[Volcanic Trip, Part 5] Making it Home: Germany

So we took an overnight bus to Berlin, and our trip was officially back on track...sorta. Although we had tickets to fly from Ireland, we were still in Berlin, and in time to go see Noah and the Whale in concert. We took the day to walk around the city, see the sights, and end up at the concert.

This is Red City Hall, and I'm pretty sure it represents the communist side of Berlin...I don't actually know though.

This is the TV Tower. I didn't know this was a landmark of Berlin until we got here. Neat, huh?

Here's a museum that I took a picture in front of. As you can see, I imported the antlers from Denmark. The interesting thing about the buildings in Berlin, specifically the marble buildings, is that they haven't been cleaned in a while, so they're extremely black and patchy. This was really neat to see, actually, and it makes me think of what Duomo, in Milan, may have looked if they didn't JUST finish cleaning it when we got there.

Here are some street sheisters. That guy in the jacket would shuffle around a ball under little boxes and the goal was to find the ball. It seemed extremely easy, but it was certainly a sheist. There were about five people who were part of the ring, and they would all pretend to bet, sometimes win, sometimes loose. It worked well to fool me for a little while. It was too easy though. At one point, Kenny had his foot on a box with the ball under it, and they wanted him to put money out and bet, but he refused. We stuck around for a while, but we never figured out how they sheisted someone.

We got to get inside of some nice Mercedes' at the Mercedes showroom.

Then we followed up by going to the Volkswagon showroom. No Phaetons though.

At the end of the day it was time to go see Noah and the Whale at the Frannz Club. It was good to see the look on everyone's face as I entered with an piece of antler. There was some serious confusion, and the girl at garderobe (coat check) said that it was too big to put anywhere, so I would just have to tell her to get them and she would put them in the back.

Take note of how Charlie Fink, the main guy, has a different guitar for every song.
The concert was really nice. It was mellow, fun, and very enjoyable.
They played "5 years Time" as one of their last songs, and it was fantastic to hear. Although, raw and unproduced (and without that woman on backup), the song itself wasn't as fun. But being live more than made up for it.
On the second day in Berlin, we decided to drink a bottle of cheap vodka, and see the WWII sights. We saw lots of chunks of Berlin wall.
This is Checkpoint Charlie. I'm not entirely sure why it is so famous, but there was a lot of tourist and WWII stuff here. It seems like it might have been a high-traffic checkpoint to crossover the sectors of Berlin.

I found an office chair near Checkpoint Charlie by a dumpster, so I commandeered it and piloted through the streets.
There was a woman handing out coupons for free chocolates on the street. Because we had recently finished a bottle of vodka, I wasn't too opposed to free chocolate. She gave us two coupons each, and Kenny didn't even want his second chocolate, so I made out like a bandit. The guy at the counter laughed when I walked up with my third coupon, and then he gave me his personally recommended flavor.
This green guy is the guy that means "walk" on pedestrian crosswalk signals. Apparently he's gained some popularity, probably because of his unique-ness among pedestrian walk signals.
We took some really nice walks through the parks in Berlin because the weather was wonderful. At one point, we even napped on a bench for about forty-five minutes.
This was a cool place to be in.

We saw some memorials too. This one is to all of the murdered Jews of Europe.
There was modern stuff in Berlin too. It was pretty neat.
We saw the TV tower at night, which was neat.

We went back for the night, hung out with our couchsurfer a bit, but fell asleep pretty quick. We woke up early to get to the airport. The trip was coming to a welcomed end. Here's a picture that has all of the things I brought on the trip.

We arrived at the airport three hours early to ensure that there was no overbooking of our flight that would interfere with our seats on the plane home. After a couple hours of napping in the airport, seeing our flight boarding to Stockholm was a relief. We were finally going home for realz.

The flight was smooth, and after two more bus rides, we were finally at home. I had never been so happy to walk through the doors of Junior, and it was good to know that I was back with friends, food, and a bed. More than anything, the trip made me appreciate the people that I've met while in Sweden, and it was time to work harder to build strong friendships, and make some memories. I was gone the entire month of April with limited contact to anyone I cared about, and it was a reminder of what's important.

I got home, and I smiled as I saw familiar faces and comfortable places.

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[Volcanic Trip, Part 4] Goal 2: Denmark

We arrived in Amsterdam unexpectedly by plane. This was a glorious thing to be so far north, and luckily, our previous couchsurfer Sacha was able to host us, last minute. We rested up at his place for the night while getting advice on how to hitchhike. We knew from our last time here that hitchhiking in Germany was easy, so we were going to give it a shot to avoid an expensive hit to the wallet in order to buy a bunch more train tickets. We were headed to Copenhagen again...

Goal 2: Hitchhike

We went to a place off of an onramp looking to get on the road through Germany from there. However, after an hour of waiting, we moved to a gas station, where I asked a kind lady where a better gas station would be. She directed us to a better position at a 'Liftplatts,' a designated area for hitchhikers.

This is me making some signs. That Amstel in the background became more of a burden than anything.

From the 'liftplatts,' this man picked us up and took us to another station on the A1. This guy started his own company. I don't remember if he said what it was, but we didn't ride with him long.

From the station on the A1, this man took us almost to the border of Germany. He's a retired director of a music school in the Netherlands. Now he does volunteer work for refugees.

And from that station, this car (filled with a man) took us to Hamburg, Germany. I don't know anything about cars, but apparently this is the luxury class Volkswagen Phaeton with a V12 engine. The best part about it was that we got to speed down the motorway of the autobahn with the driver of this vehicle. The driver was a horse trader, international.

This is how I got to Hamburg. Because of how late it was, the sun had set and we didn't feel like spending our time in Hamburg in the cold, so we bought a bus to Copenhagen from there. Hamburg was a nice little city.

Of course this is Hamburg, so we had to eat a hamburger.

This was the nicest thing to look at in Hamburg.

Copenhagen

We stayed with really nice couchsurfers in Copenhagen. It was a big flat with lots of room. We arrived by overnight bus at about 7 am, and we started walking.

The Opera House

Some Canal

This was the huge conference building that we found free coffee in.

This is a windmill in the middle of one of the oldest, best preserved fortress in Europe.

This is me with Antlers.

Eating a Danish Danish in Copenhagen.

Christiania was a really cool place with lots of chill people who built houses themselves.

This was a castle.

More castle.

We went to a bar that had a comedy show. I didn't understand anything anyone said, but I laughed all the same.

The canals that ran through Copenhagen were really excellent and beautiful.

The Little Mermaid is basically the most famous thing in Denmark for some reason. However, it's currently in Shanghai for the World Expo 2010. I had no choice but to stand in for her.

Some of the architecture was super modern and awesome, and it fit right in.

There was a hobo exhibit in the park. The fountain was pretty interesting, it had water flowing from that woman's nipples.

Copenhagen was interesting, but not really that eventful. Lots of seeing cool stuff. The biggest event that happened in Copenhagen was getting stranded outside of our couchsurfers house while we wanted to make dinner. We also went dumpster-diving, but didn't find anything good.

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