Day 31-32: Dresden and Radebeul

Tuesday turned out to be one of the most physically demanding days we’ve put ourselves through. We have found a training program to prepare us for the half marathon, and made Tuesday our official start date. The first exercise was a 2 mile run, followed by 5 aerobic intervals (run a little faster than you are comfortable with for 1 minute then reduce your speed until you recover), followed by another 2 mile run. The result was a run just under 5 miles.

Afterwards we showered, had an early lunch then headed out to find the bike rental shop. We had an idea of where to find it, but it was further out of town than we expected, and at one point we were walking along a narrow shoulder of a fairly busy highway. The rental shop was on the edge of the Elbe river bike path so, once we got our bikes it was actually quite a nice path. We headed towards Dresden (13km) with the intention of booking our train to Prague, and finding a beer garden that was recommended to us. The following are pictures we took along the way into Dresden:

In Dresden we locked up our bikes near the river and walked up through the town to the train station, then back to the river. The beer garden was another 5km up the river, putting the total one-way distance up to around 18km.  It was well worth it though, as the beer garden was nice and shady and had a pleasant view of the river. Falling chestnuts proved to be a little hazardous, but I had better luck than Jackie avoiding them.

Around 5:45 we decided we were going to be hard pressed to get home before it got dark so we reluctantly left the beer garden and biked the 18km back to the apartment for the night.

The following morning we took at a more leisurely pace. We had a late breakfast and went for a stroll through the neighbourhood. There was a stairway up the escarpment that we had seen on a map and we figured it would provide us excellent views. The following are the pictures we took in the neighbourhood.

By now it was getting late for lunch so we headed to a square in town (see pictures below) that we had biked through the day before on our way to Dresden. It was full of small shops, bars, and cafes. We found one of the busier street cafes and had a traditional Saxon meal. For Jackie that was a turkey salad and for me it was blood sausage with sauerkraut, both washed down with the haus brew.

We biked around the town a bit more but ended up back in the square again for a beer from a different beer garden. I have to say, this is living the life.

Tomorrow we leave Germany, ending the first leg of our German tour, and head to Prague. Jackie will tell you (and rightly so) that Prague is the city I have been looking forward to most. So until next time, auf wiedersehen!

SUMMARY: Germany, Part I

So far, we have spent about 2 weeks in Germany, stopping in Lubeck, Berlin, and Dresden/Radebeul. To be honest, this has been our favourite country so far. For me, it is the availability of beer and for Jackie, it is the great history and culture (who am I kidding, Jackie likes the beer too). Anyway, here are our thoughts so far. We will be venturing back into Deutschland near the end of October to visit Bavaria, with its many castles, monasteries, and of course, beer halls.

Things we liked:

• Biergartens are everywhere, and usually serve both a pilsner option (for Daryl) and a hefeweizen option (for Jackie)
• Beer in the supermarket is really cheap; a 0.5l bottle is between 0.50 and 0.70 Euro (about $0.70 to $0.95 CAD).
• The people are friendly, at least more so than in Scandanavia. People will say hello on the street, and other runners will shout a “Gotenmorg” when passing us on our run
• The weather has been fantastic (not really fair to attribute this to the country, but still)
• There is good ethic food to be found, we found a couple good Vietnamese places in Berlin

Things we didn’t like:

• Internet availability and reliability has been quite shoddy, the wireless routers in the two places that even provided us with internet needed frequent resetting.
• Almost every washroom had a charge to use them
• Coffee quality has gone down since Copenhagen
• All TV shows are re-dubbed in German so we can only watch BBC world news

Interesting findings:

• EVERYONE is ALWAYS eating ice cream, whether walking down the street or at a restaurant (in the latter case, they are often splitting a huge sundae)
• When excited, children shout “YA-HOO”, which seems a little cartoonish.
• Most beers taste the same: all pilsners are the same crisp golden beer, while all hefeweizens are the same lighter-than-Hoegaarden beers. Both are as good as any in America, but there is not much to distinguish one from another.
• Germans can be a fairly portly bunch, particularly in the Dresden region (maybe this is linked to Point #1 in the interesting findings section).
  

Additional pictures that didn't make the cut in previous postings:

*Picture from Reichstag, Germany's Parliament building

*Entrance gate to old city of Lubeck

*TK Maxx (instead of TJ Maxx), these are all over Germany

*Standard communist-era car in Berlin

*Electric vehicle charging in streets of Berlin

*Race shot from Berlin Marathon

*Daryl enjoying the Berlin Marathon

*Standard sunglass reflection shot

*Daryl with bikes on the way to Dresden

*Cool personal mailbox in Radebeul, Germany

*Flower pic...for no reason

*Daryl playing with the camera at the bier garten in Radebeul

*Picture of "real" Europeans, for Dave

Day 30: Dresden and Radebeul

We left Berlin on Monday morning (by train of course) and arrived in Dresden by early afternoon. We stored our bags in a storage locker and struck out into the city. Dresden is well known for having a beautiful Baroque old town, which was extensively firebombed in 1945 near the end of WWII. It has since been rebuilt. We walked through a bustling shopping district and picked up some Bubble Tea (there always seems to be a Bubble Tea Shop in each German city) and then made our way down to the Elbe River. Here are a couple of pics that we took.

