Going to Danish Prison

Well, you may have read about my run-in with the Danish police for not have lights on my bike at night, so it was really only a matter of time before I ended up at a prison. Kidding. Kind of. I did go to a prison, it just wasn't because of any laws I broke, rather it was just for my Criminal Justice in Scandinavia class.
The Scandinavians take a very very different approach to criminal punishment than the Americans and this prison was proof of that. While Americans basically just seem to shove as many people into prison for as long as they can, without really caring about giving them any sort of humane living conditions, the Danes are much more lenient with their prison sentences. A murderer may receive a ten year sentence. In fact, few people receive more than five years. And for most prisoners, the default place to serve out a term is an open prison, meaning there is an open gate, and the prisoners are not in any locked facilities during the day. At night they are locked into rooms, but that is all. The only thing that stops the prisoners from walking out is there willpower. And somehow it seems to work. After all the conditions in the prison are extremely humane. The prison is neat, clean, and comfortable. There is green grass all around. The prisoners have access to TVs, when their children come and visit, there are toys and playgrounds. There is a gym, a kitchen where prisoners cook for themselves, with full access to very large cooking knives. Basically, the guard who showed us around, an unarmed female in an all-men's prison, said that the philosophy is that if it doesn't make them more criminal, there is no reason they should not have access to it. Indeed, perhaps the most mind-blowing thing to me was the tanning bed. Prisoners had access to a tanning bed! It's not free for them to use, they pay for it out of their wages, but still! Wow!
And the thing about all this is that it seems to have the desired effects. The prisoners, as a result of being treated like human beings, act like human beings. They were friendly, polite, even joking with the guards. And the recidivism rate in Denmark is significantly lower than the US, which I think says a lot.
A lot of Americans would have a problem with this, I think. I heard one fellow student say, they're criminals! They shouldn't be treated nicely. But I really do think people will act how you treat them, in a lot of cases, and the results of Danish prisons speak for themselves.
All in all, this was one of the most eye-opening experiences I have had since being in Denmark. It is certainly my favorite field-trip I have ever been on and I had moments of genuine shock (seeing the knives and the tanning bed in the prison, to name a few!)

Berlin, Germany

The final city we visited on our Euro-travel-trip was Berlin, which, consistent with the common theme of all the cities I visited, was completely awesome! Like most of the cities I had already visited, I knew very little about what to do and see in Berlin, but I was completely blown away by how amazing of a city it was. One of the first things we noticed the night we arrived, trying to find our hostel, was the amount of street art. Some of it just looks like plain over graffiti, but much more widespread. And some of it is amazing and looked like photographs made out of paint. A lot of it really was art!

Our Hostel

My favorite street art: The Creation of Atom!

Street Art

The next morning, we realized that we were going to be doing a lot of walking in Berlin. In our ignorance of Berlin's geography, we booked a hostel that was about three miles from the Mitte, which is the main touristy part of Berlin, where most of the things to see were. Our hostel was right next to a subway stop but each ride on the subway would have been about $3, which just didn't seem worth it, so we decided to walk it. We fortunately did break up the walk by stopping at a delicious bakery, where I had one of the most amazing things I have ever eaten. It was like a moist custardy, powdered sugary gigantic flat cake type thing. When we got to the Mitte, the first things we noticed were the giant TV tower, lots of bear statues, and lots of buildings that looked like they were made in Rome, with columns and old looking stuff like that. For some reason, that wasn't quite what I pictured when I pictured Germany, but it was still really cool.

TV Tower: Berlin's highest structure

Looks like Rome

Bear statue

As the day continued, Katherine and I decided to do our final free walking tour of the trip. And as usual it was extremely cool. Here are some of the interesting things we saw:

• Sign in a river saying not to swim or drop anchor there, because there is an unexploded bomb there still left from World War II. Apparently this is fairly common around Berlin.
• Museum Island, the site of five world class museums. Also, how our guide introduced us to the creativity of German names. The first museum of the island originally was named "The Museum." When a second museum was added it was named "The Old Museum" (Altes Museum) and the new museum was named "The New Museum" (Neues Museum). How creative!

