In June I made my first ever trip to Dubai! It was for a work function, so I headed off on my own with the Snook to join me a week later. I landed in Dubai close to midnight…

I caught a taxi to my hotel. Interestingly, I was directed straight to a cab with a lady taxi driver. Not sure if that was just due to the late hour or what, but I appreciated it. It was a longish drive to my hotel, so I spent the ride marvelling at the architecture.

Not sure what that was, but it was impressive.

That one I recognised – the Museum of the Future! It looks like an alien spaceship.

There in the distance I could see the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. (It’s the very pointy one you can see between the two light poles there.)

My hotel was out on the Palm Jumeirah, a set of artificial islands that look like a palm tree from space. This was the hotel next door to the one I stayed in.

Yeah, it was a pretty swanky lobby. Well after midnight at this point, and all I wanted to do was crash in my room.

Less than 24 hours later, I was standing on a balcony overlooking the harbour…

Not a bad view! As I said, it was a work event, but it wasn’t all business. One excursion was “dinner in the desert,” which meant driving quite a ways out of the city to a nature preserve. It was very hot, so the tour guide gave me a head scarf.

The group headed off in a convoy of restored vintage convertible Range Rovers…

The nature area was full of Arabian oryx, the national animal of Dubai.

Soon we left the nature preserve and were driving over shifting sand dunes, with nothing as far as the eye could see except more sand. I’ve never seen anything like it.

I shot a short video…

As the sun was setting, we stopped to watch a bird show with a peregrine falcon (the fastest animal in the world). The falconer started with her hooded, and we were invited to hold her for a photo. I was the first person in line!

Apparently the Bedouins would use falcons for hunting. Our guide used a lure to exercise her, and at one point she swooped right over my head as she dove in for the bait. 😳

Dinner was at a camp in the desert. I was delighted to see a woman there doing henna tattoos and asked her to decorate my left hand. She drew it on quite thick and said to leave it for as long as possible to dry.

The falcon guy was back, this time with a beautiful owl named Athena!

Our guide wanted to show us the constellations, but alas it was nearly the full moon so the sky was much too bright.

There were also camels, but I’ve ridden them before in the Outback so I didn’t bother with a ride. I just said hello as I headed for the bus back to the city!

I did appreciate that they had little spit masks on though!

The other place I was very excited to visit was the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi. It’s a fairly long drive from Dubai, but I was excited to catch a glimpse from the highway.

You have to park quite a ways away and then enter via a long underground entrance. When we emerged in the sunshine, I was blown away.

It was like something out of a dream. Our guide led us on a whirlwind tour, stopping at many points for photographs.

The inner courtyard was inlaid with beautiful floral designs in marble.

Obviously this is an important place of worship, and there are strict rules tourists have to obey. This meant I had to be covered and wear a head scarf (annoyingly, men did not), and you’re forbidden from things like public displays of affection or making disrespectful gestures.

But honestly, I was so blown away by the building that I willingly accepted the rules. I mean, look at that! It looks computer generated, it was so unreal.

The 96 columns around the courtyard aren’t painted; those floral motifs are inlaid with marble and mother of pearl. The colours against the white – especially in that bright sun – were hyperreal.

So I willingly put up with sweating in the heat…

I’ve been to a lot of Christian churches in Europe over the past two years. By and large they are either austere and foreboding, or filled with representations of human suffering. This mosque, on the other hand – even with its strict rules – felt welcoming. The decoration was entirely geometric and nature-based. I was entranced.

I mean… look at that.

We were also able to peek inside the hall at the “world’s largest carpet.” It was really big. It’s more than 60,000 square feet. 😳

I’m incredibly grateful I got to experience this part of the world. I do not agree with many of the actions taken by those in charge, but I have found people in the Middle East to be friendly and kind. It’s not a place I would necessarily choose to go on vacation, and rarely have I felt as foreign as I did there. But that’s why travel is rewarding – to challenge yourself; to see how other human beings live; and to experience a tiny bit of life outside your bubble.

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Obviously, visiting Berlin has been on our To Do list since we got to Deutschland in 2020, and we finally got our opportunity this past May when I was invited to speak at the AWS Summit. We hopped on a train on the Friday before…

It’s only about a 5 hour ride on the Intercity-Express (ICE), and we were happy to discover you could get catering delivered directly to your seat. I went with the pasta, while the Snook had chili con carne for dinner.

The train ride was smooth and the weather was shaping up to be a beautiful weekend!

We pulled into Berlin in the evening and caught a taxi to our hotel, the Crowne Plaza Berlin Potsdamer Platz. The next morning, we decided to head out to get some culture. I was very excited to see my first Ampelmann in the wild! (These are the beloved East German traffic light symbols of a little man in a hat that are now located all over the city.)

The Snook, on the other hand, was more excited to see that DJ Ötzi was going to be playing an upcoming Schlager festival. 😂

But that’s not the culture we were after, thankfully! We were headed to the Neue Nationalgalerie, a museum of modern art. The museum pavilion and its sculpture gardens were designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and it’s a stunning example of modernist architecture.

