Dash Reports What's Going On In Central Europe!
Following a three week trip from Berlin to Hamburg, Prague, Bratislava, Vienna, and Munich!
I haven’t been posted much for the last 3 weeks because I went to Europe for fun and some urban exploration. I spent 4 days in Berlin, 3 days in Hamburg, 4 days in Prague, 2 days in Bratislava, 5 days in Vienna, and 3 days in Munich which overlapped with the first week of Oktoberfest.
I don’t know if it’s any use to you, but I feel like sharing some of my impressions:
Hostels I
Staying in hostels introduced me to a lot of cool fellow travelers from around the world. Often when I tell people around my age (33) about my enthusiasm for hostels, they react apprehensively. There was a popular horror movie called Hostel that was pretty gruesomely violent and came out in 2005 — the middle of my generation’s formative middle/high school years, so that probably has something to do with it, as friends of mine have cited it when hearing me share my travel history. However, I never saw the movie. Others are put off by the idea of sleeping in a bunk bed in a room with four to eight other people for all the reasons it would be inconvenient, and they are not wrong, a hotel room to yourself is much more relaxing! But I was traveling alone, and meeting new friends to experience the cities with and hang out with every night made the trip much more awesome. Also, hostels are very cheap, and my average nightly cost for a bed was about $50.
Beer
The cheap housing cost left a lot more money for experiences, and beer… I drank a lot of beer. These Central European countries all have huge beer-drinking cultures, and because beer is such a common beverage it’s very cheap in all these places. I like to assimilate into the cultures I visit, so I tried a lot of new beers. Draft beer was seldom more than €3, and happy hour specials typically get them under €2. Much better than the prices in America, where draft beer usually goes for $7 on the low-end and $14 on the high-end. However, the portions in Central Europe are generally a bit smaller than American portions, so the binge drinking I did is less severe than the alcoholism you might be imagining me doing.
Hostels II
Staying in hostels reminds me of a college dormitory during the first week of uni where you don’t know anyone, so everyone is happy to meet anyone. It is one of the most pure moments in life when you’re surrounded by strangers and can truly be yourself in that anonymity because nothing really matters with such ephemeral relationships. Everyone is mutually down to have a good, chill time. I did some serious research to pinpoint the best hostels with the best social vibes without being too rowdy, and my research yielded two great hostels with two so-so hostels (Bratislava and Prague) that were clean and comfy, just not my kind of social. My Prague hostel skewed a little young—low to mid-20s—but I spent most of my time walking around outside anyway. I live in a college town so I have plenty experience being underwhelmed and perhaps now a bit out of touch with young adults, and I was kind of recovering from four packed days and late nights in Berlin. If you’ll allow me to indulge in a little memento mori self-reflection, it’s an interesting time in my life to still kind of feel like a young adult, but begin to reluctantly accept, like all Millennials, we are nearly grown up. The hostels in Berlin, Vienna, and Munich had much wider age ranges, and I was quite a social butterfly in those. It’s a great social workout to put yourself in places like that where there is no comfort zone to hide in, and discovering how quickly you realize you don’t need one. Striking up conversations with total strangers is kind of exhilarating when you assemble a crew to go bar-hopping with after the hostel bar closes. I travel a lot for my job, and spend about half the year hanging out with cool coworker friends in cities none of us live, so I can straight-face profess I have gotten good at the art of palaver. And it’s so much fun. However, such galavanting does have a fresh-by date, and a lot of the hostels have age maximums of 45, so if you’re interested in hostel-hopping abroad yourself, don’t wait too long! The money you spend on travel will always return, but the time you spend delaying your travels while you’re young and healthy won’t.