This is where we found a really cool mailbox to add to our collection (for Flynn of course).

Literally a minute after we located this beautiful mailbox, a men’s choir broke into song on the square adjacent to the river. It was pretty entertaining (and hilarious to behold).

After watching for a couple of songs, we decided to make our way into the twisting and turning streets to hunt down some food for lunch. We came upon the Ontario Steakhouse, but decided it was too expensive and touristy. Too bad though, as everything was Canadian-related.

We did find a nice biergarten (they are everywhere in this region) and sat down for some traditional German fare: smoked salmon and potato cakes with horseradish mustard for me, and schnitzel and french fries for Daryl.

We then made our way back to the train station and hitched a ride to Radebeul, a small town and wine area about 15 minutes away from Dresden. It was a 20-minute walk uphill from the station to the small apartment where we were staying. It was not overly fun with our bags and we arrived very sweaty. The apartment was a nice surprise though, with a cute kitchen, brand new bathroom, sitting room, bedroom, and beautiful view onto the working vineyard behind the house.

We walked to a nearby grocery store and had a traditional meal of sausage with mustard and sauerkraut. We then tucked in for the night, saving our energy for Tuesday and a full day of activity. Till next time.

P.S. On the way back from the grocery store, we snapped a picture of the turtle waiting for the train. Weird.

Day 28-29: Berlin

Saturday and Sunday was built around the Berlin Marathon. Saturday we decided to take a day off from running and had a leisurely breakfast. The standard these days is a piece of toast with honey or goat cheese and cucumbers, tomatoes, salami, coffee, and juice.

We did some Skyping with family and hit the road around 1pm. We went to the Berlin Marathon Expo, which was held in the south of the city. It is standard for big races to have an expo the few days before the race to allow the runners to pick up their race numbers and check out the latest in gear. It was extremely busy but cool to see all of the running clothes and gear. For some reason, Birkenstock had a booth setup and were selling their sandals at a really good price, so Jack picked up a pair…I already have some. Interesting note: Beer is consumed everywhere here. It is common to see little old lady’s drinking beer at a small café and for a couple to be walking down the street carrying beer in glass bottles. So of course, beer was present at the Expo. But, it is not a great idea for the runners to drink a lot of alcohol before race day so most of the beer was alcohol free (alkoholfrei).

We went from the Expo to one of the biggest department stores in Europe, KaDeWe (which is an abbreviation for something in German…I don’t remember). It is huge. We mainly stayed on the 6th floor ,which is chock-full of gourmet foods from around the world. They even had a little Canada section with maple syrup and Moosehead beer.

After, we walked to the nearby Tiergarten, the “Central Park” of Berlin, which houses the Victory Column. The column was built in 1864 to celebrate the Prussian defeat of Denmark, then re-used to celebrate the Prussian defeat of France in 1870.

Down the road from the Victory Column is the Start Line of the Berlin Marathon. Since race day wasn’t until Sunday we got a chance to play around a little.

When we walked further down the road to the finish line and the Brandenburg Gate we stumbled upon the inline skating marathon that apparently happens the day before the running marathon. Who knew?

 

We were pretty exhausted by this point so we decided to head back to the apartment. On the way, though, we tried out Berlin’s famous dish, Currywurst (a sausage coated in curry powder and topped with ketchup). While not healthy it was pretty yummy.

On Sunday we woke up early (at least compared to most days on this trip) and headed to one of the prettier city squares to catch the marathon. The spot was between kilometer 40 and 41, so it was quite close to the finish line (a full marathon is 42 km). Surprisingly, no one else was really around, save some older ladies who were volunteers and setting up. So, we took some pictures to pass the time.

 

Finally, the first of the racers started to pass by. The wheelchair race takes off slightly before the runners.

 

Then, we got to see Patrick Makau run by, who ended up winning the Berlin Marathon and setting a new world record of 2:03:38. He was quite far ahead of the competition by this point in the race.

 

We also got to see Paula Radcliffe, a British runner who came 3rd in the women’s category.

 

Obviously, it was a great opportunity to take a lot of cool pictures and also to be motivated by all of the runners. We have already decided that we will run a marathon at some point in the near future (starting with the half-marathon in December). While inspiring, we did witness a lot of pain as detailed in the pictures (e.g., grimacing, crying, walking, cramping, puking, bleeding from the nipples…).

 

A couple of “artistic” shots for the hell of it.

After the race we went back to our neighborhood and grabbed some much needed food. The Vietnamese was delicious and made us think of Jack's Mom (Lynda), who loves Vietnamese food.

The day was capped off with a 5-mile (8km) run, which went more smoothly than our last attempt at this distance (a race in Boston at the end of July with temperatures of 40C). On Tuesday, we will begin a training program that should gradually guide us to 13.1 miles (21km).

We then had a late dinner, packed the apartment, and got ready to depart to Dresden on Monday morning. More from Dresden coming soon.