Hello again!  Margaux here, writing to you from the rainy Salzburg Hauptbahnhof (central railway station) while we wait for our train to Prague.  Leaving Salzburg means we’re about to be in an area where neither Alexa nor I know ANY of the language.  In France, we both understood enough to get along since we have a lot of knowledge with the other romance languages.  In Italy, Alexa understood because she’s Italian and has grown up with the language around her.  In Spain, we were totally fine with our 12 or more years of Spanish from grade-school.  In Germany and Austria, I whipped out my 1 year of German that I got my sophomore year at Wellesley, and I was even complimented on my accent once in Munich!

Our last post left us in Dublin, so here’s an update on the cities we visited where my broken German got us around: Düsseldorf, Berlin, Munich and Salzburg.

The flight from Dublin to Düsseldorf is a bit hazy because of the spectacular evening we had in Dublin the night before.  Instead of a hostel in Düsseldorf, we stayed at a budget/1 star hotel.  The price would have been exactly the same for a hostel, and we got to live in LUXURY for 2 days.  By luxury I mean they made the beds and replaced the towels.  My mother wouldn’t have even walked into the room, but to us (after sleeping in a room with 2 random women in Dublin) it was The Ritz. Düsseldorf is a beautiful little city with a wall street atmosphere surrounding the adorable altstadt (old city).  Unfortunately for us, it was pouring our first day there.  We walked around the city, through the Hofgarten (apparently the oldest public park in Germany), and into the Goethe Museum.  After Goethe, as the rain cleared up, we went to the K21 modern art museum which was very cool, but some of it (to quote Alexa’s log) we refused to accept as “art.”  The nights in Düsseldorf were weird and fun.  The first night we asked an old and simple looking grandpa how to get to the altstadt and he ended up drinking with us and making passes at both of us… good thing he got too drunk to realize we had escaped.  The second night we explored the altstadt ALONE and met some Swedish girls who were very nice and we bar-hopped.  Highlights of the Düsseldorf nightlife? One: the streets in the altstadt are FULL of bars, one after another, so it’s a great atmosphere for young people.  Two: there was a ladies room where in each stall there were TWO TOILETS.  ANY girl knows that two toilets in one stall is the BEST thing a pair of BFFs could ask for in a bar, right?

Next came Berlin.  Shoutout here to Sandeman’s New Europe Free Tours, it was hands down the best way to get a great overview of a huge overwhelming city like Berlin.  We walked down Unter den Linden, a very famous and touristy street, passed all the old governmental buildings and Nazi architecture, through the Brandenburg gate and the Holocaust Memorial, and more.  We even stood in the spot where Hitler killed himself!  Our tour guide told us that even though the bunker has been completely destroyed so there can’t be a memorial to Hitler, last year on his birthday (which is 4.20 by the way), “someone” (neo-nazis for sure) had scattered rose petals on the whole area… scary.  We also used took the Sandeman’s Sachenhausen concentration camp tour, and went to the Jewish Museum.  We met this group of Jewish guys from Canada on our free tour and became friends with them.  They approached us because we had nodded or something at some Jewish or Hitler comment and we bonded over Judaism.  I’m Jewish, and Alexa is not, and for some reason these guys kept assuming that I was “dragging her” to all the Jewish and Holocaust things on our trip.  This was completely untrue and Alexa was somewhat offended by it.  Anyway, the history of Berlin is fascinating and pretty complex, so taking a tour is really a great way to have it all laid out for you and put in perspective.

