Mehr Berliner

Here are a few more pictures of some of my favorite things in Berlin...mostly in museums.  If you know me well, this will not surprise you.

The Berlin Museum pass is worth it if you want to go to more than one or two museums (there are five on Museum Island alone).  One nice thing about the Berlin museums is that once you pay to get inside, the audio guides are free.  We always felt so ripped off when you spend 15 USD to get into a museum then they want you to fork over another 7 USD for the audio guide.  Luckily for Rich, he married a girl with a BFA and got his own private tour if the museum had art in it--whether or not he wanted one :-)

One other thing about Berlin museums and some other European museums, is that it may say it closes at 6, but the doors are shut at 5:30.  In Germany, they will be locked, no exceptions.  In Italy, on the other hand, you could probably talk your way in, or the guard just wouldn't care and let you in anyway.

The Ishtar Gate of Babylon.  Very cool.  I loved the tiles.  This photo doesn't do them justice.  They were so vibrant.  It was massive, but apparently this is only the smaller gate as they wouldn't have been able to reconstruct the larger gate inside.  It was one of the Seven Wonders of the World for a while.  In the photo above with the lion, I am standing in front of the processional walkway that approached the gate.  It was awesome, in the true sense of the word.  I referenced Wikipedia to refresh my memory, "The Ishtar Gate was the eighth gate to the inner city of Babylon.  It was constructed in about 575 BC by order of King Nebuchadnezzar II on the north side of the city..."

A bit apprehensive about what I might find inside the sarcophagus.  Ok, not really, but it was a little weird to look inside.  It was also a little creepy to see the drain holes in the bottom for what they think were for bodily fluids.  It was also weird to walk through rooms with empty sarcophagi and know that they were all once filled with mummies.

Are you ready for one of my all-time favorite things??

We weren't allowed to take photos, so this is the best we could sneak :)

If you don't know who Nefertiti is, you may recognize this bust (not my photo):

She was very beautiful.  The bust is very symmetrical and she is missing one eye.  They think this may be because the artist created this bust as a model.

This picture and the one below are just a couple examples of some of the interesting tiling and mosaic work.

Delicious pastries!

I loved how this staircase was oval.  The gold-painted wrought-iron in real life was beautiful.

Status Update

As most of you know, we are back in the good ol' U.S. of A.  The past two weeks have felt like two months and we miss Europe.  We are in Salt Lake City for now, studying for graduate exams and looking for jobs.  We are going to keep updating our blog chronologically even though we are home.  Things are already slipping from our memory so this is a fun way for us to recap and journal.  If you are interested, follow along.  We did not have very much extra time during our time in Europe and when we did, blogging seemed like the last thing we wanted to do so...back to October 27th-30th, 2010...

Willkommen in Deutschland

First stop, Berlin.  It is still one of our favorite places we've visited.  Thousands of years of history meet in Berlin; from ancient artifacts in the museums, to Hitler's "grave" and the Berlin wall, etc.  We'd definitely recommend it to any and all travelers coming to Europe and would recommend at least three days there.  Marijke's uncle Scott and his girlfriend Sandra wrote a great article about traveling to Berlin, check it out here.

Also, remember you can click on photos to see them larger, then click a second time to make them even bigger.

We were riding the train from Copenhagen to Berlin when all of a sudden the train stopped and they told us we had to exit the train.  We got off to find ourselves on a ferry.  We were really surprised as the ticket woman told us we wouldn't be taking a ferry on our trip.  It was really odd to have train tacks on the ferry, but it was nice to stretch our legs and eat some snacks.

A few train stations.  The Hauptbonhof (main train station--picture on the left) was massive and really modern.  The others were more historical and cute with interesting architecture, old tiling, etc.

We took a walking tour of Berlin and highly recommend them.  They're a great way to get to know a new city and make sure you hit all the big sites.  It really saves time when you can just follow a guide who knows where they are going and you get to learn all kinds of interesting background information about the buildings you're seeing.  They're also great resources to find out practical info like where to eat, etc. 

 The picture with Marijke in it is a museum today, but Hitler gave a number of speeches to Nazis from those steps and the photos of the huge rallies of Nazis were mostly taken here.  We ended up smiling in a lot of our Berlin photos, but it was a little weird as it is filled with such heavy history.

From top left going clockwise:  an interesting comparison between an idealized Nazi vision of Germany and a photo representing reality.  A monument remembering the "Book Burning",  it is supposed to represent a sterilized and empty library.  You have to look down into the ground to see it.  The statue was interesting as the hooded figure doesn't actually have a figure inside, just empty space--if we remember correctly, it's supposed to represent loss and suffering and sorrow of all people and the artist didn't want to portray a specific person.  A good example of non-exciting Nazi architecture.  Old facade of the Reichstag.

Top row, left to right: History Museum on "Museum Island," the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Richard on the bridge going to Museum Island with the "TV Tower" in the distance, street performers making bubbles on Pariser Platz.

Bottom row, left to right:  the US Embassy to Germany (had to get my fingerprints taken), train station, Brandenburg Gate and Richie's Currywurst.

