Dublin, Ireland

We took a Ryan air flight from a tiny airport outside Munich (thanks for the ride Tobi!) to Dublin and arrived in Ireland around 6pm. We gathered our luggage and hopped on a bus downtown to meet up with our couchsurfers. We met in front of the giant spire (apparently the worlds tallest sculpture) in the middle of town and then went out for a nice dinner together (where I had to enjoy a Guinness, of course). We were exhausted from the day of traveling so we went back to the apartment and got to bed after a long chat with our hosts.


The Spire


Our Gracious Couchsurfing Hosts

The next morning our hosts left for class, so Amy and I headed downtown to catch a free walking tour. These free walking tours are awesome. Not only are they around 3 hours long and extremely infomative, but because they are tip based, they are about 4 times cheaper than the standard tours.

The tour left near Dublin Castle, which was built in 1204 by the British and stood as their headquarters during the period of Irish occupation.



Dublin gets its name from an old harbor that is now a grassy park. The harbor water was very dark, and was given the Gaelic name Dubh Lin (pronounce dove lin) meaning "black pool". The name was eventually anglo-sized to Dublin.


The grassy area behind the castle which use to be the Dublin harbor. The brick paths represent the eels that used to be in the water, but they also show a celtic design from the air.  This also happens to be the helicopter landing pad for when important people visit Dublin.

On the backside stands a tower that is one of the oldest structures in Dublin. The tower use to be a dungeon in the ol' days and only one person ever escaped. The story goes that an Irish man (who was a high ranking rebellion member) was walking along the river when he came upon a group of English soldiers unloading wine. The Irish man asked if he could buy some of the wine. The English said that the wine was meant for the king but that the Irish man could come aboard their ship and have some drinks with them. The Irish man kindly accepted, indulged in the wine, and found himself awake with a terrible hangover in the dungeon. Apparently the English had been kidnapping important members of the rebellion recently to be used as political bargaining chips. The man sat in prison for sometime when some fellow clan members decided to bust him out. They dressed up as British soldiers, snuck into the dungeon, freed the prisoner, and made their way down to the basement of the dungeon. The dungeon was heavily guarded above which prevented their escape via the standard route. Their plan was to dig down, once in the basement, until they reached an underground river that was known to run from below the dungeon to an outlet far from the reaches of the British. So they dug their way out to freedom.


The tower walls were 4 meters thick!

Our next stop was the Christ Church Cathedral. This church was a beautiful gothic structure built in 1030 and is suppose to house one of the largest crypts in Europe.



After a rant from our very knowledgable, but perhaps overly political Irish tour guide we headed over to Trinity college. The campus was beautiful, although small, and houses the library used in a Harry Potter movie and in Star Wars Episode II (the jedi library).



Our tour ended in Merrion Square with another political rant from our guide. We then headed back to the national museum to look at the bog bodies (bodies found in the Irish bogs that are extremely well preserved and date back at least 1000 years). Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures.

After our gruesome detour we wandered past St. Patricks cathedral and popped our heads into a few very expensive antique shops.


St. Patrick's Cathedral and grounds.

The next morning we had a bit of time to explore the city before catching our bus so we headed to the Kilmainham Gaol (pronounced Jail) prison. There we haggled with the ticket holder for a student priced ticket (saved 8 euro) and toured the prison. The place was eerie and housed children, women, men, and political prisoners who committed crimes ranging from stealing food to murder. By the way, the punishment for an 8 year old boy stealing a loaf of bread was six weeks in jail with daily whippings. Not a very nice place.


View looking into a cell from the cell door porthole.


One of the cell doors with an all seeing eye (peep hole).


The main prison atrium. The prison was designed to give the illusion that one was being watched at all times. The guards above could see everything happening below but the prisoners could not see the guards. (Oh hey photo kids look at the panopticon, thanks GFR)

The prison was our final tourist sight. We headed back to say goodbye to our hosts and collect our things and caught our bus to our next workaway in the Metropolis that is Lorrha!

Finally! Oktoberfest!

Amy and I, accompanied by three of our german friends (Tobi and Jacob and a friend of Jacobs), hit the Oktoberfest festival around noon. The place was already full of people and surprisingly there were a lot of families with their children (Oktoberfest seems more like a state fair outside of the tents with rides and food stands). One thing that a lot of people don't know as that Oktoberfest is a celebration of King Ludwig IIs marriage in 1810.





We made our first stop at a food tent for their 8 euro snitzel, potato, and beer special. It was so good and gave us a nice base for the drinking that we would be doing for the remainder of the day.


Kurtis and Tobi at lunch!

Yum!

Beer number 1!

Amy tripped on her way out of lunch. ouch!

Topped off with pork and potatoes we went to the Lowenbrau Tent. The tents are designed with a big stage in the middle where the band plays. All around the stage in the middle of the tent are big wooden tables that can seat up to 16. The perimeter has reserved boxes, the kitchen, and the bathrooms. We easily got a seat (it was 1 pm on a Tuesday) and had a mas (what Germans call a 1 liter beer). They run around 9 euro each but you figure you're paying more for the atmosphere then the beer. After hanging out for a bit (and after Amy stuffed a liter mug in her purse) we left the festival to go grab a coffee and to swing by Jacobs place (we had to pace ourselves of course).






First official mass at Oktoberfest!

