Oh, and how did I forget Ampleman?!

Ampleman, the beloved crosswalk signal of East Berlin. There was apparently huge opposition to getting rid of him when the wall came down, so the communist worker man stayed.

Ampleman says go.
Ampleman says stop.

Communist History and an 11 Euro Haircut in Berlin

Yikes!! I know I got back from Berlin almost three weeks ago, but the blog's finally here.

We spent our first day in Berlin doing a fantastic free walking tour, which took us to pretty well all of the highlights of the city. Luckily we all agreed we were most interested Cold War era East and West Berlin, so we returned on our own to the Berlin Wall's East Side Gallery, the DDR Museum, and the Checkpoint Charlie Museum. The Checkpoint Charlie Museum was huge! We thought it was only a few rooms, but it just kept going and going. So many stories of escape attempts, people got really creative.

One of my favourite parts of Berlin was Kastanienallee in Prenzlauer Berg, an area which reminded me a bit of Commercial Drive in Vancouver. We spent some time shopping there and found a cafe serving pay-what-you-can vegan food! We had delicious soup and cake, and payed full price because even that wasn't much.

Nearing the end of our stay in Berlin, we of course heard about the Icelandic volcano. Luckily Angie and I had already booked our train tickets to Koln and then Brussels, but Gab and Sanne were in a bit of a scramble to find an alternate way to their destinations. After Sanne and Gab were on their way by train, Angie and I had a leisurely day in Berlin, visiting the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church (it was destroyed by bombs but left standing as a reminder), seeing what we could of the Berlin Zoo from outside the fence (actually quite a lot), playing on a very adult friendly playground (it had a cool see-saw, and zip-line type thing!), and getting 11 euro haircuts at a place just down the road from our hostel (and they were great haircuts too!). It was then time to grab our bags and catch our midnight train to Koln.
Our two days visiting Koln and Bonn were great too. We discovered that the Koln U-bahn has a line all the way to Bonn (1 hour), so getting there was really easy. We had fantastic weather, and it was lovely to walk along the Rhine, or sit on a plaza and eat ice cream. We saw Beethoven's house in Bonn, and the Kolner Dom (the giant, blackened cathedral in the centre of town that has never been cleaned).

Best Moments in Kiev

Since it worked well for Krakow, I'll do this one in a list too.

10 best moments, in no particular order:

1. Having a personal walking tour drawn on our map for us. --When we asked the guy running the desk at our hostel if there were any free walking tours of Kiev he said "Ah, walking tours, yes!" and proceeded to draw a line through the city of where we should go, giving a running commentary and circling important things. It turned out to be a great little tour, I think we completed the whole thing in pieces during the time we were there.

2. Kievo Pecharsky Lavra --The Cave Monastery. It was amazingly beautiful, and gave us a great view of the city too. We walked through the catacombs where there were some bodies from the 11th century that didn't decompose. That part was really creepy.

3. Seeing the Ukrainian President drive by, twice --Okay so maybe it wasn't the president, but when we were walking from the Presidential palace to a nearby park there were police directing traffic and then a black car drove by with a police escort. We kept walking and on the next road it drove by again, pulling up to the parliament building a few blocks from us. So perhaps the president was being escorted to parliament? It was the middle of the day.

4. Puzata Hata --The buffet-style restaurant that became our regular lunch (and sometimes dinner) spot. So delicious and so cheap. Perogies with cherries, cottage cheese or poppyseed stuffed crepes, apple-filled things that were somewhere between a pastry and crepe, and these great little pancakes called "oladke." I always left there in a great mood.

5. Being able to read menus in cyrillic! --Okay, this is just my moment to be proud because the little bit of Russian I've learned came in handy. Luckily, Ukrainian names for different types of food aren't too different. And for words I didn't know, I could just read them out to Gab who speaks fluent Slovak and she could translate if they were similar words. It was a pretty good system!

