My New Beer Blog.

There is way too much beer selection in this country, so in order to keep track of what I like, I decided to create a beer blog. Check it out... http://masbeerblog.blogspot.com/

Biking Around Dresden

Biking around Dresden is really nice. I see cyclists every morning going to work, to campus, or wherever. Most major streets have a designated biking path, which is really nice since you don't have worry about getting killed by a car.

A view of the Elbe river.

I biked up a hill into a really nice (and probably expensive neighbourhood).

A really nice house, with a fountain...

This intersection looks pretty cool with the cobblestone roads and the old buildings.

A view of the Elbe river from a bridge. You should be able to see a castle in the distance.

The same castle from across the river.
A pretty shady part of Dresden.
A nice bike path.
The Grosser Garten. I've been here before, but I didn't realize how big it was. The walkways are very smoothly paved. Perfect for rollerblades.
A shot of the Altstadt.

Moritzburg (Near Dresden)

Last weekend, I biked to a place called Moritzburg. It was about a 12km bike to get there. It wasn't really that strenuous of a bike ride, except for the uphill parts. I always gain a tremendous amount of respect for the Tour de France racers every time I struggle up a small hill on a bike. These pros bike up mountains!

Moritzburg was a castle used as a hunting lodge for Duke Moritz of Saxony during the mid 1500's.

The town of Moritzburg.

The hunting lodge.

These creatures must be related to Canadian Geese. They crap everywhere, and they have a similar annoying squawk.

A garden behind the castle.

The castle is actually situated in the middle of a lake. I'm not quite sure if the lake was built around the castle, or the castle built in the middle of the lake.

Berlin

This Saturday, my boss took me and 2 other coworkers to Berlin for a tour. He lived there for 5 years, so he knows Berlin quite well (well the east, since he lived there before the wall fell).

So the autobahn is one of the few places where you can fully utilize your speedometer. There are speed restrictions around the cities, but when you're on the country side, the speed limit is lifted. When you see this road sign...
You get to go as fast as you want. My boss loves to drive fast! Very fast!
If you look closely at the speedometer, it's pointing past the 220 km/h (137 mph) mark. We reached 230 km/h (143 mph) briefly a few times. That's FAST! The autobahns are designed for cars to go this fast, so it's really no problem. The Germans are also very disciplined drivers. Drivers always stay to the right, and pass to the left.

I can't say the same for Canadians and Americans. I'm pretty sure if the speed limit on the 401 was lifted, a hundred people would immediately get themselves killed.

In any case, it still took about 2 hours to get to Berlin from Dresden, despite how fast we were going. I've already been to Berlin before, and I had a blast there. The last time I was in Berlin, I did a bike tour around Berlin with a tour company called Fat Tire Bike Tours, which my friends and I thought was excellent. I was glad to see that they're doing really well there. I saw a ton of people with these fat tire bikes, getting tours. Here's a group of bikers passing me.

My boss gave us a walking tour of Berlin, which covered a lot of stuff that I've already seen.

A section of the Berlin wall still intact.

One of the ugly buildings at Alexanderplatz. On a side note, this is the place where one of the scenes in Born Supremacy was filmed. The scene where Matt Damon's character meets up with that girl that he used to work with, with a bunch of agents following her, but he manages to escape in the crowd by entering and exiting a tram. BTW, that movie really sucked compared to the first one.

The Alexanderplatz square.

The radio tower near Alexanderplatz.

There's a funny story behind this tower. It was built in the late 1960's in East Berlin by the German Democratic Republic (GDR), which was the communist administration in power of East Germany. When the sun was out, the reflection on the ball of the tower looked like a cross, which was unintended.

From Wikipedia: "As a jibe against the atheist foundations of the Communist government, and the ongoing suppression of church institutions in East Germany, Berliners immediately named the luminous cross Rache des Papstes, or "Pope's Revenge". For the same reasons, the structure was also called "St. Walter" (from Walter Ulbricht)."

A church that survived the GDR times.

Some other pics.

Inside a store dedicated to chocolate, a chocolate model of the Reichstag (German Parliament).
I thought this was cool. A chocolate volcano, which had molten chocolate oozing down the side.

A Trabant, which was a car made in East Germany during the communist times. Not exactly a Mercedes.


The places where the wall used to stand is marked by cobblestone.

A cobblestone line going along a road.

Checkpoint Charlie. One of the entry/exit points between east and west Berlin.

A section of the wall still standing, which was turned into a museum explaining the history of the secret police that terrorized Germany before and during WWII.

The market at Potsdamerplatz.
The view of the TV tower from Potsdamerplatz. The Pope's Revenge is visible from here.

A section of the wall at Potsdamerplatz.

The Canadian Embassy, just in case I get into trouble.

The Brandenburg Gate. There is a large number of Embassies near this area. Apparently, the U.S. asked Germany to move the Brandenburg Gate to make way for a new U.S. Embassy. Of course Germany didn't allow this to happen. I'm not sure how true this story is though, it sounds like a ridiculous thing to ask.

The Reichstag.

It's hard to tell that a war happened here 60 years ago, but some of the signs still exist. I've walked by many walls where you can see bullet holes. Just by the number of them, it's hard to imagine the craziness that happened. You can see here that this column is riddled with holes. Presumably from bullets and shrapnel.
The same for this column.
The signs are pretty clear on this column as well.

Things aren't that different...

On my way back home from the restaurant, I ran into a group of girls that stopped and started talking to us (I was with my German speaking Argentinian coworkers). While I didn't know what they were saying, it was a very familiar scene: A bachlorette party. I donated a Euro and collected my kiss and wished the bachlorette good luck. I'm sometimes surprised at how similar things are between Canada and Germany...

Nachtwanderung

Nacht means night, wanderung means hike or walking-tour. Together, it means a pub crawl. Last week, I went to a Nachtwanderung organized by a student organization in Dresden. This was very well organized. 14 bars/clubs were linked by chartered buses (coming every 5-10 minutes) that looped around to each of the establishments.

I went with a coworker, an ex-coworker, and a bunch of their friends. It was definitely a good time. Perhaps too good of a time (my head wasn't feeling so well the next day). But I was very amazed at the organization and the turnout. And as I predicted with an event like this, the buses were madness at around 11pm, when everyone had a lot to drink. I learned that the Germans have their own version of the "Hail to the bus driver" song, which I'm sure the bus drivers enjoyed very much (I wouldn't be surprised if they were sneaking some whiskey themselves).

The Hygiene Museum?

There's a tram stop in the altstadt (old city) of Dresden called "Dt. Hygiene-Museum" (located here). I decided to check it out, since I was interested what a Hygiene Museum could possibly have.

It turns out that there's a decent sized permanent exhibit, which concentrates on the workings of the human body. There were two other exhibits.
1. Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race (AN EXHIBITION BY THE UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM)
2. Sleeping & Dreaming: An Exhibition by the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum (In Collaboration with Wellcome Collection, London)

The main exhibit was as interactive exhibit that attempted to teach all aspects of the human being. One really cool thing I learned, was there your eye has a blind spot. I found a demonstration of this online, here.

The first special exhibit was about how the German's attempt to purify their gene pool back before WWII. Most of this was based on the theory that if you stop people who have undesired traits (psychosis, mental disabilities, physical disabilities, low mental capacities) to reproduce, you would strengthen the genetic pool of the country. Hitler used this as a basis to justify murder of millions of people.

The second exhibit was about sleep. I was actually a little sleepy by the time I got to this one...