Berlin is one of my favorite cities in the world. For one thing, its cheap. Well, its cheap on European prices at least.

I have spent most of the year so far (and will spend most of the rest of this year) in Europe and as much as I truly love this continent, it can be very expensive. Berlin is the exception to that rule. And as a bonus, there are a ton of great things to do there, along with a variety of worthwhile spots to pull a camera out.

I previously wrote about the hilarious celebrity impersonator show I attended while I was there. My God that was a classic night of unintentional humor. I am not much of a “show person,” but randomly getting invited to attend that particular show was one of the highlights of this entire two weeks.

But I was there to do some shooting of the trains, train stations, and various other modes of transport, so I could put together a quick video. Hope you enjoy some of these shots.

The main train station in Berlin, the Haptbahnhof

When I was there I was fortunate to have been sponsored for my stay by Meininger Hotels. They currently have five hotels in Berlin. I stayed at two of them and I can state that they are not only a great value, they are simply great hotels. The breakfast is one of the absolute highlights — and I’m not even a big breakfast eater.

I first stayed at their location near the main train station, the Hauptbahnhof location. It is literally one block away from that station, which is a hub of all the public transportation in the city, so its location is perfect. From there you can hop on the S-Bahn, which will get you about anywhere you need to go. You are also within easy walking distance of the major sites in the middle of town.

Speaking of which, can I just say how much I love cities that have good public transportation? Europe is so far more advanced on that than the United States. I have previously written that was one of the things that drew me in immediately in the underappreciated city of Zagreb. Berlin has the S-Bahn, the U-Bahn, regular trains, trams… it has all the transportation things that oddly make me happy.

You can tell just from looking at the lobby area that the hotel is going to be fun

The other Meininger Hotel I stay at was in the Prenzlauer Berg section of town. This is a more residential part of town and a lot more fun at night than the area around the Haptbahnhof. The nightlife here, and the various places to eat, are a highlight.

It has a lot more active feel to it. It is one of my favorite neighborhoods in town.

trains and trams near Prenzlauer Berg

All in all, it was a really great few weeks in Berlin. The weather was just beginning to warm up. The cafes were starting to serve people outdoors. The people were starting to awaken from the winter slumber…

Berlin, a city well worth spending some time in.

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this is Seeing Berlin and Enjoying My Stay At Meininger from Overland Travel Adventures from Go, See, Write - overland travel, RTW travel, adventure travel

An celebrity impersonation show combines nostalgia, campiness and hilarity. They are a fun sing-along and also a gentle laugh-at, all for the price of one ticket.

I am not sure I’ve ever been to a impersonation show. Wait, I take that back. I do remember stumbling into a transvestite drag show years ago in Key West with a group of friends. That was an interesting night.

So was this one.

I was in Berlin to do some social media consulting with the wonderful people at Visit Berlin with a Blogger-Who-Shall-Remain-Nameless. She received a couple complementary tickets to the show at the hotel she was staying at and invited me over. As I sat in the show, I typed up my notes and showed them to her as the show progressed.

She insisted that she be the “Blogger-Who-Shall-Remain-Nameless” as a result.

My Real Time Review of the Impersonators

First up was the Blues Brothers. They came out with Soul Man and Shake a Tail Feather. During Shake a Tail Feather, we got the first appearance of the scantily clad backup dancers, which made me imagine this conversation.

Stranger: What do what do you do for a living?

Dancer: I shake my tail feathers at a Blue Brothers impersonation show.

If you are going to choose a career path, you gotta embrace it 100%. No regrets.

At this point, the first quotable comment from the Blogger-Who-Shall-Remain-Nameless:

BWSRN: I gotta admit, I am too young for the Blue Brothers to mean anything to me.

Me (looking around): Unlike 90% of the audience here who have already picked out grave sites.

I’m still surprised she didn’t want to be affiliated with this post by name.

The smirk was unintentional, but I wish I'd gotten an autograph

They didn’t introduce the singers when they took the stage. They strutted out to the music and you were left to figure out who they were. Some were instantaneously recognizable either by the song or by their appearance, Madonna and Freddy Mercury being two of those.

On the other hand, a woman came out singing Chapel of Love (“going to the chapel and we’re gunna get married”).  BWSRN turned to me and asked who it was. I said, “based only on the boobs and the short curly hair, I’m going to go with Bette Midler.”

