Berlin is a complex city with many layers of history, all of which are very present for the traveller. Out of respect and as a trigger warning for people who may find it difficult to read about the heavier topics, everything relating to World War II, the Holocaust, the Cold War, and the Berlin Wall/Divided Germany will be dealt with in depth in a separate post, although mention may be made here for chronology sake. Both posts will follow the same chronology.
With exams over and done with (more on that later), I had a few days to take another trip. Berlin had been on my list of places I had to get to while in Europe anyway, but the fact that a friend of mine was going to be heading to the city at a time when I was free sealed the deal. Thursday morning, I left Maastricht on an 8:28 train, connecting in Amsterdam. The total journey time was around 8 hours, but I didn't mind so much: Germany's countryside, with it's pretty houses, made for a good backdrop.
The first real sign of crossing the border, and one theme permeating Berlin, was the graffiti. I'm not sure quite how they manage to keep it just within Germany, but it was a pretty effective method of knowing right where the country started. Berlin is actually known for its graffiti, which definitely challenges the boundaries between vandalism and art (sometimes swaying more in one direction or the other). Graffiti is only one of the ways in which Berlin is, apparent almost immediately, very hip and urban. More on that below.
Arriving in Berlin around 5:30, I headed straight for my hostel, in the East side of the city. The hostel came with extremely high ratings, and really didn't disappoint: it was clean, with a very hip design and good location. For those who like the hostel vibe (I'm, admittedly, more into the cheap prices than the backpacker scene), there were plenty of activities. I started by joining one, a quick guided trip to a local market, after which I bailed and headed out on my own, with the goal of catching sight of a few monuments (see: second post). One of my first observations was that Berlin seems to close up early: by 7:30 or 8:00 PM there wasn't much going on in a lot of the streets (though this was not the case Friday night), and so I wound up turning in early.
Not being a believer in sleeping in while travelling (there's too much Berlin to be seen!), I woke up early Friday and was out by 8:00 AM. My first stop was a bakery I had read about online. Remember how, as a kid, people used to tell you that, no, not even adults get to just eat junk food all the time? Well, that's a lie, since I started my day off with an assortment of baked goods washed down with an orange flavoured Pepsi (which turned out to be disgusting. I know, I'm probably the only one shocked). From the bakery, I headed out to the town of Oranianberg, to visit a nearby site (see: second post), and grabbed a quick doner (Berlin's take on kebab/shwarma/donair) before heading back into the City.
Back in Berlin, I gave some use to the Museum card I had purchased. While it was a good deal, at only €12 for three days (student rate), it turned out not to let me into most of the museums I was looking for. In the end, I only visited two with the card: the Homosexuality Museum (which was really more of an art gallery of sorts), and the Pergamon Museum, which hosts multiple large-scale relics from the Near-East (and, being under construction in some parts, took only about an hour to complete). After three straight museums, I needed a quick break before heading for a fourth, so I stopped to grab a pretzel (and an apple flavoured soda, which is also quite popular in Berlin, and is actually very nice), and sat below the Fernsehturm (Berlin's most recognizable tower), taking in the crowds around. After hitting up one last museum (See: second post) and checking out some of the shops in Alexanderplatz, I went and grabbed some schnitzel for dinner, at a cool and hip little restaurant near my hostel (complete with graffiti all over the walls and hip hop music playing).
It was on my second full day in Berlin that I met up with my friends, who were visiting from various parts of Europe, where they were studying. The morning actually went quite off the rails-while we were sitting and eating breakfast, my friend's bag was snatched, resulting in a morning spent at the police station, filling out the necessary paperwork. Thankfully, my friend had quite a positive outlook, and this didn't stop us from taking advantage of the afternoon, the highlight of which was stopping for a piece of cake after lunch. In the evening, we met up again in front of a venue which we had been told was a beer garden, but actually turned out to be a ballroom dancing location. Not so interested in that, we wandered over to a more touristy area to grab some dinner, and some more pretzels (which we got to go, quite to the amusement of the restaurant where we ordered them).
