As promised, here's our follow-up post, including the climactic conclusion of our holiday in Berlin! Bear with me, it's a long one. However, if you make it through all the pretty pictures and storied adventure, you'll find yourself treated to two videos!
On New Year's Eve, after sleeping off our Prague voyage, we enjoyed the premium (they charged us an entrance fee!) Christmas market in the Gendarmenmarkt- "Berlin's Most Beautiful Square", consisting of two matching cathedrals intersected by the Concert Hall. Check out the flickr pics!
In between New Year's Eve and New Year's Day...let's just say champagne can sometimes get in the way of remembering to take pictures. Mary, Emily, Sam, and I did find our way to the largest New Year's Eve party in the world, just outside of Berlin's famous Brandenburg Gate. Rather, we got as close as we could; there were so many people present that it wasn't possible to situate ourselves any place near the actual gate. The next day, aside from it being New Year's Day, it was Sunday, and on Sunday it is mandated by German law that no shops may be open (so we couldn't go to the grocery store...). So, instead of shopping, we went downtown to the Sony Center and saw the latest Mission Impossible. We may have been in Europe, but we'll never forget where we came from. That was our last night with Emily & Sam. The next morning, Mary and I made our fond farewell and made good use of the rest our day. We began with a tour of the New Wing of Charlottenburg Palace in West Berlin. I was feeling cheap and decided not to buy the photo pass. It was a fantastic way to spend the morning, but if anyone wants to see pictures, they'll either have to go there or enjoy the outside views in our flickr pics.
If there was any climactic conclusion to our time spent in Berlin, KaDeWe creates a considerable case to constitute that climax. What is KaDeWe? I thought you'd never ask! Imagine a shopping mall (not your average Pass Pets/GameStop shopping mall, but one of those ritzy malls- where they sell Lamborghinis), but only this mall isn't just full of designer clothing; oh no! Within this high-end shopping center lies Earth's finest bastion of decadence- a seemingly endless labyrinth of food. Here it is possible to find entire halls dedicated to cakes, chocolate, and sausage. When I say cakes, I'm describing the sort of confections guaranteed to cause gastronomical giggles in the guts of the greatest gourmands.
Went to the Berlin Zoo! I hope everyone checked-out the video at the beginning of the blog and saw some of the animals in action. We were given a royal welcome from the King of the Jungle himself- a lion was roaring, high on a rock, as we entered through the front gates. You can imagine what's in a zoo, leave the rest to the flickr pics.
I said goodbye to all of the animals, and then Mary and I boarded our flight and bounded north to Copenhagen! Here, we are again involved in a workaway. This isn't exactly a holiday, but it's not manual labor, either! We've been helping a Danish businessman with marketing! Some of it has genuinely been a lot of fun, but, now that I think about it, most of our workaways turn out that way.
We just finished up an advertisement concerning our marketing project, check it out (watch in HD)!
Rosenborg Castle was our first stop in Copenhagen; we sort of stumbled across it, not knowing how magnificent it would be on the inside! Again, I was too cheap for the photo pass, but this castle alone is a perfect reason to make a stop in Copenhagen during your next Euro-trip. Within the castle, aside from the numerous silver cuckoo clocks, one may visit the Danish throne room. This is pretty much the best throne room I've ever seen; there's a throne made of narwhal tusks and three good-sized silver lions (such lions have been associated with Scandinavia since the viking era).
In America, we have the Statue of Liberty. In Copenhagen, they have the Little Mermaid. We paid our respects, but it was getting cold- this far north, it is dark by 3:30 in the afternoon.
Our host had a business venture (long ago) whose aim was to sell these wooden frogs from Thailand, but that's a story for another day.
This is how Mary's tall, Nordic ancestors would've looked sailing their longships to harry the coasts of Great Britain. A couple days ago we visited the charming Danish town of Roskilde, which features an awesome Viking Ship Museum. It was built around the discovery of five well-preserved viking ships which were scuttled here and chronicles the battle resulting in their demise. For more on our trip to Roskilde, click through our flickr pics.
I'll end this mega-post with an old viking proverb, wherein lies the key to a happy life:
Be not over-wary, but wary enough,
First, of the foaming ale,
Second, of a woman wed to another,
Third, of the tricks of thieves.
-Jake
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