Berlin at Christmas (Day 3 and 4 and 5)

Dec 24, 2012

On Christmas eve, we started our day out in Kreuzberg, a neighborhood Tristan liked to hang out in when he lived here before. He took me to a kebab place he used to go to there, and I had burek (which sadley wasn't as great as it was in Macedonia). Then he showed me the infamous "bar without a name" that he often went to with his friends. Yes, it doesn't have a name. Hipster, right? 

Then we went to go see the Gedaechtniskirche. Unfortunately, it's still being restored and is completely covered (even though they were supposed to finish in June or something). 

This is what it looks like, supposedly. Though I've never seen it despite being to Berlin 3 times.

However, there was a mall nearby, so we got to see this...

Some sort of fairy world...

Also, a really fancy clock. 

Then we hung out in the toy department of a department store for a while before it closed at 1:30 and we got herded out. Starting about then, everything was closed.

Did I mention that, despite being more like a hotel where you randomly shared rooms than a hostel, the hostel had bunnies in the courtyard? 

So we headed towards Prenzlaur berg where we saw a monument that showed how the wall and the gap between it's two pieces had been laid out. All the shops in the neighborhood (including the one we wanted to go to) were closed. So we went back to Alexanderplatz and got nachos at a bar we visited when Tristan lived in Berlin called The PUB. This bar is mostly cool because it has taps at each table, so you get to serve yourself, and you can also order food from the screen there. The rest of the night was spent relaxing, and we had dinner at KFC because nothing else was open. 

Dec 25, 2012 

On Christmas Day, we went to the Berlin Zoo, the former home of the late Knut. 

We started in the petting zoo:

They wolves, which was pretty awesome. When we arrived at their enclosure, they were all howling!

 By the time we had finished at the zoo, it was raining and Tristan was starting to feel under the weather, himself. So we picked up some cold medicine at the pharmacy and headed back to rest.

Because of illness, we decided to forgo our dinner reservations at Hofbrau House. Instead, we picked up Bratwurst at the Christmas market before heading to our Christmas Concert. Unfortunately, we hadn't known what the concert was going to be -- it was nothing like I imagined. A quartet of trumpets is neither of our favorite types of music (especially because they didn't play anything the slightest bit recognizable!) However, we only paid 10 euro each for the concert, and it cost 5 euro to see the inside of the Berliner Dom anyway, so it wasn't terrible.

The Berliner Dom as captured in 2010 because that is apparently the only time I've ever taken a picture of it.

The inside...

And us...

December 26, 2012 (i.e. Second Christmas)

The next morning, we moved to a different hotel which was called the DDR Hotel and was themed to look like it was an apartment from the German Democratic Republic. 

It seems that Germans also celebrate the 26th as part of Christmas, so quite a few things were still closed. On this day, we visited the Teltow airfield (where the Berlin airlift took place), which today is a large park. It was quite windy, so we didn't stay to long.

We took it easy that day so that we could go out at night to the bar without a name for a drink even though Tristan was still sick. So we didn't do much else that day (at least, I don't remember what else we did, and I don't have any other pictures). And that was the end of Berlin for 2012, anyway. 

Berlin at Christmas (Day one and two)

Dec 22, 2012

The next day, we woke up early, took a bus to Basel to catch our train to Berlin. We had some extra time, so we walked to a Starbucks - unfortunately, for some reason it didn't open until 9 (wha? This is Starbucks. They sell COFFEE. If anything should be open before 9am, a coffee shop should be). Anyway, it was 8:50, and we didn't feel that we had enough time to wait because we had to validate our ticket for it's first use, and blah-de-blah. It actually did turn out that we had enough time to kill, so we ended up at a different Starbucks and we paid like 20 bucks or something like that for our coffees because this is Switzerland.

Some 5 hours or something like that later, we arrived in Berlin and from the beginning it was magical. 

There was snow on the ground (though it would melt in the course of the next days) and it was really cold, but it was perfect. After dropping our stuff at the hostel, we headed back towards Alexanderplatz to go to the Hofbrau House (which is knock-off of the original beer hall, which is in Munich) for dinner. Then we hit up the Christmas markets and they were awesome.

