Berlin was our next stop on the BJ Tour and Nedd's last hurrah before heading back to his boring life back in the states. RIP. He only had one day in Berlin so from the moment we touched ground after riding in a propeller plane, which apparently still exist, we were furiously exploring the city. The walking tour was fantastic and mostly revolved around WWII but did a great job of hitting other points in German history as well.
Now it's an understatement that the Nazis were one of the most destructive forces in the 20th century and were generally dicks to pretty much everyone, so the interesting thing about going through museums and tours and monuments in Berlin is the way they present the material. There are no apologies, no sides to the story, just plain facts stating this happened here and here's why. They don't bury their past in shame, they put these things in places that people can't avoid. For example, we hit up a shopping mall and alongside the ever present H&Ms and Body Shops was an exhibit about the horrors that occurred when the Berlin Wall went up. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe consists of almost 5,000 giant stone blocks of varying sizes all lined up in rows and is located in the center of Berlin. It takes up an entire city block and this was done on purpose to make people face what happened on a daily basis to prevent something like that from occurring ever again, to prevent them from ever forgetting what had happened.
Possibly the most jarring was our trip to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, which I'll only touch on briefly because it just drains the life out of me to think about it. Our tour guide made us promise to encourage friends and loved ones to go see one if they had the chance, saying "It's not tourism this, it's a moral obligation." So if you ever have the chance, you should take the time and visit one. It will ruin your day and you will probably feel uncomfortable the entire time, but that's the point isn't it? Years after the camp was liberated, there was a huge monument erected to the political prisoners that were detained at Sachsenhausen, but our tour guide said he despised the thing because no mention was made of the Jews, Romas, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other target groups that were imprisoned there. However, he pointed out something unexpected that visitors started doing. On top of the statue were thousands of small rocks taken from the field that people had placed there in mourning. That's the only picture I felt comfortable taking there because anything else just felt crass.
ALRIGHT now onto something lighter! Now I know absolutely ZERO German besides that beer is bier, and that's about all I can handle. In general, I slaughter my way through the word, raise my voice a little bit at the end like it's a question, and then the other person says, "English?" and I say, "Oh thank God." Jeff had a decent handle on the language so he helped us get around but it also blew back against us because drunk Jeff became Talk Only In German Jeff.
Jeff: (Something in German)
Katie: "I don't know what you're saying."
Jeff: (Something in German)
Katie: "Oh. My. God. JEFF!"
Repeat
But otherwise we've been relying on a wonderful app called World Lens. World Lens has an offline dictionary but the coolest feature is hovering the camera over a series of words and the app translates all of them. It works great for a few words but if you have a paragraph it gets confused because it can't tell context. I tried using it on a beer and World Lens told me the beer translated to "Thirst for Revenge." So of course I got that one. It turned out to be a bacon beer. No that was not a typo, it was a beer that tasted like bacon. At first scent, it was really gross and essentially smelled like you were about to pound back some bacon grease but it did indeed taste like beer with a bacon aftertaste. Easily the most interesting beer we've had on this tour.
My favorite story about Berlin is probably our exit. Now we relied on Jeff to book our flights in and out of the city. First mistake. You may remember earlier when I said we flew on a propeller plane? Yeah that was Jeff. For the way out of the city he got us on a flight that wasn't piloted by a Wright brother but it did make us leave our hostel at 3AM, which is just weak. But we're Smashmouth All-Stars so we formulated a plan to just stay up all night until our flight, which *spoiler alert* wasn't a great idea. We started off the night at a death bar, yes death bar, called Last Cathedral, a club that only played heavy metal and had coffins and skeletons all over the walls. My button-up fit in perfectly. If you thought struggling through German was difficult, try it while shouting over a Slayer song pumped to what my Dad would consider to be an illegal volume level.
After skipping another club with an outrageous cover ($20? I wouldn't pay that much if there were naked women inside. Oh there are? Thats why it's so much? Nope still too much), we headed onto a bar called Yesterday, a place that specialized in the Flower Power era and only played music from the 50's, 60's, and 70's. We had hit up this joint earlier when B Nedd was still with us (sounds like he's dead, but he's still alive...probably) and had an awesome time mostly due to Mann Oh Mann, an electronic board game similar to Sorry! except if you chose *not* to bump someone back to home then YOU get sent back to base. Cutthroat. We plan on buying one off eBay but it only works off of euros so friends we'll need you to visit a currency exchange before our next party. This place was also crazy dead so we made friends with both the bartenders, one of which bought us vodka shots because we were one of the first customers to return. Doesn't bode well for the organization, but damn did we have a great time there.
We crawled back to our place around 2am, took a nap and then an hour later we were off to Munich. When we eventually arrived at 9, our Airbnb meetup person was nowhere to be found. At this point we are just ready to pass out and kind of at that terrible point between still being intoxicated but also being hungover. About an hour passes before strangers help us figure out where to go, and when we make it to our house, our host tells us she wasn't expecting us until the following day. Now am I running on fumes? Yes. Am I sleep and food deprived? Yes. But am I sure this is the day we were supposed to arrive in Munich? ....Probably? Turns out she just had her dates wrong, frantically apologizes and then insists on ironing all of our sheets before we use them. I've never ironed a sheet in my life, but I felt it was rude to tell her that so we waited another hour before finding sweet sweet rest.
