European Travelogue is posted!

Many have figured this blog for dead, tossed upon the scrap heap of the millions of failed blogs about subjects such as the Jonas Brothers, Canadian Politics, and Orlando Magic, throughout the short history of the internet. Well to that I say "Ha!" I managed to write my European Travelogue after all, and it only took me 3 months...

I give to you my finished ramblings from my two week excursion this summer, parsed out into four chapters in the preceding posts. Please be mindful that, in serving as my own editor, I can assure you that there are plenty of grammatical errors, historical inaccuracies, and bold faced lies. It's up to you dear reader, to decipher which is which.

Again I thank you all for reading, and in my efforts to become a better writer, traveler, and general human being, I appreciate feedback in all forms. Though the posts will continue to be sporadic, my aim is to continue to use this blog as a forum for my ramblings for everything travel, food, and drink related, and hopefully even more. I even might finally start using my Twitter account, @3rdcoastin, so stay tuned...

Chapter 1: Prague might be known for its spring, but the summer’s not bad their either.

Prologue: Being Mindful of one’s possessions

I screwed up. This was the rapidly dawning truth.

When I explained the situation to Mike in the days following he seemed hardly surprised at all.

“How do you always manage to do something like that?” went his reply.

I couldn’t fault him for his reaction, as I was perfectly cognizant of the growing trend of seemingly inexplicable errors I tended to make when traveling: despite my self-professed wanderlust and experience as a world traveler. Whether it was leaving my debit card at a bar in the DFW airport before a flight to Argentina, or “falling asleep” on a park bench in Spain and getting my phone and wallet stolen, the theme tends to remain the same; it was always the little things that always seem to trip me up.

For days friends and coworkers had been asking if I was packed for my trip.

“Have you started packing?”

“Are you all packed now? How’s the packing going?”

This was on Monday before my Saturday flight.

I’ve never understood the preoccupation with packing, as if the act itself of gathering one’s things and placing them in a container could physically take more than an hour or two. Why would I pack on Monday for a trip that begins on Saturday? So I could place everything in a bag and let it sit where I couldn’t access it for 5 days?

“No” I replied, “I just mail individual packages of clothes to all my destinations so that I don’t have to pack”.

A few drinks following work on Friday and I was finally ready to head home to begin placing items into a bag, the so called packing ritual that everyone wanted to make such a big deal of. My flight for Prague was leaving the next afternoon and I was finally ready to embrace the fact that I was officially on vacation for the next two weeks: off to discover Central and Northern Europe for the first time with intents of eating and drinking my way through the Holy Roman Empire.

I got home, turned on some good music, and set to work. Above my closet I reached for my pack, a sturdy, internal frame backpacking pack that had served me well for almost a decade in both the mountains as well as on the road. It wasn’t there.

“Ah” I thought, “it’s under my bed”.

It wasn’t there either.

Neither of these spots contained my pack, despite the fact I rechecked them multiple times, my slightly inebriated state refusing to believe what my sober side was starting to realize. My pack wasn’t here at all, but rather, lost in the shuffle of moving three times in 2 years, it was sitting at my parents’ house in Iowa, some 375 miles away.

It was Friday night, I was supposed to catch a bus to the airport at 10:30AM the next morning, and I had left my car at work for the duration of the trip. Once again, I had let something seemingly obvious and simple throw a wrench into my plans.

I attempted to reason out the possible solutions and consequences. If I wasn’t able to purchase a pack by 10:30AM tomorrow morning, then my only other option was to use my roller suitcase and click-clack around Europe for two weeks. I was cursing the cobbled streets already.

For a moment I fretted that this annoyance might cause some local to attack me as I rattled past, but then quickly realized that Mike would have done so well before we made it all the way down the first street.

The one hope I had rested in the hands of a local sporting goods store which happened to be located just down the street from my apartment.

Laacke and Joys, situated in an old 4 story brick warehouse along the Milwaukee River, had been only a few blocks away for the full year I lived at my apartment, but I had never actually stepped foot inside the store. However, without a car and needing to be ready to catch a shuttle bus to the airport at 10:30AM, the option of driving out to a sporting goods store in the suburbs was no longer an option. This was my one chance.

At 10:00AM, the exact minute the store opened, I walked through the front doors. I ran upstairs to the packs, picked out two that happened to be on sale and that looked like they get the job done. A clerk came over and inquired if I needed any help. “I have 5 minutes to buy a pack before I need to leave to catch a flight to Europe” I replied. “Any recommendations?”

“Well that one is a woman’s pack” he said, indicating to the one in my right hand.

“I’ll go with this one then”, my left hand raised in understanding.

At 10:06AM I walked out of the store with a new pack, 40% off list price no less. At 10:11AM I was back in my apartment and finally ready to pack; I had 10 minutes. But when the act of packing involves just quickly shoving everything into the bag as fast as you can, it can be done quite quickly. 10:20AM and I was out the door and into a waiting cab, on my way to the bus station to begin a day of travel that I could only hope would end with me arriving in Prague.

I wasn’t sure if I should feel disconcerted by my lack of preparation or fortuitous for how everything worked out in the end. “Eh” I muttered, “I’ll just take it as a sign that everything is going to work out just fine.”

Chapter 1: Prague might be known for its spring, but the summer’s not bad their either.

I stepped out from the Prague metro into a drizzly, cloudy day in the Czech Republic. It would be several hours before Mike would arrive, and then a few more past that before we would meet up with our host. Unfortunately that meant my new pack, which I had so joyously purchased only one continent ago, would be weighing down upon my back for the rest of the day, inhibiting my mobility like a small child clutching to the torso of a parent. Nevertheless I decided it would be worth a look around to begin getting my bearings.

