Prague

We arrived in Prague on Saturday afternoon on a misty, cold afternoon. Since we only had the one afternoon, we dropped our stuff off and then headed back out into the rain again. We had some problem with cameras--news bulletin: cameras do not like rain!--so Karenś camera was really blurry and mine was rather blurrier than usual as well. Anyway, we saw the astronomical clock in the main square, which shows the seasons of the year as well as the time. And every hour, the doors open and the twelve apostles march past the openings.
After meandering through the main square a bit, we walked across Charles Bridge and had dinner at a fairly posh restaurant...I think we were fairly underdressed--especially in comparison to the wedding party guests who made up most of the people at the restaurant. We both ordered the Duck Comfit with bean ragout, roasted potatoes, and fig sauce.

We had another 16 people in our dorm room that night. Karen was blessed to have a couple making out in the bunk below hers. Oh well...

Here is the city gate on the other side of Charles Bridge.

Berlin

We arrived in Berlin on Thursday afternoon and found our hostel, an eccentric spot known as the Helter Skelter. Reception and bar were found on the fourth floor, and found our room, shared with two girls from the States on a college graduation gift trip and an Iranian man. We went to a potato specialty restaurant for dinner, and had very hearty and delicious meals indeed...a potato, spinach, and sausage casserole for me, and pan potatoes with various veggies for Karen. We went to see the Brandenburg Gate after dinner, a historic landmark, and renewed symbol of German unity after the fall of the wall.

The next day, we explored the Reichstag (parliament buildings) which involved a two-hour wait and security check identical to that faced in any airport you fly from. The building itself was quite beautiful, with a glass cupola (dome) that gave us an advantageous view of the city, and lots of environmentally friendly measures, such as the mirrors in this pillar which help to direct the sunlight onto the solar panels above.
Then we went to see this very interesting memorial to Europeś Murdered Jews. From the street, it looked almost like a cemetary of similarly-sized stones in perfect rows and columns. Upon walking into the middle of it, you realized that it actually was dug into a valley, so that by the time you reached the centre, these stone slabs were 12 feet tall. It was reminiscent of either tomb stones or a ghost town of empty houses. Hereś what it was like in the middle.
Karen was very interested in looking up evidence of the old split between East and West Berlin, so here is Checkpoint Charlie, one of the old border points you had to pass through to get between them.
...and the sign demarcating the American zone from the British, French or Russian zones.
We tried to see the remains of the wall and spent time lost because Karenś guide book gave us bad directions. My guide book gave more help, and she got some guidance from the people at the hostel, so she got up early the next morning to find it. I opted to sleep in a bit (yes, reversal of typical roles!) and look for an envelope to mail some postcards home.

Amsterdam

Amsterdam feels like a long time ago now...we arrived six days ago on the 3rd of August. I will try to recall as many details as I can. We waited almost two hours to reserve our train tickets to move on to Berlin, only to be told we didnt need them (upon arriving at the station for departure 36 hours later, we found out that indeed we should have had them--not impressed with transportation in Amsterdam). We were immediately struck by all the bicycles when we left the station. There were several floors of parking for bicycles at the central train station!--all full.
We got to our hostel ¨The Shelter¨--a Christian hostel--in the centre of the red-light district around 8:30 or so in the evening. Quarters were crowded in our 16-bed dorm room. We headed out for supper around 9, finding a little cafe (the outdoor patio was wreathed in smoke-rings, tobacco and otherwise) at which to eat.

Then we headed out to wander the red-light district for an hour or two. It was slightly weird to walk down these narrow streets with window after window framing the silhouette of a prostitute in its red/pink/purple glow. Above is an example of what we saw. It was even weirder to see them at 3 pm the next afternoon, lights off, but prostitutes still standing in windows and doorways, always ready for customers. We also passed the Hash Marijuana Hemp Museum, and quite a few places with Sex Musuem or Porn Shop or Erotic Museum printed on the side...they get good mileage out of their reputation!
All of Europe seems to have these cute little trucks to sweep the street or pick up garbage from litter bins on the street, but Amsterdam has taken the prize so far for smallest trucks. Here stands Karen beside one of them.
This view is looking off one of the bridges into the canal our first night in Amsterdam. Our second day in Amsterdam was not as nice...it rained most of the day, so we were glad we had gone out the night before.
Here is a view of some of the houses along the canal in the red-light district. There was once (say, 500 years ago?) some kind of a tax on houses wider than 6 metres, so they built them all tall and narrow to avoid this tax.

On Wednesday (the rainy day), we spent time in the Joodisches Historisches Museum, showing some of the history of the Jews in Amsterdam from the 16th to the 20th century (housed in several Ashkenazi synagogues), and in the evening we got into the Anne Frank House. This latter museum was particularly interesting for Karen and I, having read her diary. We got to actually tour the warehouse and house (annex) where she lived during the war years. Apparently, she had planned to publish a book about her experiences after the war, and actually had several manuscripts going (her diary, her book manuscript, and several other novel ideas) at the same time. Very interesting.

