Berlin Pt 2- Random Things

Here's a more uplifting post to break up the depressing nature of both the next and previous post.

Backtrack to before our actual stay in Berlin: Our train ride there. I might have been more excited for the train ride than anything else. I had never been on a train before, and the one always I refer to when I think of a train is the one on Harry Potter, and guess what? Our train was just like it! Well, it didn't do anything magical, but we had our own little compartment and a guy came buy with food on a trolley and everything! I could just imagine him saying "anything from the trolley?" in an British accent. I loved it. (I'm sure this is how half the trains are around the world, but it was new to me!)

Other than Berlin being a much newer city than Prague, the other major difference, is that Berlin is dirty. There was trash everywhere we looked. It pretty gross.

On the plus side though, the people were nicer (than they are in Prague) and the public transportation was much easier. Our hotel was connected to a train station, so that was convenient, and we received a free ticket (with the purchase of our room) for any kind of public transportation for our entire stay, so that was a double plus.

This is the train station at night. I thought it looked pretty cool.

We came across many funny/interesting things while in Berlin. Here are a few of them:

This hotel is the one where Michael Jackson dangled his child from the balcony.

This guy is in the process of carving a wooden shoe. Right in front of my very eyes! I thought that was pretty cool.

Ha ha. I like Brody's face.

A true hot dog "to go." He has a grill strapped to his body and was literally walking around selling dogs.

Read the Subway sign- I'm doing what it says and smashing baby subs. 'Die' in German means 'The' but it sure makes for a funny sign from an English-speaker's point of view.

Instead of a blinking orange hand and a white guy walking to indicate when to cross the road, they have these guys. I thought it was cool and different but not cool enough to take a picture of..... until I went into multiple souvenir shops and saw that they sell EVERYTHING with these figures on them. Even the most random things like sponges, gummy candies and earrings. I guess SOMEone thinks they are that cool.

Green guy in action

A true German dish: Sausage and Sauerkraut. (And might I add that it was THE BEST sauerkraut I have ever tasted in my life. I think I could live off it)

I saw a sign for Häagen-Dazs ice cream and the spelling of it looked German (the 2 dots above the a), so I figured that is where it originated and that it would be cool to eat there in Germany even though it's everywhere in the States. Turns out, it was established in New York by 2 Polish dudes. So I guess my idea wasn't so cool after all. It was still yummy though.

Be prepared for another depressing post about the concentration camp we visited... It will be the last post about our trip to Berlin.

Berlin Pt 1- History of the City

We had a great time in Berlin this last weekend. We both learned so much and thought it was cool to see where so much history has occurred. I'm going to give a lot of details abut the things we learned so that we'll never forget it. Germany has a really dark past so its going to be some pretty sad stuff, but some good, too. So for those of you who already know these things, or don't care to hear it from me, just skip on past all the writing. I have a ton of pictures, so I'm splitting them up into 3 parts.

Day 1 and 3 were spent seeing different things around the city. (Day 2 was spent at a concentration camp. Those pictures will be in another post since there are so many). Berlin is much different than Prague in a lot of ways. Nearly everything was demolished in WWII-- mostly during the last two weeks of the war, when British and Canadian planes bombed Berlin 24 hours a day. Because of this, most of the buildings are more modern and nothing too special. The buildings that did survive, were still severely damaged from bombs and had to be re-constructed. So, there's actually not a ton to see but it was still cool to be in a place where so many things happened. Mostly, there are just monuments about certain aspects of the city's history. The coolest thing, I thought, was the part of the wall they left up.

The pictures below give a general idea of what the city looks like. The building on the bottom left with the German flag flying is the Reichstag Building; Hitlers capital which now houses German Parliament. When the Soviets invaded Berlin, Joseph Stalin wanted a picture of a soviet soldier waving a flag from the roof of the Reichstag for propaganda purposes. It took them five days and an estimated 3000-5000 lives to claim the building. Just to put that into perspective, on D-day, 2,700 lives were lost on the allied side. That means that almost twice as many people died taking over that one building than died taking an entire country (France). It was the most expensive photo ever taken (costing almost 5,000 lives).