It doesn’t take one long to realize why Prague is known as such a beautiful and historic city. It’s filled with small, picturesque streets, forever arching and turning through the old part of town, and lined with baroque and neoclassical buildings that told the story of a city that rose to prominence along with the Hapsburgs many centuries ago. And their expansive tram system provides a moving background of transportation that continually flows in the background, though quietly thanks to the electric energy upon which they feed. The entire city is not “old” as they say though. Modern constructions, stores, and technology populate the streets as well, but they mostly maintain a respectful attitude towards the city’s historic past.

Being that it was Sunday, I wasn’t terribly surprised to find that many of the shops were closed and that the center of the city was almost completely devoid of anything but wandering bands of tourists. The beauty and charm of Prague, combined with a now open society and stable economy, was turning it into a booming tourist attraction.

Actually, the boom had already come and established a new tourist friendly economy to the point that, as I witnessed a large tour group of Koreans waddle into, of all things, a Korean restaurant near the center of town, I began to realize that Prague was no longer the underground destination for experienced travelers. Prague had been discovered. But I was ok with that, because upon first glance, it seemed worth discovering.

After a few hours of hobbling around with my sweaty child on my back, I decided, as any parent would in that situation, that it was time for a beer. I settled down at a nice open air beer garden near the Florenc metro stop where Mike and I had arranged to meet.

Our travel plans had began during the winter, when we both professed desires to make a trip to Europe over the summer, and decided to see if we could work out a trip together. Mike, my two times ex roommate, was in graduate school for Psychology and still had the luxury of some time off in the summer for a 2 week trip to Europe. Despite having lived together before and being close friends since college, we had never really traveled together much, and I could only presume that we could get along while on the road, but traveling with someone requires a degree of companionship much beyond that of just living in the same apartment.

If anything, we were only going for two weeks, which meant that the probability that we would come back hating each other or with regrets for not having taken the opportunity to smother the other with a pillow in the night were pretty low. The worst that could happen, I figured, was he would annoy the shit out of me for 2 weeks and then we would get our separate lives back upon return and everything would be fine.

The route had occurred by happenstance as much as anything else. I spent several weeks during the dead of winter inputting various combinations of European cities into Airfare search engines and seeing what all was available, partially looking for deals and partially trying to mentally escape the Wisconsin winter outside my frozen window. In the end, the cheapest, most interesting option was to fly into Prague, and then depart from Copenhagen 2 weeks later. The route in between represented a new area of the world for both to discover, and just like that we booked tickets and the trip began to take shape.

While we managed to get the cities coordinated alright, circumstances meant we would be arriving on different flights. Despite the seemingly endless access to technology and communication we enjoy back home, traveling to a continent where our cell phones did not work meant things had to be done the old fashioned way (so to speak).

I had checked my email at a hostel earlier in the day and the lack of any message from Mike theoretically meant that his flight had been on time and he should be arriving as scheduled into Prague that afternoon. I had proposed a 4:30pm meet up at a tram stop nearby where we would be staying.

My newfound beer garden was in shouting distance of the metro stop where he would be connecting to the tram. It wasn’t exactly where we were supposed to meet, but I figured I would be able to grab his attention before he transferred from where I was seated, without even having to take my hand off the cold pilsner I just ordered.

I envisioned it as something corny and falsely witty. “Hey Mike?! What are you doing here? Won’t you join me for a cold one?” I would surprisingly shout from across the street. Well, perhaps not quite that, but surely something would strike me when the moment came. And so came the moment, or rather the time at which point we were supposed to meet, and no sign of him.

“Damnit Mike” I muttered to myself, figuring that he was probably late, but all the while knowing that technically I wasn’t where we were to be meeting. I paid my bill and hiked off in the direction of the tram stop, child and all.

He was standing there: right where we were supposed to meet, having gone the other way out of the metro stop and walked the back route to the tram stop a half mile down the road. Despite this small inconvenience, our meet up had worked almost to perfection. It hadn’t turned out to be the movie reunion I had hoped for, but hell, we were both safely 4,500 miles away from home and had managed our rendezvous in Prague without the use of cell phones: a modest achievement in today’s age of instantaneous communication I thought.

“Shall we get a drink?” asked Mike after we had done the obligatory quick recap of one’s travel.

“I just so happen to know a place” I slyly replied, making it sound just as corny as I had envisioned.

. . . . . . . . . . .

We slept for 12 hours that night. Despite my best effort to sleep on the plane, I had managed only a few hours of uncomfortable and intermittent dozing during the flight. The fact that the world’s loudest baby just happened to be in my section had not helped either, though I later realized that it was in fact not the world’s loudest baby, but rather two of the louder babies on earth, who engaged in a call and response style of crying for much of the 8.5 hour flight.

We awoke late Monday morning, rested and ready to begin seeing the city for real. The weather had improved considerably, and the clouds and drizzle had been replaced by clear skies, a bright sun, and upper 70 degree temps. Without much of a real plan, we figured it was best to begin the day by wandering towards Stare Mesto, the medieval center of the city which coincidentally happens to translate to “old town”.

Despite being a fairly large city of over a million people, the older, historic center part of Prague is wonderfully compact and can be traversed more or less by foot. And with the roads being medieval in nature, twisting and turning down narrow stretches and intersecting seemingly at random with one another, cars have lost much of their appeal in the center part of the city. The silence in which this left many of the streets we wandered down gave the air of a much smaller European town that the capital city of 1.2 million people.

Towering above the city, across the Vltava River, stands the Prague Castle (Prazsky hrad) and the gothic spires of St. Vitus Cathedral, which together comprise the biggest castle in the world. We sighted the Hrad as our destination, and began an ambling passage through several neighborhoods, parks and over the wide and lazy Vltava River towards it.

The neighborhood below, Mala Strana or Little Quarter, was even more picturesque than the ones we had walked through to get there. Perched along the hill, its small, cobbled streets lined with houses and shops rose quickly with the terrain and provided plenty of unique vistas and sights. Unfortunately, all this wonderfulness meant that most of the shops were selling souvenirs and “authentic Czech Cuisine”, but I was willing to overlook that for now.

