tour de l'europe part deux: binka

binka_boo

tour de l'europe part deux

Jul 20, 2009 08:36

and so, i finally get on to the tales of prague, berlin and dublin.
i believe when i left you i had arrived in prague and gorged myself on cheese - a rare occurance on bothe counts.

the next day was really my only full day in the city. i just started wandering around at about 10am, with the eventual aim of ending up at the castle, since i knew it didn't close until about 8 or so. i found this street that looked sort of busy, with cafes and stuff and walked until i ended up, unknowningly, at wenceslas square. which is not a square, but a boulevard, with the museum standing imposingly at one end. i walked up to the museum, gaped for a while, then wandered up washington st and ended up at something that looked like the train station. it was :) by this stage i decided looking at the map might actually be useful, and i made a plan to walk to the palladium - the big shopping centre in town, but again i stumbled inadvertently upon a landmark - the powder tower and municiple building, both of which are awesome.
after looking around the palladium and buying some cute things at C&A, i walked through old town, which is gorgeous, but touristy and totally designed to lure your money away with babushka's, garnet and crystal... i restrained myself this time round and instead indulged in a thai massage. my god i needed it. especially my poor footsies, which really really really don't like european cobbled roads.
after a lovely pummelling, i had lunch - pork AND bacon, nomnom - i continued my wandering, up and over charles bridge, through lesser town and then i began the torturous climb up the hill to prague castle. put it this way, montmartre is piss easy compared to this climb. it's fucking steep and it never seems to end!!! i wish i could say that all this walking has improved my fitness - and i guess it probably has in some ways - but unfortunately with the weight of a shoulder bag and the muggy air and my lungs, hills are painful for me. thank god for ventilin.
anyway. i got up the top and was - well, a little disappointed. it's sort of boxy and slightly pink and a little boring from the outside. but then you go into the third courtyard and are greeted by st vitus cathedral. and that is pretty. it was open to the public and unlike a lot of churches, photos were welcome. i might not agree with religion, but churches and cathedrals really are impressive. i mean imagine lugging all thoe stones and bricks and glass up that friggin hill! the palace also has a basillica, but i didn't really feel like paying for a ticket to see inside that and the palace, but i did wander round the grounds - the gardens were beautiful and the view was just amazing. i wish my photos did it justice.
eventually i made it back down the hill and cought the subway back to wenceslas square intending to do some shopping, but in the time it took me to go three stops it started raining. no not raining. bucketing. so i went back to the hostel and had some dinner in the restaurant downstairs - a czeck dish of roasted duck with red cabbage and bread dumpings - delicious but very very filling - and had a relativley early night.

my train from prague to berlin was at 12.40 and check out was at 10, so, after checking which station i was leaving from - i had learned my lesson - i made my was to the other train station in prague, checked my luggage into a locker - very cheap - and headed to wenceslas square to do that shopping i'd planned the day before. i actually found what i was looking for fairly quickly - which was a 4 wheel trolley case - and so i headed to old town with enough time to pick up the souvenirs i'd wanted - babushka dolls for erica and jade and some garnet jewellery for myself. i ended up getting a gorgeous ring and earring set, for a pretty reasonable price. not cheap, but reasonable.

the train to berlin was late, but other than that, the trip was blissfully uneventful. i was going to write these posts and edit photos but instead i finished the time traveller's wife, which was at that incredibly engaging stage, so i ended up arriving in berlin with tears in my eyes and a strong desire to go and have a bawl rather than a ball. but i cought the S7 to nickolasee station and walked to the hostel, which i must admit was in a beautiful quiet part of berlin, surrounded by trees and the lake. i wished i'd gotten the opportunity to get out and look at it, but i was a bit tired by this stage, as you can probably imagine!

I can't say i liked berlin. i found it very cold and distant and hard to get along in. that's not to say i didn't meet nice people - the workers at the hundt, hammer and stein are pretty awesome - that's a book store that has a great english collection, and they know their stuff too. had a great time there. i checked out a few yarn stores in the city and did pick up one skein of german sock yarn, which was one of my aims :)
by far the most impressive things for me in berlin were the remains of the berlin wall and the kaiser wilhelm church, both of which are so rich with history and reminders of the trials the german people have undergone. they are also both symbols of hope in their own strange ways and i felt very honoured and priveleged to stand there and look at this sobering monuments to the trials of humanity. these two things alone made the trip to berlin worth it.
that's not to say they were the only awesome things. there were hand organs! (no monkeys though) the was surrounded by a very festivally atmosphere, with musicians and hand organs and food stalls and craft stalls. one guy was selling amazing soap that looked good enough to eat! and of course there were many different -wursts in a bun for sale. i also very much liked the brandenburg tor and the reichstag, although i didn't get a chance to peruse the tor properly as there was some sort of big event on there. the cheesiest thing i did was go to the legoland discovery centre in the afternoon before boarding the train back to paris. it was so much fun, seriously (or not lol). MIni berlin was fantastic. they had so many of the landmarks i'd visited, and they all lit up and there was a 'concert' outside the 'reichstag' and a hot air berlin that you could shoot into the air and so many other coooool things! then i got to control a lego pirate ship in a little competition, and i got to go through a lego jungle and watch bob the builder in 3D in german. it was cool :)
my one real evening in berlin (ie not having just gotten off a train) i went, as promised, to german cabaret. but of course i didn't understand a word! it was a good experience and i could understand the basic story line and the audience definitely seemed to find it funny. the style is very different to what i expected. it was a political cabaret, called shanghai. apparently they do still do the 20s style cabaret's in germany, but there were none on the night i was there :(

i had one last day lazing around in paris with laura and lulu and co, doing washing and eating sushi and organising taxis for 4am in order to get to the airport in time before i headed to Dublin on monday the 6th. because i'm flying star alliance and lufthansa is the major european carrier, i had an 8am flight from paris to fricking FRANKFURT, where i transfered to a flight to dublin. completely understandably, whilst i made it to dublin more or less on time, my suitcases did not. mind you it's a good way of getting through customs quickly. after sorting out that the luggage would in fact arrive on the next flight from frankfurt (in the evening) and giving the relevant contact details, i headed out into the arrivals lounge and met tom, my dublin host...

my irish adventures will have to wait, i'm afraid... class tomorrow!