Czechia
The Czech Republican wants to formally be called Czechia in English from now, and I support that. The way so many different languages refer to countries by totally different names than the names those countries have for themselves is a mess, and some international body needs to clean this up and get everyone on the same page. Also, Czechia has not adopted the Euro, and their currency has very cool coins. One of my travel hobbies is collecting various coins and bills in the currencies of the countries I visit, and I don’t really have a point about it except that I think it’s cool and recommend everyone do it! The nationalistic differences in ways countries present themselves on their money is fascinating, and I find people are typically very interested in looking through my collection when I show them. The koruna česká has some thick coins that are 1 Kč, 2 Kč, 5 Kč, 10 Kč, 20 Kč, and even 50 Kč in value. For reference, 100 Kč is roughly $4. I like the practicality of having coins in your pocket for fast transactions. The US currency’s coins are just too small — you must have four of our big coins just to have the value of $1. In Czechia you can carry four big coins and have the value of $8. Value per coin goes much further, and it’s nice (and more secure) to not have to get out your wallet to pay for something like a bakery item or coffee or souvenir magnet that’s only a dollar or two. I don’t believe most Americans enjoy carrying around change, except in car cup holders and some ludicrously large collecting container at home saving up for a rainy day slush fund. And surely our advanced, developed economy can do the math to phase out pennies!
Berlin
One of the most interesting things about Berlin is the obligatory reminders all around of Nazi Germany. There were lots of signs along sidewalks that in a somewhat cliché manner explained what such and such building started out as before it took on Nazi political functions and then was bombed by the Allies. Also, the museums associated with the crimes of Nazism, such as the Jewish Museum, the Topography of Terror museum, and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe are all appropriately free. Hitler’s shadow over Berlin has led the city to develop its famed counterculture club vibe full of black boots, dark clothes, and partying without inhibitions. I find it very funny there are famous clubs with high rejection rates that people faddishly wait in long lines for. Berlin being a pop-travel destination, I approve of it adding door men who judge travelers by their superficial intentions and protect and preserve the domestic vibes they’re going for. Relatedly, the drab Soviet architectural aesthetic of East Berlin is very fascinating to walk around in. Concrete is everywhere, and, fittingly, everywhere you go vendors nearby are selling commemorative little painted concrete pieces of the Berlin Wall, which may or may not actually be pieces of real Berlin Wall slabs 30 years of commemorative sales after its teardown.
Prague
Prague tops my list for the most beautiful city in the world (that I’ve seen so far, there’s plenty more to see) but I got a little lonely there. It’s a city for lovers, and I was traveling alone. The weather turned gray while I was there as well, but I spent every day walking miles’ worth of steps up and down the old streets and architectural wonders. It’s sad to think how much of Europe was beautiful like Prague before WWII. However, even in September past the summer rush, the city was filled with tourists everywhere stopping in the middle of everywhere to take photos, and walking in the bike lanes, and clogging all the the famous spots in clumps cancerous to the city streets’ tempo. I perhaps had a bit of Prague Syndrome, which we could compare to the infamous Paris Syndrome I definitely felt myself there where the city is just too tourist swamped that it of course transitioned all the cool spots into borderline theme park institutions of tourism profit. It’s less of a Prague Experience™ when looking at a historic monument a bus full of elderly Chinese pull up and take a group photo next to you. I understand I’m complaing about tourism when I myself am a tourist, but… yeah. I understand why so many places are getting fed up with tourists, and cities are exploring ways to tax them more, or limit their number, and I think it’s probably just inevitable, for worse more than better, that according to capitalism the cool cities of the world’s futures are to become experiential products like theme parks, with advertisements of “Come get the Amsterdam experience and explore a dungeon, and peruse a sex museum, and take in a Van Gogh collection, and step right up to Anne Frank’s hidden doorway, now take an edible and a mushroom and paddle down the canals, then a day-trip to the tulip fields, and, finally, take a walk down to the Red Light District.” It’s not ideal, but at least quaint, old downtowns becoming anthropological urban experiential museums will earn nations bountiful tourism money to benefit their societies beyond the international tourist zones.