These next pictures are of a catholic cathedral (definitely the biggest in the city). It has been mostly re-constructed, but the black-ish part is left over from the smoke of fires and bombs during the war.

This is the somewhat famous Brandenburg Gate located at what used to be the entrance of the city about 500-800 years ago, but is now smack dab in the middle. (Interesting fact: Germany didn't become it's own country until 1871. Before that it was part of Prussia, but Berlin was still the capital).

Now for what I learned about the Berlin Wall (from a tour we did one day):

-- The Berlin Wall didn't exist until 1961, 17 years after the end of WWII and was up until 1989.

-- Germany as a country was divided into East and West (this I knew) and Berlin was located in the East part of the country. Berlin was also divided, which meant that West Berlin was completely surrounded on all sides, like an island, by East Germany. Therefore, the Berlin Wall extended around all of West Berlin, forming a circle.

-- There were actually 2 walls with a 300 meter "death strip" in between where there were land mines and towers with machine guns to shoot people to death if they were caught in between. Around 300 people were actually shot in the death strip while trying to escape East Germany.

-- The wall was put up in 8 hours and torn down 28 years later by the bare hands of German citizens. The story of the wall coming down is truly amazing (and too long to write here) that when the tour guide was telling it we were getting goosebumps and got a tad emotional.

This is the only part of the wall that remains today. It's purpose: just for people to see. It is no longer blocking or restraining anything.

This is Checkpoint Charlie, the gate where the United States and other allied nations could get to West Berlin from East Berlin through the Wall.

This is the site where Hitler's bunker was located; right under this parking lot is where he shot himself during the last few months of the war.

This memorial below was built for the 5.3 million Jews that died in the Holocaust. People of Jewish faith have a tradition where they place stones on top of a grave sight, symbolizing permanence. This field of blocks represents stones placed on an enormous grave sight dedicated to those that lost their lives merely because of what they believed in.

An additional 5 million people died alongside the Jews in the Holocaust, including communists, political opponents, homosexuals and mentally handicapped people. This brings the total to roughly 10 million people murdered because of ignorance and hatred. It is absolutely bewildering to me what people are capable of when they are "blinded by the craftiness of men". I pray that we will never forget what happened.

"Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it"

George Santayana

{ P.S. The next post will be more uplifting...} :)

Prague- Week 1

On Monday, we did a full day of sightseeing with all 4 of us, and then Me and Meghann have done a few other things on our own. Here's all the pictures I've taken this week.

A few different views of the Prague Castle

Prague Castle at night

I guess Easter is pretty big here, because they have a ton of booths set up in the square with lots of yummy food (inculding HUGE hot dogs), fun entertainment and gift shops.

Not sure what this building is exactly. A cathedral of sorts. But I took the picture because of the moon.

The astronomical clock tower built in the 1400's. (It does cool things every hour on the hour and gathers a pretty big crowd).

View from Charles Bridge of the other side of the river (where we live)

Taking a rest from a long day of walking

We found some funny statues and took funny pictures

One day, Meghann and I ventured up to this tower on a hill that resembles the Eiffel Tower. The tower itself wasn't anything great (and I think it's weird that there is a miniature version of the Eiffel Tower in Prague when the real one is just a few countries away), but it was definitely cool to see the view from the top. (Although it was a hazy day, so we may have to go back up on a better day)

This was just a cool thing we found on our way to the tower. I don't even know what it is.

This wall was dedicated to John Lennon. We don't know why, but it's a cool wall nonetheless.

Well, that's it for our first week in Prague. We are leaving for Germany today and will be there for the weekend. I'm so excited!