On my final day, I checked out early and walked along the river towards the centre of the city, stopping for a coffee and breakfast and taking in the river, the changing leaves, and the city scenery. My first stop was the German History Museum. I was a little unsure if I wanted to visit this museum, which would cost me money, over one of the ones accepting my museum card (which got so little usage), but I'm glad I did. The German History Museum is honestly one of the best museums I've ever visited. It thoroughly and thoughtfully explained German history, starting around the year 800 and connecting the dots all the way up to the end of the Cold War. Displays were well designed, with just enough detail to let me know where in history I was, and the option to read more in depth on items that interested me (of which many did). I was really grateful for the opportunity to fill some gaps in my knowledge of the history of Germany and of Europe, and to see some important items (including a Code Napoleon and original works from Martin Luther). The special exhibitions-one on Europe after the War and a second on Homosexualities- were also excellently designed (see my second post for more on both).
This being my last day, I had things planned out (almost to the minute, though this wasn't exactly on purpose) fairly well. The next stop after the German History Museum was the Jewish Museum, where I was to meet my friends at 1 PM. Around 12:45, a few blocks away, I noticed a growing number of police cars. Soon, I was asked to evacuate the area: apparently, an unexploded bomb from World War II had been found (this actually happens on occasion in Europe). This is where my plans got permanently derailed: it turned out that the bomb was located near the Jewish Museum, making me unable to meet up with my friends. After trying with no luck to find wifi, and with no money on my phone, I gave up on finding them and walked back towards the Reichstag (German Parliament), to take a few pictures, before heading back to the train station to await my train.
The train journey is a story in itself: five different trains, including one connection of 6 minutes, for which my arriving train was 7 minutes late (such a rush!), and a bus which the NS (national railway here in the Netherlands) never informed me I would need to take at the moment I booked my ticket. It was a small miracle I made it back to Maastricht that night-I came within seconds of having to find somewhere to sleep in some suburban German city.
Tuesday, 27 October 2015
Tuesday, 13 October 2015
The best part of any country is the food!
Hello friends!
I realized that recently I've had the bad habit of just using this blog as a place to describe my travels, and have been neglecting writing about life in Maastricht/the Netherlands/Europe. So, for now I'll put writing about the last couple day trips I've taken on hold, and get into one of my other favourite topics: food!
In the first couple weeks of being here, I had the habit of translating words that I saw often on signs. Translation and food are things that us exchange students have been experiencing hand-in-hand, since most of the products we buy in stores have only Dutch on them. The following scenario is quite typical
*Chatting in the kitchen with roommates while cooking*
Person 1: Hmmm, just a second *runs to their room and comes back with a computer*
Person 2: Translating the directions on your food?
*laughter ensues*
This turned out to be a really effective way of picking up useful Dutch, and I'm proud to say that I now can understand "pierce holes in the plastic and microwave for X minutes" without my friend Google.
Similarly, I've been picking up the words on menus and advertisements as I see them. So when I started seeing signs advertising "koffie met vlaai", I already knew that this meant "coffee with".....vlaai? Whatever that was. This interested me at first, but once Google informed me that vlaai translates to "flan," I lost interest.
Fast forward to me reading a website about specialty foods in different parts of the Netherlands, only to discover that I'd been mislead-vlaai actually translates to, get this: pie!
That's right, I'd been turning down pie. Local specialty pie served at restaurants with seating outdoors on lovely cobblestone squares.
Needless to say, I rectified this, heading the next weekend for pie and coffee with two of my friends. This was promptly followed up with my roommate buying me a pie as a birthday cake. An idea which I thenstole imitated for the birthday of another friend a few days later. In the meantime, I discovered that pie and coffee is quite cheap at the local shopping centre. And so, thankfully, my folly of turning down pie has been made up for.
This situation, of course, stemmed from an interesting problem: since exchange students live predominantly in exchange student accommodations, and since many of the English classes have few Dutch students (since a Dutch option may also be available), I have few Dutch friends from whom to learn about local cultural things (like pie). Of course, I'm making an effort to meet more Dutch people, but in the meantime I've found an interesting, if bizarre, window into local cuisine: grocery stores.
Specifically, I've come to realize that you can learn a lot based on not only what the grocery store has (or doesn't have), but on what they have a lot of. For example, a few weeks ago, I noticed that there are sprinkles-a lot of sprinkles. The internet confirmed my suspicion-in the Netherlands, eating sprinkles on bread is very common, including for breakfast. And so, I bought a sample pack of sprinkles (or hagel slag) and went to town. Along with sprinkles, there's quite a bit of sausages, schnitzels, and various types of saurkraute-ish products.
