Palmer's Last Hurrah...

So when last we spoke, Palmer and I had just finished up a trip to Salzburg. Once the boss got back to town, we decided to take him on a last road trip to Prague.

We packed up the car and drove there on Thursday arriving in late afternoon. Our hotel was (surprise, surprise) right next to a mall. 

It was too late to start touring the town that evening, so we went over to the mall and ate in the food court, and stocked up with snacks at the grocery store.

Next day, we toured around town a bit (reorienting ourselves to the layout of the city), and made our way to the other side of the river for our scooter tour, which started in the Lesser Quarter. 

Lemme take a break really quick and talk about the geography of Prague. There are 4 main areas of the city (that tourists are concerned about): Old Town, New Town, Lesser Quarter, and the Castle District. The Castle District lies on the west side of the river, the northernmost of the (touristy) districts on that side. The Lesser Quarter is down the hill from the castle, still on the west side of the river. Old Town is where the majority of the tourist sites are located, on the east side of the river. New Town (which, despite its name, dates back over 800 years) is immediately south of Old Town, still on the Vltava River. Our hotel was on the east side of the river, a couple of metro stops east of Old Town.

We were in a small group, 5 of us plus the guide. Me, the boss, and the boy were on electric scooters, the other 2 tourists were on motorized electric tricycles, and the guide was on an electric assisted bicycle. Our route stretched from the Lesser Quarter down to the river, down the river to the castle, and followed the crest of the hill south from the castle past our starting point, then back down the hill. We got lots of pics. These will be out of order, but I'll throw them in anyway.

While we were waiting for our tour, we had beers next door to the place:

We saw the Lennon Wall, which John Lennon never saw or visited (named because of the graffiti that espouses freedom, western culture, and political struggle):

A weird little pond with two guys peeing in it... the guys buttocks can be moved left and right, and the... nozzles (for lack of a more appropriate term) can be moved up and down. Makes some sort of political statement, including that the left-most gentleman is peeing on the approximate location of Prague, somehow telling the people to be mindful of who they put in office... as the story was relayed to us, anyway:

An overlook of the city, from the northern end of the Castle District. On the far side of the river, you can see some of the buildings of the Old City... I believe the closest twin spires in the middle right of the pic are the Church of Our Lady before Týn, which dates to the 1300's. This church is on the main square in the Old City, across from the Astronomical Clock:

An overview of the city from the south end of the Lesser Quarter... if you look in the center of the pic, you can see a small portion of the river; the preceding pic was taken from among the trees you can see on the left of the river. Basically, another angle of the city center:

Afterward, we wandered around the city for a while, and found ourselves in the Prague Ice Bar... essentially a walk in freezer turned into a tourist site. Basically, you pay about $10 to go into a freezer that's -8 degrees Celsius (about 17 degrees Fahrenheit). You get one drink with your admission, and can buy additional drinks for between $4.00 and $6.50. You could get a bottle of Heineken or a vodka based drink. They had blocks of ice with cylinders cut out of the middle of them with a shot of vodka in each, and you'd tell them what kind of juice you wanted in it: cranberry, orange, or cactus. We each had a different flavor. Don't let me kid you - my description of it sounds dorky, but it was actually pretty cool (cool, get it? Because it was a... you know what? If I have to explain it, it loses something. Try to keep up!). Here are a few choice pics from inside - I had to keep putting my phone back into my pocket. Over about a minute out in the cold, and it would quit working until I'd warmed it back up in my pocket.

During our wandering around town, we encountered the same antique store where the wife had found her steins during the last trip - thankfully, she didn't encounter anything this time around that she couldn't live without.

The next day, it seemed like every time we turned around, plans didn't work out for us. Whether it was a museum where there were only tours at specific times (the Cold War Museum), or being unable to find a museum (supposedly a free museum somewhere in town), or yours truly doing math wrong and insulting the waiter at Hard Rock Cafe with a messed up tip... more wandering that day than anything else, and nothing much to report. We did end up doing the museum of the Charles Bridge, but we had hoped to pair that together with a boat tour, and that boat vendor seemed to have a really hard sell, and just didn't feel right.

Just FYI, I'm probably going to get the order wrong on some of the things from our last day, so I'll just give you a list and you can put these into whatever order you'd prefer.

We finally did the big museum in Old Town. There seemed to be a lot of animals - an entire floor devoted to different kinds of animals, with stuffed versions of all of them. Big aquarium section, with lots of fish (and a whale skeleton hanging overhead), and a section on dinosaurs as well. Other floors had normal museum stuff, mostly about the history of Prague and the Czech Republic.

We finally got our boat ride on the Vltava River. We boarded a boat a little downriver from the Charles Bridge and rode it for about an hour upriver, then further down, and back upriver to the dock. There was a constant narration playing in the background in multiple languages, but we could barely hear it, and were never sure when we were supposed to be listening until it was too late. I'm sure that the recording shared some vital information, but I have no idea what it could have been. Unfortunately, the windows were smeared, so I didn't get any good pics while we were on the boat. Maybe we should have taken the boat ride with the hard sell instead.