6. Taking the metro --We didn't do it very often, we walked most of Kiev, but it was an experience! Everything moved really really fast, from the escalator that whisked us away to the platform, to the metro trains which produced massive gusts of wind as they blasted by, to the people running from one train to the next. I know metros are supposed to be fast, but everything about this one really was. I also loved how there were chandeliers in the metro stations, and almost no handles in the trains so every time it stopped and started I fell over.

7. Seeing a group of old men sitting by the water playing chess. --Well, this explains itself.

8. Randomly coming across a group of older Ukrainians doing some kind of circle dance in the entrance to the metro -- To get back to our hostel we had walk through a few underground passageways (instead of crosswalks) and a lot of them connected to the metro. One night we descended the stairs and found a little band set up and people dancing, directly under the street! An old man came up and asked me something in Ukrainian, I told him I didn't speak Ukrainian. He said "Deutsch?" and I said no, English or French. Then he said "Ah! Frantzuski!" and continued to speak in Ukrainian. I continued to speak in English, telling him I didn't know what he was saying, and the conversation continued on like this for quite some time. I think he might've be asking me to dance, and I tried to explain I don't know the dance. Of course I could be completely wrong, we were really having two entirely different conversations.

9. Andriivsky uzviz --This was a steep, winding street topped by the gorgeous turquoise St. Andrew's church. The streets were lined with the only tourist stands in Kiev, where Gab and I bought what seemed like the last two patches in all of Kiev, and there were also a lot of stands and stores for local artisans selling jewelry and paintings and things.

10. St. Sophia's --This was really cool because the church was set up like a bit of an archaeology museum. The outside showed some of what the church looked like when it was first built, and inside there were sections of the floor which showed uncovered mosaics.

Having enjoyed ourselves immensely in Kiev, we headed off to get our flight to Berlin via Riga, Latvia. So I can say I've had an aerial view of Latvia, and that the airport in Riga was really nice!

Highlights of Krakow

Alright, it's taking me a long time to get out these blog posts so I'm going to do this short form.

Things we did in Krakow:

Walking tour of the Jewish Quarter --A really good idea, most of the things we wouldn't have noticed on our own, or heard the story to go with them. Like this store that wanted to recreate how the area used to look by making several mock store fronts.

Auschwitz and Birkenau tour --What can I say here that you don't already know? It was depressing, frightening, and unnerving. I felt weird about taking pictures there so I have none.

Vodka tasting --Such a student touristy thing to do, but hey, I discovered vodka can actually taste nice (when it's good Polish vodka mixed with apple juice!). We also got free pickles. Mmmm.

Visited the 24 hour perogy joint, more than once --So many kinds of perogies to try and so little time!

Met tons of awesome people at our amazing hostel --Some joined us for the various tours, vodka tasting, and other wanderings about town.

Met up with some friends from Brussels who drove to Krakow --Again, they joined us for various wanderings.

Wawel castle --Fire-breathing dragon anyone?

So basically our time in Krakow was full of fun-filled adventures, the food was delicious and cheap, shopping was good, we had great weather for the most part, and our hostel was so friendly and served us a delicious breakfast every morning and pasta for dinner some nights. What could be better? So, of course, we were sad to leave. But the next destination on our list promised to be interesting too, Kiev!

The Adventures Begin: Oslo

My two week Easter break vacation started with a visit to a friend from home, Dena, who's doing her exchange in Aas, a town just to the south of Oslo. I stayed with Dena in her dorm while my three other travelling companions, Gab, Angie, and David, did the hostel thing.

We arrived from Brussels on Saturday morning and Dena hadn't yet returned from her vacation (theirs was the week before ours), so we went to the Munch museum and met up with Dena when she arrived (straight from the airport!) that afternoon. We took a little walk around the city and then went to the ice bar, where they gave us parkas and mittens to go inside and drink cocktails out of ice glasses! We all went a little crazy with the picture taking.

That night Dena and I ventured to take the second to last train to Aas (10:20pm) only to find out it wasn't running because it was Easter weekend! So we waited in the lobby of the Radisson hotel until the last train 2 hours later. Once in Aas, it was a half hour trek to Dena's dorm. It was actually quite beautiful, I could see the stars for the first time in awhile!

