Saturday, August 25, 2012

Germany

I went to Germany this summer with my Aunt Linda to visit my German cousins.  We had an amazing time visiting Hamburg and Berlin.  The company was fantastic too :)



This is the post office in Hamburg.  No big deal.



This was our breakfast spread just about every morning in Hamburg.



We went to a beach bar in Hamburg, and Martin went to buy drinks.  He came back with the biggest pretzels known to man and orange beer!



Antoneta stuck with regular beer.



The whole gang!



Martin and his mom :)



Chatting up a storm



These buildings belong to anarchists or something.  The police tried to evict them in the 80's, and they threw stuff down on them, so the police left them there.  Still haven't gotten evicted, thirty years later!



I totally thought this was a real guy for a minute.  It's a statue.



Turned out Hamburg Harley Days was going on when we were in town, so Martin, Linda and I went to check out the cycles down at the Raperbahn (which is also Hamburg's red-light district).



Cool wall art



And sex shops



And table dances too!



This guy was riding the smallest motorcycle known to man!



The streets were packed



Artistic shot :)



We then went to Berlin, where we went to see the Wall.



It's surreal and quite crazy to think that this separated two parts of Berlin



Martin



The graffiti was really cool



This is a picture of a picture, but I thought the saying was spot on.  "We have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in."



This was an artistic interpretation of the Wall and its effects.  You have to look through slits to see the work.



This was a view through the slits.



Lunch time beer!



I bought a dress in a box!  Still haven't opened it, I'm waiting for necessary moment.



This church was originally built around the 1700s (I think) but was destroyed during WWII.  It was completely rebuilt in the 80s.



This is a mosaic, not a mural.  How cool is that?



Antoneta's sister invited us to a dinner at the restaurant she works at.  The food was fantastic, the company delightful, and wine aplenty.



Martin got creative with my camera.



Creative Martin



This was the restaurant.  The light on the left side is a bicyclist flying by.



Wonderful ambiance



And just a cool pic!



Martin's backyard in Berlin.  So cute and really close to downtown!



One last beer before I took the night train to Switzerland!


Switzerland

When I arrived in Switzerland to visit my friend Tamara, her sister came to collect me at the subway station and took me around the town of Lausanne.  It was beautiful, and so much like what I expected Switzerland to look like.  We then went to Montreux, where Tamara was working and I walked alongside Lake Geneva for a few hours.  It was so peaceful and there were mountains everywhere.  If it weren't so expensive, I might consider leaving there!


The castle I walked to (it was closed when I arrived)



I made it!



There was a beautiful path along Lake Geneva through the whole town.



I took a boat ride from Lausanne to Geneva (and got terribly sunburn).  I decided to just walk around the city and take it in.  I turned a corner, and this was what I saw!



I went to an archeological site underneath the church in the center of Geneva.  Turns out, the church was a progression over the last 800 years, and the original structure was a burial site for an Aborgian chief, whose bones are still there.  So basically, these bones are the center of Geneva.  Pretty cool, huh?!



The university park and huge games of chess.



And these guys were just randomly placed by the train station.



All over Switzerland, and France too, were these pianos.  They say, "Play, I am yours."  Very cool.



I spent another day in Gruyères, sampling cheese and taking in the sites.



Not a crisp picture, but I went to a Tibetan Museum that was in an old church.  It was a wonderfully juxtaposed space.



Offerings



A view from the top



This was my view from lunch



This was my view of lunch



And this was the restaurant where I ate lunch.  Cute, huh?



Of course, there were cowbells going off everywhere.  Such a quaint little town.