A family I bumped into at the hotel had told us about "The Anonymous Bar," themed around Guy Fawkes masks (and evidently the movie "V For Vendetta" rather than the Gunpowder Plot), so we had to get a drink there. All of the bartenders wear Guy Fawkes masks - but only when they're actively serving drinks (which I think defeats the purpose of the whole concept of anonymity... but what do I know?). I had some sort of whiskey sour (with a themed name), and Palmer had a "V's Blood" (I'll share this pic, even though it's a little blurry - was an interesting concept):

The Ice Bar (from earlier in the trip) is related somehow to a Robot Bar... so we just had to go there as well. You go into the room, and there are 8 or 10 computer terminals. You sit down at one of the terminals and order from a list of drinks, and then the two robots at the front of the room make your drink. All of the drinks were pretty imaginative, and none of them did anything for me, but the boy picked one that he wanted to try, and I videoed the robots making it:

One of the delicacies that Prague is known for is something called a Chimney Cake; it's a dough that's spiraled around a cone and cooked inside and out, then covered with your choice of toppings, crushed nuts, cinnamon/sugar, etc, and optionally filled with whipped cream or ice cream. The wife and son had to have one, so we stopped at a vendor and they got one each. I tried a bit or two of the wife's cake - she thought it was a little too crisp, but I didn't think it was too bad.

Many of y'all know that I enjoy pedicures... I finally had the opportunity to get a pedicure given by fish. Yeah, go back and reread that sentence again. They have these all over the world, but I've never been able to get one before. There's a tank in the massage/nail place where they have hundreds of these little fish called "doctor fish" or "nibble fish". The lady sprays your feet down with some sort of antiseptic/cleaner, then scrubs them down with a soft brush and rinses them clean. You put your feet into a set of Crocs, and walk over to the tank, then slowly ease your feet into the tank. The fish spend the next half hour or so eating the dead skin off of your feet.

I'm horribly ticklish, y'all. These fish tickled me so much that it just didn't tickle any more.

Additionally, the tank that they put me in was in the front window of the shop... I felt like I was in the Red Light District of Amsterdam. 

People walking by on the street stopped and took pictures... one pair of guys asked me (using sign language) how much it was, so I told them with hand signals. I gave so many thumbs up, I lost count. While I was getting my feet serviced, the wife and boy were eating at a place a little ways down the street, watching people stop to gawk at me. 

10/10, will do again. I actually found some places in Frankfurt that offer fish pedicures - I'll go get one with you when you come visit!

That was the end of that evening, and the next day we drove back to Frankfurt. Palmer flew home the next day, and is settling back into his normal schedule.

That's all for now - see you here next time!

Long(ish) update... Knoxville & Germany... plus, an appearance from my babysitter!

Please forgive me, dear readers, it's been entirely too long since my last confession. I'm (close to) certain that you'll forgive me, once you take this epic journey with me. If not.... sorry 'bout it!

The wife travels for work every September, and we've admitted to ourselves that I'm not the most comfortable with being left on another continent by myself for that long. This year, we arranged for Palmer to come over here and spend September with me while the wife was gone. Easy peasy, right?

Unfortunately, the universe had other plans. Not "easy peasy." Not "easy peasy" at all. Wherever the opposite of easy peasy is, that's squarely where we found ourselves.

One random Tuesday afternoon in August, Palmer called and told me that he'd discovered a leak on the water heater. No biggie, we have a home warranty - a $75 call to get a plumber dispatched, and all is well. Until the follow-up call the following day: "Dad, the plumber guy is here, and he said something about 'black mold.' Do you want to talk to him?"

No thank you, I most assuredly do not want to talk to him. However, sometimes, you just have to pull up your big boy underoos. Against my better judgement, I talked with him.

Turns out, the water heater had been spraying water on the wall, and the sheetrock had gotten soaked and started to grow some mold. Not much, about a 5 foot wide by 2 foot high section. It was enough that we needed to get someone out there to take a look at it. At that point, the boss and I decided that this would be too much to ask the kids to do (coordinating with an insurance adjuster, multiple contractors, etc.), so I'd better go back and handle it. I flew out on Saturday, arriving in Knoxville later that day (because of the wonders of time zones).

Over the course of the next week or so, I had multiple contractors come out to work on (and fix) the black mold - insurance ended up paying for most of it. For part of the repairs, the water heater had to be disconnected, moved out, and reconnected (remember this  - it's important for later!). 

While the repair guys were there, the boss told me to ask them about cleaning out the dryer vent - it hadn't been done since we moved in ten years ago. We scheduled that for late in the week the last week I was planning on being there.

One warm afternoon, I innocently went to Costco for a quick shopping trip. Everything was fine on the way there, but the air conditioning didn't work in the car on the way home. Let's add that to the list of things that need to be fixed while I'm home. Arranged to drop the car off and find a way to share a vehicle with the kids. Grrrrrr! That ended up taking the better part of a week to get addressed.