As for sweets, the "stroopwaffel" is currently my hand-down favourite, being a combination of wafer-thin crunchy waffles and sweet syrup (McDonald's even makes a McFlurry version). There are various other types of waffles-mostly Belgian- as well. Milka chocolate is available in a wide assortment, mostly geared towards combinations of Milka chocolate with other sweets.
A final interesting observation for today's post is the impact that different international relations have on food. Being next to Belgium, there's a wide variety of Liege waffles, Flemish fries, and Belgian beer. The Netherlands' history as a colonizer in South-East Asia also means that there is a massive amount of Indonesian food available-albeit in a modified form that removes most of the spices and a bit of the flavour.
Of course, these are only the observations I have after a few months, and mostly based on where I live (a day in Amsterdam showed me that they seem to have some different food habits). If I find anything else interesting, I'll let you know!
I realized that recently I've had the bad habit of just using this blog as a place to describe my travels, and have been neglecting writing about life in Maastricht/the Netherlands/Europe. So, for now I'll put writing about the last couple day trips I've taken on hold, and get into one of my other favourite topics: food!
In the first couple weeks of being here, I had the habit of translating words that I saw often on signs. Translation and food are things that us exchange students have been experiencing hand-in-hand, since most of the products we buy in stores have only Dutch on them. The following scenario is quite typical
*Chatting in the kitchen with roommates while cooking*
Person 1: Hmmm, just a second *runs to their room and comes back with a computer*
Person 2: Translating the directions on your food?
*laughter ensues*
This turned out to be a really effective way of picking up useful Dutch, and I'm proud to say that I now can understand "pierce holes in the plastic and microwave for X minutes" without my friend Google.
Similarly, I've been picking up the words on menus and advertisements as I see them. So when I started seeing signs advertising "koffie met vlaai", I already knew that this meant "coffee with".....vlaai? Whatever that was. This interested me at first, but once Google informed me that vlaai translates to "flan," I lost interest.
Fast forward to me reading a website about specialty foods in different parts of the Netherlands, only to discover that I'd been mislead-vlaai actually translates to, get this: pie!
That's right, I'd been turning down pie. Local specialty pie served at restaurants with seating outdoors on lovely cobblestone squares.
Needless to say, I rectified this, heading the next weekend for pie and coffee with two of my friends. This was promptly followed up with my roommate buying me a pie as a birthday cake. An idea which I then
This situation, of course, stemmed from an interesting problem: since exchange students live predominantly in exchange student accommodations, and since many of the English classes have few Dutch students (since a Dutch option may also be available), I have few Dutch friends from whom to learn about local cultural things (like pie). Of course, I'm making an effort to meet more Dutch people, but in the meantime I've found an interesting, if bizarre, window into local cuisine: grocery stores.
Specifically, I've come to realize that you can learn a lot based on not only what the grocery store has (or doesn't have), but on what they have a lot of. For example, a few weeks ago, I noticed that there are sprinkles-a lot of sprinkles. The internet confirmed my suspicion-in the Netherlands, eating sprinkles on bread is very common, including for breakfast. And so, I bought a sample pack of sprinkles (or hagel slag) and went to town. Along with sprinkles, there's quite a bit of sausages, schnitzels, and various types of saurkraute-ish products.
As for sweets, the "stroopwaffel" is currently my hand-down favourite, being a combination of wafer-thin crunchy waffles and sweet syrup (McDonald's even makes a McFlurry version). There are various other types of waffles-mostly Belgian- as well. Milka chocolate is available in a wide assortment, mostly geared towards combinations of Milka chocolate with other sweets.
A final interesting observation for today's post is the impact that different international relations have on food. Being next to Belgium, there's a wide variety of Liege waffles, Flemish fries, and Belgian beer. The Netherlands' history as a colonizer in South-East Asia also means that there is a massive amount of Indonesian food available-albeit in a modified form that removes most of the spices and a bit of the flavour.
