England: Now With More Stonehenge!

Sorry about yet another long delay! I just moved down to San Diego to start my PhD program and am still in the process of getting settled.

My brother and I flew from Munich to London on Saturday morning. He was basically just passing through on his way back to the US (his flight was later that day), but I was sticking around to hang out with an old friend of mine (Emily) and see some other parts of England. After a really confusing trip on the Underground (everything is under construction and thus a giant non-intuitive mess), we got to Paddington Station and went our separate ways: I went off to Bath and he went to Heathrow.

Ninety minutes later, I arrived at Bath. There was a Roman city here back 43 AD, centered around the natural hot springs beneath the area. They build a large temple and bath around them which still remains, hence the name. The city is full of old churches and buildings, many of which have been there for hundreds of years:

 

At the center of the city lies the Bath Abbey, originally built over a thousand years ago but rebuilt in the 16th century. It's really pretty, outside and in:

 

I met up with Emily when I got in, and we mostly just walked around the city and caught up on Sunday, intending to do the major sightseeing stuff on Monday when her husband (!) got in. On Monday we got an early start to the day, going out on a morning tour of Stonehenge and Lacock (a really old little village). We stopped first at Lacock, where many movies (including Harry Potter!) have filmed. The town is filled with adorable little cottages. Apparently this one was used as Harry's parents' house:

And this was used elsewhere in the movies, though I can't remember where:

 

After a brief tour of the village, we continued on to Stonehenge, stopping to see home thatched-roof cottages on the way:

 

At last we arrived at Stonehenge. As many of you probably know, Stonehenge is a weird arrangement of stones that were erected about 3000 years ago. Their exact purpose still isn't known to us. I have a ton of pictures of it, but here's a couple of the best:

 

 

After walking around for a while, we went back to Bath to wrap up our sightseeing there. We did a tour of the ancient baths, though unfortunately I don't have many good pictures due to my batteries dying and the lighting being poor. Here's a couple, though:

 

 

I left Bath Monday night to spend the night in London, since I had a flight the next morning. Before heading to the airport in the morning, I tried to squeeze in a little sightseeing, though it ended up pouring the whole time. Here's Westminster Abbey:

And here's Buckingham Palace:

 

And that's all there is, because I was getting drenched and didn't have much time.

So that's my big European adventure! I'm hoping to do one more post that just talks about my feelings and opinions on all the places I've been, since I haven't shared much of that. Hopefully I'll find some free time (hah) to write that up soon and put it here. Thanks for reading!

Munich

After a six hour ride through some pretty areas, we arrived in Munich on Friday afternoon. Despite getting a bit lost, we soon settled into our hostel and went to work finding food. We settled on a nearby Turkish place, since this is actually quite a popular thing to eat in Germany due to all the Turkish immigrants. I got to surprise and amuse the workers by speaking Turkish, though it was very clear that I was an American.

We returned to the hostel to prepare for a pub crawl/beer tour. Our group was mostly filled with obnoxious drunken Australians, but we still had a pretty good time and got to experience the beer culture of Munich. This city truly is the beer capital of Germany, and quite possibly the world. Beer frequently comes as a full liter when ordered. This is Bryan with an empty glass, to demonstrate how huge these things are:

 

Beer is often consumed in beer gardens, which are pretty much what they sound like: outdoor areas shaded by chestnut trees and filled with picnic tables where everyone can sit down and have a few beers in the nice weather:

 

You've probably heard of Oktoberfest, which is the world's largest beer festival (actually, I think it's the largest festival, period). This takes place in Munich every year, drawing in millions of beer fans. Munich kind of feels like a year-round beer festival, though. We toured a couple other beer houses and gardens, but we were responsible drinkers and went to bed at a reasonable hour to prepare for the next morning's tour.

We did a 4-hour walking tour of the city, which showed us all of the important sites while also informing us of the storied past of the locations we passed. I was surprised to find that many of the old-looking buildings around the city were actually only 60 years old, reconstructed to look old after the originals were destroyed in World War II. The city was decimated by the bombings throughout the war. Only a few landmarks survived, including the tower of the picturesque town hall:

 

This is also where the famous glockenspiel show happens. A couple times each day, some tunes are played on a glockenspiel and little puppet things put on an automated show in those windows. Hundreds of people gather in Marienplatz to watch and listen. We caught the noon show, and it was pretty cute. We picked up some lunch, which consisted of a bratwurst and some beer (of course!). We got it from a little shop like this, of which there are many in the city:

 

While eating and drinking, we were able to stroll through the Viktualienmarkt, primarily a food and flower market. There were many stalls selling really pretty things like this: 

Those are flowers and herbs, woven together and scented to decorate houses and make them smell nice. Surprisingly, it seemed to be mostly locals shopping in this area and many of the shop owners didn't speak English, something we hadn't encountered elsewhere.