The roof looks like it’s floating. It’s all gorgeous steel and glass and clean lines. I loved it. We walked all around it checking out the outdoor sculptures.

The current exhibition inside the pavilion is conceptual artist Barbara Kruger’s “Bitte Lachen / Please Cry”. The entire floor is quotes and text related to current issues.

It was a fascinating use of the space.

Honestly, my favourite part of the building may have been the ceiling in there.

We headed downstairs and spent several hours exploring the museum’s artworks. (No photos allowed.) It was fascinating, though admittedly less impressive than the pavilion above. We also ducked outside to another sculpture garden and to enjoy the beautiful day.

After the museum, we caught a train across to the east side of the city where we’d be joining a special tour later that afternoon. Here we are checking out the Oberbaum Bridge on the River Spree. For a long time, the Bridge formed part of the border between East and West Berlin.

We walked along the river for a bit and checked out part of the East Side Gallery. This is “possibly the largest and longest-lasting open air gallery in the world,” painted on a nearly mile-long section of the Berlin Wall.

Then it was time to head to our tour – the Berlin Craft Beer Experience! We met up with four other folks and our tour guide, who happened to be from Ohio. Our first stop was the Salami Social Club, a pizza restaurant and craft beer bar. We had some pizza to line our stomachs and sampled a Pilsner from Berliner Berg. Then we headed to Hops & Barley, in an old converted butcher shop, where we had three more beers and learned about the brewing process.

Our final stop was Protokoll Berlin, where we had some more beers and said goodbye to the group.

It was a fun evening!

Later that night, we had a reservation at CODA, Germany’s first and only Michelin 2-starred dessert restaurant. We had the 5-course tasting menu with matching cocktails. Every course involved interesting ingredients used in ways you wouldn’t normally expect. We started with four little treats: gummy bear, churro, “Kopfsalat,” and “Beefcake.” The salat was my favourite, which delicate lettuce leaves that had almost been candied somehow.

Next was my favourite dish of the night, which had frozen marscapone with grapefruit, savoy cabbage, and thyme. It was like eating an amazing ice cream sundae.

The next course had to be smashed to be eaten, and involved rhubarb, tarragon, and honey.

I was pretty excited by the next one – waffles with raclette cheese inside that you dipped in kimchi dust and yogurt.

We were getting to the more traditional style desserts. This one was grilled apple with an oat cookie and sultanas, but also with rings of crispy shallots!

You have the option at this point to sub in a “caviar popsicle,” but we skipped that one. 😂 The final course was all about chocolate, with a gorgeous glazed little chocolate cake served with purple carrot, chicoree, and hazelnut.

And of course you’re still not done at that point, because they bring you a plate of little petit fours and chocolates to enjoy with your coffee before you go! I highly recommend CODA. I hadn’t been sure what to expect with a “dessert degustation,” but I was happily surprised by the variety of dishes and ingredients we got.

The next day was Sunday, and we planned to burn off all those calories on an all day bike tour with Fat Tire Tours. We met at the office near the Fernsehturm and discovered that it was only us plus one other American couple. The bikes were comfortable cruisers.

Our first stop was very close – the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Berlin is its own state in Germany, so this building is the seat of both the governing mayor and the state government of Berlin. Our host was excellent at answering all our questions!

We next headed to the East Side Gallery at the Berlin Wall again, where we parked in the “death strip” gap between the inner and outer walls.

Our tour guide pulled out some chalk and gave us a potted history lesson on the division of Germany and Berlin following WW2. It was fascinating. I can’t imagine what it would be like to wake up one day and find your city cut in half. People were unable to meet up with family and friends for literally decades.

We then had some free time to see more of the artworks. After the Wall came down, in 1990 this section was covered in murals by 118 artists from 21 countries. Over the years they deteriorated, so they were restored in 2009.

Some are abstract, while others are more straightforward. I especially liked this one, which was inspired by the artist’s desire as young man to leave and study in Asia (which was forbidden in East Germany).

Our next destination was the Engelbecken (Angel’s Pool), a basin formed by the Luisenstadt Canal. Our guide explained that the Wall ran right along the canal. It was difficult to imagine this beautiful neighbourhood marred by such an ugly thing.

On the other side of the street is St. Michael’s Church, an important historical monument in Berlin.

This is the point where I finally remembered that I should turn on Strava! You can see our route from the rest of the tour here. With the bit I forgot, we probably did about 20km over the full day.

We next headed to the Bebelplatz, a large open square near a palace, an opera house, a cathedral, a and several university buildings.

We hopped off our bikes so our guide could give us a history lesson. He explained that Bebelplatz is the site of one of the infamous Nazi book burning ceremonies held in the evening of 10 May 1933.

Twenty thousand books from authors the Nazis deemed unsuitable were burned, right here on this spot. It was sobering to think about. Now it’s the site of a memorial called “The Empty Library.” See the “window” set into the ground in the middle of the square? If you go up to it and look down, you are looking down into the ceiling of an empty room filled with bookcases, enough to hold all twenty thousand books.