I know my boobs.

As soon as I recognized the next song, I sat up in my chair. I turned to BWSRN nameless and said, “do you know what this song is??!!”

To set the stage a bit, the crowd at this show seemed to be about 90% German, with some scattered non-German tourists like us thrown in. And to reiterate, we were in Berlin.

The song — Boogie Woogle Buggle Boy.

I feel confident I was one of the few in the audience to appreciate the irony. In short, that was a song originally done in 1941 to get up public support in the United States for the draft and the military. We were about to go to war and eventually subdue and beat the hell out of… well, no need to beat the irony drum too loud.

I turned to BWSRN and said, “if they play Springtime for Hitler next, I am going to lead the standing ovation. Just be ready.” By the way, if you’ve never seen the Producers, do yourself a favor and enjoy this 3 minutes. Perhaps the best Mel Brooks song he ever did — and that is a tough list to top off.

Next up was Freddy Mercury, who was one of BWSRN’s favorites. He sang Radio Gaga and was quite good. I wanted to make a joke about the impersonator looking like what Freddy Mercury would have looked like, if he’d made it to middle age and added a nice pot belly, but then I just looked him up on wikipedia and it turns out that he actually lived to the age of 45. I thought he died younger than that.

On came Madonna. She sang Express Yourself and then Like a Virgin after a costume change.

Oddly, watching an impersonator made me realize how talented  the real Madonna is as a dancer and performer.

This woman actually sang almost as well as Madonna, but her performance wasn’t half of what Madonna could do.

I’m not sure until exactly that point in the show that I ever truly realized how much of a difference stage presence determines your enjoyment of a performance.

She went into the audience during Like a Virgin and gave a lap dance to an older gentleman. I looked around to make sure there were EMTs at the ready. For Living in a Material World, she patted down another guy, took his wallet, then walked away and threw it back at him. During her Vogue effort, I looked at the expressions of abject mystification on the faces in the audience and wished I spoke enough German to ask them what they were thinking.

A young Louie Armstrong was next. He did a nice job with Hello Dolly and High Society. Then came Joe Cocker. There would have simply been no way to ever recognize this person as Joe Cocker, minus the songs. BWSNR didn’t really know who Joe Cocker was and asked “doesn’t he look like the guy from Saturday Night Live? You know. The one that died?”

You need to be more specific than that.

the gang's all here!!

Joe Cocker is one of my favorite singers. Interesting trivia – he was the person first considered to be the lead singer for Led Zeppelin, before Robert Plant got the gig. He’s got at least a dozen amazing songs, including Unchain my Heart, which this guy sang, but then they screwed up and had him do Up Where we Belong (with Better Midler) and then somehow even managed to pick an even worse song, You Are So Beautiful.

It was an Andrew Lloyd Weber moment for me.

He then played Leave Your Hat On. I had a flashback to watching “9 1/2 Weeks” with my college girlfriend. No, you can’t hear the rest of that story.

Madonna came back on and sang La isla Bonita with a guy playing the classical guitar on stage. I had a brief flashback to all the idiots I have seen carrying their guitars around on their back to play and hostels in an effort to get laid.

See, there is a future for both American Idol participants and those guys.

The Blues Brothers came back on stage for Sweet Home Chicago and Shout.

Me: if these people get up and dance to this, I am going to dance with them.

BWSNR: Look! See. They are dancing. In their chairs. Well, two of them at least.

They finished with Viva las Vegas, but Elvis had the night off. Then Twist and Shout, as everyone stood and clapped.

All jokes aside, everyone seemed to have a great time. That includes me, but perhaps less so for BWSNR, since she was (and likely is) mortified with my twisted view of the world, though I love her still.

Berlin remains one of my favorite cities in the world, particularly because it is the kind of place where you can have nights like this. The variety of this town is something I look forward to every trip back there. I’ve had an unexpectedly emotional day at a music festival there, enjoyed the typical tourist sites, and gotten drunk and had a night of music and memory.

Its a city I will go back to again and again in my lifetime.

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this is Bette, Freddy, Madonna, Louie, Joe… a Show of a Lifetime from Overland Travel Adventures from Go, See, Write - overland travel, RTW travel, adventure travel

I would have never thought that a visit to the Berlin Music Festival would be one of the more emotional experiences I have had in quite a long time, but as I came through the terminal entrance of the Berlin Tempelhof Airport, on my way to the runway side of the building, I started choking up a little bit.