The Moose was part of the Christmas Market at Alexa which is the mall at Alexanderplatz,. He talked. It was pretty cool. 

This Christmas market was more like a fair than a market. There were all sorts of carnival rides and stands with food (the most important food groups being Bratwurst, Gluehwein, and Crepes). 

We rode the Ferris Wheel and boy was it cold up there! 

 Also, I'd like to point out that it was probably around 20F on the ground.

But that didn't stop us from going on this contraption. Which is swing ride that takes  you high into the air and spins you progressively faster.

It was SO COLD up there with wind chill, I wouldn't be surprised if it were 5F or something like that. Everything went numb. Yet, I've never had so much fun on a carnival ride in my life. Possibly, my whole entire body was in shock and thought that I was going to die of the freezing cold. Once we were back on the ground 20F felt downright toasty, in comparison.

Dec 23, 2012 

The next day, we planned to visit Tristan's old apartment/and area in the suburbs and to see a bit of the city.

This was the S-bahn stop near our hostel. As you can see there was still snow, but not for long.  Fun fact: This bridge/S-bahn stop was featured in the music video for a song that has been very popular here in France in the last few months (One day/Reckoning Song). 

Our first stop was the shopping area near Tristan's University and apartment. He wanted to take me to a place called Noodlebox, but when we arrived, we found that it was gone. Around this time, the snow turned to sleet, the worst form of precipitation ever. We decided to go to a Chinese food place, right by Tristan's old apartment. There we had the most delicious fried rice ever. Nomnom. Unfortunately, the sleet had chilled to me to the bone. So I was pretty cold at this point. Because of this, we decided to hit up a big book store and we spent over an hour there warming up.

Then we continued on. After a quick stop at Starbucks (where I got a hazelnut hot chocolate, which is like the hot chocolate version of nutella-- so yummy). We saw touristy things...

This is at a monument that the Russians built to how awesome they are, or something like that. It looks cool in the snow. 

Us, damp at the Reichstag.

I don't remember what we did that evening, but based on pictures. I think we had dinner at a Christmas market which is pretty much what we always did. 

This part was a more traditional Christmas Market

I have to say, I've gotten A LOT better at night photography. 

La Balade Feerique

You should take bets on whether or not I will actually finish talking about this vacation before I go on the next one (which is in a week and half). Luckily, I'm not doing that much on that one... so I'll catch up eventually, I hope. This post should be a quick one.

Just to get you all back into the Christmas spirit.

This is my across the street neighbor and their cheerful  Christmas tree.

This guy was playing in a shop window

This was in the supermarket. I took a picture because apparently someone's idea of decorating a Christmas tree was throwing stuffed animals in it?

 But not as awesome as what Tristan and I discovered the Friday he arrived for our trip (our German Rail pass allowed us to leave from the Bale train station). Our train didn't leave until Saturday morning, so we went down to the Saint Louis Christmas market, which was pretty lame really except for this part: La Balade Feerique (which basically means the fairy-ey (fantastic or magical, I guess) stroll). It was a bunch of animatronic animals - and it was AWESOME.

Are you psyched for Christmas now? Because I know I am! :)

Laon: in which I attend the WORST CHRISTMAS MARKET EVER and am reminded how much French people can suck

So on December 8 (I think. Also, I apologize for the out of order-ness of this blog. I would put it in order... but then I doubt anybody would find the posts... so this is how it's going to be), Tristan and I went to Laon for the day. Laon is a little bitty French town up on a hill. It's very classically French, but other than that, there is NOTHING there.
So why did we go? you ask. Well, that Friday as we were hanging out in Soissons having our classic frozen pizza lunch, one of Tristan's floor mates comes into the kitchen and starts talking about this Christmas Market that they have in Laon, and she pulls up the website and reads about it. And it sounds pretty fun. Also, Tristan had gone to Laon twice before because that's where he had to go for for his OFII (immigration) appointment and there was this american food restaurant there that he really wanted to go to again because it was really good. And it's also only like 7 euro (round trip each) and 20 minutes away from Soissons, so why not?

Pony attack! These ponies were in Soissons. So don't give any pony points to Laon, Laon was devoid of ponies.  Though they did have reindeer, which was pretty much the only thing cool about Laon.