There’s also a plaque explaining the memorial and including a quote from Heinrich Heine: “Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.” (In English: “That was only a prelude; where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people”).

Not far away is the Gendarmenmarket, another large square surrounded by monumental buildings. One of them is the Konzerthaus (Concert Hall).

Another is the Französischer Dom (“French Cathedral,” aka the French Reformed Church of Friedrichstadt). Like much of Berlin, this whole area was heavily damaged in WW2 and subsequently rebuilt.

Our next stop was one of the biggest tourist stops – Checkpoint Charlie, the most well-known crossing between East and West Berlin. It’s in the middle of a busy street, and there are several Cold War museums nearby if you want to learn more about it.

We stood listening to our guide right over a marker showing where the Wall ran through the city. It’s like a scar, always there if you know where to look.

We then headed to the “Topography of Terror.” This is a museum housed in the former SS and Gestapo Headquarters. It has a large surviving segment of the outer wall, and this part isn’t covered in graffiti and artworks. Our guide told us a story of a brave Holzapfel family who somehow managed to zipline from the buildings in the distance across the Wall. (The story is true and you can read it in graphic novel form.)

Our tour guide told us that the damage to the Wall here wasn’t from the war, but rather from tourists hacking at it for chunks of concrete. That’s why you can’t go right up to it anymore. 😐

We next rode through Potsdamer Platz, with its gleaming office buildings and skyscrapers…

…and soon pulled over in what appeared to be a nice residential area, next to a car park. “This,” our tour guide explained, “is the most spit-upon parking lot in Germany.” He told us that beneath the ground here was Hitler’s bunker, where he and Eva Braun committed suicide. The site is deliberately left unremarkable, with only an information board a short distance away (to avoid it becoming some sort of pilgrimage site for racists and skinheads).

Our next stop was the Holocaust Memorial (“Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe”), which is unlike any memorial I’ve ever seen. It’s an entire city block covered in 2711 concrete slabs, arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. It’s hard from ground level to get a good view of how many there are. There are trees growing in places along the edges.

Our tour guide encouraged us to walk down among the slabs. You find yourself going downwards, and very quickly you realise that the irregular height slabs have become tall pillars looming over you.

It very quickly felt oppressive. You couldn’t see anyone until they were right next to you at an intersection. It was so quiet.

When we left the Memorial, our tour guide asked us how it made us feel. We talked about how the pillars looked like gravestones at first. We talked about how disorienting and silent it was inside the Memorial, and how you became almost paranoid. According to the designer, the slabs “are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason.” It’s a remarkable piece of art and remembrance.

We’d been riding for several hours now! We cut through the Tiergarten park, and I sneakily captured a photo riding along behind the Snook.

We stopped to check out the Siegessaüle (“Victory Column”), a tall monument topped with a golden statue. As a fan of Wim Wenders films, the Snook was excited to see this spot (where the angels in Wings of Desire would sit to watch the humans).

Phew – is it time for lunch yet?

We briefly paused to check out Schloss Bellevue, the official residence of the German President. (Germany has a Chancellor who actually heads up the government, while the President’s duties are more ceremonial.)

Finally, it was time for lunch! We stopped at the Zollpackhof, a restaurant and biergarten on the banks of the Spree. We happily queued up and grabbed a table together under the trees.

Since we were riding, we stuck with Radlers, which is lager mixed with lemonade (to reduce the alcohol content). I really like them!

Back on the bikes! We were nearing the end of our tour at this point. Next stop was the Reichtstag, which houses the Bundestag, the lower house of Germany’s parliament. It was heavily damaged in WW2 and reconstructed in the Sixties. The glass dome on the top makes it one of the most visited tourist attractions in all of Germany.

Our very last stop is one of the most famous landmarks in Germany – the Brandenburg Gate.

We finished the tour back where it started at the Fernsehturm, and bid goodbye to our guide and fellow cyclists. We decided to reward ourselves for all that biking with gelato… 🙂

The next day was a work day, so we both visited our respective offices in Berlin. Then the Snook left me to head back to Munich for a few days, and it was finally time for the AWS Summit Berlin! I went to the venue to do the tech check for my session…

The conference itself happened over two days. It felt weird to be back at a big event, with lots of people walking around like the pandemic never happened. (I did try to wear my mask as much as possible, but there were a lot of folks who didn’t bother.) I took a quick selfie from the stage as I was waiting for my session to kick off.

I presented on Amazon’s Culture of Innovation, and the room was packed with hundreds of people. I feel like I did a pretty good job, and I had a lot of folks come up afterwards to ask questions. (Sadly, it wasn’t recorded so you can’t see it online.) Someone from the audience tweeted a photo of me in action, and as usual, I’m pulling a face. 😂

Once my session was done I could relax! That night I headed out to a nearby biergarten for a meetup with the German AWS User Group community. It was fun to hang out with Nora, Frank, Philipp, Thorsten, Markus, and many others I’ve been lucky enough to meet here in Germany.

On day two I mostly hung out in the Community Lounge area. I wore the infamous AWS dress and brought a big bag of stickers to distribute.