Frankly, as I sit here now remembering and writing, I am getting a little misty.

Berlin Tempelhof Airport is the site of one of the truly amazing and inspirational feats of the last half of the 20th century — the Berlin Airlift.

On June 20, 1948, the Soviet Union began the Berlin Blockade, an effort to drive the Western allies (U.S., U.K. and France) out of the three sectors of Berlin occupied by those three. Since Berlin was deep in the middle of the sector of Germany controlled by the Soviets, the effect of blocking the road from the rest of Germany to Western Berlin meant that the allies either had to give up the city or fly in all the necessities of life for the two and half million residents of the city.

We chose the latter.

For eleven months, the allies (mainly the U.K. and the U.S., but supported by numerous other countries) flew over 200,000 flights into the city and delivered an average of 4,700 tons of material daily. They needed to provide everything: food, coal, water, milk, clothing, military supplies — just think about all the things that two and a half million people would need to have to survive on for a year.

The logistical effort was truly mind boggling. The schedule was such that a plane either took off or landed every three minutes. Every day. For eleven months.

When America Stood for All That is Good

During these days, when large numbers of people in the United States think that government can do nothing right and that acting communally is considered socialistic or worse, I long for days in our not-too-distant past when most everyone realized that we could do some great things when we acted together.

This wasn’t a case of just going off and bombing something (the one government effort that does seem to get support these days), but of a purely humanitarian effort, done in order to save two and a half million people from falling subject to the oppression of the Soviet hegemony.

Frankly, my country has screwed a lot up around the world in the last few decades — and I get to hear about it all the time from people around the world as I travel. But as an American standing there in the shadows of the immense Tempelhof terminal, I welled up with a little pride of a time when America was the preeminent force for good in the world.

I miss those days.

even in the shadows of concession stands, it moved me

The juxtaposition of a vibrant music and art festival with my melancholy feelings made for a bit of an odd day, but one I will not soon forget.

This was about the mid-way point of the Ultimate Train Challenge. The easy part, Europe travel via the wonderful sponsorship of Eurail.com, was to end in just a couple days. Then I was meeting up with Nora and Jeannie for the last 15 days of pretty constant train travel. Those days were amazing, as were the ones leading to this one, but this might have been the single most poignant moment on my 30-day jaunt of train craziness.

the empty counters were eerie

“You may collect your bags at Terminal 2″

And because there actually was a lot more going on that just me getting all sappy and emotional about an airport, wouldn’t it be nice if I showed just a few pics of the actual festival that was the reason we were there in the first place?

The Berlin Music Festival was happening on a couple different stages, underneath the terminal roof. In addition to the musical acts that were playing for two full days on stage, there were other live art performances there, including some great live graffiti artwork.

I was there because the amazing and talented Yvonne of Just Travelous (talented meaning not only a wonderful blogger, but one that has a blog in her native German…. and English), managed to score a couple passes from the Berlin Tourism Board for the event. And I was lucky enough to be around when she got them and did the appropriate groveling to be permitted to tag along. Plus, I think I offered to buy drinks or something of the sort.

there was a fascinating area where artists were doing live art

the eyes of the world are on you… well, ok, maybe just the artist’s rendering

Yes, he is doing a portrait… out of burnt toast

I told you. Jeez, you might believe me next time.

See the two guys dressed in costume? They are in charge. There was liquor involved.

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This is a guest post by my good friend David Roberts, who was a lawyer in Fayetteville, Arkansas when I met him and later moved to Germany with his wife for about four years, where he added two kids to his growing family. I asked him to write about the oddity of German kitchens.

—————————————-

You may be stunned to read this, but after living in Germany for 4 years, I have discovered that Germans do things differently than you do in the United States.

Different doesn’t equate to worse or better, it is just different and once you have adjusted to the difference it becomes  the new norm and you never think about it.  Some of the differences you love and will miss long after you move on to a new location;  affordable health care, family-friendly beer festivals, extensive train system, a walking culture, extended meals (when you reserve a table for Friday night, it is your table…for all of Friday night).

Some things you decidedly don’t love and won’t miss for one moment once you leave; getting scolded by random people for minor social transgressions (walking against the red light, no hat on your child, not immediately picking up dog poop), massive amount of speeding cameras, paid parking garages with tiny little spots.

