After a few days rest and relaxation in
Cologne, Louiisa and I headed to Berlin to meet up with Andy and
Blake again.
Berlin is an amazing city but it
stinks. The name literally means “Swamp City” because that is
what it was built on. Every now and then you a rotten egg type smell
hits you. This is the swamp odours seeping their way up from under
the city. But despite the smell it is a fun and yet confronting
place.
There are memeorials and reminders
everywhere of the city's past from huge holocaust memorials to the
imposing Soviet buildings and remains of the wall. We also took a
trip out to the Sachsenhausen former concentration camp, which was a
confronting experience, made even more real with the very bad
weather. it was hard to imagine how anyone could survive out there in
those conditions.
Holocaust memorial
But Berlin was not all doom and gloom.
it is a beautiful city and is also well known for its night life. We
found an amazing pub, made out of a slum building, which was home to
several art studios as well as small bars.
We had a fantastic time in Berlin, the
only complaint was the weather – it was so cold. But Andy assured
us it was much warmer in Prague where Louisa and I were off to next.
She lied. it actually snowed on our
last day in Prague. So much for a last bit of warm weather before the
Canadian winter.
Still it was a beautiful city and we
had a great time. We did a walking tour and discovered most of Euro
Trip was actually filmed in Prague and on our pub crawl we went to
the English pub they went to in the movie.
Time went too quickly and before we
knew it we were off to Vienna. It is a pretty city but doesn't really
have much to offer that other cities don't have. The biggest
highlight was finding a bar that served Boags!
Budapest was next and slightly warmer.
I really enjoyed our short time here. It is a very different city to
most of the others we had been to and is apparently still struggling
with the change over from communism to capitalism. But the people
were friendly and there were many great sights, not to mention the
thermal baths.
We spent our last two weeks in Europe
in italy. i wasnt sure how much I would enjoy it because it is talked
up so much and I expected to be dissapointed. i wasn't. Every city is
beautiful in its own way and has so much to offer. The people went
out of their way to help us and the food was amazing.
To be honest I think we spent most of
the two weeks eating – gelati, pasta and pesto, pizza and delicious
bright green biscuits.
eating buffalo motzarello pizza
It was hard to leave italy especially
as it was still fairly warm there. But we knew we had another
adventure in Canada where we will be trying to find work and settle
down for a few months. The idea of not having to pack every few days
is certainly appealing!