We made a quick tour of the castle grounds and cathedral, opting to pass on any of the “pay for” parts of the site. After looking around for a bit I felt that we had made the right decision, as the castle grounds, while impressive, did not seem to be hiding any secret hidden gems. Rather, much of it was under construction or renovation, which detracted slightly from the vintage of the area, but then again that almost always seems to be the case in Europe.

The visually stunning gothic cathedral of St. Vitus, started in 1344 but amazingly not finished until 1929, proved to be quite the intimidating spectacle of architecture that I’m sure its original architects had intended it to be. Though centuries of weathering and pollution had left most of its outer façade colored in black and soot, work was underway to restore it to past grandeur. The visual effect of looking at the restored stone, adjacent to the untouched, gave a clear indication of just how much of a beating this poor building had taken over the years.

The same evidence of pollution was visible on many of the statues lining the Charles Bridge as we made our way back to Stare Mesto over Prague’s most famous crossing of the Vltava. Despite serving as the only point of crossing between the two sides of Prague for over 400 years, the bridge is now most famous for its array of impressive, baroque stone statues that line either side. The original statue was erected in 1683, and following that a continuing series of sculptures were created, most following the Christian inspired mode of the first.

Really the only statue that stood out to both Mike and myself, a non-practicing Christian and non-practicing Jew together, was the statue of the crucifixion with the words “Holy, Holy, Holy, our Lord of the Multitude” inscribe in Hebrew above, having been paid for by a 17^th century Prague Jew who was ordered to do so after being found guilty of blasphemy by the Church. It wasn’t the nicest story behind a work of art, but I enjoyed seeing something unique as compared to the usual Christian propaganda.

Like many of the main sites in Prague, the bridge was teeming with tourists, and subsequently the vendors who chase their money, staked out below many of the now famous sculptures: caricature artists, people selling homemade necklaces and jewelry, and other trinkets and souvenirs. It was a cadre of things that you would expect to find at any souvenir stand or tourist destination around the world. For the life of me, I’ll never understand why people spend so much time and money to travel to new places and then, when there, buy the same cheap crap they could purchase at any other place in any other part of the world.

But so it was in Prague, as it is everywhere else. The beauty of the city was undeniable, and in the center neighborhoods one could walk down any number of gorgeous streetscapes lined with centuries old buildings, hopefully with a tram darting down the center to complete the landscape. But there were also often stodgy people with cameras, or young adults with child sized backpacks huffing down the sidewalk as well. It made me wonder if the people of Prague ever get frustrated by the hordes of tourists overrunning the most beautiful parts of their city.

That night Mike and I headed for some dinner at a place our host, Jiri, had recommended. Already we had been eating quite well in Prague, and now I was beginning to understand what people meant when they said that it was a “pork and beer” type of cuisine. We had managed to have pork belly, pork knuckle, pork sausage, blood sausage, ham, and pork schnitzel. And this was all just in 2 days!

What made it even more palatable was the mustard and horseradish that appeared to be a near ubiquitous accompaniment for all the pork dishes. No matter the restaurant it was always the same, a stoned-ground dark mustard and a mild horseradish that paired perfectly with the hearty meats, vegetables and cheeses that made up the foundation of Czech cuisine. Washed down with a cold, crisp finishing Czech Pilsner, it made for quite the meal.

For two days we had basically just wandered to bars, ordered a few beers and a plate or two of food and just saturated ourselves on pork and beer. From what I could gather, the idea of eating in genuine restaurants seemed somewhat of an unknown practice in Prague. Most of the places to eat, at least those that offered something beyond high end gourmet fare, had more of a pub atmosphere than anything else. This might have had something to do with the fact that Prague is the number one place in beer consumption per capita in the world, but either way it was clear that when dining in Prague, a good Pilsner is the requisite beverage of choice. For us, it meant complaints were hard to come by.

Our final night in Prague we were joined by Jiri for a few beers and conversation before our departure for Poland the next morning. Jiri had been an excellent host, and I was grateful not only for the hospitality, but also the chance to have some real conversations with someone from the Czech Republic. The topics drift all over the place, from hockey and soccer to American politics and then to Czech politics as well (of which we knew nothing).

As best I could tell, Jiri embodied the new Czech Republic. For a good part of his childhood and all of his adulthood the Czech Republic had been an independent nation with an open economy and political system. He worked for a US company in Prague and was studying Mandarin because he had a Taiwanese girlfriend. He enjoyed the freedom to work, travel and live wherever he wanted. Even on the subject of the division between Slovakia and the Czech Republic he seemed to reflect a new generation. His view being that a unified country would offer the possibility of a much stronger national hockey team. I could only imagine how much different this style of life was from just a generation before.

We capped off our night by climbing over a small wall at the Vysehrad, an old fortress perched atop a hill just south of the center of Prague. From this vantage point we could look out over much of old Prague, with a cityscape that at night was still very much dominated by castles, churches and cathedrals. It was a hidden gem that we would have otherwise never have known without the help of Jiri, and proved a fitting end for our stay in Prague.

Filled with just the right amount of pilsner, and sitting serenely on a wall looking out over the landscape, I was in a good place. So often our travels and experiences are normalized by our expectations, and to this I felt Prague had measured up. Was I ready to move to Prague, learn how to draw caricatures and plant myself on the Charles Bridge? The truth was probably not. I can’t sketch worth a damn anyways.

But I was glad to have visited. Prague was a very nice city to visit.

Photos

Chapter 2: Now I understand why Hitler wanted Poland so bad.

“Polish writing looks like what you would type if you just started mashing your palms down on the keyboard” Mike quipped as we walked around the Rynek, the central square in Wroclaw. It might not have been the most enlightened of statements, but I had to agree.

