City of Light

95% of the year, this title goes to Paris.  But for about a week in October every year, Berlin tries to compete with its own show,  the Festival of Light.  To do this, they erect large scaffolds with intelligent lighting and illuminate the large landmark buildings of the city with pictures,  abstract pattterns, and even movies.

The movie on the Brandenburg Gate transformed the landmark into a stereo

This year's festival theme was Colors of Joy

The Konzerthaus at Gendarm Markt decorated with dancing timpani and violins

My favorite of the evening, the law library of Humboldt University

A swiming elephant projected onto the Hotel de Rome

There were a series of projections on the Berlin Dom, see my preferred selection below:

But perhaps the best shot of the night was provided by mother nature, because the moon was out in full eerie force, and may have stolen the show.

Berlin So Far

It's a great city to just walk around and explore.  Because it was completely separated as recently as 1989, it's constantly changing and each neighborhood can look and feel pretty different.  It's also really big but the public transportation is great.  I can only imagine if the T had boards that told you when every train or bus was going to arrive.

We stumbled upon a 90's night at a club near our apartment.  The best part was all the random German 90's songs that would get mixed in with the American ones we knew and the crowd would go nuts.  I tried to figure out what one was after the fact, but that was a lost cause.  You can only type so many random German words that you thought you heard into Google before you give up.  We got there at 11 and left at 2:30 which is wicked early by Berlin clubbing standards.  Also, the beer is so much cheaper than it would be in the states.

On a somewhat related note, we've rediscovered our ability to sleep in.

We went to the KaDeWe, which is an enormous department store.  The best part is the 6th floor that has so much different food.  They even have an imported American section where you can get a Rolling Rock for 6.50 euro.  Nothing against RoRo,  but that would probably be the single dumbest purchase you could make in Germany given all the beer available.

One of the nice things about being somewhere this big is the ability to do something that feels like home (which can be really nice when you are traveling for this long). So, we went to the movies (the Cinestar at Potsdamer Platz shows most movies in their original language) to see Gone Girl.  I thought it was a very well done adaptation of the book.  I especially enjoyed the second half, but I wonder what it would be like to watch it without having read the book.  Also, the theater serves beer (they asked us if we wanted them opened, like we were going to save them for later) and has reserved seats so you don't have to get there wicked early and claim a spot!

We also went to a comedy show that included a group called A Spoonful of Deutschland that sings about Germany history to the tune of Disney songs.

Finally, here are some lonely gummy bears on a bench in an U-bahn station:

We didn't touch those, but Haribo gummy bears are way better in Germany.

Hallo aus Berlin!

We arrived in Berlin last Thursday night and got set up in our Airbnb with only minor snafus (more to follow later). October 3rd was the national holiday celebrating the reunification of east and west Germany,  and while it's nothing like the 4th of July,  they still throw a pretty good party, shutting down the main thoroughfare and putting up a delightful street fair. Well, really several street fairs.

Jim's first curry wurst at Alexanderplatz

The German take on fried dough, complete with garlic, sour cream and shredded cheese, called a Langos ( which my quick internet search on fried dough has let me know us actually Hungarian,  not German,  so look for more of these to show up in a few weeks. )

View from the top if the ferris wheel, Brandenburg Gate, Fernsehturm clearly in view, flanked on each side by the Tiergarten. For reference, this would be like if they closed down Boylston from  Fenway to the Common and errected a Ferris wheel at Arlington T station.

It was a pretty great welcome to the city we'll be living in for the next 2 weeks. 

Wiesn

Or as its known to the rest of us Oktoberfest. After having passed through Munich several days before on our way to Regensburg and chatted with our delightful tourist info representative,  Christiane, we knew exactly how to try to make the most of our day trip into the city for Oktoberfest.

Head straight from  the train station and follow Bayerstrasse to the main entrance.

Arrive before 12 pm and you may be lucky enough to get a seat in a tent. Ohh, and btw, one of those tents has your name on it.

Order the Mass.  It will cost you 10 euro, and will be delightful.

Finish the Mass and try your luck for tent number 2, Ochsenbraterei. Here you will find locals (disparaging Italian tourist beer drinking abilities or lack there of, sharing a father-son beer, and complimenting me on my traditional Bavarian hairstyle). Eat the slow roasted ox and the half chicken,  which are delicious, and necessary to accompany that second mass.

Walk the fair grounds, admire the lederhosen, dirndls and lebkuchen heart necklaces that abound.

Squeeze in that last mass at the Hofbrauhaus tent chatting with some locals and Brazilians.

Say Auf Wiedersehen.