What followed would then be 3 days of Oktoberfest madness.
CM
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| German graffiti is phenomenal. Here's an ape taking a picture of Jeff. Science has gone too far. |
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| When you walk through the rows everything becomes muted and it's easy to get lost. |
Possibly the most jarring was our trip to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, which I'll only touch on briefly because it just drains the life out of me to think about it. Our tour guide made us promise to encourage friends and loved ones to go see one if they had the chance, saying "It's not tourism this, it's a moral obligation." So if you ever have the chance, you should take the time and visit one. It will ruin your day and you will probably feel uncomfortable the entire time, but that's the point isn't it? Years after the camp was liberated, there was a huge monument erected to the political prisoners that were detained at Sachsenhausen, but our tour guide said he despised the thing because no mention was made of the Jews, Romas, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other target groups that were imprisoned there. However, he pointed out something unexpected that visitors started doing. On top of the statue were thousands of small rocks taken from the field that people had placed there in mourning. That's the only picture I felt comfortable taking there because anything else just felt crass.
.JPG) |
| It's a Hebrew tradition to leave stones for loved ones, but everyone has started doing it to show respect. |
ALRIGHT now onto something lighter! Now I know absolutely ZERO German besides that beer is bier, and that's about all I can handle. In general, I slaughter my way through the word, raise my voice a little bit at the end like it's a question, and then the other person says, "English?" and I say, "Oh thank God." Jeff had a decent handle on the language so he helped us get around but it also blew back against us because drunk Jeff became Talk Only In German Jeff.
Jeff: (Something in German)
Katie: "I don't know what you're saying."
Jeff: (Something in German)
Katie: "Oh. My. God. JEFF!"
Repeat
But otherwise we've been relying on a wonderful app called World Lens. World Lens has an offline dictionary but the coolest feature is hovering the camera over a series of words and the app translates all of them. It works great for a few words but if you have a paragraph it gets confused because it can't tell context. I tried using it on a beer and World Lens told me the beer translated to "Thirst for Revenge." So of course I got that one. It turned out to be a bacon beer. No that was not a typo, it was a beer that tasted like bacon. At first scent, it was really gross and essentially smelled like you were about to pound back some bacon grease but it did indeed taste like beer with a bacon aftertaste. Easily the most interesting beer we've had on this tour.
 |
| This was probably the biggest Word Lens fail. The beer was bad but I don't think I'd call it an "Anus Fathers Ballet". |
My favorite story about Berlin is probably our exit. Now we relied on Jeff to book our flights in and out of the city. First mistake. You may remember earlier when I said we flew on a propeller plane? Yeah that was Jeff. For the way out of the city he got us on a flight that wasn't piloted by a Wright brother but it did make us leave our hostel at 3AM, which is just weak. But we're Smashmouth All-Stars so we formulated a plan to just stay up all night until our flight, which *spoiler alert* wasn't a great idea. We started off the night at a death bar, yes death bar, called Last Cathedral, a club that only played heavy metal and had coffins and skeletons all over the walls. My button-up fit in perfectly. If you thought struggling through German was difficult, try it while shouting over a Slayer song pumped to what my Dad would consider to be an illegal volume level.
 |
| Once Brian left we made a new friend named Bryan to swiftly replace him. He used to work at our Mpls liquor store! |
After skipping another club with an outrageous cover ($20? I wouldn't pay that much if there were naked women inside. Oh there are? Thats why it's so much? Nope still too much), we headed onto a bar called Yesterday, a place that specialized in the Flower Power era and only played music from the 50's, 60's, and 70's. We had hit up this joint earlier when B Nedd was still with us (sounds like he's dead, but he's still alive...probably) and had an awesome time mostly due to Mann Oh Mann, an electronic board game similar to Sorry! except if you chose *not* to bump someone back to home then YOU get sent back to base. Cutthroat. We plan on buying one off eBay but it only works off of euros so friends we'll need you to visit a currency exchange before our next party. This place was also crazy dead so we made friends with both the bartenders, one of which bought us vodka shots because we were one of the first customers to return. Doesn't bode well for the organization, but damn did we have a great time there.
 |
| I couldnt stop losing. Why do I always get the warped one? |
We crawled back to our place around 2am, took a nap and then an hour later we were off to Munich. When we eventually arrived at 9, our Airbnb meetup person was nowhere to be found. At this point we are just ready to pass out and kind of at that terrible point between still being intoxicated but also being hungover. About an hour passes before strangers help us figure out where to go, and when we make it to our house, our host tells us she wasn't expecting us until the following day. Now am I running on fumes? Yes. Am I sleep and food deprived? Yes. But am I sure this is the day we were supposed to arrive in Munich? ....Probably? Turns out she just had her dates wrong, frantically apologizes and then insists on ironing all of our sheets before we use them. I've never ironed a sheet in my life, but I felt it was rude to tell her that so we waited another hour before finding sweet sweet rest.
.JPG) |
| Drinking on stairs watching the Packers game! |
What followed would then be 3 days of Oktoberfest madness.
CM
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