Day 2 had me waiting for another train (we just couldn't quite figure out the Easter schedule), but I got to enjoy a nice morning in Aas and see the little bit of snow that was left. Dena stayed home to work on a paper that day, so I met up with the others in Oslo and we took a boat ride from city hall to the opera house to Oslo's Museum Island. It was a really nice ride, we saw a bunch of little islands with cabins on them, and the scenery reminded me a lot of BC.
On Museum Island we visited the Kon-Tiki Museum, which was all about the adventures of a guy named Thor who built a raft and sailed across the Pacific Ocean to Polynesia, and then later took a reed boat across the Atlantic. I learned he was responsible for the whole Kon-Tiki craze, with Tiki hut bars and all.

In the afternoon we visited the sculpture park, where there are a whole bunch of statues of people doing different things, all by the same sculptor. One of the most famous ones is the stomping baby, who seems like he's too young to be throwing a tantrum standing up.

Monday morning I spent in Aas, since our flight was leaving that afternoon and I was already on the shuttle route to the airport. So I walked the other half of Aas to get to the bus station! I said goodbye to Dena and to Norway and met up with the others to catch our flight to Krakow, Poland.

Oslo was neat, but I'm really glad I got to stay in Aas because the small town outdoorsy-ness is what really appealed to me about Norway.

Tours, Versailles, and Paris in a Weekend

It's Sunday evening here and I just got back from Paris. I figured I should write about my weekend while everything's fresh in my mind!

I left bright and early Friday morning to catch my train to Tours to visit Darcy, and the voyage was pretty uneventful other than the fact that the train was delayed an hour due to signalling trouble (not quite sure what that means). I didn't find it a big deal, but I guess the TGV wants to preserve its reputation so they were giving out discount passes for future trips with them. Somehow I missed getting mine though; I think I was in a rush to switch trains to get my connection to Tours and didn't see the people handing them out.

Anyhow, I arrived in Tours in the early afternoon to find it beautifully warm. Darcy showed me the main areas of town (Hotel de Ville, main square, etc.) and then we wandered to try and find the Musée des Beaux Arts, discovering some neat little streets along the way. The museum was great because it was just the right size. Each of the rooms were fairly small so you weren't overwhelmed with fifty statues or paintings or something, and we managed to see the whole thing in a reasonable amount of time (i.e. not the two weeks it would take to see everything in the Louvre). The museum also had a lovely garden that reminded me of the red queen's garden in Alice in Wonderland, maybe only because I just watched that movie. On our wanderings after the museum we found a fancy clothing store where Darcy wound up buying a fancy fancy dress, and then we headed out for a Mexican food dinner and to a different place for dessert.








So it was a short visit to Tours, but I really liked it! One of the things I loved most was all of the old buildings with the wooden beams. I also loved how the river had natural banks, not cement walls like they put along most city rivers.

Saturday morning we took the train to Paris, where we dropped our stuff at the hostel and took some more transit (metro and the crazy RER I mentioned in my previous post about Paris) out to Versailles. Since we had both already seen inside the main palace we decided to cover the gardens, the Grand Trianon, the Petite Trianon, and Marie-Antoinette's Hamlet (all smaller buildings on the other end of the grounds). It was a half hour walk from the palace just to get to the Grand Trianon! It's another --smaller-- palace where Louis XIV (or maybe XVI, I can never remember because they look almost the same when I'm reading captions) went to escape the main château if he ever felt it was too much. Of course this place was still way bigger than your average home and just as fancy as the main palace.


The Petite Trianon was Marie-Antionette's quarters which she apparantly had built for her because it was more quaint, like what she was used to in Vienna. So here we have two monarchs who sometimes found Versailles too big so they built more palaces...