I also recorded some fun promo videos with the social media team (and stormtroopers!) for our upcoming Online Summit.

And then it was all over! All that was left was the afterparty, but to be honest I was pretty wiped out and didn’t stay long.

Happily, the Snook arrived the next day and cheered me right up. Since the work part of the trip was over, we had booked a more fun hotel on the other side of Berlin: the 25hours Hotel Bikini Berlin. It overlooks the Berlin Zoo! It wasn’t cheap, but look at that view…

We found a great nearby coffee roastery place for breakfast. (Berlin’s cafe culture definitely impressed me more than Munich’s.)

The weather was still fantastic, so we decided we needed to check out the zoo properly. There are a few different entrances, but we headed to the famous Elefantentor (Elephant Gate).

The zoo is set in a lovely well-manicured park, with natural-looking enclosures surrounded by lots of trees.

They have several live keeper talks a day, so we headed first to the elephant enclosure to see one. Of course it was all in German, but we understood enough of the words to follow the gist.

I really liked the mountain goats standing high up on their little crag.

The hippo area was cool, with an indoor water part and an outdoor area. I tried to get a photo of the hippos nostrils coming up above the water to take a breath.

There was also a petting zoo part for kids with lots of friendly farm animals. I said hello to the sheep…

…while Mr. Snook patted a pony.

There was also a very cute donkey!

We also fed a very, very pregnant (but still agile!) goat. Look at that belly!

We also went to see another keeper talk at the chimpanzee enclosure (the one we could see from our hotel room). Again, it was in German but we could mostly understand.

More monkeying around…

We also visited the pandas…

…and a very aggressive lizard.

We even found some Australian buddies too!

We were getting tired so decided to swing through the attached Aquarium before we finished our day. It has a very cool statue of an “Iguanodon” out front.

We zipped through the exhibits. I especially liked the decorative stained glass they had throughout the tanks.

I do love moon jellyfish.

There were larger exhibits that you actually walked through, including one that had alligators (or was it crocodiles?).

More photos of Mr. Snook looking at sea creatures…

Eventually we called it a day and headed out to dinner at Chicago Williams BBQ, a hipster barbecue place not far from the hotel. It was pretty good!

We also walked around the nearby Breitscheidplatz, which features the shell of the old Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church). The church was badly damaged in the War in 1943 and left as a memorial hall. The locals call it der hohle Zahn”, meaning “the hollow tooth.”

Breitscheidplatz was the site of 2016 Berlin truck attack at the Christmas market that was set up in the plaza. I think this is why the streets around it are so fortified with barriers now to keep any vehicles from mounting the curb. There is also a memorial next to the church to the people who were killed.

The octagonal and hexagonal structures behind the old church are the new church buildings that were built in the 1950’s. I didn’t much care for the boring concrete geometry of them during the day, but at night they really came alive with coloured lights shining through the glass squares.

Finally we come to the real reason we picked this hotel – the sauna! It has a guest sauna that overlooks the chimpanzee enclosure at the zoo. We went one morning and had the place to ourselves.

See? There are the chimps down below.

One last picture from Breitscheidplatz, where I’m having my favourite treat of Spaghettieis.

Thanks for a lovely week, Berlin!

In the middle of April, I was riding my bike across the Theresienwiese when I noticed yet another fair being set up at the far end. I pootled over to get a closer look.

I didn’t have to wonder long before I figured out what event was coming up…

Frühlingsfest! Aka Munich’s Spring Festival. How exciting. It opened a few days after we got back from Amsterdam, so we went over in the evening to check it out.

It was mostly your basic midway amusement park with rides, games, and food stalls.

However, it also had two of the big festival beer tents! (By comparison, Oktoberfest has fourteen.) The Augustiner Festhalle was super popular with a large crowd waiting to get in.

I was delighted to see how many young people were wearing their Tracht. Tracht refers to the traditional folk costumes worn in German-speaking regions (mostly in Bavaria, Tyrol, and Austria). For men it’s mainly lederhosen, and for women it’s dirndls.

While I was marvelling at the outfits, something caught my eye in the distance. “Does that… say… Beer Carousel????”

Indeed it did. “Bierkarussell.” An honest-to-goodness rotating beer carousel. We knew we were going to have to try it out, but we needed to line our stomachs first.

How about a half-meter bratwurst? Perfect. Okay, now back to the beer.

The Bierkarussell looks like a traditional carousel, except there are no horses and there’s a circular bar in the middle. The patrons stand around the edges and it rotates very slowly around and around. We went for the full “Maß” (1 liter) of Helles (lager).

The rotating was making me a bit dizzy, so eventually we stepped off and found a spot on the side to stand and drink our beers. A very happy drunk Bavarian guy toasted us every time he came past. It was hilarious.

