Berlin, Germany

September 28th - 30th

Berlin, Germany

Berlin is our last city that we our touring on this trip.  9 weeks have come and gone and we have had an adventure we will take with us forever.  We are so thankful for all of our family and friend who has been reading our blog!  It is so great to have your support.  Before looking home, we must explore Berlin!  Berlin is actually a great city and a place that we add to the list of where we would go back for sure!  There is so much modern building in Berlin, but also so much history!

We knew that Berlin would have a lot of architecture that we wanted to explore, so when we got off the train in the afternoon we started walking!

Berlin TV tower

Berlin is celebrating its 775th birthday! whoa!  So they have set up this really interesting site of Berlin's map at a scale of 1:775 with pinpoints of different historical events and places in their city.

Berliner Dom - Berlin's largest church.

There were so many architectural pieces by Architects that we have studied as well as architects that we have discovered through this trip.  Germany is a successful country in the EU and is still building so many new buildings.  The picture above is I.M. Pei's foyer/stair design for this museum.

Next we went to the Memorial of the Murdered Jews.  The memorial was very big as it took up a huge block of the city.  It was designed by architect, Peter Eisenman, and he really wanted you to get the feeling of being lost and disoriented.  The memorial consists of 2711 concrete pillars of various heights.  As the pillars vary in height, the ground is also sloping in different directions.

The experience really puts you in a different place and time.  Germany has such a sad and difficult history, and the thing that continued to amaze us was their bad history is not far off from our lifetime.

More of the memorial

A piece of the Berlin Wall

The Sony Centre...a really cool design, especially lit up at night!

September 29th

The next day we knew that we still had many parts of Berlin to explore so we decided to rent bikes to get around faster!  Our main stop was the Jewish Museum designed by Daniel Libeskind.

From an aerial perspective this building is designed in a zig zag.  We decided to go into this Museum and learn more about the Jewish experience in Germany.  The Jewish people really went through a lot of difficulties.  In this building there would be 'void' spaces where you would go in a big tall unheated concrete room with a spec of natural light shining through.  These times really gave an interesting reflection to the experience that millions of jewish people had not too long ago.

In this room the art piece was people's faces made out of steel crying out.

Some people walked across the room, although to us it felt like a grave and did not feel like the need to walk on the faces.  But when someone walked across, the clanging of the steel really echoed like rattling chains of prisoners.

A zig from inside the zag...if that makes any sense!

The stars that Jewish people had to wear.

Next we explored some of the history of the Berlin Wall.  It was only torn down 20 years ago!

The division of East and West Berlin.  This shows how Russia had ownership over the East and the West was split between the US, GB and France

A portion of the Berlin Wall that still stands.

Inside Mies Van der Rohe's Muse nationalgalerie was this interesting box!  Created by artist Paul McCarthy...The piece defies gravity.

Finally, we were in Berlin during the BMW Berlin Marathon!  We met a guy in our hotel that was running in the race.

Our last night in Berlin, we went out an explored the Night Life a bit.  We have done this in a few different cities throughout our trip, but after a whole day of exploring we were normally exhausted!  But we were lucky and found a place close to our hotel that was packed with people and had 5 or 6 different DJs playing.  Steven was pretty excited!

Next Stop:  Frankfurt...the final destination of our European tour.  

Basically we are only in Frankfurt to catch our plane to fly back to Vancouver.  Hopefully our jet lag won't be too bad.  We have loved this trip so much, but are also ready to go back home, continue to grow our business, be near family who we have missed so much on the trip, and continue whatever adventures are in store for us in BC!

Prague, Czech Republic

September 26th - 27th

Prague, Czech Republic


The Czech Republic is our last NEW country that we will see on this trip!  Our original plan was to try to go to 10 countries, and in the end the Czech Republic is our 15th country we will have visited!  We arrived in Prague late in the evening, strolled around a little bit and then went to find our hotel.

The Museum lit up at night!

September 27th

Today we were eager to check out Prague.  We have been told by many people along this trip that Prague is a very pretty city, so here we go!  We start back at the Museum and begin our independent walking tour.

Steven posing with the monument in front of the museum.

