The Rhein Falls Let down and the highest bar in Europe.

a few weekends ago I decided that in my effort to live in Europe I hadn't done nearly enough exploring of my own country. That Saturday, I ventured out to the largest Falls in Europe. The Rhein Falls. Now it being the largest place in Europe I expected great things. I had seen Niagara Falls, and Victoria Falls and thought that as the largest Falls in Europe it was going to be just as amazing. I then was told by Zuzana (a friend from Czech Republic) that it wasn't as great as Niagara, and that while still beautiful it would pale in comparison to Niagara. Ok. I lowered my expectations a little. Not as big as Niagara, but they still must be pretty big, right? I mean BIGGEST FALLS IN EUROPE. this has to mean something! I got there all excited about what I would see. this is what I saw:

Rhein Falls

WHAT?! Hopes and dreams ruined I stared in disbelief. This was practically the size of the falls behind my house at home! (I kid, I kid. But still pretty small.) Let's compare:

Niagara: 

http://www.congresstour.cl/int/destinos.php?hl=de&id_destino=658&nom_continente=&nom_pais=estados-unidos&nom_destino=-circuito-arco-iris-

I mean there was no comparison. After my shock I decided to take a few more fun pictures. It might be small but there were photo opportunities that needed to happen!

The Sunday we (Michelle, Mackenzie, and I) headed to Mount Titlus to see the mountain, the glacier and some snow. We managed a train, bus, gondola, and lift to get to the top. It was gorgeous and inside the glacier was awesome. I will let the pictures do the rest of the talking! (I didn't get a picture of the highest bar in Europe. But I PROMISE we were there!

As you can see we got a little creative with our posing in the glacier.

At the top of the mountain!!

Hiking

the weather in Switzerland recently has been wonderful! One of the things I have been wanting to do for awhile is go hiking in different parts of Switzerland.  After a bit of a hard time getting to where we want to go (note: train conductors are ALWAYS right!) we managed to arrive in Brunnen and hiked around the area.  It was absolutely beautiful weather and a sort of unplanned hike as we chose routes based on what looked more interesting. Always fun! The views were absolutely stunning and I was so glad we were able to get away from the cities!

Check out that view!

taking a break

more views

they were walking backwards I swear!

LOOK OVER THERE!

adorable little house on a cart...well not exactly adorable i guess...

driving the tractor.

Berlin

Berlin and Budapest were tied for the top city I visited. Berlin is possibly one of the coolest cities I have ever been to. We arrived at our apartment exhausted from driving, ordered Chinese food and passed out on our first night there. The next morning we ventured out to see the city. We managed to get a tour of the city definitely something I would recommend if seeing Berlin as there is so much to see!

4 hours  of touring later we were frozen STIFF. We got a 600 year history in 4 hours and saw a lot of the city including a Nazi building, some social realist art and lots of how much was destroyed in the war.  We were able to see the Berlin wall, Checkpoint Charlie and a number of other places in the city.

Brandenburg gate Where we also celebrated New Years!

Holocaust Memorial

example of Social Realism art on one of the only buildings still standing in the Nazi style of architecture

Part of the Nazi style architecture building. here used to be Swastikas in the circles.

famous statue of a mother holding her son. Specifically exposed to the elements to show the hardship and emotion. 

pretty building although I forget what exactly it is?

The next day (New Years!) was spent on another tour, this one for street art. It was so interesting to see the sort of underground culture that Berlin has so much of. Our guide was fantastic, talking about the street art and taking us to art studios around the city. A very cool experience!

Classic. Enjoying starbucks before the start of our Street art tour!

Some more street art. Our guide thought this was an interpretation of the very cute polar bear Knut who is well known throughout the world.

Part of the Metal art studio we went to

I wanted to make the pictures more interesting. So I made them pose!

PArt of a project to beautify different areas of Berlin called the 50 faces project.

New Years eve!

Check out that gate!

New Years was spent at the Brandenburg gate watching fireworks standing around (much like NYC.) Overall a good New years!

New Years day was spent mostly lounging around before heading into the city for dinner. 

