Since the Christmas and New Year are all included in this exchange semester, five of us planed a 15 days trip. This blog is a record.

Start From Berlin

in the night of 20/12, we departure from Munich Hbf toward Berlin Hbf and We arrived at about 7 am, 21/12.

The city train in Berlin is totally different from the ones in Munich, it’s more lovely, and we can a mark where French Fries, alcohol are forbidden except for dogs in the train.

After we left our packages in the Youth Hostel (the name of it is actually industry hotel, the hall of the hotel has some old fashion designs: sofas with black-white TVs in the corner, some other seats and tables make you feel like in a old-fashion train, Etc.), we went for the center part of Berlin.

Alone the way there, we accidently found a golden squirrel, he was completely friendly and accepted our food, after that we had saw some other squirrels but all of them are grey and more wild (not willing to get our food).

If you have lived in Berlin for a while and have a visit to Berlin, you may agree that Berlin is not as neat as Munich. Berlin is 3-4 times large than Munich and you can see street art everywhere. I guess that this tradition comes from the Berlin Wall, youth express themselves in such a way and this decorates Berlin in a different way(the forth picture is from the East Berlin Wall Gallery: a long long wall full of masterpieces).

Also it’s said that the whole Bayern is under strict control of the Christian church so there is no building taller the the Church. People in Berlin carved ‘freedom’ on their heart and thus the atmosphere of art is greater. And it seems there is also a strict regulation on drones in whole Germany.

Everywhere we can see some monuments about the war and the horrible things happened to Jewish. I think this is what Japanese need to learn.

History is heavy. Then we came to a check point of American army. After the WW2, Berlin is divided into 4 parts and they belongs to U.S.A. Soviet, English and French respectively. The most dominant thing at this point is a big figure, on the two sides are two soldiers with each part’s suits. And there is a wall museum which is also very cool but I did not have enough money.

Also, I did not know until that day that Berlin was taken into 4 parts and govern by America, England, France and Soviet separately. This check point is the most famous one and there are plenty of souvenir shops along the main street as well as the Berlin Wall Museum. One thing I want to say here is that people here are very open to show other this part of history(be occupied by other countries I mean), they even make money with it!! This is somehow completely different from my country.

In the afternoon, we checked-in and go for the easy-wall gallery, this is a well preserved part of the Berlin wall and the artist paint great artworks on it.

During the trip, I had seen lots of road sign and all of them made me satisfied:) I rarely saw such things in my country and I think people need to stimulate their art cells.

Other tourist attractions in Berlin. These pictures were taken in 22/12, in this day we mainly wandered around in the Museum Island area and of course we visited lots of museums. But still I did not pay for the 5 euros one hour trip in the big church(closing to the Christmas the open time was changed).

Near the Museum Island, I see a Muslim protest demonstration for the Xinjiang, and the group of people are leading by several police cars and followed by some policeman. Out of the museum, there are also some great buildings like a ruin of a monastery.

In the night of 22.12, we leaven Berlin for Warsaw, the capital of Poland. Before we leave, I met a cool Germany boy, he is an engineer as the same as me and he loaded LEDS on his luggage and his laptop because he loves it. I guess the most attractive point of him is his appearance: pink hair, pink choker and low-cut shirt. Berlin IS funny than Munich. After that, Macro(the cool boy) introduced me his organization: hack-space, I have to say this is a wonderful non-profit organization and they even have division in Beijing! The bus arrived half a hour earlier. Since this time we booked a private rented room, we left our packages in the door guard and started the trip.

Poland: Warsaw and Katowice

Warsaw

We arrived in Warsaw in 23/12. There is an old city, which is surrounded by walls and river, and new center of Warsaw. When we went to the old city, it is too earlier and nearly no shop is open. What’s more, it was a Monday and no museum opens on Monday. What a pity!

But it is necessary to go to visit something about Chopin if you come to Warsaw, so we went to a large park. It was in this park we see lots of grey squirrels and lots of pigeons. There is a lake in the park and all the birds were attracted by my snacks.

After that, we went to enjoy some tasty Polish food(that’s a chain restaurant) and it’s a surprise to find they also have dumplings. In the afternoon, after the check-in, we decided to go to the old city again for souvenirs basically(I accidently found two 100 CHY bills so I was in a hurry to exchange them into Poland currency. I had saw a lot of this kind of exchange centers and even they claimed to have 0 commission, their exchange rate is sometimes quite unacceptable).

