Poland was our favorite Baltic country. It is lively and modern and as it is part of the European Common Market it feels like it is growing; citizens are fully employed and college is free or low cost. WODSKI (Vodka) is the national drink and we had a dinner accompanied by a wodski tasting. Above you see Sally with her first two shots lined up on her way to tasting every European grapefruit vodka available. (Finlandia was the best and the Polish version the worst.) Steven did NOT find the horseradish vodka to his liking!

The Poles love their breads, and sausages and meats. This casual local restaurant, a short walk from our hostel, made you start at a huge meat counter to select your cuts, then seated you and started the wodski shots. Before you finish your first shot, perfectly cooked meats, salads, and fresh bread arrives…and the shots continue! I wish we had this restaurant in our Albany neighborhood.

Our first of many, many medieval town squares (yawn…) was in Poznan, about halfway between Berlin and Warsawa. Because we stayed on the town square we happened onto an international ukelele festival! An awesome musician from Australia played faster and faster versions of the William Tell Overture as the crowd yelled, “Faster, faster!”(below)

He was was followed by two local rockers pretending to be Mexicans dressed in big sombreros, tight pants, and …with limited Spanish. They performed a variety of big rock anthems…Move over, Boss! What a hoot with their electrified ukes, rock concert lighting and jumps out into the audience as though into a mosh pit. They got EVERYBODY dancing in spite of the rain.

Poland felt different from the other Baltic countries: friendlier, Catholic, more public art, way better food and less expensive.

Although during WW2, the Poles did their share of marching their Jewish countryman into the forest to shoot them, they also had the largest and most successful Jewish Uprising (Warsaw) of all the ghettos in the Baltics. The large Jewish populations in the Baltics have disappeared but each capital has one remaining synagogue that has been preserved.

You can see how stunned he is! This gorgeous candy display is rebuilt every Tuesday with all different candy and decorative theme…and is just one small niche in a German department store that dedicates 2 huge floors to food products. Approximately 5,000 square feet was dedicated to chocolate products alone…just in case you have a hankering for chocolate made with camel milk. There were gorgeous displays of breads, oils and vinegars, teas, spices, poultry and meats (wild and farmed), nuts, pastries, soups and stews, sausages, aspics, crustaceans and fish, and small restaurants with tasting menus specializing in each area. It was as big as an IKEA for gourmet international foods and contained food delicacies we’ve never seen before. I could live here!

I always thought of Germans as terse and professional, eg. lacking a sense of humor…but I was so wrong! Enjoy this brilliantly located ad using the bus’s exhaust system to advertise a drug to treat erectile dysfunction (above). Ha!

We asked our new friend Tomas (who generously squired us around Berlin’s newest bars and best donor kebab restaurants) if German men had a predilection to pee “free style”, like “Look Ma, no hands!”  He had no idea WTF we were talking about until we led him to the toilet in our apartment…then he laughed heartily at the LARGE graphic above.

Of course Germans still feel shame for allowing the Nazis to systematically murder their countrymen so there are historical reminders throughout the city. This marker (indicating a site for a former railroad station that shipped Jews, gypsies and homosexuals to the concentration camps listed) is right outside the high end department store shown at the top.

The public transportation system is easy, everyone speaks English, there is inexpensive and delicious Turkish food in every tiny space around town, and there is public art and murals everywhere. We loved Berlin for exploration on foot. The only problem was intense heat (95 degrees daily) and high humidity except at night and first thing in the morning. Still, five days was not enough for us, and we will return soon.

Copenhagen is the capital city of magical spires! – Can you guess which is the Dragon Spire?

COPENHAGEN (7-DAY)

This stretch was a definite personal highlight of the trip.  Saadou was a lifelong friend of my first wife, Aspasia. After her bereavement in 2008, his email of condolences ignited our friendship leading to a 7-day stay with him and his awesome family.

They’ve pampered me with much love and quality times: delicious home-cooking Danish meals including daily candle-lit breakfasts consisting of herring, local cheese, black breads & aquavit. Abundant local walks, festivals, historic areas, and museums filled our days. We also took a day-trip ferry to Sweden. The whole family was so generous with their time, including Asta and Emma, 2 and 6 year-olds respectively, who were the sweetest of the swarm.

My Awesome Danish Family Folks!  Smiling and proud Saadou between his warm and sweet  daughter, Ida, and Agneta’s father, Christian. 

Loveliest Agneta and her two gifted daughters, Emma and Asta

Saadou’s kind son, Johannes, and his charming wife, Nanna, prepped an amazing cook-out Danish meal. They have a young precocious boy, Christian and a happy baby girl, Agnes

HAMBURG (4-DAY)

As a world history buff, this city has been on my radar for many years.  Using a 3-day Hop-On Hop-Off bus pass, I’ve time-traveled to 1300’s, when it was a place frequented by pirates throughout the centuries; to 1883 in picturesque Speicherstadt district where it is now today’s largest warehouse district in the world, all standing on massive oak timber piles; and to early 1960’s, in Reeperbahn bustling nightlife center where the Beatles began to make their mark on music.

Despite being located astride the River Elbe, some 60 miles from the North Sea, Hamburg is a major port city. The biggest port in Germany – the second-busiest in Europe and the third largest in the world, after London and New York.

Inside its city limits, Hamburg has more bridges than any other city in the world and more canals than Amsterdam and Venice combined. I’ve heard several figures, somewhere around 2,300 to over 2,500.

Köhlbrandbrücke – a bridge with one of the longest cable span; the central cable-stayed part has a span of over a 1000 feet supporting the infrastructure – it was an impressive sight! (Photo credit to Go-Nils)

St. Nicholas Church, the tallest building in the world from 1874 to 1876. Due to 1943 bombing run, it was irreparably damaged and abandoned.  It is now a monument to the destruction of WWII

In spite of the historical appeal, Hamburg felt “rough”, with sidewalks littered with cigarette butts and litter, and evidence of drug addiction and unemployment. I felt this even more strongly when I then travelled next to Berlin, a thriving, sophisticated city with a huge diversity of foods,  public art, and a fabulous public transportation system.