My last post was 7 days ago. Since then I’ve visited 3 additional cities and spent around 17 hours traveling by train. Plus I made some friends! To recap:
I took the train from Switzerland to Munich. My Munich hotel was situated in an arabic neighborhood, so after eating a traditional German dinner of steak, fried onions, and potatoes (and a local beer) the first night, I exclusively ate shawarma for the rest of my meals. I only spent 2 nights in Munich and actually went on a tinder date with a local girl the second night – she was great but lives in…Munich, so our future together is unclear.
My primary reason for stopping in Munich, though, was to visit the Dachau concentration camp about 30 minutes outside of the city. I took a 3 hour guided tour at the camp. I was already familiar with a lot of the information conveyed on the tour due to my previous visits to Yad Vashem (the Holocaust museum in Israel), but walking through the camp, especially the gas chamber and crematorium building, was surreal.
Following my brief stint in Munich, I took the train to Berlin, arrived early evening, dropped my stuff at the hotel, and had dinner around the corner at an incredible Asian fusion restaurant for 25 euros (Berlin is pretty cheap). After dinner I wandered into a popular hostel and quickly found myself talking to a British dude who was staying there as part of a stag do (British bachelor party). I ended up playing drinking games with them for the next hour, but Irish exited when they headed out to hit the town…gotta get my beauty sleep. The next day I visited the Jewish museum and felt pretty emotional at times. There was one section that displayed letters that Jews wrote to their relatives right before the SS took them from their homes…that part got to me.
Other Berlin highlights:
I did a walking tour where I befriended another British dude and we ended up grabbing beers after the tour. We were supposed to meet up that evening to go out, but the number he gave me didn’t work…I’m going to assume it was a mistake. I did a food tour for dinner that night – 2 Americans, 2 Slovaks, 2 Israelis, and led by a Turk – and ended up going out with the Slovaks after the tour so it all worked out in the end. The bar was situated on top of a parking garage, pretty cool actually. I snuck in a couple more museums in Berlin on my final day before taking the train from Berlin to Copenhagen today.
I have a couple of takeaways.
- Paying a premium for air conditioning is 100% worth it (hotel vs hostel)
- Doing tours is both enjoyable and a good way to meet people, although I’m looking forward to a chill couple of days in Copenhagen before I go on a 2 night kayaking trip in Norway next weekend (as part of a group)
- I thought Berlin was a great city (Munich was fine), but it was impossible to disentangle my time in Germany from the Holocaust
I think I’ll squeeze in one more country post-Norway before returning to Boston (maybe Ireland), so open to all recommendations.
Until next time.
Noah's (Life) Ark 