Brezeln, Bier, Bratwurst: Bayern...und danach, Berlin

I spent the last week of September and first in October on a great vacation in Munich and Berlin. Really weisswurst is more typically Bavarian than bratwurst, but my alliterative title wouldn't have worked with that. I only went to Oktoberfest for one day, but I soaked up plenty of the atmosphere (including the beer & pretzels) since we stayed for a whopping 11 hours! Breakfast began at 9 with weisswurst, sweet mustard, two pretzels, and a bottle of beer. Then we headed to Oktoberfest. I swear the last three-four hours spent standing on a bench in a tent full of drunken Germans dancing to music didn't feel that long.

But let me start at the beginning...I started the vacation with an exquisite weekend (partly due to the summerlike weather and partly due to my gracious hosts) at Starnberg See, which is a lake just south of Munich and is apparently the most expensive area to live in all of Germany. My SERVAS hosts were great and took me on Saturday to tour Bavaria. I saw the Alps, lovely hills coated in colorful trees, two castles (including Neuschwarstein, which was the model for the now classic Disney castle), and even slipped into Austria for a bit and dipped into an Alpine lake (freezing, yes, but I was bad-ass and just swam really fast and then drank lots of hot tea when I emerged). The young sons in the family felt that the highlight of the day was our trip to McDonalds--I ordered a garden salad.





By the time I met Lauren, another foreign-language assistant in my area from US who I've befriended, in Munich, I had already formulated a grand analogy in my head that described Bavaria as the Texas of Germany--largest state, strong accent, their culture is often portrayed as typical German culture in foreign countries, diverse ecology, traditional costume (dirndls & lederhosen) that people still wear seriously, and friendly people. I was pretty proud of it, but apparently I'm not at all the first one to make this comparison.

Lauren and I stayed with friends she had made when she studied abroad at the University in Munich. They were really hospitable and showed us around despite the weather which had now turned rainy and cold. Although going to Oktoberfest (and recovering from it) took a bunch of our time, we also fit in a lot of other good Munich sites including the Englische Garten and Chinesiches Turm, the Hofbräuhaus, an art museum filled with paintings from der Blaue Reiter and Wassily Kandinsky, and the Olympic Stadium.







I had a great week, but by the end felt like it had been gluttonous for some reason (maybe the wienerschnitzel, brezeln, and biers that were all as big as my head contributed to that...) and I was excited to see a Pomona friend, Joanna Schenke, and some of Berlin.

After getting on the wrong train to Berlin, which took me on a 9-hour long scenic tour of all of Germany, I arrived at Joanna's late on Friday night. We walked around all Saturday, again despite the rain, and I became well-oriented to some of the central areas of Berlin including Alexanderplatz, Museum Island, the government buildings, Brandenburg Gate, and great shopping in the Mitte (which is near where Jojo lives). We also enjoyed the best falafel Berlin has to offer.

Sunday started with the Berlin Marathon! Jojo and I were spectators for an hour and saw the majority of the 40,000 runners pass us by around the 10k mark (including the fastest woman!) We've agreed that the three most impressive things we saw were: 1 blind runner, 1 runner with no legs (artificial limbs), and 1 runner with a pretty quick pace that was juggling perfectly as he ran. Other interesting notes--huge group of runners from Denmark for some reason and one man dressed up as scooby-doo. Then the touristy stuff continued with a boat tour and my first museum stop to see the Greek/Egyptian museum and the famous bust of Queen Nefertiti.







The next few days while Jojo was at work I wandered around on my own and really became familiar with the city, which was fun. I went to a bunch of museums and my favorite was probably Museum Berggruen--a small private collection filled with works from Klee and Giacometti, but they also have had a large Picasso collection on loan for some time. I seem to always lose myself for hours in Picasso exhibits... Mostly I just spent hours walking around, exploring, shopping, and seeing some sites. I stayed with another lovely SERVAS family during the middle of the week in Kreuzberg (an area of Berlin)--their apartment building was even listed as the starting point of a walking tour in the Lonely Planet!

My last night in Berlin I decided to get my final taste of its vast multiculturalism before returning to Wiedenbrück by enjoying a California style burrito (with guacamole & black beans!), fresh squeezed beet-apple juice, and some ben & jerry's for dessert while reading a trashy gossip magazine. I guess I was a ready for a dose of America and more specifically something to remind me of that crazy city called LA. Joanna even sent me home inspired to find NPR podcasts and the latest of my favorite TV-shows online--yeah, its a lot more English than I was hearing before, but now that the operator of tv-links has been arrested my indulgence can't be satiated quite as easily.

I returned to a lovely Autumn here in Wiedenbrück, which I can't wait to tell you more about in my next post.
Hope you are doing well! xoxo, Alex

p.s. The last picture is intended for everyone, but Mica's "you are beautiful" stickers were its inspiration.