We quickly moved on to some historic sites in the city, including many points of importance in Nazi history. This city was the birthplace of Hitler's Nazi movement, and it's very clear that there is a struggle between being proud of the city's history while not glorifying the horrible things that happened there. We visited the Feldherrnhalle in Odeonsplatz, one of the most famous sites of the city. It was here that Hitler gave many of his rallying speeches, and it was also a location where passersby were required to give the Nazi salute in honor of fallen Nazis:

As a result of this law, many Muncheners (people in Munich) at the time chose to take a path behind this area to avoid saluting, which is now marked by a golden trail in the road:

We also visited the Hofbrauhaus, a beer hall where Hitler held the first meeting of his National Socialists party in 1920. It remains a very popular beer hall despite this history. Once the tour concluded and we were thoroughly depressed, we moved on to explore the huge English Gardens, a popular hangout spot for locals and tourists alike. It's much like Central Park or Golden Gate Park, though bigger. There are some fast-moving controlled rivers through the park, and quite a few people actually surf on them:

The park also has the very popular Chinese Tower (yes, a Chinese tower in the English gardens in Germany), where you can get some food and beer while listening to traditional Bavarian music:

We got some beers and sweets and enjoyed the warm weather for a bit before heading off to find dinner. We had venture fairly far to find a gasthaus (traditional restaurant) that wasn't already full, but ended up finding a nice one populated mostly by locals. We got some tasty food (and beer, of course) and retired back at the hostel after a long day of walking.

Next: England!

Vienna

As mentioned, the posts are a little out of order. This one is about Vienna, which we stopped in between Budapest and Prague.

We awoke bright and early to board a train from Budapest to Vienna, Austria. Navigating the whole process was actually quite straight-forward, and in a few hours we found ourselves in the center of Vienna. St. Stephen's Cathedral dominates this area, which is mostly pedestrian only. I don't have pictures that capture how epically pretty the church is, but here's a couple:

The surrounding area is full of lots of tiny streets like this:

We only had a few hours, so we quickly set off to find some lunch. We found a place that claimed to have the most famous schnitzel in Vienna, so we decided to get some there. It was huge and delicious:

I even had water from the tap with my meal- Vienna is very proud of their totally pure drinking water. I must say, it is probably the most pure tap water I've ever tasted. There are little drinking fountains throughout the area where people line up to drink the tap water:

We spent some time walking around to digest a bit and passed by Mozart's former apartment (though I don't have any good pictures of it.) We went right back to eating to try some Viennese dessert. Bryan got a very rich chocolate cake and I got a Viennese iced coffee, which was coffee, ice cream, and whipped cream:

So delicious! We headed back to catch our train to Prague, which I'm on right now (though this post probably won't be posted for quite a while). We passed Brno a little while ago and now we're passing through a very pretty mountainous region. I'll give an update after we've had a day exploring Prague!

Prague

Sorry for the delay! I didn't have stable internet for much of the trip. Posts are also going to be slightly out of order, since my Vienna post is written up on a different computer.

We arrived in Prague late in the evening on Wednesday after a long train ride from Vienna. We were very excited to find that our hotel had a little balcony with a nice view of the castle in the distance:

We woke up fairly early to get a good start on the day and had a nice morning stroll along the river:

After crossing the historic Charles Bridge (seen above), we found ourselves at the entrance of the castle, which reminded me so much of a Ren Faire:

The whole area was filled with small roads and cool old buildings. They also had a totally authentic historic cafe:

 

After a long uphill walk to the top, we got to see all the pretty churches and government buildings. Various emperors and kings have ruled from here for over a thousand years. It is still the seat of government for the Czech Republic, and as such has lots of guards posted about. We came at just the right time to see the midday changing of the guard:

We saw St. Vitus cathedral next, which is honestly one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen:

 

After spending some time in awe of the beautiful building, we continued meandering through the castle area and eventually down to Old Town, on the other side of the river. This place also has some crazy awesome buildings. This is Tyn Cathedral, with the old clock tower on the left:

The clock tower is famous for the peculiar astronomical clock on it's front, built way back in the 15th century and still working today:

We wandered and snacked a bit before heading off on a tour of the communist history of Prague. It was an amazingly informative and fun tour, highlighting many of the tumultuous points of the city's history in the last 60 years. We even got to go down into a former nuclear bunker:

After all the serious parts were done, we got to dress up like communists and drink beer:

We got some dinner at this point; I got a very traditional roast duck and dumpling meal and Bryan got some beef goulash, which is apparently popular all throughout this area of Europe. After hanging out in Old Town Square for a bit, we went on a "ghost" tour that included some of the underground passageways beneath the city. The ghost part of it was mostly silly - lots of talk about orbs and stuff - but we did get to hear some cool legends and see the city at night:

The underground passages were really cool and spooky:

We went down there with only lanterns (and our camera flashes) to light the way. Apparently many people have experienced ghostly things down there, including some ghost hunting show. After the tour, we decided to finally call it a night and give our aching feet a break. We also had to wake up early yet again to catch the morning train to Munich, which I'll cover in the next post.