And then there are the differences that are just plain dumb.

When you buy or rent a home in Germany, you should have no expectation that a kitchen is included.  There is a room that you could use as a kitchen.  That room may have a few old cabinets and a sink, but mostly, it will be a completely empty room with electrical outlets and plumbing hook-ups (at least you know where the sink is supposed to go I guess.)

Yes, your “kitchen” will most likely have nothing at all in it. Oftentimes, they last owners have not only taken all the appliances, but also the counter tops, light fixtures and literally every single thing in the room.

When you rent or buy a place, you have to go out to a kitchen store and buy a custom kitchen to fit into the kitchen room of the place you are renting.   I still have a hard time getting my head around this — why people take custom made kitchens away from the room they were custom built to fit in when they move…they aren’t going to fit in their new kitchen, but they take them anyway.

Who was the first moron to rent a house with no kitchen and be happy about dropping a few thousand deutschmarks buying a kitchen for house he didn’t own?

It is simply the dumbest rental system I have ever encountered.

Ummmm, weren't there supposed to be appliances there?

Imagine this, you are moving to a new city for a job, school, love and you begin your apartment search.  The first place you go is in a great location, good size, affordable price; you go to look at it and when you get to the kitchen room, there are 4 walls, a few outlets, a whole in the floor for the sewer and 2 water lines coming out of the wall.  The real estate agent tells you that if you want a sink, stove, cabinets, etc, that you will have to go buy them.

My wife and I, in a brilliant financial move that has brought us to the brink of bankruptcy on a few occasions, bought a house while in Germany.  As is the norm, the kitchen was largely absent.  Our kitchen room actually still had all the cabinets and a sink, which was a total surprise, but they were at least 30 years old and the most hideous shades of puke green, fecal brown and bile yellow.

In fact, I startled the real estate agent a bit when I dramatically hit the counter top with my fist and loudly declared,  ”this kitchen has to go, all of it.  The tile, the cabinets, the counter tops are awful.”  The Germans have a fairly reserved nature; I don’t… even by American standards.  So the long and short of it is that we eventually bought our little slice of Bavarian heaven and began the process of fixing it up so we could move in.

the finished product

The first and foremost project was the kitchen.   As you might imagine, the German retail kitchen market is very healthy and we had seen numerous kitchen stores in the previous 2 years.  So we knew where to go, but not exactly how it worked.

Was it IKEA-style, cash, carry and assemble?  Full service?  We choose and they do all the ordering, measuring and installing?  Do we order the entire kitchen in one store, or do we have to go somewhere else for the fridge, stove and dishwasher.

As an aside, German shopping is very compartmentalized.  Besides the, one,  large Wal-Mart style store (much smaller) for the most part you still go to a butcher for meat, bakery for bread, an electric store for electronics and a drink store for drinks (true story, called a getrankemarkt everything from from beer and wine to sparkling water and juice).

After looking at a few stores we decided to buy our new kitchen from a national chain named  Kuchen Treff.  Now, another oddity of the Germans is that….wait for it…they speak German, everywhere, including kitchen stores.  By this point we were fairly good at the niceties of everyday German.  We could say hi, nice weather, is going to rain, etc; and we were great in grocery stores, restaurants, bars, etc.  In short, we were good at the stuff we cared about.  Not so much talking about kitchen cabinets, countertops, gloss v. flat finishes and all of the other intricacies of picking out an entire kitchen.

So one Saturday, we gathered up the measurements of our kitchen, our young child (we produced children in Germany also, different story for a different day), our German speaking confidence and headed out to our chosen store.  Luckily, we were quickly greeted by a salesman, he quickly decided that his English was better than our German and we were of, shopping for first German kitchen, in English!  Our fears were partially relieved concerning the installation.

more of the finished product

We had to pick out all the cabinets, sink, fridge, stove and hardware; then they would come out and install it.  We did however have to coordinate for the plumbing and running a gas line from the basement up to the kitchen.  Picking out the kitchen turned out to be very easy, after 2 hours we had ordered all the parts.  We would receive a phone call when everything was in, so we waited and waited.

Another unusual aspect of German culture is that, there is no hurry…to anything.  The efficient German characteristic is a complete myth, they believe their products to be of superior nature, so they don’t believe them to be produced or at least delivered expeditious manner.