Remember how the water heater had to be moved out and reinstalled? Turns out, sometime in that whole procedure, something broke. Not sure what it does, but the "thermopile" (yeah... I looked it up, and that's a real word) stopped working, and now the pilot light won't stay lit.

Just in case you're wondering, cold showers aren't fun. The warranty company dragged their feet on getting that replaced, and Cori ended up meeting with the plumber the day after Palmer and I got to Germany.

When the company came back to clean out the dryer vent.... well, of course it couldn't be that simple, could it? Turns out, when (one of) the previous owners put the vent in, they used one of the expandable ducts that looks like a slinky covered in plastic. That's evidently a big no-no. At some point in the past few years, that slinky had disconnected itself, and the dryer has been spraying lint onto the drop-ceiling in the basement for quite a while. The contractor told me that he was surprised that the house hasn't gone up in flames. They didn't have time to fully clean it out and rebuild it that day, and Palmer and I were scheduled to leave the following Thursday; the next time that they'd be able to come would be the Wednesday before we left. They assured me that they'd be able to do it in a single day, so I didn't need to change my travel plans. I told them that if they weren't able to finish on Wednesday, they'd have 2 hours (at most) to finish up on Thursday. They assured me again that they'd be able to finish on Wednesday.

The plan was for 2 of them to work on it: One would work on the cleanup, while the other would head to Home Depot for ducting and parts (once they'd been able to measure and figure out exactly what they needed). They didn't count on the amount of lint that they'd be facing... it actually took 3 trips to Home Depot. They both got there, one measured while the other cleaned. The guy who measured took off for Home Depot. When he got back, he had to return to Home Depot for another filter for the vacuum that they were using (as the filter had given up the ghost, not being able to be de-linted thoroughly enough). Eventually, the shop-vac that they were using just gave up, and he had to go back yet again to buy another shop-vac.

Wonder of wonders, they were able to finish on Wednesday, and Palmer and I flew out the next day.

Sometime in all of that, I was able to spend some time with Cori's boyfriend. He's a really nice guy. The four of us (me, him, Cori, Palmer) went to an escape room - it was his first time. We ended up finishing in 35 minutes. He spent a bit of time hanging out at our house - seems like a genuinely good guy.

Anyway, on to Germany!

Palmer is just here to hang out, not wanting to do anything specific. We'd probably be bored just sitting around the house staring at each other though, so I planned a trip. I thought I planned it for the Tuesday after we arrived. I discovered otherwise on Sunday. I happened to randomly check to reassure myself that I was thinking of the right date, at 3:37pm on Sunday. Turns out, our first night in Garmisch (4 and a half hours away) was supposed to be Sunday night.

It took 13 minutes from discovering that I had the wrong date, until we were packed and on the road.

Palmer snapped this picture as we approached Garmisch - we were still around 20 miles away from the resort (as the crow flies) - we think this is the Zugspitze. We were still around an hour away, because of the winding roads.

We did a bunch of stuff, and honestly, I'm not sure I'd be able to tell it in my normal "narrative" style, so I'll just tell you all we did, in no particular order (except by location).

We spent two nights in Garmisch. We visited our favorite wood carver a couple of towns away. We wandered through Garmisch, stopping in all of the little touristy shops. We ate at "our" Pizza Hut in town. We swam in the pool and hot tub at the resort. We drove over to the parking lot of Zugspitze (with the intention of going to the top), but I wasn't able to justify the €68 per person round trip.

In short, we just hung out around town for a couple of days.

We had 3 days booked in Salzburg afterwards, and I took a lot more pictures there.

The wife and I particularly enjoyed the Stiegl Brauwelt (the Stiegl Brewery restaurant) on our previous visit, so that was our first stop on the way into town. That's my radler in the foreground, and Palmer with a regular beer. Please note the color of my radler.

 Afterward, we headed over to the hotel to check in. Our hotel was away from the tourist area, and quite a step down from the last time we visited Salzburg (when we got upgraded to a suite on the top floor). It was a couple of blocks away from a mall (big surprise, huh?). Breakfast wasn't included with our room and they wanted $25 per person for it... not worth it to us. I walked over to the mall each morning for coffee and breakfast (bagels & donuts, etc.). 

We went to the biergarten that the boss and I fell in love with last trip; Palmer wasn't overly impressed - he enjoyed the food, but he's just not that big a fan of beer.

On the walk from the hotel to the mall, there was an interesting church:

Yes, that's a two story ear on that church. No, I'm not sure why it's there. The building is evidently some sort of museum / activity center, called Bible World. I'm not sure what the ear has to do with it, but there's a piece of plywood over the ear canal that says (in English) "Do Not Open" in big black spray painted letters. There's a story there, I'm sure.