Of course, these are only the observations I have after a few months, and mostly based on where I live (a day in Amsterdam showed me that they seem to have some different food habits). If I find anything else interesting, I'll let you know!
Monday, 5 October 2015
Rome Part 2, or, The Time I ate my way through Rome
(Yes, I know it's been two weeks and I haven't yet finished writing about Rome. Oh well).
The logical point at which to divide up my posts about Rome is, of course, when my friend Rachel arrived. Having previously run into problems meeting up with a friend in London (apparently there is more than one "main entrance" to the British Museum. Thanks for that, Google Maps!), I wanted to be very specific about where we should meet up in Termini, the large train station that serves as the main gateway for trains arriving from the airport. "We'll meet at McDonald's" I said, picking the most obviously recognizable landmark. This would, of course, have been a much better plan had I known that the station has two McDonald's inside, and one across the street, leaving the two of us running a circuit between the three locations (apparently in opposite directions), before eventually meeting up.
Now, planning this trip was a bit complicated. We knew we wanted to go somewhere and meet up and have adventures, but getting our schedules and interests to aligned with one another, and according to budget, was no small feat. So, when we realized, just before booking, that we would only overlap for a little over 24 hours in Rome, we decided to book anyway, because it had become one of those "if we don't just do it, it's never going to happen" things. With only 24 hours to hang out, we set our sites on having a sort of pleasant, chill kind of day enjoying Roman food.
We started the morning off by wandering through the streets of Trastevere to a little market. Having heard good things about the produce in Italy, I wanted to stop to buy some fresh tomatoes. Through bizarre combination of broken English, Italian, and Spanish, the lady also convinced us to buy some red peppers which had been soaked in olive oil and spices. We took our bounty to a nearby square in front of a fountain, discovering that the peppers had, indeed, been a very good choice. We then continued our walk. Remember how the Vatican wouldn't loan me a pen? Well, as a result, our first destination for the day was to head back to the Holy See to drop of my postcards which were now signed, but had stamps only valid in the Vatican. This turned out to be a good thing because, as we left the Vatican heading vaguely in the direction of a pizza place we'd read about online, we stopped, on a hunch, in a cute looking grocery store, where we happened upon some cornetti (croissants), in miniature, filled with a sort of hazelnut chocolate cream. We instantly regretted the decision to buy only one each.
After a brief detour heading the wrong direction, we soon found ourselves in the vicinity of the pizza shop we were looking for. Already this neighbourhood was obviously different from the more touristed areas, with less English, and more authentic looking food lining the streets. The pizza place turned out to be an excellent tip: sold by weight (as pizza in Rome typically is), the pizza came in numerous varieties, and was topped with extremely fresh ingredients. The woman working behind the counter also seemed to have a sixth sense about what we would like-after picking one or two pieces, she suggested a third for each of us. Full of proper pizza, we set off again before stopping, only a few blocks later, for gelato at a small shop on a corner, rounding up a blissfully decadent morning.
Stuffed full of Italian goodies, we spent most of the afternoon walking through the streets of Rome. It hadn't actually been our intention to spend so much time out on foot in the heat, but our only real goals for the day all involved trying different foods, and at that point we couldn't have eaten a bite more. And so, we walked, and walked, stopping briefly at different tourist attractions (the park surrounding the Villa Borghese, as well as the Spanish steps), or shops, looking to fill the rest of the afternoon. As we wandered back, we realized that we were in the vicinity of the Vatican again. With relatively little hope for success, we decided to see if we could find the little grocery store from the morning and, much to our surprise, we succeeded! Having spent the day talking about how much we regretted not buying the entire case of pastries, we ordered two of everything. Then, in one our of smartest decisions, we decided to walk back to the Vatican to enjoy them. As a result, we wound up sitting in the square in front of the Basilica, eating delicious Italian pastries, and watching the sun go down and the lights come on, as nuns from around the world gathered for some sort of function.
We rounded out the evening, after walking back to our room, with dinner. Trastevere turned out to be more geared towards tourists than we had suspected, and so finding a restaurant that was even moderately authentic was a challenge. With some help from Trip Advisor, we picked what was either an authentic local restaurant or, at worst, the best of the tourist restaurants. Wine, fettuccine bolognese, and tiramisu, followed by some more gelato, rounded out the end of our day in Rome.
