Germany Trip Recap

I made it back home and am in the process of trying to get back in the swing of my "normal" life, doing laundry, checking bills, and all the other nuisances one can forget about during a vacation. I'm probably in denial of jet-lag (I always swear I am immune to it), so please forgive me if parts of this posting are a bit spacey. It looks as if my Microsoft contract will start this Wednesday, which gives me a couple of extra days to pull odds and ends together before getting into what by all accounts sounds like a fire-fighting mode. (I'm not saying that in a pejorative sense---instead, I'm actually looking forward to some excitement and a chance to swing for the fences.)

As for the Germany trip, here are a few summary thoughts----

Food and Drink:
I was surprised that the traditional German foods such as schnitzel and wurst were not more prominent, but then again it's probably true that visitors to the US wonder where all the hot dog, hamburger and apple pie stands are. The most popular items, the foods which really seemed to be everywhere in Germany, were the Döner (see photo) and curry-wurst, neither of which really excited me. Italian restaurants were very popular, and I have to admit they were very good, to the point I had to force myself to avoid them and to look for more typically German food. As I mentioned earlier, breads and baked goods are very big items, and even though I am not a dough-head in my real life, I tried enough to realize these offerings were excellent. And, alas, it turns out I am not a true fan of German beer, as it is too "hoppy" for my taste buds. Of all the German beers, my favorite was Kölsch, which is a very clear beer that should be enjoyed in small glasses (it has no carbonic acid and goes stale quickly, so two 20 cl glasses are preferable to one 40 cl glass).

ICE Trains:
The high-speed inter-city express (ICE) trains were truly spectacular---Not cheap by any means, but clean, fast, efficient, definitely the way to travel in Europe if you can. (Though the sleeper car experience on one of the older regional style trains is something you must try at least once before you die!) One weird thing about the ICE trains still escapes me: You are allowed to reserve seats on them if you like, and I did so on one of my trips, only to discover that I could not get to the wagon which contained my assigned seat. It turns out that quite often they will "join" two different trains by electrically and mechanically linking them together at the engine cars (see picture). I stress that these are two completely different trains which have been joined and travel as one, and I am not 100% sure why this is done, though I suspect it is one way to move trains around, repositioning them without having to pay an engineer to do so. I'll research this a bit to see if I can figure it out, but suffice it to say that if you get on the wrong train, you will not be able to cross from one to the other in transit. (Oh sure, you could try that James Bond thing, but I would rather save that for the sleeper car...)

Language:
One of the highlights of this trip was to try my high school German, which is many more years ago than I care to admit. I was surprised to see how much of it came back so quickly, and in fact at the end of the trip some of the hotel clerks were more than willing to hold the conversation with me in German rather than switching to English as I had lamented in one of my previous posts. I also followed the Olympics and the Georgian controversy in German. While this was slow, my understanding seems to have been pretty accurate now that I compare what I thought I had read and heard in German with what I am now reading and hearing in English. (I would have been really bummed had the Georgian confict actually turned out to have been wildfires in Atlanta!) For that matter, I actually found myself dreaming in German words last night...I'm not sure it was anything meaningful, but there were a lot of "wollens" and "sollens" in my dreams.

I'm in the mood right now to get my hands on some German CD's, DVD's, newspapers, and podcasts to see how far I can go with this. I would love to return to Germany again, only this time be able to use the language exclusively from day one rather than a mixture of German and English.

The Four Cities:
Quite by accident, I seemed to pick an almost perfect set of cities to visit. Recall that initially, when I thought I only had a week, I was planning to spend my entire time in just Munich, but when the trip slipped from one to two weeks, I was able to see Munich, Hamburg, Berlin and Köln---the four biggest cities in Germany. In addition to being the largest, these four cities also really represent the four sides of the country, with Munich in the south (Bavaria), Hamburg in the north, Berlin in the east, and Köln in the west. Munich, as I have mentioned before, was very nice, albeit almost like a bedroom community. There was nothing to dislike, but rather it was just a bit too quiet for my liking, without the hustle and bustle that I enjoy in a large town. Hamburg was interesting: Very beautiful, very cosmopolitan, and I would love to see it again, although the seedy imagery of the Reeperbahn still lingers in my mind as something I am not in a hurry to revisit. Berlin was interesting, though I spent way too short a time there to be able to assess it properly; suffice it to say that it was far less crowded than I expected it to be, and the Berlin Wall was an emotional highlight I will remember for the rest of my life. Without a doubt, Köln was my favorite part of the trip, with the town perfect in all regards: It had the hustle I like without being too crowded, people seemed a bit more friendly than elsewhere in Germany, the boat trips down the Rhine were every bit as fantastic as were my previous trips on the Thames, and what can I possibly say to describe the Dom Cathedral!! In short, all four cities were incredible, and I am already planning my next trip back.

Miscellaneous:
So here is one thing you will most likely never read in the travel guides, but as I mentioned previously I really missed ice and ice cold drinks! It seems that ice just is not that "hot" an item in Europe, because everyplace I went the story seemed to be the same: If you ask for a lot of ice, you are lucky if you even get a cube or two. One of the first things I did back home this morning was to head off to the local Denny's, and I took a great deal of pleasure and enjoyment from that glass of water, filled with ice; somehow, it felt incredibly comforting and satisfying. Still, warm drinks are a very small price to pay for all of the beauty of Germany.

The hefty price, of course, is the financial one. I don't even want to think about how much I spent on this two week trip, and unfortunately I don't see that gap closing any too soon, even though in theory the dollar is gaining strength against foreign currencies. The euro and dollar should, in theory be at parity (one to one exchange rate) since that was the initial pricing point just a few years ago when the euro was introduced. For most of this trip, however, the rate was about 1.6 to one. Very few good buys could be found, and even the "eating like a local" sandwich and soda will run about $10. That, unfortunately, is very painful if for no other reason than that it makes trips back to Europe far less frequent. So, with that, it's time to start pinching pennies again as I dream of that next trip back....