One card for them all

My last Eurotrip post! (A relief for some of you who are tired of it already, but sad for others who still dream of traveling.)

Part of what makes visiting cities exciting is finding your way around.

Barcelona T-10 (10 trips, zona 1), €6,90
(note: the comma takes the place of the decimal point)
As the city is large and our hostel was not in the center, we really needed this. The Metro can be a headache because the tunnels are sometimes unbelievably long, practically like walking to the next station. Buses are ok.

Paris carnet (10 tickets, Billet Ile-de-France), €11,10
I think printing out 10 tiny tickets is still a waste of paper and adds to the litter, but the nice part about it is that you can split up the tickets. The metro system is compact, the RER (train) goes farther, the buses are routes served us well.

Berlin tageskarte (day ticket, zone AB), €6,10
Expensive for one day, but unlimited rides on buses, trains (S-bahn and Underground), trams and ferries eliminate the need for those tourist hop-on, hop-off buses.

Amsterdam strippen kaart (15 strips), €6,80
Weird system similar to the klippekort in Denmark, only a bit more complex. If you're a tourist, you don't need this, as it's much better to walk and there are not many transport links simply because there's not space! The metro will be of no use to you. Then again you might want to take the occasional tram or bus.

Sandeman's free walking tours

I discovered Sandemans New Europe Tours online (stole our photo from their site) and in the past month, I've been on five of their free tours. Yes, five free tours. (Hey, I give good tips.) Their paid tours are pub crawls and other special interest walks.

Guide: Karen (American)
Gives tours of: Paris
Quotable quote: "Americans have potty mouths"
Irreverent Jewish musician who we had on two tours, the regular city tour and the Montmartre tour, which they were testing at the time.

Guide: Maria (Swedish-Japanese)
Gives tours of: Berlin
I love her! An ex-model turned music mag correspondent whose love affair with a rock star brought her to Germany, she has training in acting, and it shows.

Guide: Elysia (American)
Gives tours of: Amsterdam
UPenn grad with a sweet voice.

Guide: Gregg (Australian)
Gives tours of: London
Nationalistic and cocky (in a funny way) boy from Oz.

They also have free tours of Edinburgh and Munich. Tip generously!

Food trip: BER

German beer? I prefer water, thanks.

Our first dinner in Berlin was at an Italian resto at Hackescher Markt, which is touristy by all standards but doing brisk business. A couple of times, we tried looking for the restos recommended by New Berlin magazine, but they were all non-existent.

For a cheap fix, there's currywurst (sausage sprinkled with curry powder) everywhere. I prefer the bread kiosk near Warschauer station though, because it has a good assortment of pastries and pizzas for hardly anything.

I find German and Danish food similar: herring, rye bread, potato salad, meatballs. Not really our thing, having to deal with that assortment everyday, so we opted for Asian. Our splurge dinner was at Silberstein, which, despite its name, serves Japanese everything. To continue our tradition of drinking something local in every city, We matched our meals with Berliner Weisse, beer with syrup. I got one with raspberry while Indi had hers with woodruff.


Then we kept eating Asian food (sorry, Germany). The good: Asiagourmet at Berlin Hbf has big, fresh (and authentic Asian) meals at low prices. The bad: Villa Culinaria at Budapesterstraße. I thought the menu looked good enough. Turns out they everything is microwaved from the box.

We didn't eat here, but the first time we saw this, we thought the word lumpia was Filipino. Apparently we don't have a monopoly on it.

Markt, museum, park 1

No typo there--it's German.

Visited an antiques market near Tiergarten station. You could say we were expecting a different kind of market...

The 3-day museum pass is the best! For €7.50, as student can visit dozens of museums. Another great thing is that there are clusters of museums, such as those at Kulturforum and Museuminsel (Museum Island, a World Heritage Site), so you need not go far to go from one museum to the next for most major museums.

It's too time-consuming to go into the specifics of each site, so let the photos do the talking. I just need to point out the Jewish Museum for its unconventional (and disorienting) structure, which is truly noteworthy.

Reichstag

This is currently my desktop wallpaper. The cupola of the Reichstag was designed by Sir Norman Foster and Partners, who also designed 30 St Mary Axe (the Gherkin), City Hall and the Millennium Bridge, all in London.

Reichstag + Sponge Bob =?

So we queued two hours and spent 45 minutes up there. But can you complain when it's free?