The very next day I spotted an email from the local Democrats Abroad Munich chapter inviting us to join them in the Hippodrom tent for Bavarian-American Friendship Day. I immediately reserved two seats. Of course, if we were going to party in a festival tent, we were going to need our own Tracht…

I had previously waffled on whether to buy Tracht. It’s an actual folk costume, and I wondered whether it would be cultural appropriation. (Neither of us have German ancestry.) I asked a couple locals though, who said that it was absolutely fine. The only rule they mentioned was to NOT buy the crappy shiny Halloween costume versions they sell in the cheap shops near the Hauptbahnhof to the tourists. Instead we went to Trachten Rausch, not far from where we live. They were pretty busy with folks buying outfits for Frühlingfest, but within minutes we each had a guy pulling stuff off the racks for us to try on. I got a pink dindl with an apron and blouse, and the Snook got lederhosen, a checked shirt, and knit socks. (Each outfit ran us around €200.)

And then it was time for the big day! We got dressed up and made our way to the Hippodrom. Holy moly – it was overwhelming. A band was playing and thousands of people were eating dinner and gulping down giant steins of beer.

We found the Democrats Abroad tables pretty quickly. It turns out that many of the tables at the front of the room were for various American expat groups.

The tent was so big they had a screen so people in the back could see the stage. (As you can see, not everybody was wearing Tracht.)

Karena took a photo of the Snook and me in all our Tracht glory…

We settled in and pretty soon we flagged down a server for some beers. PROST! 🍻

The evening kicked off properly with a lovely speech from United States Consul General Timothy Liston in honour of Bavarian-American Friendship Day. He wore Tracht too!

We were enjoying ourselves a lot!

The band were mostly playing classic pub rock covers (in English), but I’m not sure if that was special because of the day. Maybe normally it’s all Schlager? At any rate, they were awesome. We learned very quickly that every 20 minutes or so the singer would yell “Die Krüge hoch” and everyone would raise their glasses and sing a little drinking song…

It’s called “Ein Prosit der Gemütlichkeit,” and it means “a toast to well-being.” It’s followed by a count to three and then “DRINK!”

With all that beer, it was time for some food.

The Snook went for the roast pork with dumpings, while I went with meatballs and sauerkraut. I find it frankly astonishing that they manage to have table service in such a huge place. And there’s no credit cards – it’s all cash. (Note to self: Write an Ocean’s 11-style heist movie where a daring band of criminals knocks over multiple Oktoberfest tents in one night!)

We each had a second Maß of beer, and that’s when everybody started to really cut loose. People were up on the benches dancing and singing along to the band. My phone is full of videos of us acting like idiots and belting out Neil Diamond and ABBA songs. As I’m sure YouTube would flag those as copyright violation, instead you get a photo of the Snook and a couple dudes’ bums. 😂

Here we are at the end of the night. Yeah, that was a good time!

Thanks to the Democrats Abroad for hosting us! Now we’re just counting down the days until Oktoberfest and we can break out the Tracht again… ❤️

With the four-day Easter weekend looming, we were trying to decide on a city to visit. “There’s a sleeper train to Amsterdam!” the Snook offered. That settled it. Amsterdam had long been on our list of cities to visit (I have a bucket list goal of hitting every one mentioned in Paul Kelly’s ode to Aussies in Europe), and I’ve always wanted to ride in a sleeper train. Time to visit the Netherlands!

The train – and I am not kidding – is the NightJet NJ420 from Innsbruck to Amsterdam. It has normal carriage cars, and then a couple in the middle that are the sleepers (“Schlafwagens”).

We were greeted by a porter who led us down a very narrow hallway to our cabin.

It was about 10:30pm when we boarded the train in Munich, so the porter had already set it up for sleeping. There were two bunks, but theoretically there’s a third one that can fold down if needed.

Can you tell how excited I am? The first thing we needed to do was select our options for breakfast in the morning and give the bits of paper to the porter.

There is a tiny sink crammed into the corner where you could clean your teeth, but the bathroom was a shared one down the carriage. (Unfortunately there was a problem with the water on this journey, so the sink wasn’t working.)

The train pulled out of Munich, and we kicked off our shoes to relax a bit. There was a bag on each bunk with slippers, a bottle of water, a snack, and some sparkling wine. The Snook had also cleverly brought a couple mini bottles of Schnapps…

Prost! We eventually decided it was time to go to sleep. I claimed the bottom bunk so the Snook clambered up the ladder to his berth.

In terms of sleeping comfort, the bunks were just long enough that I could stretch out (I’m 5’10”, 178cm) but anybody taller would be a little cramped. The mattresses weren’t super thick, but for me the bigger issue was the pillows were very, very thin. Still, I did eventually fall asleep. The train does make a few stops during the night and the carriages aren’t soundproof, but I had my headphones playing white noise and it didn’t bother me. The biggest challenge was that since we were lying perpendicular to the train’s movement, whenever it would brake or accelerate you’d feel it. (That’s why the upper bunk has a net, to keep the Snook from rolling right out onto the floor!) Still, the sleeper was nicer than I expected and I definitely got more sleep than I ever have on a long haul flight.

In the morning we opened the window to find ourselves rolling through the Dutch countryside. The porter came by to help us fold up the beds and fold down a table for our breakfast.