Before we left the one thing I had wanted to do was see the Hitler exhibition at the German historical museum. It was pretty controversial when it first came out and I was excited to see what all the talk was about. It was a really interesting exhibit, filled with Hitler's rise and information on the party in general.  Overall a really good exhibit. 

We left Berlin around 2pm and after some snow, rain and other weathery things managed to make it home at about 11pm (our original ETA was 9pm...oops?) A very good trip overall although it felt good to get back to routine after 11 days of being away!

Praha

Our next stop on our trip was Prague. Before leaving Budapest we stopped at Momento park to look at the monstrous communist leader statues.  It was freezing cold out so in order to make the park more bearable as we walked around we decided to take turns posing with them.  These are a few of the results....

shaking hands.

Michelle was SOO EXCITED when we drove through Slovakia on our way to Prague. 

Shelley also expressed her excitement!

Afterwards we headed to Prague arriving in the early evening. After check-in we headed out for some traditional czech food. I'm not really sure what that necessarily consists of but we had these potato dumpling things (not really dumplings but bread.) and hit up a few bars before heading home to bed

clock in Prague square

On the boat! attempting to get warm

Christmas Market in Prague

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Getting ready  to cross over the Charles Bridge

Prague Castle

The next day we decided to take a guided tour of the city. this was both a good and bad idea. Good because we got to see so much of the city. Bad because the weather was so cold no one could really feel their legs, arms, or face after. It was a 6 hour tour including a boat ride.

Prague at night

Just like in London!

Excited to be there!

The next day was full of more walking around and the Communist Museum (started by an American businessman!) and looking at the Christmas markets.

Highlight of the trip? The beer. Surprised? i was. I'm not a beer drinker at all normally but it being so cheap i decided to give it a try. Czech makes a lot of good beer. Every one that we tried was good! The Czechs are the largest consumers of beer in the world. This makes it so they don't have to export their beer because all of the beer is consumed domestically.

We left prague and headed off to Berlin!

Day trip: Liechtenstein

The Saturday before the trip we spent the afternoon down by the lake. It was surprisingly warm for early November but we managed to do some drawing and people watching throughout the afternoon followed by the wine boats at night. The wine boats were very cool. We got free tickets thanks to the ticket person and my SIL/brother. Once inside there are several different boats set up where you can go and taste several different red, white, rose, ice, and sparkling wines. It was a great evening with friends as we tried wines from around the world like Portugal, Argentina, South Africa, France, Italy, Switzerland etc. etc.

trying out some of the wines!l-r Me, Michelle, Whitney, and Shelley (photo: courtesy of Michelle)

Sunday we decided to take a day trip. One of the things I love about Switzerland is that it doesn't take long to get out of the country. One can get to about 5 different countries within a few hours.  We decided to take advantage of it and headed to the 6th smallest country in the world. Liechtenstein.  There isn't much to it. We had to take a bus to get in because there is no train that makes a stop in Liechtenstein.

Nicole, Michelle and Whitney on the bus to Liechtenstein!

Once we got there we decided to head to the post museum. Free is one of our favorite things as au pairs. We had to see what it was about!

 

 

Lots of fake statues like this....

and drawers full of mail like this

After that we headed to the only major attraction in the city in the Liechtenstein. The castle.   Because the Prince still lives there you can't go in it but merely walk around it.  There was a guard at the gates making sure we didn't try any funny business.

walking up to the castle we decided to take some of the harder paths...

The castle!

All 5 of us by the gate of the castle. L-r Zoe, Nicole, Whitney, Me and Michelle

After that we stopped at a cafe for a rest. One thing I have learned in Europe. Coffee in the afternoon is almost a necessity.No matter what we always stop at a cafe to do some people watching.  Probably one of my favorite parts of Europe is everyone's need to SIT DOWN for a cup of coffee. Not a coffee on the go or in the drive-thru but actually sitting down in a cafe to get a cup of coffee and enjoy the scenery around you.

Another Great weekend!


*All pictures (with the exception of the wine boats) courtesy of Zoe!