Birthday, Bier, and Snow!

This week, I celebrated a number of things. Like everyone else, I was stoked for the end of midterms. I had three in a row on Thursday--none of which were cake walks--and spent the next two days watching That 70's Show and preparing for my bigger celebration--a visit from a friend from home and my 24th birthday, in order of importance. Bright and early Sunday morning, I picked her up from Tegel and thus began our long week of tourist-ing both in Berlin and in Munich.

It was fun to be able to show someone new what little I have learned about Berlin and Germany so far. We of course went to the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag and a number of other monuments and museums--the Deutches Historiches Museum is amazing, as was the Berliner Dom and the Jüdiches Museum. But you can find all these in a guidebook--what I really showed her was a love of the Ampelmann.

We also went to München for a whirlwind two days of tourist traps and mountain climbing. I won't bother to post a picture of the Glockenspiel--voted the second most disappointing tourist attraction behind the Atomic Clock in Prague, only because that one is four minutes longer. While Kayleigh loved its four out-of-tune songs playing at the same time while little men poorly jousted or danced about the plague, I thought it was a little cheesy. However, it fit perfectly into the landscape of Munich. I caught myself wondering when the cheesy kitsch would end, but then I remembered--this is where it all started. I was not in Busch Gardens or Epcot or Helen GA--a town near my grandmother's housed designed like a town in the Alps--I was actually in Munich, where it all began. And as you would expect, it was much more an endearing town then the rip-offs back home can really capture. There are tiny buildings everywhere and old-style churches and two town halls--no skyscrapers anywhere downtown. While Munich, like Berlin, was decimated after WWII, a law was passed in Munich that all the buildings in the downtown area have to look similar to the old buildings and be below a certain height and in the old style. There is no Potsdamer Platz here--their version of moving on after the war was trying to recapture and commemorate what was destroyed, and they had the time to do so. Berlin so soon after the war was thrust into the Cold War in a way that perhaps Munich was not, allowing it to remain quaint.

Kayleigh made the comment that while Berlin reminded her of New York, Munich was more like Boston. It's interesting to note that my freshmen year in college I went to a school in New York while Kayleigh graduated from Boston University and spent her time abroad in Dublin. We're attracted to the same types of cities, even abroad.

In what many stereotype as true Bavarian fashion, we also went on a Beer Hall tour that evening. And I learned that it is in fact a true aspect of Bavarian culture. They love their beer, and not just during the end of September. We went to two beer halls, one of which being the Hofbrauhaus where Hitler made his first speeches (creepy), and a small brewery and restaurant. In Munich, brewery restaurants like the one we went to only sell that beer in house--no bottles, even in Munich, or even in a gift shop to be sold to the public. It is only available in the restaurant. Our guide took us around where they brew the beer and we nibbled on toasted barley, wheat, and took a whiff of some hops before enjoying our massive liters of beer.

Surprisingly, there was also snow in Bavaria. After a quick bus ride from Munich, Kayleigh and I were in about six inches of snow and staring at what must be one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. The Alps are epic. I have never even seen the Rocky Mountains and only driven through pieces of the Appalachians--I never really knew I was missing anything glorious until driving out there. The castles we saw also were pretty intense too--Ludwig II, who may or may not have been insane (and maybe murdered!) built three castles in the Alps, two of which we saw. The first, Linderhof, was a smaller palace modeled after Versailles with rococo decorations and a grotto we couldn't get to which had electricity for his late-night theater productions. The second was magical. It has to be--it is the design for Disney's logo and Sleeping Beauty's castle in Disneyland. (Haha, bad joke, but I couldn't resist.) Neuschwanstein is built up a mountain near Ludwig's childhood home and was meant to be his fairytale Medieval castle. Throughout the castle rooms are scenes from Wagner's operas--my favorites were Tristan and Isolde in Ludwig's bedroom. It was most definitely worth the trek up the mountain and the stairs in the tower--and besides, I had to work off all that beer from the night before.

Sadly, classes have to resume, Kayleigh has to go back to work, and life has to start again. While in Munich I was very much the tourist--and often a cranky one at that, especially during the 10 minutes in front of the Glockenspiel--in Berlin I had the pleasure of showing someone what I knew already. Yes, Brandenburger Tor is a self-explanatory S-bahn stop, and yes, she had a guidebook and is very capable of tooling about the city by herself, but I like to think that because I knew something about the city, more than just the wall and the Hitler, we both had a more worthwhile and enjoyable time.

Happy Birthday to me. :-)