We found a building designed by Frank Gehry, a Canadian architect, the same guy who designed the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain (if you remember way back then!).  This building is quite unique and it functions as an office and restaurant.  The combination of materials and shapes on the top part of the building, shown in the picture on the right, gives a really interesting feeling to the building.

The leaves on the trees are starting to change colours with fall approaching and you can see the church/castle in the background, which is one of Prague's main sights.

Unique snake benches and Steven finding his way through Prague.  Steven could really fit into the Medieval time period well!

As we walk up towards the Prague Castle we are given great views of the city

The Prague Castle/Church

Such delicate stain glass

Some more views of Prague.  People were right, Prague is a very pretty city!  Although Prague is a big city, it does not have a big city feel and is quite charming in its style.

In the Senate's garden there is this massive wall covered in this grey droppings.  Green plants and bushes are slowly working their way up the wall to complement the grey wall.  If you look carefully in the picture on the left, can you see any faces?

At the Senate's courtyard we were entertained by a couple of musical numbers!

A fancy astronomical clock

The town square

We really enjoyed exploring Prague and we were so happy to be able to fit this city into our travel plans!  If we stayed here longer there were definitely some musical shows we would have loved to see, for example, Andrew Lloyd Webber was suppose to play in a few days, as well as Stomp.  Also there are so many other great musicians to see that play Mozart and other classics.

Next Stop:  Our last major city to explore...Berlin, Germany

Oktoberfest, Munich, Germany

September 25th

Oktoberfest, Munich, Germany

Oktoberfest!   An annual festival in Munich where people drink beer the way Germans do, wear traditional outfits and gather in a fun-loving spirit!  It is the largest festival in the world and over 6 million people from around the world visit this festival every year!

We begin by eating German bratwurst and sauerkraut!

Oktoberfest!  We heard that people have to reserve tables up to a year before the festival, so we really had no expectation of how far we could get into the festival.  We figured that we could probably walk down the main street and check out the sights, but we were not sure if we could get into the beer gardens!

Surprisingly enough we got to the festival early enough to get into a few beer gardens!  This was our first one of the day!

Steven's first beer with a German lady that we chilled with!

Amazed by how many steins of beer they can carry at once!

Jenna's first time EVER trying beer...was not completely sold, but figured Oktoberfest was a good place to try!

Even the conductor of the band drinks beer!  Only in Germany!

The cute traditional outfits everyone wears!  Plus massive pretzels!

We moved on to see if we could check out more beer gardens...this was number 2, but we did not stay long, we decided to continue touring!

Our tour ended quickly when we made it to the Hofbrau Haus beer garden.  The atmosphere was definitely more upbeat and the place was packed!  We found a table that we could stand at and did not have to pay so we decided to hang around for a little while.

Steven's 2nd beer

Some French Swiss guys joined our table and were a lot of fun!  They had sooo much energy!  Good thing Steven could speak French to them, it really helped the flow of the conversation!

One of the guys even bought Jenna a rose! How sweet!

WINE!  Yup they have wine at Oktoberfest, thank goodness!  Jenna was happy to not have to drink beer!

This beer garden was so full with about 10,000 people!  Some people would stand on their table and attempt to chug their full 1 litre of beer.  We only saw one guy do it successfully.  Ugh, we definitely did not attempt such a dare!  If you do not finish the beer you have to dump the remaining liquid on your head.

Our Swiss friends left and next came a group of 3 Americans and 1 Austrian!  You can tell that they really got into the festivities by their outfits!  They went all out, even traditional shoes!  Every so often there was a traditional anthem that would be played where you had to stop your conversation and sing/cheers your glass.  We had great conversation with these guys and after a while they just started buying us beer and wine!

Steve sporting the traditional German cap!  Very handsome! 

Time in the Hofbrau Haus flew by, but we left so that we could try to find Jenna's brother who had just flew in from London, England to go to Oktoberfest!

Oktoberfest 2012 cookies!!

After walking 30 minutes aimlessly through Munich to find Dave and Laurie, we actually found them!  We could not believe it!  We were so excited!!

Jenna, Dave and Laurie at Oktoberfest!

After visiting for a while, we had to head back to the train station to get back to our hotel in Salzburg.  It was sad to not be able to hang out longer, but so good to visit with Dave and Laurie!!

Next Stop:  Prague, Czech Republic