One of the big things I've been wanting to do around Salzburg is visit Eagle's Nest. It's a little less than an hour outside of town. Well, the parking lot is around an hour outside of Salzburg. Once you get there, you have to take a bus up the mountain. The road up is a 20 minute long winding two lane (paved) goat trail. We eventually ended up at the upper lot:

I chose to include this pic because this is the upper lot, with Eagle's Nest itself at the top of the pic. From this lot, you can buy a separate ticket to take a bus to the top (around €25 per person, round trip). If you'd prefer, you can hike up, by heading to the right from this lot - they say it's a 20 minute hike. I simply don't believe them. The other alternative is to go through the tunnel on the left, which dates back to the original construction in 1938, and take an elevator up to the top. We chose the tunnel and elevator.

The complex was intended to be a conference center for the Nazi party. Here's what the view from the top is supposed to look like (this pic was shamelessly taken of a tourism book - if you look at the right hand side of the pic, you'll see a red star... remember where that is, relative to the rest of the pic):

Here's what it looked like during our visit - Palmer is standing near where I put the red star in the previous pic:

Visibility from the other side was a little bit better - way off in the background, you can almost see Salzburg:

Back in Salzburg, we explored for the rest of the time we were there. During our travels around town, we found a Manner store (the wafer company based in Vienna), so we couldn't help but give them part of our money:

Please note the color of my radler there; this particular restaurant made their radlers manually, by pouring sprite and beer together. The beer was fine, but this wasn't what I'd consider a true radler. Page back up and see what the radler from Stiegl looked like. At this restaurant, Palmer had pizza... most of the pizzas at this restaurant had corn on them, for some odd reason:

One of the other places that we found was the "Red Bull Hangar." Red Bull is based right outside of Salzburg, and they've got a hangar next to the airport that's filled with a bunch of Red Bull vehicles - Formula One cars, motorcycles, planes... you name it, if Red Bull has raced it, there's one of them in the hangar. Including, for some reason, a WWII Corsair:

In the back left hand corner, you can see the tail of a DC-6 in Red Bull livery. On the right side, you can see part of an Alpha jet. Evidently, these are all of the planes that they use in airshows, stored here when they're not in use.

Anyway, Palmer is here for a a few more weeks, so there might be another post or two coming - we don't have anything planned, but we've got nothing else going on, so you never know!

Another (The) Hague trip... but first, Köln (Cologne for y'all Yanks!)

So... as I've mentioned in past entries, the wife's assignment here includes duties for (and occasional trips to) The Hague. This time, we drove there, and added a couple of days on the front end to visit Köln, which you might know as "Cologne" - that's the English name for it.

Cologne is only a couple of hours away, so we drove up in the early afternoon, in time to get checked in and start thinking about dinner. We stayed in the Marriott, right in the city center, so just about everything was within a walkable distance. In accordance with past trips, first order of business was to find a halfway decent barbecue restaurant, and we did. It was a bit of a hike, and turned out to be a "BBQ Deli," meaning that it wasn't really a full restaurant, just counter service with a couple of stand up tables. We each had baked potatoes stuffed with pulled barbecue - I had pork, and the boss had beef. Pulled beef? Yep. Dunno - she picked it. It was halfway decent. If we want to try again, we'll go to the real restaurant that's associated with the deli, but it wasn't within walking distance, so we'll have to drive to it. It was halfway decent, but not bad overall for Europe.

The next day, we'd signed up for another of the "free walking tours," given by the same company we used in Berlin, "Can You Handle It Tours," another of the "Rude Bastard" walking tours. The guide who gave the tour was an American (from Michigan, if that matters), and she was nowhere near as "rude" (playful and profane) as Arthur in Berlin. She only "cursed" once, and that was when she was telling us about the name of a specific landmark in one of the squares (and here, I'd like to apologize for my language - I usually try to keep my posts rated around E10... this might kick it into T territory!): The Gutter Shitter (Kallendresser in German - I'll use that term from here on out).

There are several legends associated with this figure, but its (original) origin is a mystery. The original figure no longer exists, but was such a well known figure in the square that it was quickly replaced when it fell. One of the more intriguing legends has to do with the attitude of the townspeople toward the city government in the past, as the square that the figure is on also is home to the town hall.

Interestingly enough, on the clock tower attached to the town hall is a face (called the Platzjabbeck) who, every hour (with the chiming of the bells) opens his mouth and wags his tongue in the direction of the Kallendresser.

On our tour, Emily walked us past the original merchant for "Eau de Cologne," dating back to 1709. Of course, after our tour, we had to go back there. When writing these posts, I try to do additional research to make sure I'm not blindly passing along bad information... buckle up. If I've gotta learn about eau de Cologne, y'all do too. I'll put it in blue, so you can just skip it if you don't care.

"Perfume" is basically fragrant essential oils or aroma compounds mixed with fixatives and solvents. Perfumes have different descriptive names, based on the dilution of the aromatics. In ascending order of dilution (so, strongest first) they are: parfum (or extrait) > esprit de parfum > eau de parfum (or parfum de toilette) > eau de toilette > eau de Cologne > eau fraîche.