We had been in Poland for only a few hours and already it was becoming clear that we were hopelessly lost with the language. The town we were in, Wroclaw, which we attempted to pronounce more or less as written, something along the lines of “Row-claw”, was not pronounced in any way similar to that. As far as I could imitate, it was actually pronounced “Vrots-wahf” or some muttering to that extent. Hell if I could figure it out, and the same went for just about every other Polish word we encountered. I had begun the trip with hopes of picking up bits and pieces of each language from the countries we visited. I gave up on this goal in Poland after about 20 minutes.

Luckily we were fluent in English, the world’s premiere international language. And, should we need more information during our visit, we also just so happened to speak the second most international language as well: also English, but spoken louder, slower, and with an exasperated flair. Travelers, tourists and explorers alike, this is the way in which the world communicates these days.

We had crossed into Poland from the Czech Republic over the Sudeten Mountains by bus earlier that day, a mostly pleasant ride that featured a fair amount of quaint, rural European mountain scenery. The mountains were old and worn, much like the cottages and villages tucked away amongst their aged peaks, and they provided at least a little bit of entertainment for a window seated wanderer.

For as much as I felt prepared and knowledgeable about what to expect in Prague, the opposite was true upon our arrival in Poland. Though not exactly known as a hot spot destination, I was well aware that the economy had been doing well of late, one of the few bright spots of Europe in the current recession era, and I was curious to see how this manifested itself throughout the country. Would the communist era Poland of the middle 20th century that forced the emigration of tens of thousands of Poles to the United States be most evident? Or would the Poland with the highest GDP increase within the European Union in 2009 show signs of an ever strengthening Eastern European Nation?

The truth proved to lie somewhere in the middle. As our bus made its way towards the center of town we passed through alternating neighborhoods of glistening post modern offices and drab, communist era apartment buildings. Within a few blocks the scenery beyond the window could change from that of suburban, prosperous Germany to that of economically depressed Belarus.

But none of this mattered, because upon taking two steps into the Rynek, the large central square of Wroclaw, I was instantly in love with Poland.

It was a truly beautiful and near perfect setting. The square, lined with 4 and 5 story stone, brick, and wood buildings, was completely populated with bars, cafes, and restaurants. It was off limits to vehicles and therefore filled with pedestrians on a warm and gorgeous Wednesday evening, many of whom appeared to be there for nothing more than to stroll around the square over and over again. All of the establishments had large, outdoor seating areas that were full of people out enjoying dinner, drinks, and perhaps some ice cream. It felt almost as if they couldn’t ever think of leaving such a place until at least well after the sun goes down.

Wroclaw had seen extensive fighting and damage during WWII, causing almost 70% of the city to be rebuilt. Luckily, through hard work and unified actions, the charm and history of the square was very well preserved. Even though many of the buildings lining the square were built only about 50 years ago, most had been designed and decorated to resemble the 17^th and 18^th century edifices that would have stood there before.

The square was large enough that the interior actually contained two additional blocks comprising a church, town hall, and a few adjacent buildings. This meant that as you walked around the square, you were completely surrounded on both sides by people, cafes, beer, and a general feeling of conviviality.

We quickly dropped off our stuff at the apartment of Deante, a friend from college who we would be staying with, and then made haste back to the square for some dinner.

As in the Czech Republic, we were still reaping the benefits of a strong exchange rate, and with food and drink prices quite reasonable we spent the first part of the evening simply strolling the square and sampling food and drinks at a number of the bars and restaurants. Later that evening we would be joined by Deante and Mark, who had been at practice for the American football team they were playing for in Poland. I’ll explain a little bit later.

The night continued with more Polish beers, though I did not fancy them as much as the Czech Pilsners we had enjoyed just before this, and some general conversation about life in Poland and the “beauty of the square” (I’ll also explain that a bit later), and then some more beers. At this point Mark headed home while Deante, Mike and I decided to head to a nightclub for some entertainment, and some more beers.

This seemed like as good as time as any to make our first excursion to a Polish night club. There was the usual mélange of American music styles rotated or mixed with electronic/disco stylings as well, and of course the scantily clad women who looked like they were 14, but who were actually probably 14. And then there was some more beer, and some shots of vodka, the liquor of choice in Poland, to conclude the night. Tequila would have been the only worse option, but it wouldn’t have been as appropriate.

There was no next morning.

At about 1pm we awoke with groggy faces, pounding headaches, and a general sense of “what the hell just happened?” Our trip, on which we had behaved fairly responsibly thus far, had been taken to the next level: the drink until you throw up on a couch in Poland kind of next level. I felt terrible in every way possible. We were deathly hung-over in Poland, yet it felt appropriate.

For lunch I ordered Hunter’s stew, attempting anything that I thought would help settle my stomach. This was not the right choice as the stewed mix of beef, onions and cabbage only too much resembled the half digested meal that had once again presented itself a few hours ago. I managed to put it down, but felt absolutely no better afterwards. I don’t remember what Mike ordered as I didn’t care then and therefore don’t care now. I was glad that he felt as bad as I did. It is true that misery loves company.

We only had one full day in Wroclaw, but first we needed to go check train schedules and buy tickets to Berlin. We decided to walk back to the station as a means of seeing more of the city, but outside of the central area most of the city proved to be unremarkable. The sky was grey and dreary. In the rain the city appeared infinitely more depressed and resembled more of the Soviet era Poland that I had thought of. By the time we reached the train station the rain was beginning to come down pretty hard.

We weren’t sure what to do with ourselves until the rain relented so we headed towards some nearby food stands. I ordered an espresso from a cute young Polish girl who spoke English well enough but with just the slightest accent that came off very attractive. My hope had been that the caffeine would help fight against my still raging hangover, and to my surprise it was. As my energy level and morale both lifted through sips of an effective though fairly mediocre espresso, I flipped through a Polish tabloid, pleased to see that the Poles obsess and stalk their celebrities just as much as we do.

