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.

Budapest

Greetings from Europe! I'm now on a big European adventure with my brother, visiting Budapest, Vienna, Prague, Munich, and London. This post will be about our first day: Budapest, Hungary.

We took an overnight flight to Hungary from NYC and got a surprisingly good amount of sleep on the plane. By the time we got to our hostel and settled in a bit, it was lunchtime. Our hostel was kind of strange- we had a twin private room, and apparently the private rooms are in a completely separate building down the street, in an apartment building. While we were weirded out at first, it was pretty nice to essentially have our own apartment with a bathroom, kitchen, and living room.

One of the workers in the hostel gave us a lunch recommendation, but we arrived there only to find that they were closed for vacation. August is kind of a universal holiday month throughout Europe, so many family-run establishments close down. This ended up being fortunate, because we instead stumbled upon an all-you-can-eat-and-drink place down the road. We got to try stuffed paprika, goulash, venison, and all kinds of other Hungarian foods. Plus, unlimited wine! I would have taken a picture but we were too hungry to think about that kind of thing.

Once we thoroughly stuffed ourselves, we set off for the tourist area of the Buda Castle District. On our way we stopped at St. Istvan's Basilica, which is pretty massive:

The interior is incredibly beautiful as well:

We then crossed Szechenyi Bridge to go from the Pest side to the Buda side, granting us some beautiful views of the Danube:

We took a little elevator-type thing up the steep hill to the castle district. This area is full of tiny medieval roads, pretty churches, and old buildings:

It also has Fisherman's Bastion, which looks like a fairytale castle and has awesome views of the Pest side of the city:

After soaking in the awesome views for a while, we headed back to the hostel. On the way we saw the Dohany Synagogue:

We saw a cemetery attached to it, and noticed that all of the dates of death were in 1945- a grim reminder of the city's horrific past. Once we made it to the hostel, we gathered our stuff and headed off to the famous Szechenyi baths. These are hot mineral baths around thermal springs and the facility includes indoor sauna areas and a couple outdoor pools. Since we were going late in the evening, only the outdoor pools were open, but they were more than worth the trip:

There were three pools: a giant hot tub (38 degrees), a lap pool, and a warm pool with jets and currents throughout it. We spent a couple hours just relaxing in these with the many tourists and locals spending their evening the same way. By the time we left, it was too late to grab dinner in a restaurant anywhere, so we settled for some gyros, which are found all throughout the city at all hours of the night. We went to bed at a responsible hour to get ready for our travels the following day.

Next post: an afternoon in Vienna

Day 8: Tikal

On Wednesday we once again woke up bright and early to catch a ride to the airport at 4am. Though technically at Guatemala City airport, our plane departed from what was basically a hangar with a little office for checking in. There was no security or anything. Paul assured me that the plane would seat at least 80 people, but it was actually about a 30 person plane:

This was by far the smallest plane I had ever flown in, so I was a bit nervous. It actually ended up being a very smooth flight, and we arrived at our destination (Flores) in about 45 minutes. We met up with the rest of our tour group and made the hour-long drive out to Tikal. There were five of us in the group, all young Americans. Our English-speaking guide immediately took us on the smaller trails rather than the big paved ones through the park, which was amazing. Tikal is located in a jungle filled with all sorts of wildlife- monkeys, parrots, snakes, and lots of strange bugs. Being right in the thick of it and hearing all the jungle noises was a great experience. After a small trek, we arrived at our first site:

 

Tikal was quite a large city back in the Mayan period (1000BC-950AD), and the Mayans chopped down all the trees in this area and basically paved it all to make their buildings and roads. Once they mysteriously abandoned it in 950, nature prevailed and grew right back to the way it was, regardless of what was on top of it. As a result, all of these pyramids and temples became completely covered in vegetation:

 

There's a pyramid under those trees and plants, similar to the one above. It's only after 30 years of excavating that they're been able to uncover these sites. Even now, only about 25% of the total city has been excavated. After walking through some of these smaller complexes, we arrived at a much larger temple that we were able to climb. After a long walk up some stairs, we had a breathtaking view Tikal:

I'm not a huge Star Wars nerd, but apparently there's a scene at the end of A New Hope that is filmed right here. I made a little Photosynth panorama from the shots I took up there:



Our next stop was an area called Mundo Perdido (Lost World), which is the oldest of any of the complexes:

If I remember correctly, this was a building used for astronomy purposes- the top is totally flat, so you can climb up there and lay/sit around to see the stars. We walked through a couple more complexes to see more temples and living areas. I don't remember which temple this is, but it's impressive looking:

 

After a bit of a walk, we finally came to the main attraction of Tikal: the Grand Plaza. This has some incredibly high temples, including the oft-pictured Temple I:

There are several other buildings in the main complex, including some that were used to house important officials and rulers in the ancient city. We were given the option of climbing another temple, but by that point we were pretty exhausted. The climate is incredibly hot and humid, so we were sweating like mad. We ended our tour with some lunch, though we quickly dipped back into the jungle to watch and listen to some howler monkeys. I unfortunately don't have many pictures of the wildlife that I saw, because they're pretty elusive. Howler monkeys sound terrifying, by the way. I thought it was someone screaming at first.

Once we made our way back to the airport, I was shocked to find that our plane would be even smaller than the first:

It seated about 15 people. This is the view from the very back seat of the plane:

There was also a pretty nasty storm rolling through, so I was very nervous about the safety of flying. We waited for the worst to pass by, and the flight ended up being very pleasant. I took some amazing pictures from my seat:

We got home in the evening and were naturally very tired. For once we got to get a full night's sleep before our last day in Guatemala. I'll probably do one more post to wrap up my experiences here, but for now I have to go pack.