Having said all that, the original eau de Cologne has a light citrussy scent. I guess I could have saved all of us a bunch of time by just saying that and moving on, right?

While wandering around town, we had lunch in a (modernized) old restaurant. The first mention of the address of this restaurant dates back to 1163, but the foundation dates back to the Roman settlement in Cologne. The building has been owned by the same family since the 1920's, but was heavily bombed during the war. Members of the family sheltered deep in the basement during the bombing, and were buried when the building collapsed. The family patriarch threw a coin into the well in the basement and wished that his family would be okay; a few days later, his family was discovered weakened, but unharmed. You can still see the well in the basement of the building. Neat building, good food, good beer.

Speaking of beer... the people of Cologne are quite proud of their beer, a specific variety called Kölsch. That specific name is "geographically protected" in the EU, so any Kölsch sold in the EU have to come from within 31 miles of the cathedral in Cologne. Kolsch beers are brewed in other countries, so if you've had a Kolsch in the US, you're familiar with the style. One thing that's different in Cologne though, is the serving style. The beer is not very carbonated, so it's served in smaller glasses that are tall and narrow, holding around 7 ounces per serving. The server (called a Köbes) carries around a "kranz" (crown or wreath) and drops off a new glass to replace empties, marking a tick mark onto one of the coasters on your table (to keep track of how many beers you've been served). To keep from getting another beer dropped off, you put a coaster on top of your beer... at least, that's the way it's supposed to work. I couldn't figure out how to do it when you're sitting outside on a breezy afternoon. I just had to keep putting my hand on top of my empty glass. Sorry for the stock image, but couldn't see the scale of the kranz in the wife's pic.

After we ate, we wandered our way down to the Chocolate Museum. We were thinking about it, and our worldwide chocolate museum count is up to four, I think. I was pretty impressed by this one. It covered the whole process, and delved into some of the prehistorical aspects of chocolate in the different cultures as well. Pretty impressive. The museum is affiliated with Lindt, but chocolates from other companies were represented as well. Overall, very well done.

Afterward, we stopped in the little café in the lobby, and the boss had some fondue, dipping random fruits and baked goods in two types of chocolate.

We'd seen lots of people throughout town wearing t-shirts from the band Kiss, and that evening I happened to strike up a conversation with a gentleman in the lounge who claimed to be their pilot on their current world tour - they were playing that night at the arena in town. I have no reason to doubt the veracity of his stories, but also no proof that he was actually their pilot. Either way, good conversation for a while.

Next day, we had a tour of the cathedral scheduled in the afternoon, so we were looking for something to do in the late morning. I saw something online about a mustard museum (and y'all know how much I love weird museums), so I looked up where it was, and we took off walking. Turns out, it was literally across the street from the chocolate museum. D'oh!

On the way there, the boss wanted to find a specific store that we'd walked by on our tour the day before that sold... wait for it.... watercolors. We retraced our tour route and eventually found it. She found one that she liked, so we got that and kept moving across town. 

Turns out, the mustard museum was just a store with a little bit of historical stuff in a little alcove. We tried a couple of the mustards and bought a couple of crocks, then headed back to the room to drop off our stuff before the cathedral tour.

A few quick facts about the cathedral: at 157 meters (515 Freedom Units), it's the tallest twin spire church in the world, the second tallest church in Europe, and the third tallest church (of any kind) in the world. From 1880 to 1884, it was the tallest building in the world, at which point it was surpassed by the Washington Monument.

You can see Emily, our tour guide the previous day, there in the foreground. In front of the church, you can see a parade float, with a sign to its immediate right. Protesters were demonstrating against the Catholic Church and the German Cardinal of the Catholic Church. This was just the best pic I had of the front of it. We'll just move on.

Construction on the church started in 1248, but it wasn't completed until 1880, due in large part to pausing construction for 274 years (from 1540 to 1814) when they ran out of money. 

One of the main reasons for this grandiose cathedral is that it houses a reliquary containing the relics of the Three Magi. I'm not going to try to trace the provenance of these relics, just going to say that the reliquary itself is quite impressive. It's a massive box, about 3 1/2 feet wide, 5 feet high, and a little over 7 feet long - the largest reliquary in the western world.

(Best pic I could find, not mine.... by Arminia - File:Dreikönigsschrein im Dom1.JPG, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2237541)

Christian buildings occupied the site where the cathedral stands, all the way back to the 4th century. The current building was completed in several phases (due to the aforementioned lack of money), and is the largest gothic church in northern Europe. One of the striking features of the cathedral is the extensive use of flying buttresses, which mean that the walls don't have to be as substantial as you'd expect for a building this size. As a result, the windows they were able to install make the inside of the church much brighter than you'd expect:

Let's talk for a moment about the windows, and the war.

During the war, Cologne was an important target for the allies. 262 separate raids bombed Cologne, including the first ever "Thousand Bomber Raid," when the RAF sent 1,047 bombers to attack the city in a 90 minute period.