Sleep  it off on the train ride home.

Really Old Breweries

We took a trip to Kelheim, which is a small town in Bavaria that happens to have not one but two breweries with "the oldest" claims.  First up is the Weltenburger Klosterbrauerei.   The easiest (and to my mind most delightful) way to get there from the center of town is to take a boat trip down the Danube.

The brewery is located at a Benedictine monastery (that also has a pretty cool church) and claims to be the oldest monastery brewery in the world having been in existence since 1050.  I believe the Weihenstephan monastery not too far away may have something to say about that, though.

This is the Danube Gorge which is the narrowest and deepest part of the Bavarian Danube (which is a qualifier because the Danube is the second longest river in Europe).  It's right before the monastery.

We may have chugged our beers here a bit (their most famous, the barock dunkel, a real nice dark lager) in order to catch the boat back to go through the aforementioned gorge and get to our second brewery.

We were in a bit of a rush because we hoped to take the tour here at the Weisses Brauhaus and we wanted to make sure we had plenty of time.  It turns out that they didn't have headsets to translate the German tour into English (though the website said they did), so we decided not to take the tour figuring our time would be better spent drinking in the biergarten.  I don't think this was the wrong decision as their beer is delicious and wheat beer has always been a favorite of mine, but it's a bit of a shame, because they have a pretty interesting history.

The actual company name is G. Schneider & Sohn and you may know them as the makers of Schneider Weisse.  King Ludwig II (of Neuschwanstein fame) and the Bavarian royal family held exclusive brewing rights but sold them to Georg Schneider I because of declining popularity.  He began brewing in Munich in 1872 and is credited by some as saving wheat beer.  The brewery we visited in Kelheim is now their main brewery and has been making wheat beer since 1607 (though they bought it in 1927).  This gives them the oldest wheat beer brewery in Bavaria.  Unfortunately, the original Munich brewery was destroyed during WWII, but they still have a brauhaus of some sort at the original spot, I believe.  They are still family owned and Georg Schneider VI is running things now.

The whole street that the brewery is on smells great (like freshly baking bread).  It's a cool place and lest you think we had had our fill of beer, the next day we went to Oktoberfest, but we'll get to that.  To fulfill our glassware addiction, we bought two (one from each) which was showing restraint.

Also, because this is the internet, here's a cat we met in Kelheim.  Chrissy was particularly smitten.

Regensburg

The delightful medieval town of Regensburg,  located on the Danube (Donau), about an hour northeast of Munich, was meant to be a brief layover stop for us to facilitate visits to other places, but it turned out to be pretty cool itself. The entire city is a UNESCO site.

This wurst house is the longest continually operating wurst shop in all of Germany. (Over 900 years old). They are delicious, and you can eat them with excellent sauerkraut, sweet mustard, and delightful fresh rolls flavored with caraway seeds.

And of course wash it all down with the local brew

The Regensburg Cathedral

I won at cribbage, slowly working my way back up the leader board

We took a guided tour of the old city hall with an incredibly knowledgeable guide who educated us on the the Holy Roman Empire of Germany, the trading routes of the Haupsburgs, and the Royal Imperial Diet, as well as the creation of the postal service in Europe  ( the princely family of Regensburg had a monopoly on European post and were the originators of the Pony Express)

Additionally, we learned about medieval penal code, and the introduction of Carolinian doctrine,  which said you had to confess to be guilty, which was only slightly better than if you drowned you were innocent. Here you can see the actual area and apparatus where the government of the free imperial city of Regensburg practiced "painful examination" to extract their confessions. 

Odd alusions to medieval torture aside, Regensburg was a delightful and beautiful town.

Forgensee

Over 40 km biked in one day on alpine foothill paths round trip around Schwangau and the Forgensee. It took several hours, and left us sore, but was worth it.

First stop, Tegelbergbahn summer luge

Being pulled up the hill

Luging downhill

Stop #2, Are we going the right way? Who cares, look at the view.

Stop#3, The chain on my bike loses its gears on a hill. I walked it to the top and managed to fix it. While doing so, a potentially mentally ill German woman eager to practice her English stopped to chat with us, show us photos of her California vacation, and asked if we wanted her to take this "selfie" of us. I say she might be mentally ill because she said she was checked into a nearby rehab clinic for knee surgery (but biking alpine foothills?) , and several km later, we passed a clinic for pyschosomatichse. 

Stop#4, The view of the castles from the other side of the Forgensee,  neatly 3/4s through our trip.

Stop# 5 - I lost count..., tired legs, sore buts, hot showers and bed.