Fifteen minutes passed and still no let up in the downpour. We decided to press on through the rain rather than spend our whole day browsing Polish gossip magazines and drinking coffee, as enjoyable as it sounded. Fifty yards down the road Mike motioned behind us and I turned to see the girl from the coffee stand running up through the rain, my forgotten train ticket in her hand.

She quickly handed it to me and I had barely managed an embarrassed “thank you so much” before she turned and headed back through the rain.

“I love you” I quietly added, though by this time she was already out of earshot and back to her life in a Polish food stand.

It was hard to pinpoint what exactly it was with Polish girls, but something about them just seemed so nice. Perhaps it was the semi-Eastern European facial structure, which had gave an exotic appearance without the defined and intimidating bone structure that characterizes many women from the Slavic and Russian regions. Or perhaps it was the fact that they all were razor thin with huge boobs. It was so difficult to tell.

In the end I reasoned that it was probably some combination of the two, but regardless there was no denying the plethora of beautiful women walking around the streets of Wroclaw. When we had arrived, Deante mentioned that they enjoyed just sitting and having a beer on the square while “people watching”, which I found a curious thing for two American men in their mid twenties to do. It was after we had spent a night doing the same that we realized he had in fact chosen his words quite carefully.

Our last night in Wroclaw some of Mark and Deante’s teammates came over for drinks before we headed out for some Thursday night festivities. If your wonder still persists from my earlier statement that they play for an American football team in Poland, then allow me to explain.

American football, which it is called to distinguish it from another popular sport in Europe involving feet and a ball, does exist in Europe, even after the collapse of NFL Europe. Most of the Western countries have some form of a league, usually made up of amateur or semi-pro players who continue to work normal jobs, treating the sport more as a hobby.

Recently, these teams have begun to discover the advantages of employing American players with either some professional or collegiate experience, as even college football in America represents a much higher caliber of play. While there are limits to how many foreign players can be used, simply having a few American players on the team can make a huge difference. Through some contacts of other players who had started playing in Europe, both Mark and Deante were able to connect with the team here in Wroclaw.

I didn’t ask, but I felt fairly certain that the teams can’t offer the players much in monetary compensation, seeing as how even the league championship game was expected to draw only a few thousand spectators at best. I supposed that the assistance of a place to live and a reasonable part time job was the way in which the international players were supported.

And so, Mark and Deante, two players with Division 1 collegiate experience but without the skill set to be able to earn a living playing professional football in the US, find themselves playing semi-pro ball in Poland. And they love it.

The Poles like to party, and have a tenacity for binge drinking that feels very much aligned with Eastern Europe compared to the western half of the continent. We mixed whiskey and cola together and spent an hour or so talking to some of the Polish football players, mostly about football and US culture, but with the occasional comparison to life in Poland as well. Sparing the details of a bunch of young males in their 20s heading out into the streets of an evening looking for fun and entertainment, for these purposes it is enough to say that we arrived back at their apartment sometime around 4am, though the precise time was sadly not recorded.

The rain had abated on Friday as we made our way towards the train station, though the skies remained overcast and dreary. We passed a final time by the miniature brass troll sculpture welded to the window bars on a nearby building. When we first arrived Mike had commented on the troll, pointing out the small sculpture that I otherwise would have surely missed.

“There’s one of those trolls I read about” he remarked.

“What did you read about them?”

“That they exist”

“Oh”

I was saddened when I recalled this exchanged, realizing that it represented well the depth of our cultural experience in Poland. We had come with hopes of exploring and understanding a new culture, one often neglected in the US, and instead we had just been drunk or hung-over the whole time. We hadn’t managed to see more than a tiny fraction of Wroclaw, and had done nothing cultural whatsoever.

But then again, we had talked to and hung out with more locals than I was sure we would in any other country, so maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing. The cultural exchange from listening to Polish guys usie explicit phrases from “South Park” or comment on their favorite American Football teams and players might have been worth far more than any day of sightseeing could have ever brought us. In fact, I was pretty sure that this was the case.

At the train station we each purchased a large schwarma sandwich served in a big pita pocket. The true evidence of the homogeneity of Poland was thrust upon me when I realized that all of the employees of the ethnic food stands at the train station were Polish. I had not seen this in any European country so far, and doubted I would ever encounter it again either.

We were heading to a new country with yet another new currency, and I had managed to ration my Polish currency well enough that the purchase of one schwarma relieved me of the last bit of the now useless to me Zloty. I accomplished my goal too well though, and did not have enough money to purchase a drink along with my meal, which at the time only meant making several “too poor to buy water in Poland” jokes. Little did I know how much this would mean.

Our exit from Poland did not come without trouble though, as with only a few minutes before our train’s scheduled departure, Mike and I approached the platform to find absolutely no indication anywhere of any train to Berlin. We rushed around looking for signs, information, or even someone who just spoke English, but to no avail. It never fails that everyone in Europe speaks English, yet when you finally need to locate such a person, none can be found.

Five minutes past the departure time and we had no idea what was going on. There was no sign of our train, and no employees around either to ask. I was stumped, not to mention tired and not pleased with the thought of missing our train to Berlin.

Just then I heard the voice of an American, oh sweet America! I turned to a young college aged kid and his friends who were backpack adorned as well and trying to figure out the situation as were we.

“Are you headed to Berlin?” I asked.

“Yes”

“Do you speak Polish?”

“A little, apparently the train is delayed by 20 minutes.”

“Ok great! Thank you. We don’t speak a word of Polish and had no idea what was going on”

“Yeah it’s a difficult language, and the whole Luneberg thing doesn’t help either.”