Our Apartment in Prague

We arrived at our apartment in Prague on Saturday afternoon. The location of the apartment is perfect- within walking distance of just about everything. It's really nice inside too with new furnishings and almost everything you'd need to live for a few weeks (except cleaning stuff since they come to clean and switch out towels once a week, like a hotel). It's pretty much perfect minus a few things-

(1): Only one bathroom. We were expecting a 1 and a 1/2 bath (that's what it said on the e-mail we got and from info online) which we thought meant one full bathroom plus another with a toilet and sink; so 2 toilets. But I guess here, 1 and a 1/2 means 2 half bathrooms: one with a shower and sink, the other with a toilet and a sink. So only one toilet. For 4 people. Hmm... We'll be getting real close! ha :)

(2): We were also expecting a washer and dryer. Well here, a dryer means a big rack to hang all your clothes on. I've never had to hang dry each tiny little individual pair of socks and garments etc, so that'll be interesting. But oh well, we'll make it work! Here are some pictures:

(Just disregard me in these ones. I was in a silly mood):

The next day, we went to church again. This time, we knew what we were doing with the subway so it didn't take quite as long.

We were able to go to all 3 hours of church this week, which was fun. There are a lot of American families where the husband is working here as an ex-pat, so a lot of people speak English, which is great for us! They have sacrament meeting in Czech with translator head-sets for those who don't understand. (Some of the talks are even in English with a Czech person standing next to them translating after every sentence. That would cut your talk time in half!) Then for Sunday School and Relief Society/ Priesthood, they have two separate classes: one in Czech, one in English. The branch is very small but the people are very nice.

For the rest of the day, we just relaxed, played cards, made our first meal (a lot of things we bought at the grocery store on Saturday ended up being different than what we expected since we can't read the labels, so we'll have to keep practicing through trial and error) and got ourselves ready for a full day of sight-seeing on Monday. Stay tuned for pictures. Lots of them :) (I'm waiting till the end of the week so I can do all of them in one post before we leave for Germany for the weekend! So excited!)

Our last days in Čelákovice

Someone informed us of a little trail along a river that was close to the dorms, so Meghann and I decided to check it out one day.

Along the way, we saw many interesting things. Some normal, some not so normal:

The first thing was a bunch of ducks, some geese (or swans I'm not really sure) and an otter! (or beaver, i'm also not really sure-- if anyone knows, please inform me!)

There must have been a school close by because a bunch of kids (and a few adults) were there feeding them bread.

The next thing we saw was an old chair in the weeds, sitting there just like that all by itself.

Also sitting alone by itself in some weeds was this abandoned stroller. Thankfully, no baby in it!

I loved this really old looking railroad sign

It was so cool to see the neighborhoods of a real city in the Czech Republic, since I'm sure Prague won't be very accurate with all the tourists and everything. I'm glad our stay at the dorms in Čelákovice are over and I'm so happy to be back in the city where there are lots of things to do.

The one and only thing I will miss about Čelákovice is this cool machine where you can get a perfectly steamy, creamy hot cup of hot chocolate in less than a minute for 50 cents. (I think I got one at least once a day).

That's all for now! (Oh, and p.s. our apartment is awesome! I'll post pictures soon).

New experiences with food

We ate at our first Czech restaurant the other day and it was pretty good! Different. But good. They have a lot of dumplings (those white things are bread dumplings) and meat especially sausage (the red stuff) I'm not quite sure what everything else was, but it was good!

We wanted to have a few snack items around the dorms instead of ALWAYS eating in the cafeteria or restaraunt. So one day, Meghann and I ventured out to a small grocery store across the street (we were happy for something to do!) to see what we could find. It was hard to tell what things were, and I was so happy for the items that had some sort of picture on them!

Something interesting about the stores here is you have to pay for a shopping cart

AND for the plastic bag to put your groceries in at the end. Pretty much, nothing is free here.

Also, lots of people have dogs here, so when they go to the grocery store, they just tie them up outside. There is always at least one dog sitting outside when we go there. Sadly, people do the same thing with their children! Infants even! They just leave them outside the store in their strollers. I've seen it at least 3 times. I couldn't believe it when I first saw it!

Not many people in Čelákovice speak English, since there aren't very many tourists here, so sometime's it's hard to get around. But for the most part, in the restaraunts and grocery store you can get away with just pointing. I can say please and thank you really well, and I've used those words a lot but there's many other phrases that would also be helpful, so I'm trying to work on other words.