Paris to Berlin

Well, I’ve fallen behind on this a bit. We have internet issues, so pictures are on their way slowly. We got to Berlin this morning around 8:00 after an interesting train ride. There’s more on that to come, but first I’ll cover the rest of our time in Paris.

First of all, Rebecca could train Olympic atheletes with the way she runs around. She has earned two nicknames: track star and speed bump. She is either sprinting around or making sudden stops. She takes the stairs when an escalator is an option. Ridiculous. Anyway, we'll get down to business.

I wrote this on our first full day in Paris, June 6.

Today I got up and started typing some of this, but the hotel keyboard is different on the left side so it took FOREVER. Had an awesome breakfast in the hotel. Croissants rock socks. We started our photography tour with Barbara (an American journalist/photographer/awesome lady living in Paris) at 9:00. She was awesome. She showed us the neighborhood called Mont Martre. Is is where the movie Amelie was set. Very artsy, very beautiful. The church where the Jesuits were started is there, as is the Basilica of the Sacred Heart (where there were singing nuns, pre-Whoopie)


We learned how to use the metro from Barbara. As our train approached, she said, “OK, now find a seat and I don’t mean a man.” Hilarious. High five to Amanda for spreading her terminology overseas. We then got some coffee, said bye bye to Barb, and headed to the Arc de Triumph (which is an arch no matter which side you look at it…also see video “No More Help”). Also, we realized that the French (and Rebecca) love stairs and that when I am elected president of France, I will implement a strict elevator/escalator policy.


We then walked to the Louvre (got in free…woohoo student discount!), hitting the Jardin de Tuillieres along the way. Just before that, we passed the American Embassy, which may not be photographed, as I was yelled at by Secret Service as I attempted to do so. The gardens were great. Square trees, fountains, but no kids playing with boats so we still have to find that.

June 7, 2008

We went to Versailles this day. It was about a 40 min metro ride out to it. That place is crazy. Gold everywhere. Louis XIV knew how to do it. The palace was just room after room of incredible paintings along the ways and the ceilings. The hall of mirrors would go nicely in a sorority dorm, and the gardens were far beyond big and incredible (see Videos from Versailles).
After getting a sandwich in the garden café (p.s. all French sandwiches are simple and amazing…cheese and bread never tasted so good), we wander the gardens so more. At this point, I’m certain my feet will fall off, but Rebecca and Melissa want to walk the mile and a half to Marie Antoinette’s place, so Mary and I shuffle ourselves out there. It’s a big mansion made of pink marble. Some couples were having their wedding pictures done while we were there. How cool would that be? Anyway, it turns out that the pink marble place wasn’t her real place, so we walked about 500 miles to another house on her estate (which was shown in the Marie Antoinette movie). This looked more like a normal place and that someone actually could have lived there, instead of enjoying the Versaille lifestyle of being woken at 8:00, dressed at 8:15, and visited in your bedroom all day.

After completing the Cribs version of Marie Antoinette, Mary and I insist on taking the petit train back to Versailles as our feet are exploding in pain. Our other options were renting a golf cart or segways, but I figured both (well certainly the latter) were too complicated. We heart the petit train.

After making it back to Paris, we go check out the Eiffel Tower. But the weather wasn’t looking too hot, so we decided not to climb up a giant metal building and to just take some pictures and try again another day. After the treck to the Eiffel, I am convinced I will never walk again as blisters have taken over my feet and I am considering amputation. Which brings us to my quote on the metro:

5:05 PM
I’m going to put Rebecca in a tiny box and mail her somewhere very far away and boring so she has to walk back. In heels. Twice. I love the petit train. They are telling me an ice cream lie. The Eiffel Tower is brown.

June 8, 2008

Melissa and I are appreciating the beauty of the bench of the Musee d’Orsay and arguing about which statue is better. I say mine because of his hair, goatee, big forehead, and moldy body. She says hers because it expresses sorrow, is green (with envy), and has saggy skin. I declare myself the winner.

We went to the Eiffel Tower today and it was pretty awesome. Everyone has seen pictures of it, but seeing it in person is amazing. We got there, hopped in line, and realized that it said the top level was temporarily closed and you could only go up to the 2nd level. This seemed like a major bummer since the 2nd level is wayyyyyyyy lower than the top. But we waited about an hour in line and just before we went up to get tickets, they re-opened the top level! WOOOO!!! So we cram on this little elevator (Rebecca wanted to take the stairs and I told her that her box just got a little smaller) and up up up we go! They stop at the 2nd level so you can look around and buy things at the gift shop. Then we got in the line to go to the top, and about 45 mins later we were up there enjoying a great view of the city! I don’t remember how tall it is, but we’ll just say it is way darn up there.

June 10, 2008 12:10 PM

We are being Parisian and floating down the Seine on our last day in Paris. The last two days have been more chill that the first few. We found and fell in love with a restaurant called Les Deux Magots (apparently Hemingway used to frequent it). We went there twice in one day and are headed back for lunch today and hopefully a t-shirt from the gift shop. Who doesn’t want a 2 magots shirt?