Luneberg! The town of 70,000 people in between Berlin and Hamburg where our train would finish its trek, this is what all signs identifying the train said. Of course! It made so much sense now. Why would a train make reference to Berlin, a city of 3.5 million people, when the final destination was instead a much smaller, wholly more insignificant town just further down the tracks?!

Sometimes the Germans are just too damn literal.

The train pulled in and we hurriedly boarded as the stop lasted no longer than a few minutes. There was still a unnerving lack of identification of where we were actually headed, and neither Mike nor I was convinced we were on the right train, but the restroom signs inside the train were in German, so we figured it was close enough.

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Chapter 3: Berlin: The weather could not have been wurst.

Our train pulled into Berlin’s central station not long after the schedule arrival time, despite the initial delay in leaving Wroclaw. The first priority in our new country was to withdraw some Euros. It took maybe 10 minutes of wandering through multiple levels of the station before locating an ATM, but after withdrawing some cash, I immediately went to a convenience store and bought a 1.5 liter bottle of water and began to chug unrelentingly. The combination of two nights of heavy drinking in Poland and no money to purchase any water before our departure had made the 5 hour trip to Berlin one of the most miserable train rides of my life. I spent much of the time in a dehydrated daze, fantasizing about anything water related, and even pondered stealing the beverage of the man sitting across from me while he was in the bathroom. It was not my proudest moment.

Having come from a smaller Polish city, the size and scope of Berlin was immediately awe inducing. Even just a look at the transportation map posted on the wall of the station and it was clear that we had entered a new level of modern city. The dozens of train lines (both Ubahn and Sbahn, of which I did not understand the difference at all) were drawn out on the system map in a cryptic maze of lines and dots, accentuated with a plethora of stereotypically sounding German names ending in platz and straße. An anxiety attack was not an out of the ordinary reaction to such a map one would guess.

I stared blankly at the map for 5 minutes, with neither an idea of where we were, nor where we were supposed to be heading. Trains continued to arrive and depart from the five stories of tracks almost continuously, then darting off in the next direction just as quickly as they had arrived. It was an airport of a train station. For the first 20 minutes after we arrived, I was overwhelmed by Berlin, a sentiment I rarely admit to having in foreign cities.

Perhaps that was a slight exaggeration, as a mere 30 minutes later everything had begun to take focus. We were sitting on a Sbahn train (though I still didn’t know what the difference was), headed towards the home of our host in the southern part of Berlin. The act of locating and orientating yourself can provide such a simplifying and pacifying influence on your perception of being in a new city.

We managed to meet up with our host, Matthias, that evening despite some international dialing difficulties, and headed out to a neighborhood pub for a few drinks and some darts. Like most instances where two groups of people from entirely different parts of the world are meeting for the first time, the conversation was slow and focused on travel stories and pleasantries, and the games of darts long and imprecise. After another round the conversation picked up and we engaged in a couple heated games of cricket, with our Team USA pulling out a few key victories over the Germans. Neither Mike nor I is considered to be much for dart players, but with the help of a few drinks we managed to emerge victorious. Matthias even taught us the German word that for the first couple drinks to get the skill going, which translates literally to “aiming water”, though alas as I forgot the actual word. It was very like the Germans to have a such a word.

The evening had began with hopes of venturing out to explore the nightlife of Berlin, but after a few beers it became apparent that our late nights in Poland, accompanied by the usual unfulfilling sleep one can expect following several hours of overconsumption, had taken their toll. Neither of us could summon the energy to get on the train and ride back into the city to explore, and so we decided to head back and call it an early night, figuring the full nights rest would do us good. And besides, there was still Saturday night to be ready for.

Saturday brought the return of rain, not so much as a real storm like in Poland but the kind of gentle, persistent rain that continues for hours and offers a gentle “fuck you” to any plans you might have had for the day.

We got off the Sbahn at Potsdamerplatz in order to peer through the haze and mist at the Jewish War Memorial, Brandenburg Gate, The Reichstag, Unter Der Linden: all nice but in some way lacking any specific draw or unifying force. The Jewish War Memorial was the most powerful, but haunting as well, which was probably the intention of its designer. The stark monuments, symbolic of coffins but with irregular sizes and heights to give uniqueness and personality to each, as I imagined the artist had intended to give individual tribute to millions of people who were thoughtlessly murdered en masse.

Despite my favor of the Jewish War Memorial, I still found the sights of Berlin a modest thrill at best, mostly relevant only to the politically charged, war ravaged and economically unstable history of the city in the first half of the twentieth century. Berlin was not a great sightseeing city, nor was it a particularly beautiful city, but yet still the visitors arrive.

It was a phenomenon I could not explain, and did not particularly care to worry about either. Instead, after about 90 minutes of walking in the rain through central Berlin, we decided to hop into a nearby restaurant for some food and a liter of beer, which seemed about as German of an idea as anything else at that point.

I ordered a bowl of hearty potato soup, which hit the spot quite well on an unfortunate July day with temps in the low 60s. It was simple: based merely on broth, potato, sausage, and aromatics and spices, but still quite wonderful. Paired with a tall, German Lager that went down fast on a dreary, wet day, I felt we had made the most of our situation. To pass the time, we struck up some conversation with a group of girls sitting at a nearby table; all 3 of them were visiting for the weekend from London, though two were originally from the US and the third from Scotland.

The two American girls almost immediately showed themselves to be the type of expats who, as soon as they left America, began to look back at their home country with a sort of annoyed disdain, as if they really had to admit that they came from a place where people shoved Big Macs into their faces at an ever increasingly alarming rate and watching the Blue Collar Comedy Tour was considered a cultural experience.

They seemed fairly surprised when we proved capable of holding a few short conversations regarding Bauhaus design and Moma, the newly crowned best restaurant in the world in Copenhagen. I wanted to instantly ignore them for their readily snobbish attitude, but at the same time it was nice to be holding a conversation about anything, be it Molecular Gastronomy or the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, with someone besides Mike.

