Lions and tigers and bears (in the middle of the city)

Audrey (my cousin) arrived in Berlin on Tuesday, so I´m no longer travel buddy-less. She is staying with some relatives in Berlin, so we´ve been meeting up each day in the city to site-see and speak "American" together. Since we´re staying in different parts of Berlin, it means that I have to find my way home using the bus and metro system all by myself - and my navigational skills could definitely use the practice. It´s good for me . . . and it sure makes me appreciate (and miss) Katie´s map-reading skills!

Today we spent a fun (and sunny!) afternoon walking around the Berlin zoo. We´re now giving our legs a break at an Internet cafe. I can´t download pictures to post here, but hopefully I can get some up soon.

The line to see Knut, the zoo´s celebrity baby polar bear, was ridiculous. He´s only available for viewing a couple hours each day. We did finally get close enough to see him, though - and he´s quite cute. It was our lucky day for seeing baby animals, in fact - we also saw an infant monkey, warthog, jaguar, buffalo . . . I guess spring is a good time to visit. The Berlin Zoo is well-designed for seeing the animals up close. We were amazed at how few barriers were used in some of the exhibits. For example, the rhino was close enough that we could have reached out and touched him - and there was only an ankle-high rail and a small ditch in between us. Europeans must not be as lawsuit-happy as Americans.

First Day in Berlin

The weather has been making me feel right at home the past couple days. After spending the afternoon and evening wandering around Frankfurt (see first two photos) and getting drenched, I caught a flight to Berlin last night.

My mom spent about a year here in Berlin when she was near my age working as an au pair (nanny) for the Kasten family. Lucky for me, she has kept in contact with the family and they are letting me stay with them. The Kastens took me on a drive through Berlin this morning and pointed out some of the major sites. It was nice to have locals to give me an orientation! They dropped me off at KaDeWe. Since it was pouring outside, it was a good day to do some browsing in Europe´s largest department store. Ýou wouldn´t believe how many varieties of cheese and sausage exist. The toy section is impressive, too. The photo shows some of the famous Steiff teddy bears - I actually still have mine that the Kastens sent me from Germany when I was a baby.

Left Behind

Hello from Frankfurt! I'm hanging out at the Holiday Inn near the airport, awaiting my nighttime flight to Berlin . . . and feeling a tad lonely. Our 6-week journey has come to an end and Katie and Mark's Oregon-bound plane should be in the sky now.

As for me, I've still got a month of travel left. My cousin Audrey will be joining me in Berlin in a few days and the two of us will travel by Eurail through Germany and Denmark. After checking out of the hotel today, I'm planning to take a shuttle to the airport where I can hopefully ditch my backpack in a locker and catch a bus into Frankfurt so that I can at least see some of the city while I wait for my flight to Berlin. In Berlin, I'll be staying with some friends of my mom.

Since I've got free wireless and some time to kill . . . I'll do a little recap of the last leg of our trip. Our blog has been a little neglected since Budapest due to lack of Internet and/or issues with Blogger. It's bound to get a little lengthy, so feel free to skim . . .

The first photo was taken in our youth hostel in Prague (our next stop after Budapest) ... Mark's bangs were in need of a trim, so Katie put her skills to use with the help of mini Swiss Army knife scissors. They're not exactly a beautician's best friend, but they did the job.

The next photo was taken early one morning on the St. Charles Bridge in Prague. After visiting the bridge during the day and evening while it was crowded with people, Katie and I decided it would be worth it to drag ourselves out of bed at 5:45 a.m. to get some photos without the mobs. It was a beautiful, sunny morning and well worth the early rise.

Photo #3: Yes, those are human bones and you'll never guess where we saw them ... in a church! On our way out of Prague, we stopped in a small Czech town to see some sites, including this "bone church." It looks like any other old European church from the outside, but on the inside it is decorated with the bones of 40,000 people (many who died in the Plague). Skull garlands hung from the ceiling and bones were arranged in all sorts of artistic shapes – or simply stacked into huge pyramids. It even had a chandelier comprised of every bone in the human body. Supposedly, the monks’ reasoning for their bone décor was to represent that once you’re dead you’re still a part of the church.

We also toured a medieval silver mine in the same city, donning helmets and climbing a long staircase deep down into the mines. We were joined by Tom, an Australian guy we met at our hostel in Prague, who is nearly six and half feet tall. He had to be practically doubled over in the low, narrow passageways. Better to be a tall miner than a portly one, though – our guide told us that one large woman got wedged in between the walls and it took them 10 minutes to push her through.

We next stayed a couple nights in Cesky Krumlov (also in the Czech Republic). It wasn’t on our original itinerary, but someone at our last hostel talked it up and we had extra time, so we decided to check it out ourselves. It’s a fun little town, although quite touristy. We did some hiking, ate at a cool underground restaurant and walked around the grounds of a castle (even small European towns have castles and cathedrals) where they still keep live bears in the moat.

