The life and times of a pop-culture junkie and music addict living in Arlington, Virginia
Ok, not really, but I am off to Berlin. It’ll be a short trip, just tonight through Sunday.
While I’m away, I invite you to marvel at the plume on this man’s amazing hat. I really do love the jaunty hats favored by traditional Bavarians.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Easter weekend is a four-day weekend here, because the Friday before and the Monday after are public holidays in Bavaria and much of Europe. Not wanting to waste a long weekend, I went to Prague.
Some notes before the pictures and story:
On with the pictures and story!
A few weeks back, when the weather first started to turn sunny and nice, I took another short day trip. This time, it was to München to see the Deutsches Museum. This place is sort of like the Smithsonian in Washington D.C.
Inside, there’s a huge selection of aircraft, boats, space vehicles…
Up on the sixth floor, there’s a sundial garden. Since the weather has recently started to be sunny, this was a beautiful spot.
…I also got this pretty spectacular panoramic view of the Munich skyline from the sundial garden:
I don’t have a lot of commentary for the rest of these, so I’ll just put up a lot of pictures.
Palmator: Das Starkbierfest Am Adlersberg, a set on SmugMug. There are more pictures in the set, so click on through!
On the way to breakfast this morning, there were a lot of people wearing lederhosen and dirndls, the traditional Bavarian outfits that Americans always picture when they think of Germany.
The reason for this belongs to the Prösslbräu Brewery in Adlersberg
Palm Sunday is the first day of the year that they serve Palmator, a dark and strong bock beer from their kegs. A lot of people turn out for the beer, the band, and the traditional Bavarian outfits.
I managed to find my way out there, sharing a taxi with some friendly guys who were also going after the number twelve bus was far, far too packed to be useful. The beer is served in one liter glasses- this is a much larger volume of beer than I’m used to, and those glasses were heavy!
Also of note- one of these pictures shows what was being used as a men’s room- the Germans have turned public urination into an art form.
The brewery sits on top of a pretty good sized hill, so there’s a fantastic view from the top of the wall, looking all the way back to the city.
After I was done at Doku-Zentrum, I took the tram back toward the Bahnhof, and from there I met Heather from “Heather Goes Deutsch” for lunch and some hang time. Heather lives in Nuremberg and teaches English there.
I’ve noticed a trend among other Americans that I’ve run into here. We tend to be in one of three categories: Technology workers, Teachers, and Students. (Although there are a huge amount of American troops here in Germany, I’m not counting the military folk because they’re not necessarily in Germany by choice, and many of them tend to have short term assignments here before getting deployed elsewhere.)
Ah, but I digress. I was talking about Nuremberg. Heather went to lunch. On the walk there, we saw some preaching Christians. They were much louder and more preachey than the Mormons from my previous visit.
Heather and I ate at Alex, which is a chain- I’ve eaten in the Regensburg location as well as the Nuremberg one. Alex feels a bit like TGI Fridays or Applebees back home. It overlooks a large courtyard which was filled with a green market at the time.
After lunch, it was time for a walk up a very steep hill to see the castle that I missed last time I was in town. It was tall and castley. Heather warned me about the hill, but it was much steeper to get all the way up than I expected. (The journey back down looked like it would have been a lot of fun on roller blades. Until you broke your neck, that is.)
Here is a rare photograph where I’m in front of the camera instead of behind it:
The castle ramparts were sufficiently high up that the view was pretty spectacular looking over the town. Here’s part of it:
After our controlled descent from the castle, we walked around the city a little bit more. While Regensburg has monuments to Kepler, Nuremberg has the Albrecht Dürer house. Dürer, as it turns out, spent quite a bit of time in Nuremberg, born there in the late 1400s and returning for parts of the 1500s. He was there in between stints in Italy and the Netherlands, and his famous painting of a hare has resulted in a lot of rabbits in stores and sculptures. For example, there’s this super creepy statue. I told Heather that it looks like Alice in Wonderland on peyote.
By this point in the afternoon, I was pretty much ready to hop a train back home, so we started to follow the city wall back toward the train station. Interesting fun fact: The wall around the city of Nuremberg is mostly stil intact You can walk along large sections of it and eventually you’ll wind up back at the train station.
On the walk back, I saw some nifty stuff that needed to be photographed. I’ll close out the post with these last three photographs-
1) Some nifty graffiti that translates to “Against sexism, against homophobia!” At some point I will take pictures of more graffiti around town in Regensburg. I’ve already got a nifty collection of pictures of the decals that people put on street signs and lamp posts- I find it fascinating.
2) A street musician playing an instrument that I can’t quite identify. It’s not quite a harp, but it’s similar. It also looks quite heavy.
3) Random Greenpeace protest. Apparently they’re against nuclear power. (And power is yet another topic on my future posts list.)
Whimsy. Tacos. The DMV. 