We managed to keep drinking through the afternoon well enough to necessitate heading back in order to take a late afternoon nap before heading out for the night. When we were finally up and ready to go again it was almost 10pm. This did not concern us, as if Europe is known for one thing, it’s that they will party until the sun comes up, and then they will continue just the same.

First we required a stop at Curry 36, which had been recommended to us by several people as the best place to get Berlin’s famous Currywurst.

The stand was still busy at 10:30PM, and after a couple bites I could see why. The currywurst was crisp and flavorful, and yes it is the curry flavored sausage experience it sounds like. The frittes were excellent as well. It was at this meal that I began to realize I was starting to like the European combination of mayo and ketchup on my fries. Like most Americans, for years I had detested the concept of putting mayo on fries, but yet here I was, beginning to enjoy the concept. McCarthy would have assuredly proclaimed me a communist on the spot.

After our meal we decided to walk in the general direction of Kreuzberg, the hip neighborhood we were told would be filled with bars, clubs and the other sorts of attractions that people in their 20s like to look for in their free time. This proved to be a poor decision, as not only was the walk much longer than we had anticipated, but the neighborhood through which we were walking was nothing more than blocks and blocks quiet residential buildings. By the time we finally arrived in an area that had some activity we had been walking for well over half an hour through a light rain.

We walked by several bars and restaurants but none seemed to be particularly busy on a Saturday night, and so we continued on. Finally, tired of walking and in desperate need of a drink, we stopped into a bar that was showing the big boxing match that evening between Wladimir Klitschko and David Haye. The place was packed and everyone seemed heavily interested in the fight, something I was not anticipating on encountering We had a few drinks and watched the end of the fight, engaged with the rest of the crowd, but afterwards the place began to clear out almost immediately, though it was only 1am in a city where the nightlife supposedly never stops.

We paid our bill and moved on, deciding to hop back on the train and head towards the area around Curry 36, which seemed to at least be full of people when we were there earlier in the evening. This area as well yielded very little, and after another half hour of walking, the reluctant decision was made to cut our losses and head back to head home. We admitted defeat. We had not managed to find a decent bar in Berlin on a Saturday night. I had never been more ashamed.

Sunday the weather was no better, but there was little we could besides just bitch a little bit, grab our stuff, and head out. I was already disappointed with how much use I was getting out of my cheap tourist umbrella with “Berlin” written on it over and over in a whimsical font which I had purchased at the Jewish War Memorial.

We started the day at Checkpoint Charlie, the main crossing point between East and West Berlin throughout the decades of separation. Mike had insisted on visiting the spot, but I had been less excited about the prospects, figuring it would just be a gigantic tourist trap. And it was. But the visit turned into a pleasant surprise as the walls surrounding the area were covered with a gallery depicting many pictures of the Cold War and telling the history of the wall and the divide between East and West Germany.

Standing there, reading the history of everything that had happened, the full weight of what the Berlin Wall had meant and its impact not only on the people who lived in the city, but on the rest of the world, began to dawn on me. The realization that it had been only a little over 20 years since the wall had come down, and how much the city had changed since then, was astounding.

Being a millennial, my generation represents the first for which the Cold War has always seemed like a past event, something from the history books. But there in the rain, reading about the incredible successful and tragic failed escape attempts, and the Berlin airlift, and President Kennedy’s famous (or infamous?) speech, it was this moment at which the Cold War became real for me.

It was an awakening, though not quite enough of one to compel me to pay five Euros to get my picture taken with the actors in American army apparel who were “manning” the checkpoint.

From Check Point Charlie we hoped on the Ubahn to visit the East Side Gallery, where a multitude of artists have painted a series of large murals along one of the largest stretches of the wall that remains. Once again, the rain seemed appropriate for such a location, and we strolled along, looking at the series of murals and taking in their political and cultural messages. All of them had been repainted only 2 years ago (the originals murals were painted shortly after the fall of the wall) and still looked striking and vibrant against the grey surroundings of the city. I couldn’t pretend to understand the context and meaning behind the murals, but I felt I could appreciate the significance of each on the day it was painted.

Our afternoon walk took us back through Kreuzberg, where I realized that we had actually walked down several of the same streets the previous night. There seemed to be just as many people out on a Sunday afternoon as there were on Saturday night, and I began to think that perhaps the rain had played a role in our difficulties of finding a good place to get a drink. That was, at least, what I wanted to believe.

We stopped in for a couple beers when the rain picked up, and then moved on once it abated, our standard course of action for almost our entire visit in Berlin. We would wander around until a point in which we needed a break from the rain, and then we would stop into the closest bar and sample whatever German beer they had on tap. At this pub it was Erdinger, a German hefeweizen that instantly became one of Mike and my favorite beers in Germany. It was a balanced hefeweizen that was full bodied and did not taste like a bowl of lemons. I enjoyed it tremendously.

………………………………..

Our next destination was Lubeck, a Hanseatic city on the northern coast of Germany. I didn’t know what Hanseatic meant, but I figured we would figure it out once we got there. Lubeck was a small city by comparison, only 250,000 people, which would be a nice change from the size and scale of Berlin.

Despite the poor weather and other difficulties we had encountered there, I still enjoyed my time in Berlin. I did realize though, that we had approached the city in the wrong way.

Berlin is not a city you visit for a weekend, at least not if you want to do it right. You need two days just to get your bearings and start to get a feel for where things are. As much as Prague was a great city for a weekend getaway, to systematically visit the main sites in the center of town and then be off, Berlin is a city to wander through for a week, getting lost in its neighborhoods and looking for unknown bars, restaurants, and street art.

I knew, as soon as we left, that I would be back to Berlin sometime later in my life in order to make a proper visit.