• A very simple but powerful memorial to "victims of war." It was basically a wide open room with only a statue of a mother holding her dying son. Underneath the statue are buried an unknown German soldier and an unknown concentration camp victim.

• Crosswalk signals: shaped very differently in East Berlin.

• Humboldt University: Where several very famous Germans were educated, including Einstein and Max Planck.
• Another memorial, below ground, visible through a window in the ground showing plain white bookshelves with enough room to hold the 20,000 titles that were burned during WW2. Near it, students sell books that were banned.

• A chocolate store that our guide said was the best in Berlin. It had amazing chocolate sculptures, including a chocolate bear, a chocolate Titanic, and several choclate German landmarks, on the outside and when we returned later it was indeed amazing chocolate. It was also interesting cause it was all in German and I didn't really know what I was buying.

• The Berlin Wall, or at least the second largest remaining piece of it. And Checkpoint Charlie, the American-run checkpoint from East to West Berlin was.

Berlin Wall

• One of the most interesting things we saw however, was the place where Hitler had his bunker and where his body was discovered and burned. It was interesting because it was so uninteresting. There is nothing there indicating that anything of any historical importance happened there. The bunker is covered in grass, and it is right in the middle of a grassy section of a parking lot.
  
• A new contraversial memorial to the Holocaust. Contraversial because it's very ambiguous. It's a bunch of stone pillars in lines. Nothing is written about what they mean or represent. Someone said the idea is to make you think about the Holocaust for yourself and to try to figure out what it means, rather than simply being shown a list of names. The other thing though is that the stones are covered with a chemical to repel grafitti and that chemical is produced and developed by the same company that made Zyklon-B, the gas that was used in the holocaust to kill the very people that the memorial is commemorating. Some people have a real problem with that, and I can certainly see why.

• We finished the evening at the Brandenburg Gate, which is a really cool gate in a big square. It's one of the major landmarks of Berlin. Incidentally, it's right next to the American Embassy. When the Americans decided they needed a bigger fence around the embassy, they asked the Germans to move the thirty meters to the left. Keep in mind, this gate is REALLY BIG and is like the biggest landmark of Berlin! The Germans declined the request. Also, right near the gate is a pretty important hotel: the hotel that Michael Jackson dangled his baby out of!

Brandenburg Gate

Balcony Michael Jackson dangled baby from

Dinner that night was delicious. I had something that was basically meatloaf wrapped in cabbage topped with a different kind of cabbage, with a side of potatoes. It was really really amazing. After dinner, Katherine and I decided to check out a ping-pong bar we had heard about. It was pretty different. It was a giant plain concrete room, with a ping-pong table in the middle and a bar off to the side. You could put down a 5 Euro deposit for a ping-pong padde. Then you joined the line on one side of the table. When you reached the front of the line you took one shot and if you made it, you went to the end of the line on the other side. If you missed, you were out. I never did too well, but it was fun and some people were very good!

Ping-Pong Bar

The next day, Katherine and I repeated our same routine of walking to the center and stopping for delicious baked goods on the way. In the city, we walked around in the morning. We saw tons of bear statues. We also saw one of the best street performers I have ever seen. He played the water glasses, but he played like really complex songs with tons of glasses at once! It was mind-blowing! Later we saw something extremely strange:
Katherine and I were standing by that memorial we had seen yesterday with the statue of the mother and son, when we noticed a giant pink man in a rabbit costume (like a pink Easter bunny). He was carrying a Christmas wreath covered in carrots with some German writing on it. He left that wreath in front of the monument, walked about 20 feet and was charged by three police officers who grabbed him and threw him into a van. We still haven't really figured out what it was about, other than that it had something to do with Africa. Not really sure exactly how that works, but that's what the flier someone handed out said.