Laon is up on this really tall hill, which we hiked up after discovering the restaurant we wanted to eat out wasn't opening up again until like 5 or 6pm... I forget which. Which means we have some time to kill.

Note how steep the stairs are... 

 Pretty much the best part about Laon is the view (other than the reindeer which are presumably only there for the Christmas Market)...

Whether or not it is worth the hike is up to you.

This is pretty much the entire Christmas Market. To the right are the reindeer, to the left was a roasted chestnut stand that sold the grossest chestnuts ever, and also the cathedral. Later we found some stands that were in a basement selling trinkets. And straight ahead (behind the Christmas trees was the worst vin chaud stand EVER).

So as you can see, there was not much to do at the Laon Christmas market. So this whole thing wouldn't have really warranted a belated blog post if the guy selling vin chaud/mulled wine/gluehwein hadn't been a total douche.

So it turns out I have been saying the word "vin" wrong for my ENTIRE life. I have been saying something like "vahn"- with a really soft n - more nasal than anything. Which means I'm really saying "vent" - which means wind. The ACTUAL way to say "vin" is something like "vehn" - with the same n thing. It's a hideous word. Coincidentally, this is also how you say "vingt" (which means 20) which I have ALSO been saying wrong all this time (yes, vin and vingt are said the same. I hate this language.). So anyway, I go up the vin chaud stand, and ask for "Deux vins ('vahn') chauds, s'il vous plait." and the guy working there says "pardon" or something like that. And I repeat myself. He responds "Ahhh, vin (vehn) chaud"  with a laugh -- in the most snotty way possible. Dude! The only thing you are selling is vin chaud! It's not that hard to figure out what I want! This would have been sort of annoying, but okay, whatever but of course that wasn't the end. He turns to his coworkers and is all (in french) "She ordered a "vahn" chaud-- hahahahaha" and they all laugh and repeat it. Seriously. And I was standing RIGHT THERE and I could hear and understand everything. I get it, hahaha, I ordered a hot wind. Very funny. But it's generally considered to laugh at people you don't know to there face. I mean, if I were working at a popcorn stand or something and a french person came up and ordered what sounded like a "poopcorn" or something, I wouldn't laugh at them to their face. 

And to add injury to insult (see what I did there?), the vin chaud (which I will henceforth refer to as Gluehwein because that's easy to say "glue-vine" and nobody ever talks about mulled wine in America.) was awful. Usually, it's like ambrosia or something: delicious, warming, and amazing. But this gluehwein was just -- bad. It was a tragedy. 

As we walked away from the market, a choir preformed in front of the Cathedral. They sung some carols in English, but I don't think they spoke English. A) they had terrible accents and B) I'm 99% sure they unknowingly blended two songs together. 

So that was Laon. Though it did end well, with a delicious american meal.

Skopje

Skopje (pronounced scop-yeh) was by far the most interesting city we visited during October break which came as quite a surprise because neither of us knew that much about it coming in. To be honest, we visited Skopje because there was a cheap flight from there to Saint Louis. And had we visited only a couple of years earlier, it would have been a completely different experience.
This town, the capital of Macedonia, is currently undergoing a massive face lift in a project called Skopje 2014 which aims to give the city a more classical, monumental, and generally pleasing look by 2014. 80% of Skopje was destroyed in an earthquake in 1963 and the buildings where initially replaced then -- today, they hope to rebuild some of the buildings as they were before. The government has spent an estimated 80 to 500 million euros on this project. And not everyone is pleased, in a country with high unemployment and many social problems, the beautification of the capital seems wasteful.
We arrived in the early afternoon after a long bus ride (and a super long border crossing, of course). As we exited we were hounded by a taxi driver who wouldn't take "no" for an answer (our hostel was super close to the bus station begin with). One of the things we discovered in Eastern Europe is that saying "taxi" near taxi drivers is like announcing you need a ride. For example, you can say "we don't need to take a taxi" and 5 taxi drivers will emerge and say "taxi? taxi?".
Our hostel was pretty tiny, with only two rooms, a cozy living room, and tiny kitchen (and only one bathroom). But it had three puppies! They also had the mother, but I think she had been rescued from the streets and therefore was a bit skittish bout people.