We pulled into Amsterdam at 10:30am, blinking in the sunlight and still wearing yesterday’s clothes. Time to find our hotel…

We had left the booking until pretty late so the only place we could get a room was the fancy Marriott W. It wasn’t too far so we had a 15min walk through Amsterdam to get there. It’s actually two buildings across the street from each other, and we were in the “Exchange” building. Reception is up at the roof level, and there’s a pretty spectacular view from the terrace.

The building on the right there is the Royal Palace of Amsterdam, and the brick one on the left is the Magna Plaza, formerly the main post office of Amsterdam and now a shopping mall.

That’s the view up Raadhuisstraat, which crosses several canals. You can see the Westerkerk church spire in the distance.

Our room wasn’t ready yet so we made our plans to explore the city. We decided to skip the museums and cannabis cafes on this trip, instead spending as much time as possible outside in the glorious Spring weather.

The Royal Palace from ground level. It was originally built as the Town Hall of Amsterdam but was converted into a palace in the 19th century. It’s where Queen Beatrix was announced to the Dutch people in 1980.

Here’s the Snook in Dam Square, one of the most well-known spots in the city. That’s the National Monument in the distance.

This is the Beurs van Berlage building, which the Snook really liked. I think it was the clock.

This is the Oude Kerk (“Old Church”), Amsterdam’s oldest building. Rembrandt was a frequent visitor to the Oude Kerk and his children were all christened here.

Canal!! This is the view from the Oudekerksbrug (“Old Church Bridge”).

This is looking north towards the Basilica of Saint Nicholas, the city’s primary Catholic Church.

I was entranced by the canals of Amsterdam. There are more than 100km of them (62mi), with 1500 bridges in the city.

You know what else I was entranced by? CHEESE.

This is actually the Amstel river as seen from the Blauwbrug (“Blue Bridge”). There are a LOT of houseboats in Amsterdam. There were also a lot of river cruises going up and down the river and canals too.

We walked up the Kalverstraat, Amsterdam’s main shopping street. (Fun trivia: it’s the most expensive property on Dutch Monopoly!) There was a queue out the door at Van Holland Stroopwafels, and we made a mental note to come back later for treats.

The LEGO Store had a massive working windmill in the window!

More canal action! Everybody was out enjoying the Easter weekend Spring weather.

Get ready – you’re going to see a lot of tulips! There were blooming planters all over the city.

After lunch, we headed back to our hotel for a nap and shower. Then it was time to go out and meet my Amazonian colleague Anshu!

Anshu moved from Melbourne last year, so he volunteered to show us around Amsterdam. The first place he took us was Wynand Fockink, a distillery tasting room straight out of the 17th century.

We stood in the crowd and waited our turn to get to the front. They had more than 50 different liqueurs, including jenever (the Dutch precursor to gin). The attendant explained all about jenever to us and gave us a taste, and then we picked out a couple brandies to try. (I went with cherry; the Snook with sloe.) The tiny glasses are filled right up to the brim, and you’re meant to bow down to slurp the first sip out of them. Fun!

Our next stop was a Dutch craft beer bar called the Arendsnest, along one of the canals. We sat outside and enjoyed some excellent brews as the sun got lower in the sky.

Our final stop of the night was Bierfabriek Amsterdam, a brewery and restaurant right in the city. It was crowded by they found us a table tucked in the corner. Their specialty is “rustic slow roasted French farm chicken,” and who could resist that?

We said our goodbyes to Anshu and headed back to the hotel to rest up ahead of a very big Easter Sunday…

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Last year I attended the AWS Nürnberg Meetup Group (via Zoom) and learned a couple things: 1) Nürnberg = Nuremberg, which I had previously naively thought was an entirely separate city 😂; 2) despite being technically located in Bavaria, Nürnbergers do NOT think of themselves as Bavarian but rather Franconian; and 3) the folks there are incredibly friendly. The organiser of the AWS group is Frank, and when I mentioned that I’d like to visit his city someday, he said to let him know and he’d give us a personal tour. But nobody actually means things like that when they say it, right?

At any rate, two weeks after we got home from Vienna we boarded a Friday evening train to Nürnberg. It’s a very fast trip from Munich (less than 90min) so we were there well before the sun set.

Um, how cute is that? We had booked a room at Hotel Elch (Elk), which looked to be pretty centrally located to everything we wanted to see. Our room was on the very top floor, right underneath the roof, and without an elevator it was a decent hike up maybe 4 flights of stairs. That’s what you get when you stay in a heritage building.

Frank had given us a tip to make sure to come on a weekend with nice weather. We’d timed it well and the forecast was nothing but blue skies. We dropped our stuff and went for a wander. The center of Nürnberg feels very medieval with its cobbled streets, city walls, and castle looming up on the ridge. Our first destination was the Hausbrauerei Altstadthof, which is the starting point of the Historische Felsengänge tour.

There were only a few of us on the tour. The guide was a friendly older local guy who spoke only German, so the Snook and I were offered electronic devices where we could punch in numbers at each stop and hear an explanation in English.