The Hamlet was actually really neat. Again, Marie-Antoinette had it built so she could enjoy something "simple." It's an entire village of houses made to look like peasant dwellings with food gardens and farm animals, but I don't think too many other peasant dwellings had an architect! It felt quite a bit like Disneyland, a bunch of buildings carefully designed to give a certain image so everyone can play pretend.
After Versailles we lugged our tired selves back to Paris to meet up for a night time bike tour. While we waited for the whole group to show up we met a guy from Montreal who came to Paris to dance the robot under the Eiffel Tower. Apparently he also goes to New York frequently to do the same. So for all of you with any performing skills, there are some interesting career possiblities out there for you! And he's considering coming to Vancouver, so be on the lookout for a robot-mime in the near future.

As for the bike tour itself, so much fun! We went with a group called Fat Tire Bike Tours and our guide was great. It was a really great way to cover a lot of the city at night, and of course everything's beautiful and all lit up. I thought it would be way scarier to ride a bike in Paris, but we were a big enough group that cars had to notice us. The tour ended with a boat trip along the Seine, complete with free wine. However, it started monsoon-raining and we had to take shelter on the bottom deck, making it harder to see everything the boat guide was talking about.

Sunday was a much more relaxing day, as we leisurely strolled around the Latin Quarter and had coffee and crepes outside on the Place de la Sorbonne. We also had time to check out the Jardins de Luxembourg and the Pantheon, and even go inside the Pantheon. I thought it was really neat because there are so many famous people buried there including Voltaire, Victor Hugo, and Louis Braille, the guy who invented --you guessed it-- Braille. The main part of the Pantheon was interesting because it started as a church and now is filled with all kinds of statues commemorating the revolution and great thinkers.

In this picture religion meets secular. The paintings on the ceiling and the walls are part of the original decor of the church and the statue was added latter with a caption that reads: "Vivre libre ou mourir," Live free or die.

So this time around I saw a new side of Paris, one that was more leisurely and beautiful. Perhaps I like it better during a monsoon than during a hurricane.

Anvers-Antwerp-Antwerpen

What to call this city? It usually depends which language you're using, but I've found here that hardly anyone calls it Antwerp even when they're speaking English. So for the title of this blog I've settled on the combination of all three used by Express (the group that organizes exchange activities for us) to advertise the trip, and from now on I will refer to it as Antwerp because I think that's what it's best known as in Canada.


So the city itself. I thought it was a great place, and I could probably live there. It was super clean, near water, and had some neat looking buildings (starting with the train station that strikes you right upon arrival). The shopping was also fantastic. Indeed that's all I'd heard about Antwerp before I went, that it was great for fashion and shopping. I thought that would mean expensive, high end stores, but I found instead that there were tons of vintage stores to be found! I also found a store selling all kinds of natural and organic stuff, from shoes to dresses, and I wanted to buy almost all of it. Everything looked so cool! It was difficult to do, but I did manage to leave Antwerp with only two purchases: a jacket and a scarf. Both of which I'm extremely happy with now that I'm back in Brussels.


Antwerp wasn't entirely a shopping trip, however. We started the day in the Ruben's house museum where some of his paintings were on display. The museum was really about the house though, Ruben's was no starving artist!


We also did a walking tour, which started in the Antwerp's Grand Place (every good Belgian city has one), showed us the Notre Dame Cathedral (which I thought was cool with its one onion dome, see the photo), and took us to the Steen (a castle-like building that was the first building in Antwerp). The tour continued, but at this point a few of us decided we could stop for fries and catch up with the group. Of course the fries took longer than expected and we didn't wind up rejoining the tour. However, by calling friends who were still with the group, we managed to find the next stop of the tour after they had left and were on their way to the next. It was a little contemporary art gallery that was called something to do with a panther and offered free enterance. What's not to love about free art in a quaint little building with a courtyard?

After all the touring was done, we caught up with the group again at a restaurant/pub for hot chocolate and then started browsing vintage (and some non-vintage) shops. The evening flew by as there just continued to be places we wanted to go!

So Antwerp was a really nice place to visit, not over touristy and it just had a nice vibe.