This was where we left you, right before our overnight train to Munich.  We thought it would be interesting. Interesting is SO not the right word, but I don’t even know what is…

We board the train and are immediately glued to our seats in fear of the seemingly homeless dirty man who reeked of alcohol who was sitting in front of us on the train.  We had brought wine and comfy clothes, trying to enjoy the trip, but the second he started staring at us through the cracks in the seat every 5 minutes, we knew that wasn’t happening.   After a little while of deciding whether to move or not, a pretty cute British guy approached us because he saw the looks of terror on our faces.  His friends, who all looked about 14 years old, joined him and started telling us about the drunk that they had also made friends with.  Apparently their friend had been kicked off his flight for being too drunk and that’s why he was on our train. Great.  These guys then thought it would be “funny” to make their drunk friends with our drunk (yes, we now had claim to the German Jack Sparrow sitting in front of us).  The two drunks hit it off, but their drunk was actually kind of interesting.  He kept lecturing us about the horrors of East Germans and how entitled the youth now feels since their parents grew up with communism, etc. etc., and the only way you can be free is through DEMOCRACY.  Our drunk kept throwing in lines of perfect english, like, “Oh! I have a cousin who lives in Sydney,” or “Sudoku is very difficult to explain in English,” reaaal useful guy.  Then the drunks started searching through their bags… for “ganja.”  Finally they found some, I guess, and then rolled it into a cigarette and snuck into the bathroom to smoke it.  That’s when we bolted.  The guys grabbed our bags for us and we looked for seats back in their car.  We found some, and then went to the dining car to eat some snacks.  We came back after 15 minutes and there were people in the seats we had claimed.  We headed back to our seats, and the two drunks were sprawled across them.  At this point, we knew we were screwed but we asked the train crew for help anyway.  They wouldn’t help us so we spent the rest of the train ride sleeping in seats across the way from each other next to two safe-looking small men.

We arrived in München at 6 am and napped in our room for a little while.  Then we found another Sandeman’s free tour and took that around Munich to orient ourselves.  Every other word out of this tourguide’s mouth was either “beer” or “hitler,” which is exactly what Munich is famous for.  The ever famous Hofbraühaus beer hall is the birthplace of the Nazi party.  That sums it up pretty much.  Munich was beautiful and the perfect size to get to know in a small amount of time.  We actually wished we had spent more time there so we could have enjoyed one of the parks, or visited the castle that Cinderella’s Castle is modeled after (Disney Princess weakness…).  We also went on Sandeman’s Beer Challenge where we got to learn about all different types of Bavarian beer and taste a bunch too!  We made some friends at the Beer Challenge and we got to see a German Fraternity which was SO COOL.  The house was very similar to the frathouses I know (not so much for Alexa), except Mussolini had stood in their kitchen.  I don’t think any chapter of SAE can claim that, can they?  Also, one of the pledge tasks is that they all become masters of fencing.  They fenced for us in the fencing room.  We thought someone was going to loose a head…

After hearing from almost EVERYONE in Munich that the people of Austria were completely uncivilized barbarians, we set out for Salzburg.  We only had one day here, but one day was enough to see the major sites.  I would have liked more days to take advantage of the amazing hiking, but maybe next time.  We climbed up to see the fortress, which is the oldest and best preserved castle in europe since it was never bombed (but instantly surrendered to Napoleon…).  Then we explored the altstadt on Mozart Straße and Mozart Platz near the Mozart Cafe and the Mozart Theater, and of course the birthplace and childhood home of, guess who? Mozart.  I was exaggerating a little there with all the Mozart stuff, (Alexa: “No you weren’t! Not at all”), but that is Salzburg’s claim to fame.  Oh, that and The Sound of Music, which we didn’t stop singing the entire time we’ve been here.  We also saw a production of Hansel and Gretel at the Marionetten Theater.  In theory, this is a great idea because the theater and the art of puppetering is very Austrian, but we honestly couldn’t stay awake.  Sorry.  Also, Marionettes are terrifying.

Alright, well, I’m at €3.75 right now at this internet cafe, so it’s time for us to go catch our train.  Next stop: PRAHA.  Auf Wiedersehen!

P.S. I just sniffed my sweater because a really bad smell just arrived.  Alexa saw me do it and said, “It’s not you… it’s the guy across from us.”  HEY EUROPE. BUY SOME DEODORANT.