Impressions of Yermany

19 June

We arrived in Germany at the beginning of the World Cup, and shared campgrounds with groups supporting Argentina, Mexico, Switzerland, Italy, Germany (of course!) and Sweden. Lots of Swedes!, which are easy to spot because of their yellow and blue outfits. They also pronounce "Germany" starting with a Y sound, which is why we now call it Yermany.

After visiting the castle at Schwangau built by crazy King Ludwig, we spent two days in Munchen (Munich), which has one of the best transit systems we've encountered yet ("smart" escalators change direction when a train comes in), and huge streets by European standards. We shopped for, and finally found used bikes! (It's been hard to find anything that fits Craig in Italy and France.) And, of course, joined the crowds in the biergarten in the English Garden, where we watched the US lose to the Czech Republic. Badly.

Then, for a bit of a respite from the city, we spent a night in small-town Bamburg, famous for its smoked beer (imagine drinking a good hefeweisen around a campfire... without the campfire), before heading to Berlin.

Berlin is fascinating, with its mix of east and west and old and new, and is not afraid to tear down old neighborhoods for new monumental projects. It has some of the most interesting public art and architecture that we've seen in Europe. And an urban hipster scene that rivals that of Seattle. Only it seems that everyone is trying just a bit too hard to achieve the "look".

We spent longer than anticipated at the Judisches Museum, one of the best examples I've ever seen of integrated museum architecture, with excellent and interactive exhibit design.

Like Munchen, Berlin has an excellent public-transport system, though we only used it to get in and out of town, since we now have our bikes! The ticket-buying system at the main (and brand-new) transit center was extremely confusing... It required going to one machine to choose your route and ticket, and taking the barcoded paper it printed out to another machine to pay, and pick up the 'real' tickets. On our way back to the campground in Potsdam, lightning strikes delayed the regional trains for almost an hour!

If you wake up one day magically transported into a foreign city, you will know you're in Germany if:
a) there is a steel and glass structure next to the cathedral
b) there is a huge park behind the steel and glass structure
c) there is a designated bike lane with its own traffic signals running from the park to the city center and beyond
d) the first person you encounter on the bike lane is drinking a beer (and if they also have visible tattoos, then you're in Berlin)

-SK
a Ljusfors, Sweden

The photos here are from Bamberg and Berlin