Caffienated and a little sobered up we headed back. We were greeted at the entrance to the festival with a taste of what the night would offer; a man in lederhosen passed out in the grass. Unfortunately Amy and I didn't get the traditional garb (lederhosen are close to 200 euro for the full get up and Amy wasn't going to dress up if I wasn't).

We stopped in to the Paulaner tent and were unsuccessful in finding a table. We huddled near the end of one and drank another mas before deciding to head back to the Lowenbrau tent.


Hey Selena Gomez, what are you doing at Oktoberfest?

There we grabbed a seat with a man from Nimibia (spoke perfect english and german) and his german wife. With good company and a good table we started indulging in the beer and pretzels.




This describes the rest of the night pretty accurately.

and this.

and more of this!

Eventually, as expected, we were dancing on the tables with the rest of the tent and singing american oldies, thats right, the band played nothing but american oldies and germans, americans, italians, and every other nationality in the tent (regardless of whether or not they spoke english) knew and sang the words. It was a pretty shocking surprise.


It looked so good at night!


Closing time came and we shuffled out into the streets. Amy managed to get another mug and a hat while the boys and I grabbed some leberkase sandwhiches (its like a fried spam sandwhich). We made our way back to Tobi's to rest up before our flight to Ireland.

München (Munich to all of you english speakers!)

We woke up early on Monday morning so that we could catch the train into Munich and spend the day in the city. Just based on the amount of people on the 9am train we knew the city was going to be packed. After about a 1 hour ride, we got into the train station, luckily there were still a few lockers available so we stashed our stuff and headed out to catch another FREE walking tour (love these!) The tour met at 10:45 and the guides had just enough time to tell the 60+ people waiting about the world famous Glockenspiel. Our guide told us about how almost all of the bells are out of tune, but that no one in the city of Munich cares because it is something only for the tourists. Honestly, it was kind of underwhelming and we both liked the astronomical clock in Prague much better!


The carillon (glockenspiel), not actually a very old building, just built to look old.


Munich was a main headquarters for the Nazi party and as such, most of the city was bombed by the Allies. Everything in the city was carefully recorded and photographed by the Nazis before the war so that every detail could be rebuilt. However, in the re-building process, some corners were cut to save money and so there are many details that are simply painted onto the facades of buildings.


St. Peters church: They only rebuilt one of the two original towers and then just painted the clock faces on.

The maypole in Viktualienmarkt (a big market in the city). If you steal someone else's maypole, they have to pay a ransom... In beer! Our guide told us a funny story about the Munich Police department stealing the maypole from the Munich airport, the airport then had to throw a huge party for the police force.


The 6 main beers in Munich: Augustinerbrau, Hofbrau, Lowenbrau, Paulanerbrau, Hacker-Pschorr Brau and Spatenbrau. All of which have huge tents at Oktoberfest and of course all of which have been tried by us! The yellow and black symbol in the middle is representative of Germany's pure beer laws.


We got to visit the famous Hofbrauhaus.

Huge beer halls

Practicing carrying the heavy 1 liter mas mugs.

Live bands in every beer hall/tent.

The church the devil made (rumored to have been made with the help of the devil because it was built in only 20 years, in actuality is was built so quickly because it used local, easy to use building materials.

The devils footprint inside the church (actually the architect's footprint).

Weird shrine to MJ all over an old statue.

Painted on facades on the Residenz building.


When we finished up our tour we got word from our host for the night that he was home so we headed out towards his house. We were greeted by friends and beer (of course) and Tobi (our host) took us out for the night.

The Isar river that runs through Munich. We sat by the banks and had a drink.

Kurtis with a Weisbeir, Amy with a Radler.

Second bar of the night with Tobi, not nice Kurtis.

We didn't stay out too late because we needed to be fully rested for Oktoberfest in the morning! We could tell already that we were in for a great day.

Bamberg!

Earlier in the week we visited another small city that is known for its beauty, Bamberg. To get to Bamberg we had to first go into Schweinfurt and then catch a train. In the Bavarian region of Germany (where we are) they have a train ticket known as the Bayern-Ticket (Bavarian ticket) which is good for up to five people to use for unlimited train and bus rides for the day. This ticket costs 29€, which may seem like a lot, but transit is SO expensive here that it is actually a pretty good deal. Upon arriving in Bamberg we headed straight to the tourism office which is located on an island in the middle of the Regnitz river. On the way, we got a little bit distracted by some playground equipment that would surely be illegal in the US.


Amy trying out the Zipline type toy.

At lunch we had our first experience with a true language barrier and the waitress was very rude and short with us, I guess if it only happens once every two weeks, we are doing ok. After lunch we began our walking tour of Bamberg.


The city has two rivers cutting through it.


The Altes Rathaus (Obere Brüke), the old town hall, rebuilt after a fire in 1440, but then later re-designed in Rococo style in 1744.


They always seem to put the castles and churches on the top of a hill for us to climb.




Fresh fruits and veggies from the area in a market.

Area known as "Little Venice", later in our trip we will know if it is actually anything like this in Venice.

The Dom, the Old Court and the New Residence were all up on the hill, unfortunately, cars were allowed to drive through the area, which made it impossible to imagine you were in a medieval city. The Dom was started in 1007, but not finished until 1237.

The rose garden.

Not a bad veiw from the terrace garden!

Monestary on the hill converted into an old folks home. Not a bad location eh, Grandpa?

And of course, we had to try the thing that Bamberg is known for: Rauchbier. It literally means Smoked Beer. Kurtis said yum, tastes like bacon and Amy said gross, tastes like bacon.