Note: Australian girl on the third year of  her decade abroad. (We met a ridiculous number of Australians on ridiculously long trips on this trip. Do people not have to work in Australia? Or what?) 

Puppies!

That evening we didn't do much, because we were exhausted. However, we did take night stroll. 

Admittedly,  the new buildings look pretty cool all lit up at night. 

The architecture is mostly neoclassical which is a style I usually hate because everyone did it death in the 19th century. However, I've never seen 21st century neoclassical and I found it quite interesting.

One of the things we noticed is that they seem to want to steal the monuments of other  European cities. For example, there is a bridge much like this in Prague.

Walking around the city, I was reminded of a book that I read at the beginning of my time in France called The Devil in the White City. This book is the novelization of the building of the Chicago world fair and how that intermingled with the story of serial killer that lived in that area during that time. Skopje recalled the "white city" to me. Everyone who see the buildings of the world's fair spring up and everyone who visits it experiences it as magical. It was fascinating to see the national monuments of a country under construction. Sure, it might all fall to disrepair, and it might be a waste of money -- but it's interesting to think that these buildings could become the symbols of Macedonia in the future. Every country has build it's national buildings at some point.

They had gone completely sculpture mad... 

Particularly they like to invoke a supposedly glorious Macedonian past (particularly they like to claim Alexander the Great). This Justinian II, I think...

We spent the morning and early afternoon seeing the new monuments they have erected. These are only a fraction of them! And they are no where near finished, there is construction everywhere.

Personally, I think these benches are the greatest symbol of government waste in Skopje.  I mean, what is their purpose? There is no way you could have a performance in this Rotunda thingy. 

This is the original train station, in ruins after the earthquake. 

During the afternoon, we walked over the bridge to the old town of Skopje, which was much less epic in scale. We had burek (a greasy, delicious pastry stuffed with beef (or other things)) and cevapi (cheh-va-pee  -- type of sausage wrapped in delicious bread with onions) both Turkish/Balkan specialties for lunch. While  we ate the burek, we were stared at by a small gypsy boy, who wouldn't take our refuse to make eye contact as a refusal. It was awkward, and also sad. But giving money wouldn't help him, he surely is being used by someone to guilt people into giving money. 

After we ate, we walked up to the old fortress, but it was closed. That night we went to a Mexican food restaurant called Amigos, that was actually pretty good but played horrible music. 

The next morning we did a little more site seeing and searched for post office to send our post cards before leaving to come back to Saint Louis...

This is where the post office was. It really makes you understand the desire to tear down everything that they rebuilt in 1963.

One more gratuitous puppy picture. The puppies didn't have names, so we named them. From left to right: Boris, Constantine, and Alexander the Great. 

Stay tuned for winter break posts, which will hopefully be more timely than this one. :)

Sofia

From Veliko we took a bus to Sofia and arrived in the early afternoon. We arrived to find that a lot of work had been done on the train station since we had last been there and this work was still in motion. As we walked back to the hostel, we reminisced about our last trip to Sofia and wondered what would have changed and what would stay the same.
We stayed at the same hostel: Hostel Mostel, but in a different part of it and it was a completely different experience. Additionally, we were both still getting over our cold so we couldn't experience it the same. Of course, nothing's the same the second time around but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. You can't recreate the past.
Like us, the city has changed a lot in the past two years - it's more modern and wealthy and there is a hint of grungy hipsterness that I'm sure the college students of the coming years will love. For example, they had a bar that was an apartment that was set up like an apartment with different rooms and couches and tables, and even a kitchen. Kind of cool, but also kind of awkward. Where do you order the drinks? We didn't stay.
The first night, we did a little walk around the close parts of the city and then relaxed. The next morning, we did the tour of the main attractions.

Some things had changed quite a bit...

and some things not at all...

We had planned to spend our second and last night in Sofia going out after cooking for ourselves at the hostel (chicken nuggets, couscous, and peas)... but in fact, we only went to one bar (which had pretty gross beer, to be honest) and then we went home, because I guess we're old.
And that was Sofia -- finished again in a flash.