After a month or so, we get the call, they want to install our kitchen in the next week or so.  Now we have been living in a house, with a 6 month old, with no kitchen for a month.  This was a glorious phone call.  While we had been waiting we had the old tile removed and new tile installed, all of the old cabinets were taken out and the walls painted; we were ready for the new kitchen.

The installers turned up early on the scheduled morning and started the process of building a kitchen and it was all coming together until…the stove got unwrapped ..and it was gas…and I hadn’t run a gas line to the kitchen…  I mentioned earlier that Germans tend to speak German, the workers only spoke German. So I used all of my German, a German dictionary and some pantomiming to tell them there was no gas in the kitchen, please call someone.  Finally they did and within an hour I had gas in the kitchen, an hour later the kitchen was complete.

The kitchen was a great success.  We cooked many meals in that kitchen.  Intially, it was for my wife, our first born and myself, shortly thereafter we added our beautiful little girl to the check list.  We had big parties to celebrate birthdays, engagements, holidays and random get-to-gethers.   The kitchen was always the center of action and it performed marvelously.

Unfortunately, we moved “home” a few years later and rented our piece of Bavarian heaven (sporadically, see aforementioned bankruptcy) until we could return, or otherwise come up with some long term gameplan.  But in a good ole American gesture of individualism, we left that kitchen in the kitchen room.

At least ONE person is Germany was going to get a fully furnished kitchen on us.

An example of a German Kitchen Store.

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Just in time (almost) for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall, here are some quick notes on a self-guided walking tour of Berlin. A city with almost too much to see, Berlin is to easy get around via subway and by walking. It is well worth at least three or four days of exploration. I want to focus on just a few of the sights that are all within very easy walking distance of each other.

In the center of downtown (at the Unter den Linden S-Bahn exit) lies the Brandenberg gate, the triumphal archway under which conquering German armies marched after going to war. It was commissioned by King Fredrick William II in the late 18th century and is probably most famous for its chariot of horses on top, being driven by Victoria, the Roman goddess of victory. Apparently it didn’t provide initial good luck, because Napoleon conquered Prussia just a couple decades later and took the chariot statute and Victoria off to Paris. It was returned a few decades later — after another war, this time won by the Germans.

From Berlin

It is an iconic sight in Berlin. Their is a line in the street on the west side of the gate that shows where the Berlin Wall once ran. The Brandenberg gate was actually in the no-mans zone for those years. Immediately next to the gate is the U.S. Embassy — prime territory in town for one of the conquering Allied powers. Across the way is the French Embassy, in a fairly ugly building that does not refect what I think of when I think France. The prime hotel overlooking these particular sights is the Hotel Adlon, which normally wouldn’t be one any sightseeing agenda, but I can almost guarantee that you have seen it before.

It was from the penthouse suite’s balcony that Michael Jackson dangled his infant child, to the consternation of most of the world watching on television. Ahhhhh, those classic Michael memories.

Right around the corner is the Reichstag, which houses the German Parliament. The building is suitably picture-worthy, but it is the addition that that building that is the real draw. Before the legislative seat of government of Germany was moved back to Berlin, post re-unification, a large glass dome was added to the top of the building. From inside, you can actually see down to the floor of Parliament and see government in action. It really does look like sausage after all. Lines are long to get in — better to go first thing or last thing in the day. Views from up top are spectacular.

From Berlin

Immediately south of the U.S. Embassy and Brandenberg Gate is one of the most moving places I’ve seen on my entire trip: the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Often mis-indentified as the “Holocaust Museum,” the correct in-your-face name gives an accurate impression of what this site is all about. On the surface of the city block that the memorial occupies are the iconic 2,711 huge stone block that you have no doubt seen pictures of. They stand at various heights and are neatly organized in rows that take up almost the entire block. The architect of the project, Peter Eisenman, has never given any interview explaining what feelings he meant to convey with the design. Walking through the field, taking pictures of the stones with the shadows cast upon them, and seeing others walking in and out of your field of vision is interesting. I wish I had a better word for it, but that’s all I’ve got.

Underground in the small museum. Admission is free and although I hate to be the type of blogger that says “you must do this or that,” you really should take a hour or two out and go downstairs. There are only about five rooms down there. One hallway has the basic history and time line of the Holocaust. One room has maps and pictures of every concentration camps — and there were a lot more than I ever though. One room details how many Jews were killed from each country. But it was two of the rooms that set me back the most.