Felsengänge means “rock passages” and refers to the extensive system of tunnels and cellars carved into the rock beneath Nürnberg. While there are many access points around the city, the main tourist entrance is in Albrecht-Dürer-Platz, right next to the statue of the famous local artist and facing St. Sebaldus Church. We went down the stairs and our guide unlocked the heavy door and ushered us inside.

The tunnels were built from the 14th century onwards and were mainly used in the brewing of beer. At one point, Nürnberg had more than 40 breweries based in the city, and each had a rock cellar for fermenting and storing their beer. The tunnels were eventually joined up and they were used during World War 2 as bomb shelters for the locals and to store precious art as well. Some of the connecting tunnels are pretty small (I had to hunch not to hit my head) so definitely this isn’t a tour for someone with claustrophobia.

There were various stops along the way as we learned about the city, its history of beer making, and how the tunnels were used. We also learned about the Reinheitsgebot, the famous German beer purity law that was adopted across Bavaria in 1516.

There were also some informational exhibits along the way. Many showed medieval manuscripts with illustrations of monks brewing beer, often with a six-pointed star dangling above the pot. Our guide explained that it had nothing to do with Judaism, but instead was known as the Brewer’s Star meant to ward off fires and bad spirits.

The cellars were dug very deep, up to 4 stories in places. However over the years some of them were altered or destroyed, and so changes have been made to conserve them. Our guide told us how in this vault, there are columns, beams, and support rods holding the walls and ceiling to ensure they don’t collapse.

We also learned how ice was cut from lakes and transported to the cellars in the winter, where it would slowly melt over the summer and keep the tunnels cool enough for the beer fermentation. The sandstone also filtered groundwater, and we saw examples of primitive “pipes” made from bored-out logs that were used to transport the water.

Towards the end of the tour I jokingly asked the guide if there were any “Geister” (ghosts) down there. “Oh yes!” he answered. 😳

The tour ends back up at ground level where you are offered a sample of the famous local Rotbier (red beer) from the Altstadthof brewery.

There’s also a distillery associated with the brewery, so we heard a bit about the process of making whisky and got to step inside one of the storerooms full of barrels. It smelled amazing. Needless to say, the Snook was in heaven.

After the tour, I had taken Frank’s advice and booked us in for dinner at the Brewery. We enjoyed some fine Franconian fare and sampled more of the beer…

…and even a bit of their Bierbrand, which is distilled from beer itself. It’s similar to whisky but not exactly the same.

We decided to burn off some of those calories with a nighttime stroll around the city. We headed first to the castle with its dramatically lit walls and battlements.

From the castle we walked south down Burgstraße towards the Altes Rathaus (old city hall).

It stands directly behind St. Sebaldus Church.

We continued on to the Hauptmarkt, the big public square where the world famous Christkindlesmarkt (Christmas market) is held each year. One of the attractions in the square is the Schöner Brunnen (beautiful fountain).

Nearby is the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), which we would discover the next day has a very famous clock.

The river that flows through Nürnberg is the Pegnitz, and we crossed over the Museumsbrücke on our walk. From one side we could see the Fleischbrücke, a late Renaissance bridge that has stood for more than 400 years. On the other side we had a view of the Heilig-Geist-Spital built over the river. It was originally a hospital and now it’s an old folks’ home.

We headed back towards our hotel. Along the way we passed by St. Sebaldus Church again, this time from the front. St. Sebaldus is the patron saint of Nürnberg.

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As soon as we got back from Madrid back in March, we dumped the suitcases, did a couple quick loads of laundry, and repacked everything again. 24 hours later we were on the train to Vienna. Time to continue our Habsburg week!

We caught the RJX 261 from Munich to Vienna, which takes about 4 hours. Since it was dinnertime, we used the train app to order food from the dining car and it was delivered to our seats. I couldn’t resist tweeting it to @_DiningCar.

Dinner onboard the RJX262 from Munich to Budapest-Deli. We ordered on the railnet site and they delivered to our seats! 🍺🚞 @_DiningCar pic.twitter.com/yCaki7An5T

— Kris Howard 💃 (@web_goddess) March 10, 2022

Once we arrived at Vienna, we caught a cab to our hotel and then crashed for the night. The next morning, we wandered around the corner to phil (a bookstore and cafe) for breakfast.

My friend Eileen calls Vienna “the Melbourne of Europe,” and yeah, I can see it. I went for the brekkie option that came with a glass of Prosecco.

We were staying in the Museum Quarter of Vienna, and I spotted this graffiti nearby: “Man tötet nicht aus Liebe.” (One does not kill for love.) This saying has been used a lot in conjunction with an Austrian campaign against domestic violence.

I also really liked this nearby intersection, with its rainbow pedestrian crossing and LGBTQI street signals. 🏳️‍🌈❤️

Our goal for the morning was to see some art, so we headed to the nearby Maria-Theresien-Platz. This public square sits between the Naturhistorisches Museum (Natural History Museum) and the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Art History Museum). In the center there is a memorial statue of Empress Maria Theresa herself. It was shaping up to be a beautiful day in Wien!

