Again, we couldn’t help but compare Prague to Berlin. While the hotel in Berlin was lovely, the one in Prague was rather gross. It was kind of grimy and decorated rather depressingly. The bathroom was ok though, except for some reason you had to climb into the strangely high bathtub, and the soap holder had no holes so it filled with water and the soap got rank. We asked for more soap but nope, no deal. We chose this hotel partially because it had a breakfast included but we shouldn’t have bothered. The breakfast was a joke. It was so bad it was actually amusing. Every day we surveyed the progress of the rotting apple bowl. These apples were literally decaying before our eyes.

There were throngs of tourists everywhere and we were hard pressed to spot a local, unless of course they were poking out of a shop trying to pressure us into buying something. If we tilted our heads skyward though we could see past the tourists and spot the lovely, old architecture.

The first two restaurants we tried out were crap and thus began my ongoing resentment towards hidden fees. I already knew that we’d have to pay to use public washrooms, and we’d have to pay for water but in these restaurants we even had to pay extra to eat the bread. There was even an extra fee to use the condiments! Pay for ketchup? Screw you Prague!

More to come.

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The city has evidently undergone much recent construction since the fall of the Berlin wall and one can no longer tell the difference between East and West. There are new buildings everywhere. However, remnants of the old remain and all along the ground, there is a line demarking where the wall used to be.

It was a relief to spend the next day sitting on a train. We were in a cubicle with four German dudes who wouldn’t shut up and kept leaning over and blocking my view of the window. One of them fell asleep and snored loudly while displaying his crotch in too tight jeans. *shudder*. But then they got off and a tourist from Texas joined us as well as a typically German young woman who was tall and blond and kept chattering on her cell phone. When we got to the Czech Republic the conductor became Czech and started talking in broken English and broken German and we all squished up our faces and looked at one another in amused commiseration.

Stay tuned for my recap of Prague!

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We spent the next 4 days walking around Berlin. What a great city. It was so clean and the air was very fresh despite the many smokers. It didn’t rain again and though it was a bit chilly at times it was usually ideal walking weather. Everywhere we went we discovered a new cool place. There were tons of squares (or platz) featuring unique sculptures and whatnot where locals could simply hang out and we did indeed spot many teenagers loitering around being cool. There also seemed to be a lot of school field trips happening because huge gangs of adolescents, led by adults were touring the sights alongside us. They were all very hip and trendy. In fact, generally speaking, all Berliners are a well dressed lot, regardless of age.

We noticed that the city was peppered with life-sized fibreglass bears painted in all sorts of patterns and wondered what that was about.

As we sat on the memorial and people watched I felt the need to mention how attractive Berlin men are. Even Phil had to agree. In Montreal we’re used to seeing a larger percentage of attractive women versus attractive men (seriously, where are all the good-looking guys?) but in Berlin it was the opposite. That’s not to say the women were ugly but the men outshone them. They were tall and broad shouldered and square jawed and simply yummy. No fat people either. Just as we were commenting on the lack of obesity, three overweight people walked out of a Dunkin Donuts and passed us. I suggested they were probably American tourists and sure enough, when they spoke it was with American accents. The fanny packs were also a tip-off.

Part III coming soon!

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I’m back from Europe.  Don’t lie, I know you missed me.  This morning I willingly woke up at 5am.  Of course, I’m still on Europe time so for me it was like 11 am.  Travelling is fun and the trip was great but I must say that I’m a homebody by nature and the best part of the trip was coming home.  But you don’t care about me sitting at home in my underwear (or do you, cheeky monkey?) So I’ll get on with my tremendous tales of travel. 

After the museum we went to a little café for a croissant and it was all very bizarre and surreal. It was clearly a spot for locals and we got weird looks for being there without knowing the routine. We awkwardly figured out that one had to take a plate from one area and choose a pastry from another area and just had to guess at where to pay as there was no cash register in sight. Turns out stores in Germany have cash registers that are sort of built into the counter so they aren’t visible until opened. Usually you can find the cash by looking for the person sitting at a computer monitor (they sit, don’t stand) but in this cafe there was no monitor to be found. We sheepishly ate our crappy pastries and went back to the hotel, which was just heavenly.

I wanted to spend the whole trip in that bed watching German TV. We watched Evil Dead 3 in German and watched a lot of MTV because some of the shows were subtitled instead of dubbed. We were utterly traumatized by a commercial with some sort of creepy mascot feeling up a woman in a sauna. We couldn’t tell what the mascot was supposed to be and my best guess was a tapeworm.

Stay tuned! More to come!

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