???

We ended the day at one of the museums on Museum Island: the Neues Museum, which had an amazing collection of Egyptian art including the Bust of Nefertiti, which was really beautiful. There were also tons of really cool scrolls and mummys and sculptures, and bones and more. It was a great museum and a great end to our trip.

Bones

Bust of Nefertiti

After the museum we headed back to our hostel and went to sleep. An early morning flight the next morning and we were back in Copenhagen. Home sweet home, at least for another month.

Krakow, Poland

After leaving Prague, we continued with a seven hour train ride to Krakow, Poland. The train ride was long, but it was kind of cool because we were in a Harry-Potter-esque compartment. For the first couple hours, Katherine and I were in the compartment with four other people, so it was a pretty tight fit, and they were all quiet and reading so it was super awkward if we wanted to talk to each other, so that wasn't too fun. But then everyone had cleared out by the Polish border and Katherine and were given the chance to stretch our legs and to talk to each other as much as we wanted so it wasn't too bad at all. Finally, after a rather long train ride, we arrived in Krakow. My first impression of Krakow was a very positive one. The train station was like right next to the main central square, and our hostel was right next to that, so we found our home for the next few days very quickly. The only catch is we spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out how to cross the road. There were no crosswalks anywhere that we could find and it was quite a busy road. (As we later discovered, there was actually a foot-tunnel under the road that we should have gone through.

Also, when we first arrived, we immediately saw the giant Medieval market square, which we learned is the biggest Medieval square still existing in Europe, at something like 250 meters across! That's a big square. And when we arrived it was all decorated with posters and Polish flags, because we happened to arrive the day before Polish Independence Day! After crossing the square, we found our hostel, which was the best hostel in the world, I have decided. We paid something like $12 per night. And this included breakfast, an incredibly neat and clean room, internet access, helpful signs telling how to do important things like go to the airport, a kitchen with free coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and a sign telling about the various free events that went on in the hostel each night. These included wine night, cake night, pudding night, Pierogi night, and more. Although, we only were really there for wine night and cake night. Another interesting thing that happened that night: as I was laying in bed, someone came into our room and was getting into the bed next to mine who looked really familiar: my roommate from Copenhagen. I knew that she would be in Krakow over the break but I didn't think it would be while I was there, and I certainly didn't think she would end up the next bed over from me.

Flags for Independence Day

From the Medieval Square

The next day was when we discovered the lovely weather of Poland. By this I mean that it was bitterly cold and rainy. Like a rain so cold it makes you feel like an icicle. I actually wore a pair of tight leggings underneath my jeans so I could be a little warmer. The bulk of the early part of this day was spent visiting Auschwitz, which is right near Krakow. While obviously this is not the most cheerful place we could have visited, it was eye-opening and I am very glad that we went. Some of it looked just like what I had seen in photos or in movies like Schindler's list, the wooden barracks, the barbed wire fences, and the train-tracks. But there was something about being there that photos and movies can't really capture. And while most of the major part of the camp is in ruins, you can still get a sense of the massive scale of the crimes that were committed there by how the rows and rows of barracks (even if all that remains of most is the brick chimneys and foundations) just keep on going into the distance. I could talk at length about what we saw on our visit to Auschwitz, about what shocked me and what sites of horrific genocidal crimes we saw, but some part of me feels like a blog isn't really the place to do that, so I'm going to leave my visit to Auschwitz to what I have already written on the topic.

After arriving back, we continued with something that dominated much of our time in every city we visited: walking around aimlessly and exploring the city. We saw a memorial to Polish independence, which was covered in all sorts of flowers and fire, in honor of Independence day. We also saw tons of churches and remnants of the Medieval fortifications. We also found the Wawel Castle, which is a really big landmark in Poland. It was night, so we couldn't walk around on it's grounds but it still looked really cool. Finally, we decided we were freezing so we went back to the hostel to warm up, and on our day there was a large group of people singing Polish songs in the Main Market Square!