In total, over 77,000,000 pounds of bombs were dropped on Cologne in the war. Here's a picture of the city taken in 1945, after the war:

Absolute desolation. Except for a handful of buildings. Including that magnificent cathedral.

The cathedral suffered collateral hits by 14 bombs. The cathedral itself wasn't targeted in the raids - not out of the kindness of the Allies' hearts; it was the most recognizable building in that part of Germany, and was used as a navigation waypoint.

All those gorgeous windows? The panes were individually removed and stored at remote locations for safety, then reinstalled after the war.

Dinner (& beer!) on our last night in town was at a place that claims to be one of the oldest in the city, dating back to 1318. The brauhaus was destroyed in the war, and I wasn't able to find any documentation about its true age, but the site for the brauhaus itself and our tour guide both made that claim, so.... we'll just go with it for the purposes of this blog entry.

So next day, we got up and hit the road for The Hague. We rolled in early afternoon, and since we were so early, we headed straight to the beach, to have an early dinner and walk on the boardwalk. We went to one of the restaurants lining the sand and had a couple of drinks as well.

The next day, the weather sucked. According to some of the locals the wife talked to, they hadn't had a storm like that in years. I didn't leave the room all day. Once the wife got home, we took a tram to the main shopping district and tried to get into a wing restaurant that I'd seen online, but they weren't accepting walk-ins for some reason. We ended up wandering around looking for a place to eat, and found our way back to the food hall that we'd discovered in a previous trip. I had wings, and the wife got "nachos," which appeared to be more of a bowl of chips with a bunch of random stuff piled on. We wandered for a little while longer, but all the stores were closed, so we took the tram back to the hotel.

I hung out in the room most of the next day as well, we took the tram back over to the shopping area after the boss got off work. We wandered around, stopped in our normal cheese shop, and ate at a tapas restaurant for dinner. I've never had tapas before, I enjoyed it.

The following day, I wandered around the neighborhood that the hotel was in - we've stayed in that hotel before, but have only explored in one direction. I headed in the other direction, and happened to encounter the restaurant that we had reservations in for that night, simply by luck. I was looking for a grocery store, and the restaurant happened to be across the street.

Dinner was at an Italian restaurant that her coworkers had recommended - I'd made the reservation earlier in the week. We had olives, bruschetta, and shared a pizza. Pretty good - not Italy good, but pretty good nonetheless. They had a wood fired oven right inside the door - that's not something you see everywhere you go.

The following day, we had an entire day to do a 4 hour drive, so we decided to break it up, and stopped in Gouda to do some touristy stuff. We found parking in a very conveniently located garage, and walked back to the Gouda Cheese Experience, where we had purchased tickets for a tour.

The (let's call it) "museum" was surprisingly well done! When we checked in for our tour, we were given a clipboard with a sheet full of trivia questions and an audio player. There were a few different movies that we got to watch (and listen to in English with our audio players), interactive experiences... I need to break off and tell you about this thing.

They had a cow set up with some sort of computer system in its udders with targeting screens in the buckets that showed how good your aim would be while milking a cow. That was right next to the display where you could press a button to smell what a pasture smells like, so perhaps they were trying to stifle competition in the cow farming business... not sure. 

We had to answer the trivia questions using information that we learned during the tour, and find 6 rubber stamps throughout the exhibits to stamp our trivia sheet. After the tasting at the end of the tour, we turned in our trivia sheet to be scored - amazingly, we got 100% - and were awarded green and yellow pins that say "I'm a cheese master!"

After we gave them some more money for cheese and cheese accessories, we dropped off the goodies in the car and decided to wander the town for a little while. One of the sights that the wife had read about was the weighing house, where the wheels of cheese were weighed. We didn't make it into the weighing house though, because we encountered a market instead. We ended up wandering around the city for a little over an hour exploring the extensive booths and little alcoves in the city. 

Here's their city hall, with some sort of display about cheese underneath:

And here's the weighing house, that they've turned into a little museum:

One of the things that the wife has fallen in love with over here (other than Westerwald Pottery, Delft Pottery, and watercolors) are stroopwaffel. It's effectively two very thin waffle cookies with a layer of caramel of some sort in between. The first time we went to The Hague, she bought a freshly made one when we went to the beach, and I occasionally still hear about that particular one. Well, in our wandering around Gouda, we encountered a market that just sold stroopwaffels. They were in vending machines. You went up to a computerized kiosk and selected what you wanted and paid, then the locker containing your purchase popped open for you to access.

After we finished up in Gouda, we headed home, uneventfully.

Two last things: 

In Dutch, they don't have the sound we use for the letter "G." So when you're saying "Gouda" in your head (while reading this), that's not the way that they say it. They actually say "How-duh," but with a little crunch before the "H," almost like the true pronunciation of "Hanukkah." There's your little bit of trivia.

Final thing. Walking around the town of Gouda, we encountered the following vehicle, and I just couldn't believe the web site address:

I don't know what kind of business it is, but they're probably paying a fortune for the graphics on their vans! 