Munich was the last major stop on our itinerary. We visited Munich’s Olympic park (1972 Olympics) and the BMW museum (factory tours were all booked, unfortunately) and took an evening tour to get acquainted with Munich’s most famous product: beer. (Munich is home to the original Oktoberfest, started by King Louis I). Our tour ended at the famous Hofbrauhaus – where 10,000 liters of beer are served daily in huge, 1-liter glass mugs. It’s a place full of lederhosen, music, singing and giant pretzels to go with the giant beers. Yay for cultural experiences!

The last couple photos are car shots of our Peugeot station wagon, which we returned to the leasing company last night. She served us well.

It's about time for me to catch my shuttle, so I'd better wrap up. Give Mark and Katie a hug for me when you see them . . . and be sure to ask Katie for an impersonation of our Neuschwanstein tour guide. She'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

P.S.

To give credit where it´s due, a good portion of these photos were taken by Katie - not me.

Happy Mother's Day!!!

MOMS,

Hey Mom... I just wanted to wish you a happy Mother's Day... today as we were driving through the countyside I saw several little flower stands selling Mother's Day flowers... I mentally picked out a bouquet for you. It was a medium sized bunch of bright gerbera daisies, they were yellow and orange and red!!!! So... if I could bring some home for you I would... but I don't think that they would be very pretty when you got them ;) you will just have to be satisfied with the picture... that I copied off of the internet ;) just to illustrate!!!!

So... all that to say... HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY moms!!!!

We all love you... and you are wonderful moms!!!!!

Lots of love, your three awesome kids!!!!! ;)

On this day in 1992 . . .

I got a brand new brother! And he's kept me laughing (and rolling my eyes) ever since. So, I'd like to briefly interrupt this travel blog to say . . . HAPPY 15th BIRTHDAY GABE!

Budapest

Tomorrow morning we’re off to Prague (or Praha, as it is known here) – just two more countries to go. It’s hard to believe that we only have ten days left in our six weeks of travel.

We’ve thoroughly enjoyed our time here in Budapest. Yesterday we heeded Rick Steves’ (our travel guidebook) advice and spent several hours relaxing in the public baths. It wasn’t really as intimidating as we first thought. In fact, the atmosphere wasn’t much different from a public swimming pool in the states. (And yes, people were wearing swimsuits.) It was definitely a hot spot for the locals, with old, pot-bellied men in Speedos gathered around chess boards in the water. We spent most of our time soaking in the large, outdoor bath located in the center of the building pictured above. There were a bunch more saunas and baths of varying temperatures inside, though.

The second photo was taken today inside the House of Terror museum - the former location of the Nazi's and (later) the Communists' Hungarian execution headquarters (they called it the House of Loyalty). The photo shows a wall in the museum covered with the faces of those who were murdered there. Communism wasn’t overthrown in Hungary until 1990, so it was a fairly new – and very powerful – museum. It would have been even more fascinating if we’d been able to understand the numerous video clips of victims recounting their horror stories (in Hungarian, of course). Still, it made for a sobering couple hours – especially the part when we watched a video describing the prison conditions and executions as an elevator slowly took us to the basement where the prisoners were held in cells, tortured and murdered. We visited Mauthausen (a Nazi concentration camp in Austria) a few days ago, but that didn’t make the House of Terror any less shocking.

Speaking of shocking, we saw a dead body tonight. Curiosity got the best of us when we noticed people gathered along a bridge with fire and police cars parked nearby, lights flashing. Sure enough - firefighters were standing in the shallow water around a dead man. Eventually, news reporters showed up. Too bad we can’t read the Hungarian newspapers – I guess we’ll never really know the full story.

Adventures in Eating

If there's one thing we're all good at, it's eating. And the food here in Budapest is downright delectable. Last night I dined on cold fruit soup and cheese-stuffed, breaded chicken breast served over rice and fries (obviously not pictured, I'll explain the photos in a minute). Our bill came to about 3,500 - but it was in Hungarian forints, so we actually came out pretty good. The money here is confusing, for sure. We feel like high-rollers carrying around wads of bills marked with 5,000 and 10,000. (With the current exchange, around 186 forints = 1 U.S. dollar.)

But back to food . . . along with the good, we've sampled our share of not-so-tasty as well. For example, Katie and I have both had our turn accidentally ordering pizzas topped with sardines and other questionable sea creatures. Sometimes, even the food we make for ourselves doesn't end up quite like we expected. European meat departments can be rather scary - chickens with the beaks and feet still attached, mold-cased salamis, mysterious skinned creatures, etc. One night, we thought we had purchased a tube of ground sausage for our spaghetti sauce. It ended up being a bologna substance, but we still fried it up and added it to the sauce. It's not a recipe I'll be duplicating at home, but it actually wasn't bad.

The photos illustrate a night in Austria when Mark made his specialty - ramen noodles with pretzels prepared in the bag so that you don't dirty an extra dish. Now that's a recipe I might actually use again - and teach my brother.