Austria and Germany

Hallo!

This past week I've been travelling around Innsbruck, Austria, and Halle and Berlin, Germany.

Innsbruck was probably one of my best experiences so far couchsurfing. I was staying with a really nice guy and I was immediately invited to a birthday party for his best friend. It was more of a little gathering but I spent a couple hours talking, drinking wine and having late night snacks with a couple Bosnians and Austrians. It's a little hard to convey, but I felt so incredibly welcome that I had a really good time.

The next day, I decided to go hiking (the main reason I had decided to visit Innsbruck). Now, in Canada, hiking would usually involve some hitch-hiking to get up to the trail and since there aren't that many people going in that direction, it could take quite a while. One thing that is really convenient about Europe is that all the hiking spots are really popular so everything is very accessible: paths are well-marked, maps are easy to find and most mountains will have a gondola going up and down. The hike next to Innsbruck was exactly like this, though, because of the gondola, most of the hiking trails weren't that busy. Without really thinking, I hiked up 1500m in 3 hours. It was a grueling hike and my ego took a bit of a beating when I saw 60-year-olds coming down the hill without any difficulty. I stopped at a gondola station about 300m from the top and, since I was so exhausted and dehydrated, I decided to take the gondola up to the top instead of hike the rest of the way (it was just steep, loose rock until the top anyway). It was pretty cloudy and it rained a bit during my hike, but it was pretty clear when I got to the top. To save my knees, I decided to take the gondola all the way down and spend a bit of time in town.

The town of Innsbruck is very different to what I was seeing in Switzerland. At first glance, some parts of it seem pretty run down (ex. graffiti, unmaintained buildings, garbage), but I soon realized that these are exceptions that don't bother the locals. Most buildings are pretty old, but are well maintained and are actually quite nice. There is also the touristy downtown with the typical Austrian mountain architecture, but it seemed very touristy. That night, I made Schnitzel with my couchsurfing host and then left early the next morning for Halle, Germany.

If you haven't heard about Halle, I wouldn't be surprised. It's a city of about 250,000 in Eastern Germany, which would usually be overlooked by tourist in favour of Leipzig or Dresden. I went there to stay with a German couple I met in Ecuador. They were incredibly nice and very good hosts! I was taking things pretty relaxed while I was there so I didn't get up to too much. But, I did go with my friends to a concert in Leipzig of Delphic (an electro-rock group from Manchester). I also went to the Beatles museum where I learned a lot and then was able to do my own renditions on "Rock Band : The Beatles". I also went to a key church for the Reformation and sat in on a free concert of organ music. And finally I went to the Prehistory museum and learned a whole bunch about mammoths and got to see the Nebra Sky Disc (the earliest representation of the heavens in human history).

Halle itself was an interesting city. Before the wall fell, there were 500,000 people living there. As you walk around the city (in the less touristy places), you see a lot of buildings where obviously nobody lives. A lot of windows have been covered up with bricks, a lot of deteriorating buildings are wrapped in a kind of netting, a lot of windows are broken, etc. These buildings are kind of the typical image we might have of Eastern Europe during communism. But then you continue to the places where people actually live and those buildings are very nice and are very well maintained.

My next stop was Berlin, where I finally got a break from the cloud and rain I'd been seeing for the last week or two. And it was replaced with crazy hot, sunny weather that made carrying my backpack around all day slightly uncomfortable- let's just say that the first thing I did when I got settled in my hostel at night was to have a shower. Berlin is a little different in character than say, Paris. It's not a pretty city and the general philosophy of the city seems to be functionality. However, there are a lot of things to see and public transportation is a dream! I managed to visit the Reichstag (which is actually now called the Bundestag, since Germany is no longer a Reich or "empire"). I also took a couple pictures of the Brandenburg Gate (the old gate of the old Prussian city) and of the line in the road where the Berlin wall used to be. I visited the Topographie des Terreurs, a free museum on the activites of the SS during WW2, located on the site of their old headquarters. I took a picture at Checkpoint Charley (where there's really nothing to see except a little shack) and then headed over to the German Jewish Museum. Now this museum has a very odd shape and its architecture is meant to throw you off-balance (both literally and figuratively). On the first floor (which is more artsy than museum-ish) the floor is slanted in both directions and there are also doors that lead to empty spaces or to concrete gardens and such. It was quite a neat experience and the actual museum was so full of information that I only got up to the year 1800 when they closed the museum. The next day I wandered around some flea markets, saw the TV tower (the tallest structure in Europe), and then went on to visit the German History Museum where I was again thrown out as I reached the year 1850 (luckily I'm a little more knowledgeable on my 20th century German history).

Early the next morning, I caught a train to Copenhagen, where I met up with my friend Kevin who will be studying here this semester. I was thoroughly soaked in a rainstorm as I tried to find our meeting place, but I've luckily been able to dry off. Hopefully I can stay dry during the next couple days of very uncertain weather before I head back to Holland for some Dutch lessons, some organic bamboo farming, and babysitting some kittens in Amsterdam!

Cheers!