That's all for now, I'll post again when we do something else exciting!

Berlin, for real this time!

It was Palmer's last week in town, so we had one more trip to go on. After hemming and hawing trying to figure out where to go, we chose to visit Berlin and do all of the tourist stuff. Cori and I had previously been to Berlin for her concerts last year, but didn't do any real tourist stuff while we were there.

The wife took off the last few days of last week, so we hit the road early Wednesday afternoon for the 5 hour drive. As we entered town, we stopped for dinner at a restaurant we found on Trip Advisor. Pretty good, standard German fare.

The Special Olympics World Games happened to be in Berlin this weekend, so we weren't able to find any reasonable place to stay in the city. In Europe, they won't typically let you have 4 people in a room - that's why we used VRBO when we visited Nuremburg and Luxembourg, to avoid having to get two rooms. VRBO's were outrageous in Berlin this weekend, so we stayed out by the airport in the Moxy, and just got two rooms, one for the boys, and one for the girls. The Moxy is a low end traveler hotel in the Marriott chain, with absolutely no frills. We were lucky that the bathrooms in the rooms had walls - we've seen Moxy's with just frosted glass dividers between the room and the bathroom area.

At this point, I feel a contrite apology might be in order. For the last couple of updates, I've overlooked one of the previously highlighted (for me, at least) parts of my narrative... the showers in our units. I'll cover them briefly now, in hopes of assuaging your disappointment - just skip the blue part if you don't care about my shower reviews:

Nuremburg: Our VRBO had 2 full bathrooms, one on the main living level (where the kids rooms were), and one in the upstairs (where the boss and I stayed). The downstairs bath had a stall shower. I am unable to comment on that shower, as I didn't use it. Perhaps I should have, simply for the sake of my review, but I didn't. Sorry - but that'd just be weird. The shower upstairs was weird. You all know how much I enjoy the showers where it's basically a tub with a plexiglass shield attached to half of the tub... if it's been too long since my last shower review, and you don't remember, I'll forgive you, but I just can't stand them. Ours upstairs was one of those, but the tub had a weird shape. Rather than just being a rectangle, it was almost a normal shape, but the end where the spout was was square. I don't remember ever seeing a bathtub that was a truly weird shape, so that was a little odd. I didn't take a picture of it, which might have been a minor mistake on my part. 

Luxembourg: Our VRBO had one and a half baths. The shower was one of the aforementioned tubs with a plexiglass panel on half of it. Not my favorite. Moving on.

Berlin: Traditional stall in the Moxy, with a sliding door on the shower stall. We've stayed in Marriott branded hotels before that didn't have any kind of door on a stall type shower, so this was an additional bonus.

Moving on.

On Thursday, we drove downtown. Our original plan was to take buses and metros to get around, but that was when we were expecting to pay €30 a day for parking at the hotel; the parking lot at the hotel was miniscule, and was always full, so we ended up parking down the street, and driving in (being able to use our expected hotel parking fee for parking in town instead). We parked next to one of the main shopping areas, to be in the right place for our walking tour.

I've mentioned previously that we've had good luck with the "free walking tours" that are available in lots of cities; we signed up for another one, but with a twist. This particular tour was given by a company called "Can You Handle It Tours," and was called the "Rude Bastards Tour." Supposed to be more "R" rated - we chose this one to try to keep the kids engaged. In reality, pretty much the same kind of tour we've gotten everywhere else, but with cursing. Our guide, while he was quite engaging and (mostly) knowledgeable, some of the language came across as a bit forced, almost like he'd just recently learned some of the more offensive words, and was still getting a feel on their proper usage.

Only real criticism that we came up with came up the next day - I'll jump a little ahead to explain. There was a specific museum (called "The Topography of Terror") next to a lengthy section of the Berlin Wall, with an area under the base of the wall section with a bunch of displays. He told us that the sunken section was a display of the foundation of the oldest hotel in Berlin, when in reality it was the cellar of the nearby Gestapo headquarters, where political prisoners were tortured and executed. We discovered the wrong information the next day, when we went through the museum.

Flash-forward complete; let's flashback to the real blog entry now.

In the course of our Rude Bastards tour, we touched on most of the big sites - Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie, the Holocaust Memorial, the Gendarmenmarkt (which the Konzerthaus, the German Cathedral, and French Cathedral share), and a parking lot which was the site of Hitler's bunker. The government specifically covered the bunker with cement and buried it, then put a parking lot on top of it to avoid it being turned into a shrine. As it was, there were still a few tour groups that we encountered there. Not really easy to complain about it being turned into a tourist site while we were there being tourists, huh?

One interesting fact that he shared with us; one of the largest buildings in Berlin during the war was the headquarters of the Ministry of Aviation and the Luftwaffe. That building was specifically not bombed by the allies, to use as a navigation waypoint - I just thought that was ironic. That building is still standing, and is now the headquarters of the Ministry of Finance - basically their IRS.