We bought our tickets and headed into the Art History Museum. It turns out that Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary commissioned these two museums to house the Habsburgs’ formidable art collection.

The entry to the Museum leads you into the ground floor of the Rotunda with its fantastically decorated ceiling. From there you can branch off into several different galleries.

We headed to the right into the Egyptian Collection. It was pretty much exactly what you envision as a kid – hieroglyphics on the walls, huge carved sarcophagi, and mummies in their painted coffins.

“Do you want to get cursed?” the Snook asked as I posed for a selfie with some burial idols. “Because I’m pretty sure that’s how you get an ancient Egyptian curse.”

I especially liked this statuette of a hippopotamus from Thebes. They’ve dated it to around 2000BC, so this little guy is like 4000 years old.

Next we headed to the Greek and Roman antiquities. Hello, butts. 🍑 This is the rear view of the Torso des Speerträgers (torso of the spear-carrier).

The building itself is a work of art, extravagantly decorated and carved.

I especially liked this Amazonian Sarcophagus showing the famous female warriors fighting against the Greeks.

The collection also includes a Roman mosaic depicting the story of Theseus. His battle with the Minotaur is in the center of the labyrinth, and around the sides are scenes with Ariadne. (The museum has spotlights that periodically turn on to highlight parts of the mosaic, which is why the scenes are lit up.)

A statuesque Mr. Snook, posing in a room full of Roman sculpted heads.

I love the stylised decoration on these Greek amphorae. This one depicts Silenus and the maenads, as well as more Amazons.

Another part of the museum is the “Kunstkammer” which houses its most fabulous treasures. This is the famous gold Cellini Salt Cellar from 1543, which was stolen in a daring heist in 2003 and not recovered until three years later. It’s insured now for like $60M.

Time to look at paintings! We headed up the staircase, which is ridiculously over-the-top and features paintings from famous artists like Gustav Klimt.

We’d been going for over three hours at this point, so I was feeling a little tired and had a rest on a bench.

The collection includes quite a few works by Peter Paul Rubens. This one is “Haupt der Medusa” (Head of Medusa) showing the severed head of Medusa with drops of her blood turning into snakes. 😳

The museum also houses a large number of works by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the most significant artist of the Dutch and Flemish Renaissance. Here the Snook views “The Tower of Babel.”

We spent nearly five hours in the art museum, so it was definitely time to get outside and see more of Vienna. We walked along the Heldenplatz past the Hofburg Palace (where Marie Antoinette was born!), and through the archway next to the Spanish Riding School.

Our destination was St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the most important religious building in Vienna. It’s nearly 900 years old! I was not expecting the beautiful geometric designs made from glazed tiles on the roof. I’ve never seen anything like that on a church before.

The interior is also stunning, with paintings, sculptures, altars, and tombs wherever you look. We walked up and down the aisles. The cathedral was nearly destroyed in 1945 by retreating German forces, but the Captain saved it by disobeying orders to reduce it to rubble.

We walked all around the exterior of the cathedral too. The towers have many bells, and it’s said that Beethoven discovered he was deaf when he saw birds flying out of the towers but couldn’t hear the tolling.

Digression: The real reason for going to Vienna was to celebrate my 45th birthday. I had been thinking for a while about getting myself a nice wristwatch. (Not a smartwatch; a real mechanical watch.) I’d bought myself a beautiful Longines watch for my 40th, but a year later I accidentally left it in a hotel room in Singapore and I never got it back. I was heartbroken at the time and, though the Snook suggested repeatedly that we could replace it, I told him that I didn’t deserve nice things if I couldn’t care for them properly. Finally, several years later, I felt like it might be time.

As we walked through Vienna, we looked into several watch shops but I couldn’t find anything that met my requirements. I didn’t want anything too tiny or delicate, or with silly bits of diamonds stuck all over it. I wanted something simple and classic, and ideally I wanted it to be self-winding. What I really wanted was my old watch again, but even though we saw many Longines, I couldn’t find any just like it. The Snook convinced me to check out one more shop, Juweliere Ellert, a jeweler near the cathedral. The saleslady was very nice and showed me many different watches, but none of them were right. She asked me to describe my old watch, and when I did, she suddenly reached back into a cabinet and said, “Is it this one?” IT WAS. It turns out that the particular model had been retired in 2020 but they had one left, and she recognised it from my description. So I got my watch back! She even gave us a nice discount. It was the best, best birthday surprise, and I couldn’t be happier with it.

Anyway, after that excitement we were starving so we headed to 1516 Brewing Company for dinner and craft beer.

After dinner we walked back to our hotel, past the illuminated Vienna State Opera. I’d love to see a performance there someday.

Back at our hotel, it was finally time to relax. We were staying at Das Tyrol, which I picked mainly because it advertised having a private spa. (We’ve gotten a bit addicted to saunas!) We’d reserved a time slot so we put on our robes and slippies and headed down to the hotel basement. And, WOW.

It had a Finnish dry sauna, a steam bath, a big rain shower, and some couches to relax on. There was even an aquarium built into the wall! We spent an hour down there, and it was heaven. I highly recommend.

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