Photos from Koln

We are finally at a hostel that offers fast and accessible internet service with USB plugs and (on some anyway) plugs for Karens and my North American memory sticks--which seem to be different than European ones. So Iĺl include a few photos from our time in Cologne. Here is a sampling of what the buildings looked like there, really cute and generally narrow. In Amsterdam, I read that the houses were built very narrowly to avoid a tax...perhaps something similar in Germany existed several hundred years ago?
We visited Legoland in Koln as well. They had a neat program that allowed you to take any box off the shelf and show it ¨virtually¨ in 3D growing off the screen. Neat, though a bit difficult to explain. Karen got a video on her camera.
Here is Willy, Nityla, and Karen standing on the observatory deck of the Chocolate Museum. This is one chocolate museum we did not go into.
The ¨Dom,¨ Germany"s largest cathedral.
Inside the Dom.

Hopefully within 24 hours I can post photos from the last five days as well.

Koln and Bonn

We arrived in Koln about 8:20 on Sunday night and after some wandering around trying to figure out where to reserve our tickets for Amsterdam as well as when and where to get the train from Koln to Roisdorf, where our friends Willy and Nityla live, we finally caught the 9:53 train, meeting them around 10:20 pm. We had a wonderful time of visiting with them that evening...it felt like no time had elapsed since we last saw them six years ago.

The next morning (Aug 2) we got up late and then after a German breakfast (lots of different breads, meat, cheese, nutella, jam) we headed into Koln (Cologne in English--and if you're checking, yes, Koln should have umlauts over the o.) Karen got videos when Willy took us on Autobahn 555...he got up to 195 km/hr in his old vehicle, though he has done up to 225/ hr with a newer car that didn't work so hard to get there. We saw the Dom, the largest cathedral in Germany first, and then proceeded to walk along the bank of the Rhein River, getting a nice view of it from the Chocolate Museum--though this time we didn't enter the museum!

After wandering around for a while, we had "lunch" at 5:30 pm...Bratwurst and beer--Karen tried a lighter beer, I went for the beer and Sprite cocktail. I do not think I will ever develop a taste for beer, but I guess you have to try it when you're in Germany....:) Then we went to the Schloss (castle) and surrounding park where Willy proposed to Nityla and walked around there a while. After that we got a panorama of the city by going up a really tall office tower.

At that point (8 pm) we headed home to relax, do some emailing and uploading photos, and just visit with Willy and Nityla. Then we had "supper" of bread with melted Camembert cheese at 11:30 pm, with wine.

The next morning, they took us to Bonn, their closest city where we saw the house in which Beethoven was born and wandered around, going to the post office so Karen could mail a large Paris poster as well as some postcards home.

We headed back to their apartment, where Nityla made us a tasty Brazilian lunch of rice with white beans, veggies, meat, and salad. We packed up and headed back to the train station to catch our 1:36 train to Koln. Then we had a 3.5 hour journey from Koln to Amsteram.

Next entry: what we did in Amsterdam.

Bruges

'We had an interesting night on Saturday night in Bruges. Our room was right over the bar and outdoor patio, so it was fairly noisy. Then just before 3 am, three men came into the room right beside ours. The one was clearly trashed out of his mind, swearing at the top of his lungs and pounding the walls with his fists such that it sounded like he was going to come through our wall. The other two were trying to calm him down with words such as, ''We're here for you, buddy.'' He pounded around for around 30 or 40 minutes, sometimes quieting down and then picking back up again. We tried to phone down to the main desk, but couldn't get through. Karen was about to walk down, when he finally subsided into silence. Then about 5 or 10 minutes later we heard the retching on the floor and the sound of water as his buddies tried to clean up. The next morning, we reported to reception, who told us he'd broken the window as well.

After a short night, we headed into town for some sight-seeing. We started off with a boat ride around the canals of Bruges...beautiful. Then we walked to the Market Square where Karen snapped pictures of the old medieval town hall and other buildings to her heart's delight. This was followed by a trip down what I call 'Chocolate Row' due to the string of chocolate shops in a row. We dropped some money on some liqeur truffles there. Then on to the Frieten Museum and Chocolate Story where we learned about the origins of Belgian (French) Fries and chocolate. The trip wasn't complete without a stop at the Fry Shop where we sampled some fries with mayonnaise the way the Belgians eat it.
One of the many chocolate shops in Bruges.
Karen gleefully holding up her butter truffles.
At 4 pm, we took the bus back to the train station for our next journey. For a small place, we were rather surprised how many bicycles there were parked there!
And the benefits of travelling first-class on a German train with a Eurail Pass--here is Karen ensconced in our glass compartment (well, glass doors separated our compartment from the rest of our coach anyway) with cushy headrests and a lovely dropleaf table. There were lights that you could turn on and off above you, much like the lights in airplanes. Our compartment had seats for six, but for the duration of our trip, we were the only two people in it.

Our transition from Brussels to Koln went well, but we had trouble getting the train the rest of the way to our friends' house in Roisdorf, so after arriving in Koln at 8:15, finally met them at 10:20 pm. After having not seen them for 6 years, we had a good chinwag for several hours thereafter.

A Few Photos of Stratford

So here are a few pictures of our time in Stratford. This is the Royal Festival Theatre, which is curently undergoing major renovations, scheduled to reopen late this year.
Here is an example of some of the Tudor buildings you see all around town.
Some guy named Nash married Shakespeare's niece, so it is at his house that some university students are doing excavations this summer to learn more about the Shakespeare familz.
Here is the Courtyard Theatre where we saw As You Like It.