Bavaria and Berlin

I'm going to assume that you've read the post on transport in Germany. If not, please read before continuing.

Bavaria

One of the nice things about having a car is being able to go where you want, when you want. One of the good things about having a car in Germany is being able to do this quickly.

We decided to do what's called the Romantic Road which is not so much a road, but a series of towns and villages to visit in Bavaria. We managed to visit about five, due to transport woes (see previous post about transport) and also due to Anna being somewhat unwell.

First up were the castles of Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein. Fog blanketed the valley on the day that we visited, so the photos aren't great, but it was interesting nonetheless.

The websites that we looked at suggested getting there early, otherwise the queue would be bad, so we arrived earlyish and only had to wait about half an hour.

The first castle was interesting; rebuilt a few hundred years ago, it was never really a defensive castle.

The second castle was built by an interesting character, King Ludwig II of Bavaria. He grew up in the first castle, his younger brother was declared insane at 12 years old, and he lived way out in the wops in this castle. He was a medieval enthusiast, and really felt a connection to the tale of the knights of the holy grail, identifying himself with them in a way that, to be honest, was unhealthy. This fascination with medieval myths led to his building of (as he saw it) a medieval castle. His conception of what those castles were meant to be like was more on the romantic end of things, so he ended up with a castle design that looked more like the castle in Disneyland than anything else (rumour has it that the Disneyland castle is based to a large degree on this castle).

By the time we climbed the hill to the castle it was raining, and we were glad we'd brought our rain jackets.

The tour group was very large, and we weren't able to hear what the guide was saying sometimes because he started before everyone had actually entered the room he was in.

The castle had an incredible throne room, like nothing I've ever seen before. From the mosaic on the floor to the painted ceilings it was amazing. There was so much detail everywhere, it was impossible to take it all in. I'll spare you the pictures (not least because they're verboten). In addition to the throne room, there was a room with an artificial cave that used to have a smoke machine and a waterfall streaming down the rocks. That's definitely something we haven't seen in any other castles we've visited.

The castle was unfinished when Ludwig moved in, and a few short months later he was told by a group of psychiatrists that he was insane (probably a politically motivated diagnosis), and the next day he was found drowned in a lake. Officially a boating accident, but as you can imagine, conspiracy theories abound.

After the tour we stepped outside into the rain. Proper rain. Ever since this day in Germany I've had the umbrella we bought in Poland in my bag constantly, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. We ran down the hill dodging other umbrella-wielding tourists and while our jackets stopped the rain on our top halves, the rest of us was soaked by the time we got back to the car. Two out of five stars; would not recommend.

We cruised through another couple of towns, admiring their architecture, and finished up wandering through the Residenz in Wurzburg without any real idea of what we were looking at.

One of the little villages.

Finally we reached Berlin after a harrowing bus ride (see previous post about transport).

Berlin

Capital City #12

Berlin is an alright place, if you can understand how the transport system works. They seem to have two different metro systems, the U-bahn and the S-bahn. Both of these sometimes go underground and sometimes go overland, and both of them cover most of the city. It may be a throwback to the days when there were two Berlins.

The city itself is very spread out, or at least the interesting things are.

Visiting the museums quarter, we were approached by a couple of young girls who handed us a petition to sign about an orphanage, or a school or something for the deaf. They indicated to us that we should sign. I was reading the part at the top which was meant to explain what it was for while Anna said “No” and I wondered why she was being mean. At that point a police car drove past with sirens blaring and the girls went off – I thought initially they were going to ask someone else to sign, but no – they were hiding behind the pillars of the museum.

We went into the church we'd been standing outside, and Anna explained her rejection. Wisely she's been researching scams that tourists get into, and this is one of them. Apparently once you sign the petition, they'll pressure you into making a donation implying that now that you've signed, you must donate. We came across them another couple of times. FYI: petitions presented by young girls who should be in school, act mute themselves, and who hide when a police car drives by are probably scammers, and should be avoided.

Church where we met the scammers.

The museum we ended up going to was the Deutsches Historisches Museum, which believe it or not is about the history of Germany. It's rather quite interesting, but we only managed to get up to Napoleon's time before the museum was starting to close. Such a vast amount of information. This is the second time we've just got up to speed with the earlier history of a country, and have missed the modern part – what on earth has happened in Hungary and Germany in the last 100 years?! We don't know.

We saw the Brandenburg gate:

The gate.

We also saw the Reichstag:

The 'stag.

The Berlin Wall was of course something we both wanted to see. We spent a couple of hours walking along the former lines of the wall, reading all the plaques and exhibits that are dotted along the section of wall that remains, and thereby partially making up for what we missed in the museum. Many of the exhibits detailed the escapes from East Berlin. Exciting stuff. Early on, the Berlin Wall incorporated existing buildings, blocking the doors and bricking over the lower windows. Some people escaped by jumping out of the third story windows into the waiting arms of the West Berlin fire department who used ladders and catching nets, and were patrolling the likely areas in case people decided to jump.

This remaining section is around 4 metres high and has been designed to be difficult to climb without looking all spiky and forbidding. All the better for public relations.

We were also able to visit the Holocaust Memorial. It's quite effective. It's a field full of black granite obelisks of varying heights, with footpaths between them all. From further away it looks small, but when you're standing amongst the obelisks, some of which are 4 metres tall or so, you really get a sense of the scale of the thing (the memorial, that is). As to how it commemorates the holocaust, it's hard to say, but the place does exude a sense of gravity, of sorrow. Perhaps that's only because I know that's what it's meant to convey, though.

On our second afternoon in Berlin we stumbled into the preparation for a premiere of “Sex Tape”, the movie. As you can imagine, this is exactly the kind of movie that we're just aching to miss, not quite on the anything-with-Eddie-Murphy-from-the-last-decade end of the scale, but still. My number one rule when deciding not to watch a movie is to ask this simple question:

Q: Does the movie poster consist of BOLD RED TEXT IN ALL CAPS with a white background?

If Yes, then I'm probably not going to be interested. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, but it's helpful anyway.

There were a few people already camped out around the barriers on the red carpet, but I think the size of the crowd reflected the (presumed) quality of the movie.

Following our whirlwind tour of Berlin, it was time to head to the Netherlands. Because of our experiences on the buses in Germany, we thought we should try the train. Surely we would have better luck with good old-fashioned railways. Right?

Apparently there was some union action on the day that we left Berlin. We heard mention of a drivers' strike, and lo and behold, the departure board said that our train was late by half an hour. Half an hour is something we can deal with, it's no big deal, although we did hope that our connection in the Netherlands would still be available.

The half hour passed, and now the board said 45 minutes, then 60. Eventually we left 70 minutes late. The conductor came past to punch our tickets, and gave us an envelope with a form to fill out to get some compensation. Yay, at least it isn't a free ticket for German trains that we won't be able to use.