Time for a Vacation

A few people have made comments about me taking a 'vacation' seeing as though I'm not currently employed, but hey, it is what it is. It's tough work living in Moscow and trying to accomplish even the most basic of tasks on a day-to-day basis. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

So Olga and I decided to 'get away' (that better Dion?). We hit Berlin, Prague and Munich over the course of 9 days and had a very nice time. Although I have to admit that we walked quite a bit even for us and we walk just about everywhere given that we haven't owned a car since we've known each other.

In short, Berlin was OK, but didn't really have that 'German' feel to it. Maybewe just had the wrong expectations. Don't get us wrong, the city is interesting it just wasn't quite what we expected.

Add to that the fact that I suffered a REALLY bad day picking sites on the day that we trekked about 10 miles. Seriously, I went 0-for-3. First, I decided it would be interesting to see another gate, as I thought it would be similar to the Brandenburger Tor, which was really neat. So that is not the case and it turned out that we wandered down a road with Soviet-style housing for more than a mile and the 'Tor' was just nothing special. Strike one. On to a park where we walk up a not insignificant hill that shows a bunker at the top. We get to the top and what do we find? Certainly not what I would consider a bunker. We found a group of 'young adults' enjoying some beverages and chatting. Nice, not even a good view of the city. Olga is less than amused at this point, but hey, we're just looking for interesting sites. Strike two. Later that evening I convince Olga that we need to see Checkpoint Charlie, as it holds such historical significance. We get to the site and what do we find? Again, not what I expected. Checkpoint Charlie is now a metal post in the ground that plays a recorded statement about why this site is important. Strike three...and I'm still hearing about that one.

Prague was much more interesting from a site perspective, but I almost gave up on it the first night. I was caught off guard by how many tourists were there and it took me a bit to get past that. The sites are amazing though and the history is quite rich. We were also a bit surprised at the fact that Prague still has a Soviet-era feel to it.

Munich was amazing. The city has the architecture, the culture and the food of Bavaria all of which we enjoyed immensely.

I'm having some technical difficulty right now and am not able to post pics, but will do so soon.