Old fortifications

Part of Wawel Castle at night.

Eventually, we went to dinner, where I had a dish that consisted of beef in some sort of really warm and hearty sauce with sauerkraut, and I really love sauerkraut, so that made me super happy. That night, was wine night, so we had a little wine, and then one of the hostel workers offered to show anyone who wanted some bars in the area. So we, and maybe a dozen others, from our hostel followed him into a very bizarre bar. On the one hand, it was nice because beers were less than a dollar. (Poland uses the Zloty, which is pronounced some way that I don't even know how to transcribe). As to the bar, it was in a small brick basement. And the entry area was decorated like a giant pirate ship, with sails, flags, and boat stuff. But then when you looked around on the bars, there were all sorts of motorcycles and motorcycle paraphanelia on the walls. And they played bad eighties American music, like Michael Jackson, which really added to the atmosphere. And the Polish guys that we were watching dance, danced like something from the disco era. It was really a fascinating bar to see.

The next day was an exciting one. First we took a free walking tour of Krakow. Our guide, a local college student, was fantastic. He spent the first fifteen minutes of the tour assuring us that he was a certified guide, because apparently the companies that charge for tours don't like the companies that give them for free, so he says they make news stories saying how the guides aren't real guides, and he made very sure that we all saw his official badge. It was kind of funny. He showed us some interesting things that we would not have found on our own. For example, we saw various interesting churches, the Jewish quarter, which has some very old synagogues in it. He also pointed out a bunch of pope (JP2) statues. John Paul II was from near Krakow, and they LOVE him there! There are so many pope statues in Krakow. He even showed us a window in a random building with a giant poster of him in the window. Apparently, one night he visited Krakow and was staying in that room and a whole bunch of Polish students stood on the ground outside the window yelling for him to come talk to them. And he came and told them to go away, that he couldn't sleep. And then he stayed and talked to them for three hours. And then whenever he came back to Krakow he would stay at that window and talk to students for several hours at night. He also pointed out various spots where scenes in Schindler's List were filmed, which was interesting because in some of the spots I could definitely vividly recall the scene they were talking about. We also ate a type of really good Polish fast food that was really cheap called Zapiekanke, which was basically a really delicious pizza with garlic and onion sauce and fried onions and no tomato sauce. Finally, on this tour is when I noticed that Krakow is filled with pigeons. They are literally infesting the main square and will land on anyone eating food that they want.

Pope window
Giant head in the Medieval Square

Me, Katherine, Polish fast food. Also, we were cold.

Pigeons. Rodents with wings.

After our free walking tour, we decided to visit another major site just outside Krakow: the Wieliczka salt mines, which are the home of the oldest continuously running salt mines in the world. These mines have been in operation since the 1200s! We started our trip into the mines by walking down 54 flights of stairs! Ouch, but we made it. Ultimately we ended up 400 feet below ground and saw some really awesome stuff. Everything there, the walls, the floors, the ceilings are made out of salt. Our guide assured us that we were welcome to taste any of those if we were in doubt, which I declined to do. The only things we could not eat were the salt art. All over there were amazing salt sculptures. Some showed miners mining the way they would have mined in the Medeival times (what a shock, it was REALLY dangerous!) and other art showed more funky things, like the seven dwarves. The most impressive part by far was the salt cathedral, complete with salt chandaliers, salt Jesus, salt Last Supper painting, salt alter (saltar?), and of course a salt John Paul II. It was a huge room, that was absolutely mind-blowing to stand in. I've never seen anything like it and I doubt I ever will again. The other thing that blew my mind was how big the whole mine system was. Tourists are required to stay with a guide at all times because there are over 300 km of shafts and you could very easily get lost in them if you didn't know what you were doing. The final exciting part of the mine was getting back to the top. Fortunately for everyone's knees they did not make us climb back up the 54 stories. Instead we all packed in to a very very small and cramped elevator that was tight, dark, and shaky. I don't love elevators and I really didn't like this one. As it was idling, it kind of bounced up and down ever so slightly, and to be honest I don't know that Poland has the same safety regulations as the US, so I really was uncomfortable. However, we did make it to the top very quickly, so quickly in fact that my ears popped on the ride!

