Hi guys,

Love to share about this, it was truly wonderful and can;t wait to go back...

I'll go into a lot more detail later, but in a nutshell..

Amsterdam was a lot of fun, very accessible and pretty mellow. Much more than meets the eye: imagine meeting a hot model at a party, and finding out she not only has a great personality, but also has a master's in social work. A lot of people go to Amsterdam just for the coffeeshops, red light district and general separation from your senses, but they miss the whole point.

Paris was...well, beautiful. I see now what all the fuss was about. It is a truly romantic city, with all of the passion and tragedy of a doomed romance in a well written novel...sorry that;s the best analogy I can come up with.
There are things there I will never see here in NYC, and there is an elegance about the city that it exudes.

Berlin-my first thought was that this was a very ugly city, but again, more to it than could ever be imagined. The recent history that it has been through is nothing short of remarkable, and extremely painful. You can see this in everyday life there. There are scars of Nazi Germany, the Berlin Wall, and of a nation trying to be proud of its identity.

Pound for pound, Berlin had the most impact on me...

Bookmarking to read more.

Hopingtotravel, hope I can add some awesome things to read later.

Have you traveled before? If you haven't please go...life changing things can happen abroad.

Yes, latest trip report starts "Paris When it Sizzles"...

but am always looking for new ideas.

esl,

Very interested in hearing more about Berlin...

gruezi

Hope you'll post a more detailed report when you have time. Having visited all 3 cities, I like Paris for its beauty, Berlin for its history and museums, and Amsterdam for its attitude.

What stuck in my mind from Amsterdam (keep in mind, since Americans only get two weeks vacation, I was there for about 3 days)..

My first sight of Northern Europe.

Clean airport, very manageable...

Never seen so many bikes in my life..if one goes, the best piece of advice is watch where you are going. Of all cities I;ve visited, I was probably the most aware of my surroundings I have ever been-bikes, motorbikes, people, trams, cars, buses are swarming around you.

High and low culture juxtaposed everywhere...like Oude Kerk, right in the middle of the Red Light District.

Coffeeshop in the north of
Amsterdam, that had a floor that was a fish tank, with little carp peeking at you from below. Coffeeshops are very peaceful places, even if you just settle for espresso..

Van Gogh museum-masterpieces of a genius with serious issues...well I guess that's all geniuses.

The Red light district, how open it all is, and very practical as well. The whole way Amsterdam is seems to be very practical-you can't stamp out drugs or prostitutes, so why not legalize it and control it that way?

Speaking of which, the ladies underneath the red light, some of whom could be models in another life..not that I partook in this, but just an observation.

The open urinals that are everywhere, again very practical....

Dutch are this way I think, very matter-of fact, "this is what it is" without any BS.

How pretty the bridges and houses on the water are, how dirty the water must be...LOL

Waking up in my hotel to a Julie Andrews look-alike singing "The Sound of Music" on a TV show, in Dutch.

The Anne Frank house, very haunting, the first glimpses I had of Nazi horror that took place.

The project at the bottom of the Anne Frank house, Freedom to Choose. This was really fascinating, they would show clips of certain issues, say, freedom of speech (even hateful speech), freedom of religion, of dress, etc. And then you could vote on whether you agreed with this or not (say, do you agree that a person shouting anti-gay rhetoric has the right to say these things? Or what about someone who blatantly denies the Holocaust ever existed?). You then voted, and could see the results of the people in the room, and also of people who had voted in the past.
This was really done well, simply because I felt torn about many things..anyway, a nice surprise.

Roving English, there for stag and hen parties...nothing against them at all, some really cool people. Just noticed a lot of them, more than Americans, Irish or any other group.

Amazing how everyone speaks English, testament not only to the educational system, but also the fact that the Dutch don't dub English speaking movies. So they hear it in the natural rhythm.

I would not say anything about Amsterdam was as profound as the other two cities, but definitely somewhere I could go to again and see something extremely different..

Interesting report, esl. I'm looking forward to your impressions of Berlin.

esl- love your take on Amsterdam! I disliked it when I visited the first time at age 20. Finally decided to give it another try at age 32 and found myself liking it much more.

Thanks much. Berlin was my favorite of the three cities, I am really looking forward to speaking aboout it.

But now Paris....

The sheer beauty of it. A city that really exudes romance, like along the underpass of the Seine River, or in Montmartre (with a fantastic view of the city), or just the view down the Champs Des Elysses. Too bad I had no one to share it with..

Of the three cities, I felt instant awe of it..

There of course is much history in Paris, maybe not quite as recent and world changing as was in Germany, but seeing the Arc de Triomphe was a highlight.

Notre Dame was breathtaking, could feel Quasimdodo about to tug away at the cord....

I enjoyed the train system-coming from New York it seemed really easy and natural..and trains are not near as crowded or dirty as NYC nor do they come late as often..

How nice Parisians seemed to be, no different really than New Yorkers..never once got a real attitude, and no one ignored me if I asked for directions, even in my pathetic French.

My friend J., whose flat I stayed in. She was actually a friend of a friend (who I met when i stayed in Sevilla, Spain). He basically referred me to her. She is a photography student and someone who lives in her parents' building, a wild setup with long, winding stairs, and a gate. She and her friend R. were completely awesome, we had a great little dinner in her flat, that she made from scratch, of rice, salad, and pepper. They were poor, but it was so delicious, it is one of those things that is made from the heart.

