Berlin, Germany

Berlin is a mixture of historical and modern buildings and great museums.

Nearly matching German and French churches sit across from each other in a square, with the theater in the middle:

German church

Theater

French church

The bear is the mascot of Berlin, so there are bears all over the city: statues, stuffed bears, souvenirs, etc.

Julie and a giant stuffed bear

Phil and the bear

A bear wandering around the Brandenburg Gate

Julie and Phil in front of the Brandenburg Gate

The Reichstag, house of the German parliament

Remains of the Berlin Wall

The other side of the Berlin Wall

A line throughout the city marks where the Berlin Wall used to stand

Phil and Julie divided by the Berlin Wall

The old Berlin city hall and the TV tower

Palace Charlottenburg

The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church was bombed during World War II. Berlin decided not to rebuild it, but many of the mosaics on the ceiling and floor have been restored and a new church has been built where one of the church towers once existed.

Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church

Mosaic on the ceiling

Mosaic on the floor

The new church is very modern and hexagonal shaped with thousands of small blue windows.

Julie sitting at an outdoor restaurant
We had a German specialty, white asparagus, potatoes, and hollandaise sauce, for lunch.

We went to the Pergamon Museum on Museum Island. Admission to the museum included a headset with great explanations of the exhibits. The first room was a reconstruction of the Greek Pergamon Altar. It contained parts of the relief depicting Greek gods battling giants and monsters. It was very impressive.

The Pergamon Altar

Reliefs on the Pergamon Altar

Phil next to a gigantic statue of Athena

Ishtar Gate from Babylon, Iraq

As we were leaving the museum, it started to pour outside. Luckily, we were right next to the Berlin Cathedral, so we went inside. We walked to the top of the dome and went through the church museum. It gave the history of the design of the building and had several large models of the church and proposed designs. The models even had the paintings and mosaics. We also went down into the crypt, where the kings, queens, and other royalty were buried.

The Berlin Dom (Cathedral)

The dome of the cathedral

Inside the Berlin Cathedral

The organ

Weimar, Germany

During the drive from Frankfurt to Berlin, we drove past Wartburg Castle, where Martin Luther lived while in exhile and where he translated the Bible into German; the town of Eisenach, where Johann Sebastian Bach was born; three castles built by the same king: one for his wife, one for his mistress, and one for himself; and the tower at the Buchenwald concentration camp, which was known for medical experiments on prisoners and where 60,000 people died.

We stopped in the town of Weimar for lunch. Weimar was the home of Goethe, Schiller, and Wagner, and many other poets and musicians. It is a quaint town with lots of restaurants, bakeries, and shops.

Statues of Goethe and Schiller in front of a concert hall where Wagner's music was played

The Bauhaus Museum, which features works from the Bauhaus School of Architecture and Applied Arts

The city hall and square

Phil with our yummy tomato and mozzarella sandwiches and pastries

Frankfurt, Germany

We took the train from Leuven to Frankfurt, Germany, where our bus tour began.

We had dinner at a German restaurant. Julie had beef goulash with noodles, and Phil had tagliatelli, a wide noodle, with a fresh pesto basil sauce. We had goulash and goulash soup a number of times during our trip, but this was definitely the best we had.

After dinner, we met with our tour guide, Eszter Bokros, and the tour group. The group was quite diverse, with some young and many retired. There were a few other Americans, many Australians, and a few from Canada, Singapore, and India.

In the evening, we took a bus into Frankfurt and walked about the city for a while. The shopping district was closed, but there was a festival going on. There were lots of booths selling beer, sausages, potato pancakes, etc.

Saint Katherine's Church built in 1681

Half-timbered German buildings

City hall
We bought some gelato and ate it on a bench in front of the city hall.

Brussels, Belgium

The main square in Brussels is known as the Grand Place. The city hall is surrounded by guilders' halls in the square.

Guilders' Hall

Phil & Julie in front of the city hall.

Manneken Pis, a statue of a boy peeing into a fountain
The city regularly changes the costume on the statue.

A church

We went to the Royal Museum of Beautiful Art of Belgium.
Most of the paintings were religious works, but we also saw paintings by Seurat and Salvadore Dali.

Tower of Babylon

Painting by Seurat

A neat looking building

A clock on the wall of a building

St. Michael's Church

The inside of St. Michael's

The great mustache of Belgium

While in Brussels, we had some very delicious truffles! We also had Belgian snack waffles, which are coated in sugar that caramelizes when hot. The Belgian bakeries also sold very tasty pastries, cakes, and fruit tarts. Belgium definitely has very good desserts!

Leuven, Belgium

Our friend Benedict Brown, whom we met while in grad school at Princeton, is now doing a post-doc at Katholieka Universiteit Leuven, in Leuven, Belgium. He was kind enough to let us stay with him for two nights and to show us around Leuven and Brussels.

From Benedict's apartment, we walked into the center of Leuven. Leuven is a university town and has a very nice city center with a neat city hall and church surrounded by cafes. A few of our favorite photos are below:

A church that we drove by

Another church that we drove by

The Leuven city hall is covered with flags and carvings.

Phil and Benedict

St. Peter's Church
The Belgian churches were celebrating the 450th anniversary of the Arch Diocese.

Inside of St. Peter's Church

A very ornately carved pulpit inside St. Peter's

The Universiteits Bibliotheek (university library)
Renovations of the library were supported by American schools and universities. We found columns around the outside of the library to commemorate Princeton and UPenn's donations.

A statue of a cockroach on a pole
Maybe Benedict can tell us the story behind this statue.

Castle Arenberg
The engineering campus of the university is built around this castle.
The castle was built shortly after 1500 by William of Croy, advisor to Emporer Charles V. Following the marriage of Anne of Croy to Charles of Arenberg, ownership of the castle was transfered to the Arenberg family.

Castle grounds

In the evening, we went to a restaurant and ordered Belgian waffles with ice cream and chocolate sauce. They were a little crispier than Belgian waffles that you get in the U.S., but they were quite good.

Our Trip to Central Europe (May 21 - June 7)

We've been talking for a few years about visiting central Europe. We had both been to western Europe before, but neither of us had been to central Europe. We also had heard that things are still inexpensive there but starting to go up in price, so now was the time to go.

This year, it finally worked out.

After checking out the travel options, we decided to take a Cosmos bus tour that included stops in Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Austria.

We also decided to visit our friend Benedict Brown, who lives in Belgium, before the start of the bus tour.

We had a wonderful time on the trip and recommend visiting each of the cities that we saw!

We took over a 1000 photos on our trip and will share a few of our favorites from each city in the next posts here on our blog.

Leuven, Belgium
Brussels, Belgium
Frankfurt, Germany
Weimar, Germany
Berlin, Germany
Poznan, Poland
Warsaw, Poland
Czestochowa, Poland - Jasna Gora Monastery
Auschwitz-Birkenau & Auschwitz Concentration Camps
Krakow, Poland
Wieliczka Salt Mine in Krakow, Poland
Slovakia
Budapest, Hungary
Vienna, Austria
Moravia, Czech Republic
Prague, Czech Republic
Munich, Germany
Nördlingen, Germany
Rothenburg, Germany