Lubeck was miniscule by comparison, especially since most visitors remain within the old center of town, which is separated from the mainland by a small, lazy river, and compact enough to traverse by foot alone. It was refreshing that after one day there we knew our way around the entire area.

Lubeck was the first stop on our trip where we did not have lodging arrangements made beforehand, and so we had to venture out and find a hostel for our time there. Luck was on our side, as we were able to find lodging at a nice hostel, and though we paid a rate for a 5 bunk room, we were the only two there and thus had a private room for all intents and purposes.

We spent the evening wandering through several of the cobbled, narrow streets. I felt the calm and quiet of the city were exactly what we needed following the past week of never ending touring, drinking and traveling. Eventually, we became famished enough to settle on a restaurant, opting for one of three places stretched along the river guiding the western border of the old part of town.

While the waiter did speak some English, the menus were in German only, leaving us scrambling for something to order that sounded exotic… but not too exotic. I chose the special, sauerfleisch, that was written on the chalkboard on the wall, figuring it was special enough to merit advertizing, and therefore had to be good. I had no idea what I had just ordered, and when the ham steak arrived, topped with an slightly salty and sour aspic, the two together served slightly chilled, I realized I had gotten what I wanted, in a roundabout sense.

Actually, the meal turned out quite good, despite my initial reservations. Gelatin is a texture we rarely consume in day to day eating in America, but enjoyed it quite a bit, and actually thought the bold and enhanced flavor it brought to the pork made it well worth the adventure. The fact that it was served chilled though did not sit well given the mild and dropping temperatures.

Even for northern Germany I supposed that this was still probably unseasonably cool weather. Later that evening, as we sat drinking a few beers on the patio of a bar we had to sit next to the large portable heaters in order to stay warm. We weren’t exactly in the Arctic Circle, but I was beginning to suspect that we had entered the part of the world where one should almost always bring a jacket, no matter what time of year.

Tuesday was our only full day in Lubeck, but already it felt as if we had explored a sizeable portion of the city. I started the day with some coffee and a croissant, which hit the spot in an indescribable way. Mike was not a coffee drinker, so I was oftentimes on my own for getting coffee and any form of breakfast in the morning. It felt a shame as this was often such a wonderful experience in Europe, to merely sit back and slowly wake up to the day. Granted for us this occurred at 11AM rather than 6AM, but we weren’t that old yet.

We explored around the old part of town once more for the early part of the day, observing again some of the immense, towering churches that appear ready to tumble over at any moment. Lubeck had enjoyed its most golden years earlier than the other cities we had visited on the trip, and so the age and architecture of the buildings gave it an even strong historical sense. The age of the buildings, combined with the swampy sea level marsh upon which they were built, had led to many of the towers and steeples beginning to lean and tilt quite preciously. It made me uneasy to see such large and ancient structures tilted at angles anyone could recognize as not being part of the original design, but without any kind of modern support structure to keep them stabilized. It wasn’t quite the leaning tower of Pisa, but it had the same visual effect.

By 2pm we had already exhausted just about everything there was to see in Lubeck. The plan of visiting a place that would be easy to cover had worked too well, so we hopped on a bus and headed for Travemunde, a seaside resort about 15 km away. Lubeck itself was not actually on the open sea, but instead connected by a large inlet and river to the North Atlantic. Travemunde was the actual seaside location, with beaches, a boardwalk, and a ferry terminal from which ferries to other Northern European Destinations departed.

I was surprised at the amount of development catering towards tourists that existed in Travemunde, given how small of a weather window must exist there for good beach going conditions. Even today, the 5^th of July, the skies were overcast and swimming seemed like an idea only for the slightly insane or fully inebriated. But still, it had all the makings of a summer resort town, and there were scores of people milling around to support this claim. I guess when you live in this part of the world it’s nice to have a beach you can visit within a short commute as opposed to flying off to Ibiza, even if the weather’s not the same and there aren’t nearly as many Spanish women in bikinis.

Late Wednesday morning began our final travel day of the trip, a 5 hour train ride from Lubeck to Copenhagen. Our last evening in Lubeck had been pleasant, with clear skies and warm temperatures for the first time in days, but aside from attempting to describe the serenity of sitting in the courtyard of our in the late, North German summer evening, there was little of consequence to write about. Even pictures could not do justice to sanguinity of the evening, and really I can only leave my lack of exposition as description enough.

On our ultimate leg of the trip we finally learned to plan ahead by purchasing provisions for the train ride. Some juice, fruit, brie, and a loaf of fresh baked bread made it a much more enjoyable journey than that fateful trip from Poland during which I would have gladly pushed an old lady off the moving train for half a glass of water.

We were already in good spirits when the announcement came over the PA system, first in German and then repeated in English, that our train would be boarding the ferry at Puttgarden for a 45 minute ride over to Denmark.

It was true! All along, our ambition of traveling from Northern Germany to Copenhagen had involved the idea of a ferry. I had decided originally that this would be our means of arrival without actually investigating whether it was possible; however, when I told our host in Copenhagen that we were planning on arriving by ferry, he commented back that we would most likely then be taking a train into Copenhagen. At first I did not understand, until I discovered that no ferries actually served the route from Lubeck to Copenhagen, as it is much too accessible by land based transportation.

Disappointed at first, I then read in my investigation that the ICE trains made their route by way of the Puttgarden ferry, and that the train itself was loaded on for the 45 minute crossing. I was hesitant to believe this until the announcement finally was made. This was even better: we were on a train that was going onto a ferry. How many people can claim to have done that?

Well perhaps it wasn’t as interesting as it sounds now that I’ve sufficiently built up the experience. The train was loaded onto the car deck along much the same as the other vehicles, and we were required to move to the passenger deck as were all the other automobile-based travelers. Our train was in effect just one gigantic SUV, crammed into the hull of a large ferry. But still, we were on a train: on a ferry!

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