We tried to go to St. Chapelle again and it was closed. I think it’s fake, but Melissa owes me a Euro. We hear it is more beautiful inside than Notre Dame, however we never seem to be there when it’s open. Oh well, the outside is nice.

Yesterday, we visited Napoleon’s Tomb, and he did it up right. There was tons of armor and cannons all over the place, so I’m thinking of decorating my room in that motif. I am convinced that one cannot get ratatouille in this city. But, I am very well acquainted with bread, cheese, and wine. If we weren’t walking 400 miles a day, I would come home weighing in around a metric ton. After Napoleon’s Tomb, we went (on the metro, our fav) to the Catacombs, but they were closed. Then we tried to tour the opera house to visit the phantom, but that wasn’t until late and was only in French. So, yesterday’s theme was attempting to find ghosts and riding the metro. Speaking of ghosts, Rebecca got a couple pictures of ghost blobs at Napoleon’s tomb like we ones we got in Savannah. Creepy. Yikes, we just floated by some guy sunning himself in an itsy bitsy teeny weeny white polka dot bikini bottom. Europeans definitely have a different way of life.

June 11, 2008 10:31 AM

Yesterday was quite a day. The boat ride was a great way to see the sights one last time. We stopped at the “best ice cream place” according to the tour book and it was delicious. Hotel de Ville was a mysterious old building with no clear purpose. We then had lunch at Les Deux Magots, but alas they did not have t-shirts. So, we headed to the Latin Quarter (where a lot of Greek restaurants are, ironically) to go souvenir shopping. After that, we loaded up on sandwiches, snacks, and wine for the 11 hour train ride to Berlin. It was then that the fun started.

We had to get our luggage (all 700 lbs of it) to the metro and then to the Eurail station. Timeout. Mary just came out of the bathroom after screaming and said she slapped herself in the face with her own bra. Time in. So as we roll our suitcases out the hotel, Rebecca turns and says, “Watch out for the hole” and points to the construction on the sidewalk just outside the door. Her suitcase hears this and attempts a nose dive into the pit. She saved it, but it was pretty amazing that we had a near miss just walking out of the door. We made it to the metro station without incident, drug our stuff down the stairs (causing what sounded like machine gun fire), and Rebecca go stuck in the entrance gate. We had to wait for the lady behind her to pay so the door would re-open. Pretty amazing so far. Then we see a train pull in just as we are approaching it, so we decide to go for it and leap on before the door shuts. We consider this a huge accomplishment.
After making it to the train station (2 hrs early) and not being able to figure out too much (how to reserve our next train ride, what to do with bags, etc), Mary and I fall asleep on the ground with our bags like homeless people. Napping turned out to be a good idea since we were not able to get a sleeper car for the trip. That’s right, we had 11 hours of sitting in no air conditioning ahead of us. I should have known how the train ride would be when a pigeon pooped on me just as I woke up from my nap on the floor. Score.

Eventually the train came, we tag teamed throwing our luggage into the car and found our tiny room, which we shared with 3 college aged sisters from ATL, so that was a relief! They go to see us at our best when Rebecca and I loaded the luggage onto the shelf above our heads. Let’s talk about no strength left and I’m the only one who can reach the shelf, and we shove Mary’s bag on its side and pray it doesn’t fly off to kill the ATL girls. We then get settled, get our sandwiches out and start chatting. The girls were nice and said that they were just passing through Berlin to catch another train to Munich. That would be two 12 hour train rides back to back. Shoot me in the face. So after we finished our sandwiches, the ATL girls took some Nyquil or something and went to sleep, so we went to the dining car to play cards (Phase 10, which Reba won of course!) On our way to the dining car, Rebecca found some “dirt” on the back of my shirt that I claimed was in no way related to the bird poop. After this, we get tired and decide it’s bed time. Mary heads to our seats, returns and tells us that ATL girls have taken over and there is no room for us. So we all curl up on the dining room car floor with the blankets we stole from the airplane. I fall asleep for a bit but then woke up nearly frozen to death, so I get up, see Rebecca sleeping on several chairs, and head back to my seat, where I find Mary has done the same thing. Now I know I can pretty much fall asleep anywhere, but sleeping at a 90 degree angle with feet everywhere in the cold just didn’t work. I soon see Rebecca sitting in the hallway outside the room. We were in hell.

Finally, the rooster crows (literally) and we approach the train station. Or so we thought. Apparently there are 4 train stations in Berlin and we had to pick the right one. So after a few minutes of fatigued map searching, we just say we’re going with the last one so we don’t have to move as fast. The ATL girls get off at the stop just before us, which we were thankful for because we didn’t want them to witness us trying to get our luggage off the train.

