Germany

I'm a rail nerd, which is not surprising news to many of you reading this. At uni, I wrote my thesis about trains, and I've spent an alarming amount of my quiet time in recent years thinking of things like: where would you put a monorail in Melbourne? and wouldn't it be cool if there was a high-speed train between Melbourne and Sydney that took 3 hours one-way? You know, that sort of stuff.

European trains haven't helped diminish this affliction. Our first high-speed, highly efficient, highly-catered, highly-comfortable trip was from Zurich to Munich, then after a few days there we went to Berlin, then later, from Berlin to Paris. It all cost a bomb, but as someone who paid to see Bon Jovi from the front row would say, it was worth it.

Our Munich adventure involved a lot of wurst and potatoes done in several ways. The first white asparagus of the season was on sale almost everywhere and I had some of that too, in a soup. And roast pork with potato dumplings. And apple strudel. Oh yes, and beers.

That was all great, but not as great as what we saw when the weather turned sunny on the Sunday afternoon we were there. We thought: nice day, big park, why don't we enjoy these two things? So did much of Munich. Including the middle-aged nudists. One of whom strutted on the gravel walkway for close to an hour making noises with his todger by slapping it against his thighs. I don't have any photos, only painful memories.

There are some visually appealing things in Munich though, like this building that I forget the name of. It was in the complex that King Ludwig's mob called home for a while:


Shortly thereafter, we went to Berlin. On the first day, we took a free tour of the city that went for four hours, was fascinatingly and entertainingly done by a very funny guy from Liverpool or Birmingham or somewhere, and ended up costing us quite a few euros in guilty tips.

We also saw that "cupola" on top of the Bundestag. You are supposed to be able to see down into the chambers of parliament from the top - you know, democracy and transparency and all that. But you can't, which made me think that Norman Foster was being a smart-arse.


Obviously, it's not all fun-filled sight-seeing in Berlin. We went to the holocaust memorial; most people walking through the rooms, looking at the exhibits and listening to the stories, were either in tears or near to it, myself included.

We stayed in the former East Berlin, among many potent built reminders that the book of Communist architectural glory is very thin indeed. Look at this as an example of how to perfectly complement a charming cityscape:


What is that concrete dildo doing in the background?