We did not do much today because we have to leave for Katowice. But I had a one hour trip alone, it worth it! I saw the dirty side of the Warsaw, since it was just a one-hour trip, the dirty side is not far away from the city center I guess. It was somewhere along the road and near some car-fix point. Besides I also went to some closed ruins which is near the Warsaw train station. From the outlook I think these buildings were served as some forts for war.

In 24/12, I went to visit the Warsaw University(WU) intentionally. This university has the similar rank with Beihang University and I was later to know that Poland has the most amount of universities in Europe. No building was open because it was in the holiday(all of my roommates united with their family) and the whole campus is really quite. I found in the back of the campus a cannon. After a careful investigation I noticed that the back part is much higher than the ground, which may means this part of the university was for defense.

What I happened to see is a black cat in his house, the house was full of food and I bet this is the reason he did not accept my food.

Katowice

Katowice is a heavily polluted industrial city and the air condition is awful, I guess no teenagers is willing to live here(after I came back here from Iceland, I know maybe I was wrong). It is strange to find that the atmosphere back in Beijing, China is greater than in Katowice, the place our hotel located.

The good things about Poland is that the commodity price here is much lower than in Munich and it was totally ok to survival in Poland for two days with my accidently founded money.

We spent our Christmas Eve here. We did not go out so there was no atmosphere for the Christmas in our hotel. The funny thing was we kept browsed our Wechat’s moments to watch friends back in China celebrate this festival.

At afternoon of the next day, we took a plane to Iceland, I think this is where our true journey begins.

Iceland

At the airport, I saw a small poem and I definitely love the one “I WILL TAKE PHOTOS TO DIE FOR, WITHOUT DYING FOR THEM”.

We spent 5 days in Iceland, but we did not see the aurora. And we need to keep in mind that we only have 5 hours daylight each day in Iceland.

There was no specific plan for the first day(26/12), so after visit the unique museum I decided to walk along the boundary of the city Reykjavik. In Icelandic language, Reykjavik means steam bar, this was named by people who first found this place.

You can easily saw the landmark Sun Voyager, but we did not saw a sunrise with it due to the bad weather(we stayed Iceland for 5 days with at most two hours sunlight in total!!). You can relatively clearly see the snow mountain at another side, which is very beautiful.

After that, I just walked western along the coastline and the landscape was just wonderful. Unfortunately, when we headed back, it started raining and we did not have a raincoat. As a result, we were totally wet.

In 27/12, we went to the golden circle. Basically, we went to a crater lake and the geyser. Here you can see the photo and the video:

In 28/12 and 29/12, we had a two day’s trip in the south coastline of Iceland. Our driver is also our guide and he is a 65 years old Icelandic. Since people in this group were all Chinese except the driver, it became a typical Chinese tour group. During this trip, we went to the black sand beach and diamond beach.

In the second day we went for a glacier hiking:

New Year in Katowice

Then we went back to Katowice for the eve of new year.

Yes, we went out at night to the city center and danced with local people. At first I was sanding there and thinking about nothing. Then a couple of young stood next to me just said happy new year to me. What made me smile is that after a while another came into the crowd and with wine and gave me a huge hug:)

Some Asian boys approached my companions but the girls came with me were too shy to dance. Some local girl said that we are all human, don’t be shy, but when I wanted to dance with one of them, that Polish girl was also shy:)

Krakow and Prague

The first day in 2020, we went to a beautiful town called Krakow. Fine, actually I don’t love it and I almost kept myself in the room.

After that, we went to the capital of Czech Republic: Prague. Prague has honored modern history and I had visited some famous spots and status. In the XBOX, I took the picture of a little girl pointing to the tank belonging to Soviet after her father told her that part of history. I also took a cool selfie.

Some other landscape in Prague: they have much more tram than bus; the art of vagrant:

Something Else

Another interesting thing I found is that you can have a look at almost all the viewpoints of a city in on of this city’s postcard shops. And I guess these postcards are the cheapest souvenirs you can get when you traveling in Europe(Definitely, picking up random Iceland lava stone is an exception).