We wander off the train in a delirious state and go to the taxi stand, where we are greeted by the least enthusiastic taxi drivers in the world. There were tons of them lined up and we had to go knock on the window, interrupting the driver’s telephone conversation, to get her to take us to the hotel. Well when I say “we” I mean Mary and I sent Rebecca. We get to the hotel and it looks pretty scary in the front, so I’m internally panicking. Berlin isn’t as cutesy as Paris, by far. Anyway, we again send Rebecca in to get our room and 20 mins later she returns with wireless internet access, breakfast tokens, and room keys! It was amazing to be able to check in at 8:00 am.

The inside of the hotel is pretty cool. It’s like a huge dorm building, so it feels almost familiar. One side of it is a hostel our side is a hotel. Our room has 2 twin beds, a set of bunk beds, a table with 3 chairs, and a bath and a half, and a storage closet. It rocks. We unpacked a little so it almost looks like a dorm.

After what I think was the best shower of my life, we chilled for a little and then ventured out to figure out the Berlin subway system. We applied the same method that they use in Paris and it worked just fine. It was just a lot more difficult because German words are a lot harder to spell and remember, so we just had to make up our own phrases to remember where to go. Our stop is Heine, so yeah that one is obviously easy to remember.

We went to a huge department store called Ka De We, which is the abbreviation for the real name but that’s what people call it. This place has everything. We had our first experience with ordering German food in their buffet. It was pretty educational to be able to see the word and the food at the same time. I think we were all still half asleep, so we just picked out whatever. I had some soup, a salad with what seemed like a crab cake but wasn’t totally one, and a roll with olive butter. Good stuff. I wanted brats, sour kraut, or weinersnitzle, but decided to wait until I could enjoy it to get it.

After lunch, we looked around for some comfy shoes for Mary so she could survive the rest of the trip and Rebecca and I got yelled at on the toy floor for trying to take pictures of the puppets. Lame.

After KaDeWe, we walked a couple blocks to an old church that is nick named the broken tooth (since that’s what it looks like). It was bombed during WWII but most of it was preserved. During the rebuilding of Berlin, new church buildings were built on either side of it in a much more modern style. We watched some more street performers, this time they had older men with skateboards. We decided they were too old to be doing that. We then realized that we were about to fall asleep (at 4:30 PM), so we headed back home. On our way there, we realized that they number the trees on the sidewalk…every sidewalk. We didn’t make it back out that night and took a much needed long rest and geared up for the next day.

June 12, 2008

We woke up around 8:00, got some breakfast at the hotel (eggs, sausage, cereal, fruit, sandwich stuff, great coffee…good stuff), and headed back to the train station to reserve our upcoming trips. We didn’t want to get stuck without a sleeper car again. The Germans have been incredibly helpful and patient. I hate that we don’t know any more than hello, English, bratwurst, and thank you in German, but a lot of them speak some English so we are getting by.

From the train station, we took a Mercedes Smart Car cab to Gendarmenmarkt. The cab driver was trying to get us there in a hurry and was not trying to run up the fare, which was really nice. Also, here they have a traffic light that flashes before the light turns green so they know to rev their engines. Awesome. We get to our destination, which is a square with two churches (a German and a French) and a big theater. My camera battery died as soon as I turned it on this morning, so Rebecca’s blog has all the pictures, sorry!

After learning about how the French were allowed to build their church so they helped the Germans by building them a church next to it, we headed to Europe’s largest chocolate store. This place had chocolate sculptures of all kinds of things (a bear, a flowing volcano, the Titanic) and some great chocolate. With all that chocolate, I thought the Germans might have tooth problems, but then I saw a place right by the chocolate store called “White Smiles: dental care lounge”. Seemed perfect.

After getting some chocolate, we headed to the famous street you always see military parades take place on in Germany, Unden de Linges (under the limes, I think). It used to be lined with lime trees and reserved for pedestrians, but it is a pretty main drag in Berlin now. We went through the big gate and took a picture with a dude dressed like a statue. It was pretty surreal to walk under there and think about all the things that had happened there in the past.
We continued walking until we saw a doner kebabs stand on the street, and per a friend’s suggestion (thanks H. Layne!) we stopped for lunch. They were sandwiches on great bread with cheese, a flavored sauce, tomatoes, lettuce, onions, and the meat was shaved off of a big slab of it that was cooking on a rotating pillar! Amazing. After that, we were energized and ready to hit the German History Museum. 3.5 hours later, that energy had been sucked out of us by German history. They Germans like to fight. The end.

After that, I got to pick an activity, so we walked past the giant needle with the golfball on it (not really but that’s what it looks like) to see if we could make reservations but they were closed…so we proceeded to a beer garden (no it doesn’t grow on trees) for an authentic German evening of watching the football (soccer) game and having wieners and potatoes. Rebecca and Mary ordered “potato soup with a weiner” (swear to ya) and I had “two wieners, potato salad, and a salad”. Each dinner was 5 euros or less, which was much different than Paris! We then had a night cap/dessert at the oldest pub in Berlin where cool people like Napoleon and Gorbechov had been. It was a nice day, and we’ve got a doosy of a day planned for tomorrow!