From Berlin

There is a room where the histories of 12-15 families are laid out. Family photos are on display. Letters. Descriptions of each of the members of the family: ages, professions, schooling, and so on. And then a full explanation of when the Nazis took them to their concentration camp(s) and how they died. Entire families. From Germany, France, Lativa, Russa, Bulgaria, and so many others. Among the reality of millions of murdered Jews — seeing these families stories brought it down to a level I hadn’t thought of before.

From Berlin

The Room of Names is a simple place with no photographs or other displays. One each of the four walls, a person’s name and biographical data is projected. Over the loudspeakers in the room, using information compiled by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, an announcer somberly and briefly details the life, and death, of the person whose name is projected on the wall. On a continuous loop. There are about 700 such brief biographies being looped now and the project aims to expand that to several thousand. When I was there, two women sat on one of the benches crying. They weren’t alone.

I walked out that morning with one thought in my head — I just don’t understand. I don’t mean that in a disrepectful way at all. I certainly understand the facts and details of the Holocaust and the museum was an incredible jolt to my soul. But I don’t understand how people can do that to each other.

On this trip, I’ve been through Uganda, Germany, Cambodia, Sudan and skirted Bosnia. Genocides have happened for thousands of years in a variety of places and are certain to happen again in the future. I am, or at least was, a criminal defense lawyer. I can comprehend murder. Murder for greed, or anger, or jealousy or any of the other thousands of reasons it happens every day does make sense to me — I dispise it, but I can at least comprehend it.

I just cannot comprehend the systematic killing of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or in the Holocaust’s case, millions of people because of their religion, or tribe, or educational background or the other means of weeding out who “must die.” One murderer or a small gang of murderers is something I can get my head around — but genocide is carried out by thousands and thousands of people, at the highest levels of power in their government. How do they get to that point? How is it possible to convince that many people to do something that unspeakably horrible? In the end, I supposed I’m glad that I cannot understand it at all, but I do understand, and believe, in the inscription on the wall I read that day.

“It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say.” from Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (I sommersi e i salvati. Turin 1986), Simon and Schuster, New York.

Primo Levi, born in 1919 in Turin, was a chemist. As a member of the Italian resistance, he was arrested in 1944 and deported to Auschwitz. He survived and began in 1945, directly after his return, to write. In 1987 Primo Levi committed suicide.

From Berlin

My good friend, The Aussie Nomad, also has done a walking guide to Berlin that you should check out. And for Berlin Hotels, you should check out that link.

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OK — two pictures, but one is just a cropped close up.

There aren’t many countries where you can summarize the nation’s personality in one picture, but I think this does a pretty good job for Germany.

Simply put, Germany is a country of rule followers. This is no better shown that at any an average intersection in the country. You must be at an intersection to see it, because no one jaywalks — that would violate the rules.

No one, I mean no one, crosses against the light.

As a side note, I dislike when people say something “never” happens or is “the best ever” or other authoritative statements of absolute truth. Look – its not the best pasta made on the planet. Its not the best song ever written. Its not the worst speech ever given or the most stupid managerial move in the history of baseball.

One of the best? Sure. Almost always? Absolutely. I’ve never had better? Great.

There is always room for a bit of flexibility in any authoritative statement. Nothing is the best anything. No one is the most evil person on the planet. And nothing happens every single time. Well, except that the sun will rise in the east, the tax man is going to want his share every year, no one will live forever, and . . .

Germans don’t cross against the light. I have seen this in numerous cities and under numerous situations. Today in Dresden it was driven home once again — about five or six times, I would walk up to an intersection, see the red light, look around, see absolutely no traffic at all (not a lot of car traffic in downtown Dresden), and walk across the road, usually a pretty small two-lane one.

And no one else crossed with me. In fact, they all looked at me like I was an alien from another planet.

I would so want to see what they think of Cairo or Mexico City. The thoughts running through their heads there must be priceless.

By the way — here is the important part of that last picture.

And although you can’t see far enough in this picture — rest assured, there isn’t a car, bus or other vehicle anywhere in sight.

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this is Germany summed up in one picture from Overland Travel Adventures from Go, See, Write - overland travel, RTW travel, adventure travel