Bratislava
Bratislava was a bit dampened by the fact that Prague’s gray skies were an omen of historic raining throughout Central Europe, such that several people died and hundreds of millions in damages occurred. I missed the damaging floods, fortunately, and thankfully it didn’t storm much in Bratislava so I didn’t get too drenched exploring. However, as I left, the Danube water level was super high under Bratislava’s famous UFO bridge, and lots of Slovakians were standing along the banks looking at it. Climate change is a bitch.
Vienna
It stopped raining the morning after I arrived in the evening in Vienna. This city was my favorite on the trip. Its architecture is beautiful for miles, it has great transit, it has world-class palaces and museums, and I very much enjoyed the café culture. The really famous, old cafés kept long lines to get a table all day long, and, from peeking my head inside, it looked that the tourist checklist spot approach of the international clientele made its vibe less inspiring. I instead found smaller, more hidden cafés with names like “Kafka,” full of posters from auteur films and other interesting aesthetic choices. Five days was a good amount of time to start to get to know Vienna, and another two or three days wouldn’t have tired me of it.
American Culture
As a more general thought, anytime I travel I’m always reminded how superficial it is for people to claim America doesn’t have culture. Americans do not have “culture” in the sense that we have a traditional kind of garb and cuisine from peasants of the 1600s with their weird monarchy guards who have puffy balls on their shoes and do weird bird steps when changing shifts… but everywhere you go, even in proudly advanced European countries, a shocking number of advertisements use English, and all the youths are wearing t-shirts and hoodies with random English phrases on them and references to or symbols of American bands or movies or TV shows or sports teams or cities, and every store and bar plays American music on the radio. If any non-American likes hip-hop, rap, jazz, country, pop, the blues, and a lion’s share of rock & roll, they listen to American culture. When taking pictures of many international cities’ major monuments and attractions you often have to crop out a McDonald’s, KFC, or Burger King sign. Coca-Cola is sold everywhere. It’s more capitalistic cultural exchange than an American tourist buying overpriced lederhosen for Oktoberfest, but there’s a lot the rest of the world idolizes about America. Meanwhile, American football is growing fast in Europe, and I watched a football game on a Sunday night in Hamburg because my German friend I was staying with doesn’t miss a weekend of staying up for Sunday football nights despite the seven-hour time-zone difference. Even in the Oktoberfest tent I drank and sang and danced all day with strangers and new friends celebrating the cultural oddities of Bavaria, the biggest crowd-pleasing sing-along song played by the big band in the tent center getting both the native Germans and assortment of global travelers yelling at peak volume in unison was “Country Roads,” a song nostalgically crooning about… West Virginia’s Shenandoah River. If America doesn’t have culture, why did I see so many Australian and Dutch tourists vacationing in Germany croon out cardiac nostalgia for rural Appalachia? The next top crowd pleasers in order were “Sweet Caroline,” “Living on a Prayer,” and then a whole host of 80s and contemporary songs from the US. America doesn’t have culture, puhlease.
Oktoberfest Cocaine
I didn’t know this before attending, but it’s somewhat of a ubiquitous Bavarian tradition for everyone to snort Wiesn Koks (meaning Oktoberfest coke), which is a menthol-hinted powdery tobacco that gives you a head rush, and lots of people had little bottles of it and shared generously. The spirit of Oktoberfest stayed high in me all day, and I drank for nine hours straight with hostel friends I had made in Vienna and met up with in Munich, who arrived early to the festival ground on Saturday morning and got a table in one of the giant beer-branded tents. The tables all fill up fast, and table space is very precious Oktoberfest real estate, so I had about as positive and fun a time sharing rounds of beers and waters, pretzels, sausages and sauerkraut, and standing up on the table with everyone in the tent and singing along to the band, and meeting Germans and people of other nationalities, and sprinkling menthol powder on my hand and snorting it, and singing along to “Country Roads” like three times, they just love it so much lol. ☕
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Sounds like you had a great time! True story: I was in Germany when the wall was coming down. I still have a piece. Seems like East Berlin hasn’t changed in the many years since I’ve been there.