Salt salt-miners

Chapel, with partial view of salt chandelier in upper right corner

The Last Supper

Back in Krakow for the night, Katherine and I decided to eat the most Polish meal we could think of: pierogies! Pierogies are these delicious little Polish dumplings that I'd heard of because a few friends of Polish decent told me about them and because my school cafeteria served something that they called pierogies. I word it like that becacuse other than sort of being a dumpling, they were nothing like the delicious amazing warm dumplings we had in Poland. Traditionally, they are served with a potato filling, but we had one with a delicious cabbage and mushroom filling. Also, when we got back to the hostel we discovered it was cake night. It was not, however, cake like we know it. It was really good and ridiculous sweet, but it was more like a glorified cookie. Like it was basically layers of wafers held together with an obnoxiously sweet and sticky filling that was kind of like a mix of condensed milk and caramel. Very good.
Our flight out was the next afternoon, but we still found time to fit a little more exploring in. We decided to see the Wawel castle in the daylight. It was really nice to walk around and we found a big dragon statue and entered a pretty neat cathedral. And for some reason, outside the castle there was a tile, with a star and Michael Jackson's name on it. Not really sure what that was about.

Wawel Castle

More from the castle

Us in front of the dragon

Michael Jackson memorial star?

Finally we made our way to the airport. Krakow was incredibly tourist friendly in terms of getting to the airport. Once you enter the train station to catch the very quick shuttle to the airport, there are signs all over the ground saying 'airport train this way!' It was very helpful, unlike in Rome, where it took us about an hour to find our train, after being told an incorrect platform number by the guy who sold us our tickets. Nice.

Well, that's all for Krakow, stay tuned for Berlin!

Travels continue: Prague!

Our Roman adventure over, my friend Katherine and I headed off towards Prague, Czech Republic. Our immediate introduction to Prague, like introductions to many cities, was not particularly charming. The airport, like most airports, was pretty far away from the center and I really hate figuring out how to get from airport to Hostel. Our journey from the airport began with trying to find the right bus. Not particularly easy to do, considering that Czech, like Danish, is really a horrible looking language. We were however told, by a transit worker, that we should pay our fare on the bus. However, when we attempted to pay the driver, we were yelled at in Czech. Not sure why, but then he motioned for us to move. Other people appeared to have tickets, but we never purchased a ticket of any time. So within our first hour in Prague, we definitely broke Czech law, by stealing our five dollar bus ride. However, we never got caught and when we changed to a subway train, we managed to figure out how to pay for that ride. Finally, that train ride over, and after a twenty minute or so walk so with our bags, we found our first hostel, Chili Hostel, where we stayed in an eight bed room, with six complete strangers, which ultimately turned out to be a great way to meet some pretty awesome and interesting people.

Our hostel basemement.

After getting settled in our room for a little bit, we headed out to eat. Our hostel was like a twenty minute walk from the really touristy areas of Prague, so we were fortunate to be able to find some pretty cheap eats. For $10, I had a gigantic meal, which included goulash, a delicious beef dish, some spinach that I actually liked, potato dumplings, and a soda. We were pretty beat from a long day of travel after dinner, so we planned on going back to the hostel pretty quickly. However, the restaurant we chose to eat at was right on the river, so we decided to follow the river a little and see what we found. And we definitely ended up walking much further than we intended. As we turned a corner, we got our first glimpse of Prague that was as breathtaking as I had heard. From our spot across the river, we could see the big castle in Prague, the cathedral and bridges, and lights. It was amazing. We decided to walk towards the lights and just kept getting drawn in further and further to the city. We'd see something we wanted to go look at and say, let's go there and then turn back. But from there, we'd see something twice as amazing and had to keep going. We ended up going to the famous Charles Bridge, which is covered in old Gothic statues and enjoying the amazing night views. This is also when we noticed that Prague is extremely touristy! I hadn't heard so many Americans since being in America!