Another fun thing we learned... the symbol on the crosswalks in Berlin is a little different than others we've seen. The characters are differently shaped, wearing cute little hats. After unification, the folks of Berlin threw up such uproar when their crosswalk lights were all changed to the western version, they changed them all to the eastern type instead. It's one of the few things from before the fall of the Iron Curtain to thrive after unification. It's a whole thing, with a store where you can buy merchandise - which, of course there is, and of course the wife had to buy stuff there.

We also passed by a place where you can take a motorized tour of Berlin in a Trabant. Evidently, this was a crappy car that was quite well known in east Germany. Very cheap, very poorly built, plastic body panels, powered by a two cycle 600cc engine. Took over 20 seconds to get to its top speed of 60mph (if you could even get it going that fast). At one point, there was a 13 year wait for these cars.  

About the sites we saw...

• Brandenburg Gate: This sits at the site of the original Berlin Customs Wall, constructed in 1734. The site itself dates back to the 1100's, before Berlin existed. It's pretty well known now - everybody's seen pictures of it, it's one of the most famous tourist sites in Germany. It's immediately between the Embassies to the United States and France, with more embassies further down the block (including the Russian Embassy, a few doors down from the US Embassy). 

• Checkpoint Charlie: Everybody's heard of this one too, the most famous checkpoint between East and West Berlin. The city was divided into the east and west sides by the Berlin Wall (as everyone knows), but West Berlin was broken into three sectors, with different Allied governments administering each one: American, French, and British. Checkpoint Charlie (the third checkpoint - Alpha, Bravo, Charlie in the NATO alphabet) was one of the checkpoints from East Berlin into the American Sector.

• Holocaust Memorial: I'd previously seen pictures of this one online. It's a 200,000 square foot site with 2,700 rectangular pillars, each about 7'9" by 3', from 8 inches tall to over 15 feet tall, arranged in a big grid like a city, generally from shortest to tallest front to back. You can wander throughout the monument, as the passageways are about 2 feet wide between them. One of the ironic pieces of information our guide gave us (which I have not been able to verify independently) is that the blocks are painted with graffiti repellant paint. That's not the ironic part. The ironic part is that the paint was developed by a company named Degussa... one of their subsidiary companies was the main manufacturer and distributor of Zyklon B, the gas used in the extermination chambers. I found that ironic.

(that top pic of the Holocaust Memorial was of our guide, Arthur while he was telling us about it)

A repeated theme of the tour was the attitude of Germany toward France. I'm not sure how factual all of his points were, but he gave several examples of Germany and France specifically taunting each other... for example, a sculpture of Victoria, the Roman Goddess of Victory, sits atop Brandenburg Gate. Her head was sculpted to specifically be looking down on the French Embassy. Pretty much any opportunity the Germans had to thumb their noses at the French, they did so.

After the tour, we headed back to the hotel to rest up a little before dinner, then drove to (what turned out to be) a chain restaurant, but was actually pretty cool. The name of the place was BrewDog, and they've got locations all over the world. Who'd have thunk it? Pretty good food, wide beer selection, and what appeared to be a handful of free video games in cabinets.

The next day, we drove back downtown to visit a couple of museums that interested us. We parked and walked over to the Topography of Terror Museum, which was on the site of the Gestapo Headquarters. There was a lot of reading in there, stories of political and cultural dissidents who were tortured, and in some cases, executed. It honestly was a bit of an overload - it was all pictures and captions / stories. There were a lot of visitors to the museum, and it was difficult to be able to read all of them. After we finished up inside, we went outside, down to the section our guide had told us was the foundation of the oldest hotel in Berlin, which turned out to be an extension of the exhibits inside.

We moved the car to another garage and walked over to the German Museum of Technology; we hadn't walked past it during our tour, but while driving home that day, we'd seen a building with an airplane on the roof - a C-47, of the same type that participated in the Berlin Airlift. Of course, it piqued my interest! Turns out, it's a museum of German technology and innovation - the museum covered everything from ships, to textiles, to trains, boats, planes... honestly, I skipped through most of the museum. I spent most of my time in the area devoted to ships and planes. Pretty interesting, they had quite a few examples of famous German planes, but I did note that they were missing (what I'd consider) two of the most famous German planes: the Fokker Dr.I and the ME-262. They did have quite a few other examples of well known German aircraft: The ME-109, the FW-190, and a burned out JU-87.

Sorry for geeking out in that last paragraph - you knew what you might find when you started reading!

We drove back to the hotel and hung out for a little while, then went to dinner at... any guesses? Of course, it was a barbecue restaurant. Long time readers will remember my predilection for finding barbecue restaurants in whatever cities we visit... this one was better than most, our waitress was from Alabama, and the bartender made one of the top three whiskey sours that I've ever had. I call that a win, for barbecue in Berlin!

Yesterday, we drove back to Frankfurt, and have had a down day today. Palmer returns to the states tomorrow morning, so that's all of the adventures of the whole Shores Family for now... whatever we end up doing with just Cori... well, you'll just have to tune in next time!