europe with jason p.2
...i love italy! and venice is my favourite!
after venice, we then hit up our train thru austria...
and into MUNICH GERMANY! yay! where désirée's from!
Désirée emails us all the right places to go, first stop the beer garden in the park, by the chinese tower
where we each enjoy a stein of beer in the sunshine with the rest of the bolvarians
across the street from our hostel (the best hostel we stayed at! meininger if you're ever in munich! really clean, new, included breakfast, really comfortable beds and new bedding...) was the "Best Beer in The World" Brewery... all beer is tapped from huge wooden barrels-the only place that still uses the origonal, tradition technique... and this is the only brewery that makes the beer... and outside of munich (even in other parts of germany) is extremely hard to come by.
and it WAS really good :)
also during our stay, there was a (very small) neo-nazi demonstration, and a HUGE counter-protest, ANTI-neo-nazi demonstration in the town square. a lot of german punks, a lot of speakers, and people wearing white roses... symbolic to the the anti-nazi movement made by a few university students during the war, who were pursecuted for distributing anti-war and anti-nazi liturature 1944. jason grabbed one, and pinned it on my bag, and it's plastic so i can still wear it! yay!
and inside munich's city church... here is, as legend tells it, The Devil's Footprint.
munich was totally awesome, but it was time to catch our sunrise train to the czeck republic into prague
and i like this one of j that i took
then, we're IN PRAGUE! yay!
where you can buy swords and armor from the regular street venders! haha! YES! and the guy selling these was totally listening to iron maiden. yeah, prague rules.
we walked up to the prague castle... and this was a nice view down the castle (path) stairs
the castle cathedral was unbelieveably gorgeous
inside, there were services being held for the pope, and this AMAZING organ was playing the most mind-blowing music... i had to stand still for a few minutes and just listen, and think, damn, i'm IN prague, IN this beautiful cathedral, listening to this thousand year old organ or whatever, and holy crap. i could die and be happy.
more of the cathedral... the gargoyles are the best, and spit water when it rains.
here was the prague clock tower, that has the life-size figure that move, dance, etc when the clock strikes on the hour... this clock was awesome because it also includes a full astrological clock... showing sun, moon and rising signs... not to mention a skelton and that pulls the chord to chime the hour bells! AWESOME!
speaking of skeleton... we took a bus an hour away into Kutna Hora, the town that is home to... THE BONE CHURCH
this place was designed and decorated during epidemics of the plague, and the priest of the church had so many bodies piled outside the church doors and didn't have enough burial space for them all, so he started to use their skeletons to build chandeliers, candelabras, and crosses inside...
in each corner of the church, there are also free-standing pyramids of bones and skulls, all of the human remains were said to not just be competely morbid and unusual... but to symbolize the fact the life is transitory, and that god and jesus is with us in both life as well as death... yeah kinda creepy, and it was really cold in there too, but also really COOL.
after a lovely- super nice vegan/vegitarian dinner in prague (love those krowns! so much cheaper than the euro!) we arrive in BERLIN
this city is saturated in history... 60% or so of this city was COMPLETELY destroyed during the war, and the buildings that are origonal can be identified by the bullet holes (see the patch-work in the columns? origonal)
here's another example of the bullet holes from the war in a building down town.
...
after venice, we then hit up our train thru austria...
and into MUNICH GERMANY! yay! where désirée's from!
Désirée emails us all the right places to go, first stop the beer garden in the park, by the chinese tower
where we each enjoy a stein of beer in the sunshine with the rest of the bolvarians
across the street from our hostel (the best hostel we stayed at! meininger if you're ever in munich! really clean, new, included breakfast, really comfortable beds and new bedding...) was the "Best Beer in The World" Brewery... all beer is tapped from huge wooden barrels-the only place that still uses the origonal, tradition technique... and this is the only brewery that makes the beer... and outside of munich (even in other parts of germany) is extremely hard to come by.
and it WAS really good :)
also during our stay, there was a (very small) neo-nazi demonstration, and a HUGE counter-protest, ANTI-neo-nazi demonstration in the town square. a lot of german punks, a lot of speakers, and people wearing white roses... symbolic to the the anti-nazi movement made by a few university students during the war, who were pursecuted for distributing anti-war and anti-nazi liturature 1944. jason grabbed one, and pinned it on my bag, and it's plastic so i can still wear it! yay!
and inside munich's city church... here is, as legend tells it, The Devil's Footprint.
munich was totally awesome, but it was time to catch our sunrise train to the czeck republic into prague
and i like this one of j that i took
then, we're IN PRAGUE! yay!
where you can buy swords and armor from the regular street venders! haha! YES! and the guy selling these was totally listening to iron maiden. yeah, prague rules.
we walked up to the prague castle... and this was a nice view down the castle (path) stairs
the castle cathedral was unbelieveably gorgeous
inside, there were services being held for the pope, and this AMAZING organ was playing the most mind-blowing music... i had to stand still for a few minutes and just listen, and think, damn, i'm IN prague, IN this beautiful cathedral, listening to this thousand year old organ or whatever, and holy crap. i could die and be happy.
more of the cathedral... the gargoyles are the best, and spit water when it rains.
here was the prague clock tower, that has the life-size figure that move, dance, etc when the clock strikes on the hour... this clock was awesome because it also includes a full astrological clock... showing sun, moon and rising signs... not to mention a skelton and that pulls the chord to chime the hour bells! AWESOME!
speaking of skeleton... we took a bus an hour away into Kutna Hora, the town that is home to... THE BONE CHURCH
this place was designed and decorated during epidemics of the plague, and the priest of the church had so many bodies piled outside the church doors and didn't have enough burial space for them all, so he started to use their skeletons to build chandeliers, candelabras, and crosses inside...
in each corner of the church, there are also free-standing pyramids of bones and skulls, all of the human remains were said to not just be competely morbid and unusual... but to symbolize the fact the life is transitory, and that god and jesus is with us in both life as well as death... yeah kinda creepy, and it was really cold in there too, but also really COOL.
after a lovely- super nice vegan/vegitarian dinner in prague (love those krowns! so much cheaper than the euro!) we arrive in BERLIN
this city is saturated in history... 60% or so of this city was COMPLETELY destroyed during the war, and the buildings that are origonal can be identified by the bullet holes (see the patch-work in the columns? origonal)
here's another example of the bullet holes from the war in a building down town.
...