Berlin Wall

Checkpoint Charlie 

Trabants

The Reichstag Building--we went at 9 pm hoping to avoid a long line and still waited an hour to get in.  We're glad we got to go, though, as it's been closed to the public due to terrorist threats.

 A chocolate Reischstag

The Sony Center

Copenhagen

Checking the map on our way to the temple; our delicious lunch; Irma; the bike lanes in Copenhagen.

 The Copenhagen, Denmark temple.

A few of the amazing buildings in Copenhagen.  The night pic is the church with the statues (or copies of statues?) of the twelve apostles and the Christus statue.

Joseph and Louise Jansen with new baby Aimee--such a little doll!  Richard and 'Jansen' served together as missionaries in Scotland.  They were kind enough to show us around Copenhagen, take us out to dinner, drive us around, take us to church, allow us to stay with Joseph's parent's, etc. etc.  Thanks for everything you did for us!  We had an amazing time and it was all possible because of them.  One thing we really enjoyed was the 'traditional Danish dinner' we had on Sunday.  Marijke had a sandwhich (open-faced, one piece of bread) with potatoes, radishes, hard-boiled eggs and a mayo-based sauce topped with fried onions.  Richard had a similar sandwhich but with fish and other meat.  They also had delcious chocolate and desserts.  Oh yeah, and we can't forge to mention the danishes!  They had lots of poppyseed pastries that were delicious, but unfortunately we didn't take any pictures.

 Danish Kroner

New Haven

Having fun with the soap someone put in the fountain; 'Del Boy' the Jansen's Rhodesian Ridgeback snuggling up with Richie next to Jansen's dad, Lasse; a little more Copenhagen.

 
We had a great time in Denmark and wished we could've stayed longer.  This was taken on our train to Berlin.
Farvel Danmark! 

Velkommen til Danmark

We are really behind on our blog, but we're going to conintue to update it in the order of our travels, hope you don't mind.

The ferry ride from Oslo to Copenhagen was more like a cruise with restaurants, activities, hot tubs and decks for lounging and comfortable cabins.  It was a great way to travel and we definitely recommend it--bunk beds and all :)  We'd also recommend paprika chips and that almond bread from Norway.

Kings Cross to Station Midi

"So long, farewell

Auf Wiedersehen, goodnight

[We] hate to go and leave this pretty sight..."

Bonjour Belgique!

Oslo - Land of Misfortune

Our fjord cruise concluded with a train ticket to Oslo, on the other side of the country.  We arrived in Oslo around midnight, with almost no idea how to find our hotel.  Unfortunately the only people in Norway that don't speak English fluently are the bus drivers.  Finding our hotel (which was about 1 mile from city center) took over an hour and a half because we couldn't communicate with the bus drivers.  We showed them the address as well but they didn't know how to help us.  Eventually we figured it out but had to walk around steep neighborhoods in the middle of the night with our bags.

By the time we checked in to our hotel and opened the door to our room it was 1:30am.  It was really a shame as well, because our hotel room was really nice.  We found it on laterooms.com and it was cheaper than a hostel or budget hotel.

The hotel room we didn't have time to enjoy

Our hotel room had a washer/dryer combo machine, so we were pretty excited to wash our clothes.  Unfortunately the washer/dryer combo is really slow, and after we started the wash cycle (a process that cannot be interrupted) we noticed it would take THREE HOURS to complete, then they would still have to dry.  This would have been ok if we had started the wash cycle at night, but we started it about two hours before checkout.  They told us they would charge us $50 if we weren't out by the checkout time, so we were pretty stressed.  After half an hour of trying to work something out with the staff the manager said she would just take them out when they were done AND dry them in the hotel's commercial dryer for us.  She told us to just go do our siteseeing while she took care of the clothes.  We did as she said and it really saved us.

From the hotel we went to the world famous Vigelend Sculpture Garden.  The sculpture garden is a massive collection of statues, mostly dedicated to human form and motion.

Horse bucking a baby, happens all the time in Norway

From the garden we went to the National Gallery.  We didn't have much time but the gallery is home to Edvard Munch's The Scream, one of the most famous paintings ever painted.  We double and triple checked the museum's location and visiting hours, only to find upon arrival that it had been "closed for a private exhibition," about 15 minutes before we got there.  We asked the security guards at a neighboring museum if they knew anything about it; they didnt, and they said in all their years they had never heard of an unannounced, mid-day closure for a private exhibition.  We left assuming someone famous or "important" was inside screwing up our day.  We went to a Norwegian history museum instead.

We booked a bunk-bed cabin on an Oslo-to-Copenhagen overnight ferry, but we almost missed it.  We couldn't communicate with bus drivers enough to figure out how to get to the pier to board the ferry.  We ended up run-walking with our bags for a mile, ha ha.  To make matters worse the pavement was covered in pebbles and sand so we couldn't really roll them along.  

We loved Norway and we think about it everyday, but our experience in Oslo told us it was time to go.

Farvel Norway, hej Denmark

Flåm

The final leg of our fjord cruise was a trip on the Flåmsbana, an old rail line that winds its way up a mountainside, providing unbelievable views along the way.

Road used by workers to build the railway

Richard in front of the Kjosfoss waterfall

The photographs don't do this waterfall justice

In total it was a very long day of sightseeing, but it wasn't over...