The next day was an early one for me-with a flight back to Brussels leaving at 7:10, I was up just before 5, catching the first train to the airport.
The logical point at which to divide up my posts about Rome is, of course, when my friend Rachel arrived. Having previously run into problems meeting up with a friend in London (apparently there is more than one "main entrance" to the British Museum. Thanks for that, Google Maps!), I wanted to be very specific about where we should meet up in Termini, the large train station that serves as the main gateway for trains arriving from the airport. "We'll meet at McDonald's" I said, picking the most obviously recognizable landmark. This would, of course, have been a much better plan had I known that the station has two McDonald's inside, and one across the street, leaving the two of us running a circuit between the three locations (apparently in opposite directions), before eventually meeting up.
Now, planning this trip was a bit complicated. We knew we wanted to go somewhere and meet up and have adventures, but getting our schedules and interests to aligned with one another, and according to budget, was no small feat. So, when we realized, just before booking, that we would only overlap for a little over 24 hours in Rome, we decided to book anyway, because it had become one of those "if we don't just do it, it's never going to happen" things. With only 24 hours to hang out, we set our sites on having a sort of pleasant, chill kind of day enjoying Roman food.
We started the morning off by wandering through the streets of Trastevere to a little market. Having heard good things about the produce in Italy, I wanted to stop to buy some fresh tomatoes. Through bizarre combination of broken English, Italian, and Spanish, the lady also convinced us to buy some red peppers which had been soaked in olive oil and spices. We took our bounty to a nearby square in front of a fountain, discovering that the peppers had, indeed, been a very good choice. We then continued our walk. Remember how the Vatican wouldn't loan me a pen? Well, as a result, our first destination for the day was to head back to the Holy See to drop of my postcards which were now signed, but had stamps only valid in the Vatican. This turned out to be a good thing because, as we left the Vatican heading vaguely in the direction of a pizza place we'd read about online, we stopped, on a hunch, in a cute looking grocery store, where we happened upon some cornetti (croissants), in miniature, filled with a sort of hazelnut chocolate cream. We instantly regretted the decision to buy only one each.
After a brief detour heading the wrong direction, we soon found ourselves in the vicinity of the pizza shop we were looking for. Already this neighbourhood was obviously different from the more touristed areas, with less English, and more authentic looking food lining the streets. The pizza place turned out to be an excellent tip: sold by weight (as pizza in Rome typically is), the pizza came in numerous varieties, and was topped with extremely fresh ingredients. The woman working behind the counter also seemed to have a sixth sense about what we would like-after picking one or two pieces, she suggested a third for each of us. Full of proper pizza, we set off again before stopping, only a few blocks later, for gelato at a small shop on a corner, rounding up a blissfully decadent morning.
Stuffed full of Italian goodies, we spent most of the afternoon walking through the streets of Rome. It hadn't actually been our intention to spend so much time out on foot in the heat, but our only real goals for the day all involved trying different foods, and at that point we couldn't have eaten a bite more. And so, we walked, and walked, stopping briefly at different tourist attractions (the park surrounding the Villa Borghese, as well as the Spanish steps), or shops, looking to fill the rest of the afternoon. As we wandered back, we realized that we were in the vicinity of the Vatican again. With relatively little hope for success, we decided to see if we could find the little grocery store from the morning and, much to our surprise, we succeeded! Having spent the day talking about how much we regretted not buying the entire case of pastries, we ordered two of everything. Then, in one our of smartest decisions, we decided to walk back to the Vatican to enjoy them. As a result, we wound up sitting in the square in front of the Basilica, eating delicious Italian pastries, and watching the sun go down and the lights come on, as nuns from around the world gathered for some sort of function.
We rounded out the evening, after walking back to our room, with dinner. Trastevere turned out to be more geared towards tourists than we had suspected, and so finding a restaurant that was even moderately authentic was a challenge. With some help from Trip Advisor, we picked what was either an authentic local restaurant or, at worst, the best of the tourist restaurants. Wine, fettuccine bolognese, and tiramisu, followed by some more gelato, rounded out the end of our day in Rome.
The next day was an early one for me-with a flight back to Brussels leaving at 7:10, I was up just before 5, catching the first train to the airport.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)