Barbes, a street in Paris, in an interesting African neighborhood, the changing face of Paris.

It is VERY expensive in Paris...ouch!

How pretty French women are, not necessarily because of physical attributes, but also because they seem to have a unique sense of style. Maybe a colored scarf here, or an off color jacket, hard to describe but I'm sure there are others who agree with me...

The Louvre..the mother of all museums. I spent about 2 hours there, could have easily spent 6. Had to see the main ones: Mona Lisa, Winged Victory of Samothcrace, Cupid and Psyche, and of course, Venus de Milo.

Speaking about American politics with a group of Frenchmen at a bar near the Bastille...

But the atmosphere was something really special, unlike either of the other two cities, I felt that I could be just about anywhere and breathe in the beauty and grandeur of it.

Now, Berlin...

I had a few drinks with my friends before I left. I took the Eurail from Paris, it was an overnight train, got into Berlin really early...

I would do overnight trains again, but I have to say I was pretty shocked at the setup, six bunk beds in a little room...spent a lot of time in the bar in the back of the train... there is something very unique in getting drunk, seeing the countryside of Europe get darker and darker...

Getting into the Hauptbanhof, the main train station, and taking the bus to my hostel, I thought, what an ugly city. It is so plain..and dull and..not Paris! Maybe I can cut short my stay here and go to Munich for a day or so, or head back to Amsterdam.

I get to my hostel, Mitte's Backpacker hostel, and must say I am very surprised. I booked this maybe two days before I got here, at an obscenely low price( about 6 times less than in Amsterdam, where I stayed in a real hotel).Yes it is a hostel, so there is a lot less privacy, but still...

After checking in, and basically claiming a bed, and a locker (my "room" was a dorm room with about 30 beds, for both men and women), I head out to see this city, if it gets any prettier...

So I used my trusty map that I bought in the gift shop at Hauptbanhof, very accurate map by the way...I head down Unter den Linden and what do I see and hear...student shouting through megaphones and marching down the street. I ask a passerby, and apprently they are protesting that schools should be free for all students. It was the first kind of internal "problem" I had seen on this trip, but it had to be in Berlin, a city of conflict, even now..

I head farther down Unter den Linden, until I arrive at Brandenburg Gate, one of the most recognizable points of Berlin, and the gate was actually surrounded by the Wall on both ends (there were actually two Walls). Right next to the Gate, I stumbled on something that I will never forget, but something I think is just as important as its more famous cousin..there was a little entrance to Raum der Stille (Room of Silence). This is a place of meditation, simply a room with chairs and minimal artwork, with a dark tapestry on the front wall, and a bright light shining through it...

A place to contemplate life, and the state of affairs in the world..and where the human race is going and what it has learned. Or not. And what have I done to really better things..that is a question easier avoided than answered.

On from Brandenburg, saw the Reichstag, the city parliament. It is grand and well not beautiful, but like much of Germany, seems very..efficient. I imagine when Hitler was in it, it was an extremely intimidating presence. On the front of the Reichstag, it says "Dem Deutschen Volke", in other words, "For the German people", which I guess had a darker meaning not too long ago..

More to come, thanks!

Well onwards we go. Strange, once I start writing about traveling I find it hard to stop.

After seeing the Reichstag, I followed the map down the street to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (yes, that is the actual title). A parkful of square cinder blocks. The image of gravestones comes to mind, but it's far more than that.

The blocks on the outside are shorter, you can sit on them. but as you walk through the exhibit, the floor curves downward, and the stones get higher and higher, until you are inside a labyrinth. You can see the light, and a way out, but pretty soon, you are virtually surrounded by concrete. This gives you a slight indication of what it must have felt like..like a mouse in a trap. But the brilliance of the piece(designed by a Jewish-American named Peter Eisenman)
is that is open to interpretation.

On the other side of the Memorial, there was an entrance to a museum, so I ventured down..the museum is totally free. There, you saw a whole history of Jewish persecution by the Nazis, in both picture form, and also in writing.

One of the most heartrending moments was a room that was dark except for little inscriptions that were lit up. These were translations of letters of prisoners of concentration camps, writing to their loved ones for the last time.

It is unfathomable to know what someone is thinking when they are basically saying to their father, mother, daughter, son, wife, etc. "I am going to die tonight, they are murdering me, goodbye I will never see you again."

I studied history obviously in school, but this was something on another level, that humanized the whole experience. And with ALL respect to the Anne Frank House, this had just a lot more impact.

Towards the end, I walked by a picture of a man's family. There were about 20 some people in the picture. The man actually left Germany before the war. He later found out that his entire family was murdered in the Holocaust, men, women and children. And not only did the Nazis kill them, they also tried to destroy any trace that they had ever existed. As the sign phrased succinctly, "Such was the totality of the Holocaust".

Leaving the museum, my next goal was to see the Berlin Wall, more on this later..

Els, did you fly from Berlin to Paris? If so, what carrier did you choose? I'm looking for an economical way to travel from Berlin to Paris- heard that trains take too long (over 5+hrs). Any suggestions?

Sorry Sarah, just saw this...I went from amsterdam to Paris to Berlin, then back to Amsterdam. All by train.