The entrance to the Charles Bridge

Our first beautiful view of Prague

The next day, Katherine and I set off to explore the city in the morning. In our explorations, we ended up finding an old looking wall just off the main touristy area, and the wall kept going all the way up this really long and steep hill. So naturally, we decided to climb the hill. From the hill, it was very apparent that it was autumn. The trees were red and yellow and amazing. And the top of the hill provided an amazing view of Prague's old town. We also explored a pretty sweet island in the middle of the river that we were able to get to off one of the bridges. This is also where we first noticed the abundance of dogs in Prague, none of which were on leashes. Somehow everyone just has perfect little dogs that don't leave their owners! On the hill, we also found an interesting monument, the "monument to the victims of communism." We figured out that the Czech Republic really does not like communism any more, after their Soviet occupation.

View from the hill

Autumn on the island

Monument to the victims of communism

Also, this was the day that we first discovered an amazing thing when traveling through European cities: free walking tours. Basically, you go on a tour, with a guide that is paid only on tips. We saw some really parts of Prague, like the Astronomical clock tower, some old churches, the Jewish Quarter and more. One of the coolest churches we saw had an old shriveled up human arm hanging in it. The legend says the arm came from someone who tried to steal a statue of the Virgin Mary from the church. He pointed out the oldest Jewish cemetery in Europe, which has over 25,000 bodies in it, in a VERY small areas. The bodies are buried one on top of another an the gravestones are piled in every which way. Our tour also came complete with re-enactments from the guide that actually made Czech history very interesting.

Astronomical clock tower

Cool church sculptures

Hebrew clock from the Jewish Quarter.

We also discovered a grocery store today, where we bought some delicious pastries and wafers, which are strangely popular in Prague. The wafers are like two giant communion wafers with hazelnut flavored sugar in between. Really good.

Wafer

Other highlights from our remaining time in Prague include:

The castle and the Cathedral: We hiked up a very long hill to the castle, which was cool to walk around. And at the end of the hill was an amazing cathedral. This cathedral is the second biggest cathedral in the world. And considering we saw the first biggest (St. Peter's) only a couple days before, I was pretty happy to see this one as well! The cathedral was huge and gothic, with amazing gigantic gargoyles, stained glass windows and more.

Castle and the Cathedral on the hill

We found the John Lennon wall, which is a giant wall covered in John Lennon related graffiti, including lyrics, his face and more. It was pretty neat to see. Near the wall was an old-fashioned watermill and a fence covered in locks. We never figured out what the locks were really about but it was still very cool to see and very different, and it was a nice find a little off the super touristy path.

From the John Lennon Wall

Watermill and Locks

Food in Prague was really good and beef heavy, with good sauces and stuff. Really creamy and delicious. What was unusual however, was the fact that almost every meal came with a side of some random raw vegetable. At one meal, I had a side of sliced cucumbers. At another there was a side of lettuce. And at yet another there were quartered tomatoes. Strange, but at least it made me eat my vegetables.

We also visited the Kampa Art Museum, which was an art museum we found right by the river. There was a lot of really neat stuff in there. Basically, Prague loves weird sculptures. I'll just show photos, since a picture's worth a thousand words:

Giant-faceless babies.

Penguins

Me + ?

We visited a giant TV tower. In and of itself, the TV tower would not have been that impressive, considering the fact that we had to walk pretty far to see it. What was really strange about it was the giant sculptures of faceless babies climbing up and down it on all sides. It was really really creepy, actually. And I'm not sure what the babies were all about, but there they were.

TV Tower. If you look close you can see the babies on the left-most column