Stephanie was in the English-speaking program in Spain. She’s convinced me to go to Cologne just to try their specialty beer and to check out their Carnival. Listen for yourself:
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Toby from the hostel in Berlin:
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(sorry, no translation yet – if you speak German, please help me out)
On my way to Amsterdam, I decided to make a detour (only a few hundred kilometers!) to stop for lunch at a particular north German restaurant that was recommended by a friend I’d made in my earlier travels. You can do that when you have a rail pass that lets you get on and off practically anywhere. I was very pleasantly surprised by the little city of Bremen, which has kept its historical center relatively intact but has built modern shops and tourist attractions on streets adjacent to the historic areas. I was able to avoid most tourist crowds as I walked from the train station to the city center.
For lunch I had a taster portion of labskaus, a traditional regional meal of corned beef hash, fried egg, pickled herring, and beets; downed with a mug of Beck’s beer, the local brew. I can just imagine Jenny’s face cringing at the thought of this meal. It tasted pretty much as you would expect each of those ingredients to taste on their own so you be the judge of whether you’d like it or not.
I’m having lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant, listening to French music, in Berlin.
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It really is indicative of my stay in Berlin – not that I feel like I’m in Paris but because I’ve met more foreigners, especially, Parisians, here than I have met actual Berliners. I did spend quality time with a few Germans living in Berlin but my associations, by far, have been with foreigners living in Berlin.
Berlin is an international hub and melting pot.
In the last 2 days here here, I’ve been to museums, an art gallery, a bicycle tour of the main historical sites with fellow couchsurfers, a local hole-in-the-wall bar, the Berlin Beer Festival (2km long beer garden!), and a 6-floor industrial/goth night club. I’ve eaten Swiss, Vietnamese, Thai, and Indian foods, and drunk a lot of German beer. I’ve been out until 5 in the morning almost every night (bars/clubs don’t close until most people have left and there is no last call for alcohol) and I’ve woken up early to do it all over again. Of course, after I crashed my rental bicycle this morning, I decided it would be better for me to take it easier today.
Beer festival sounds (2:34:00) (me trying to order in German, my fellow couchsurfers, random people at the bar chatting with us):
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View all the pictures in chronological order on Flickr here. Below is a subset of the pictures in random order.
I met Aike from Bremen while in a hostel in Kazan and we spent a couple days hanging out together and even took a boat trip down the Volga. Here is what Aike says about his hometown in Bremen, Germany:
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