing

To live day by day

With the consequence of love

And the bitter unwanted passion

of your sure defeat.

I have been told

In that fierce embrace

Even the gods

Speak of God.

- David Whyte

You really can't blame me

I spent a few days in Vienna and I have to admit I didn't have a real plan for this city. It's a 7 hour train ride from Aalen to Vienna and once you get off that train, you really care about little else.

It's such an easy city to navigate and get around that it isn't difficult to see many of the beautiful sites just by hopping on the U-Bahn and then hopping off at any given stop.

I typically don't go to any city blind. I usually research and type into Google the top 10 sites to see anywhere, but that wasn't the feeling I was getting for this trip. It reminded me (on a slightly softer level) of an excerpt from the book "Eat, Pray, Love," where the author is in Italy just lounging on the floor eating to her heart's desire rather than going out and seeing the sights. Of course the voice of her ex-husband pops into her head asking "this is why you went to Italy and ruined our marriage? To sit on the floor and eat food all day?" And the author simply replies back with no shame,"yes, yes it is."

Now I am not getting divorced, but one would still expect that if you're in a new city you're going to break your back to see every nook and cranny. Normally I do, but all I wanted to do was leisurely walk around, drink coffee all day and perhaps take pictures of the magnificent buildings and gardens from time to time. And I really don't feel any shame about it at all!

Vienna takes their theater very seriously apparently. This is just one of many theaters I came across.

City Hall where a huge festival honoring Austrian culture was being held.

As I was just meandering I came across this gorgeous garden. It was a very lucky find.

I am guessing in order to raise funds to maintain the garden you can buy bushes or plants in honor of a loved one. This particular flower had a quote on it that says

"Once in a while, right in the middle of an ordinary life, love gives us a fairy tale."

It was written by anonymous. I wonder if that is the same Anonymous with a statue in Budapest;) Nonetheless it was a very sweet sentiment.

The garden kind of reminded me of the scene in the movie Notting Hill where Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant fall in love. That quote was perfect to set the scene!

My lack of motivation to be a die-hard tourist may not show it, but Ireland may have been my favorite country, but Vienna is my favorite city. It was so clean and beautiful. The buildings were gorgeous and I ate some of the best food I have had this entire trip in this city.

Just Be Thankful

My Eurail Pass expired a few days ago, which meant I had to use up the last few trips on it. I ordered one for Austria, Germany and Switzerland and since I am living in Germany and have already been to Switzerland, I booked a few days in Vienna. I stayed in this crazy hostel that reminded me very much of a Freshman college dorm. As the picture, I am sure suggests, a Freshman in college was how everyone was acting.

The bar in the basement of the hostel offered 6 Jager Bombs for 10 Euros so everyone had a field day with that. (And when I say everyone, I always book a 6 room dorm at hostels in order to meet people, so I am referring to my roommates and anyone else the cat dragged in.) This trip brought out a side of me that typically makes a resurgence at my birthday. I wasn't sure I even had it in me anymore either! I really value sleep and hangovers typically take-away from that, but the party girl I thought was dead along with the idea of me ever being 18, 19 or 20 again, (an age that allows you to post pictures like the one above without embarrassment) was brought back to life in Vienna. It was nice to know I still had it in me. Now when I turn 23 in a month, let's hope that my back doesn't give out or I decide to move to a Floridian retirement community!

But moving onto much more fulfilling topics, Budapest was only a 2 hour train ride from Vienna so I spent a night there. There I met a friend of a professor I had who took me all around his beautiful city and told me fascinating stories of the country and city he grew up in.

Lately I have become enthralled with the history of WWII and its effects on Europe. So of course that was one of the first questions I asked Mr. Biro, my personal tour guide. When the Nazi regime's end was imminent, the Germans fighting in Hungary holed themselves up in the Buda Castle. The Russian military came in and took the hundreds of troops out with zero mercy. Out of all the troops only 5 soldiers came out alive. As we drove up to the Buda Castle Mr. Biro said that the very road we were on was dripping with blood as it trickled down the hill.

The map above shows you how devastated Hungary was by the war. The thick, bold, red outline shows you how big Hungary was pre-WWII. The thin, red line towards the Western border is the territory that makes up Hungary as we know it today. They lost all of that land when the war came to a close. Castles, history, language, forests and culture, was seized and absorbed into the countries that we recognize as Romania, Serbia, Slovenia etc.

One thing that did work to Hungary's advantage was the fact that a large part of the country is surrounded by hills and forest, making it difficult to maneuver tanks into it.

Hero Square, honoring those that founded Hungary back in the 9th century and other prominent Hungarian leaders.

Mr. Biro also told me that when the Russians were pushing the German's out they bombed the hell out of the city leaving craters 5 feet deep in the city. Not to mention obliterating many of the beautiful buildings Budapest is known for. When the war was over, children would play in the craters left by the bombs. At the same time Russians would take any child of working age (12 and above) and ship them off to Siberia to work in order to build their own economy.

Mr. Biro's childhood friend was playing in the streets one day and saw the Russians coming to collect more children to work and he jumped into one of the craters and hid, sparing him from being shipped away from his home to Siberia. Isn't it ironic that the holes the Russian's created, saved him? Fascinating too.

Studies in later years also have shown that the bombing and damage to the cities and grounds of Budapest have shifted the ground so much that it has raised 5 feet since the war.

This statue is commemorative of the author who wrote the early history of Hungary under King Bela's rule. The identity of the author is unknown and in all historical accounts of this author and in stories he is referred to as "Anonymous." I wonder if he is responsible for all of those inspirational quotes you can read on the internet that says "author unknown!"

St. Stephen's Church built in honor of King Stephen whose fist is mummified and buried in a tomb within the church. The people of Hungary take this as a sign seeing as no measures were really taken to preserve the fist in the first place. It's preservation is considered a miracle and inspires the Basilica's followers to live the way that Stephen led when he was still alive.

The day we went in, a competition or ceremony if you will, between different choirs from around the region was being held. The church was beautiful. One of the most beautiful pieces of architecture I have EVER seen ANYWHERE, but it was even more special to be able to hear the music from the different church groups.

Look at the detail of the ceiling! That is love and dedication right there. The pictures in the center of the domes weren't painted either. They were all done through mosaic!

My tour guide told me that everyone in Budapest gets to celebrate their birthday twice. Once on the actual day that they were born and then again on their saints day. Most everyone in Hungary is named after a saint and they get to celebrate their "name" day.

A very posh Hilton hotel was built on the ground of an old nunnery. Instead of building over all of that history they incorporated the nunnery into their building. To the left you can see the ruins and on your right you see the new part of the Hilton.

Parliament, Budapest's oldest building.

Part of the Buda Castle. Now it is really only there for tourist purposes, which is why it it's in such great shape.