Wedding Bells in T-Town

About a month ago Clay and I made a pilgrimage across the state of Alabama to a city we have very mixed feelings about -Tuscaloosa. As with all good Auburn fans, we have a natural aversion to the city that is home to the dreaded crimson tide. However, this city was our home for 2 years and did grow on us…a little. We both grew up a lot in T-Town. We finished our masters degrees, Clay got his first real job,  we experienced a life-altering, tragic event that allowed us to witness the beauty of a community coming together, and we met some pretty fantastic people and formed lovely, lasting friendships.

The reason for our first visit back to our former home was the wedding of some of those dear friends, Whitney and Parker. Whitney was in my MBA program and we became fast friends shortly after the program started. Whitney has a larger than life personality, a huge heart, and the mouth of a sailor! She’s hilarious, always up for a good time, a superb dancer, and a loving force. It was a joy watching her marry Parker in a gorgeous ceremony followed by a full-on dance party reception.  The event also gave me a chance to spend quality time with Stephanie who is my kindred spirit and was my lifeline throughout the MBA program. Many wishes of joy and love to Dr. and Dr! Here are some pictures from the weekend!

First up, a stop at our favorite little fruit stand in Chilton Co. 

We had to stop for peaches in Chilton Co.! 

 While in town, we hit up some of our favorite local restaurants and shops with our gracious host, Brad. We also stopped in  Dirt Cheap where Brad found this gem...

We ate breakfast at the famous Waysider Restaurant where I was tricked into eating Strip-O-Lean "bacon". The waitress warned me that it would be salty. That was HUGE understatement! It was inedible! But don't let that deter you from eating here. It's a Tuscaloosa must-do with AMAZING biscuits and grits.

Isn't it precious? Be warned though- every inch is full of Alabama memorabilia. 

Whitney and Parker are both PhDs in Chemistry. Smarty pants! The wedding was adorably chemistry themed.

My beau

My dear Stephanie. I love this girl!

Beakers!!

 The reception was held in the Natural History Museum on Alabama's campus. It was beautiful and fit the scientist well.

MBA friends with the beautiful bride

This pretty much sums up our relationship...so silly!

Konopištĕ

I wanted to do a separate little post about Franz Ferdinand’s Czech residence, Konopištĕ. Dad and I, along with his friend Joe, took a day trip out to this little castle in the Czech countryside and boy was it weird! I left Prague that day knowing absolutely nothing about Franz Ferdinand other than the fact that his assassination was the event which started WWI, but returned to Prague that evening with a wealth of knowledge about this eccentric royal.

Franz was only 24 when he purchased the castle as hunting lodge. Ferdinand was an avid hunter and Konopeiste offered fertile hunting grounds and a place to display his many trophies. Seriously, every inch of this place was covered in antlers and animal skins. Ferdinand went on a yearlong, world-wide hunting expedition and every animal from that trip was displayed along with the date of the kill and country of origin. The guy was thorough!  He also had an amazing armory will beautiful ivory embellished swords and intricate suits of armor. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to take pictures inside so I swiped some of these from Google image to give you an idea of the over-the-top nature of his obsession.

Source

Source

Ferdinand was a bit kooky and filled his moat with these local bears, one of which still lives at the castle! Franz also went against the wishes of his family and married Sophie Chotek- an unsuitable wife as she was not a member of a reigning or formerly reigning dynasty of Europe. By doing this, the couple’s children would not be able to inherit the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was a pretty huge sacrifice for Franz in the name of love. Hearing Franz and Sophie’s love story was super charming and learning about their bright and adventurous children was also a treat.  

These native bears have a very unique "V" marking on their chest.

They also have on display the clothes Franz and Sophie were wearing when they were assassinated. It was at the same time awesome seeing such a neat piece of world history and incredibly sad after spending the previous 2 hours getting to know these royals.

Konopištĕ was an excellent side trip and a beautiful place to be on a Czech summer day!  

Berlin Highlights

I had an interesting time in Berlin. It was the last stop on our trip and by this point everyone was pretty tired and grumpy, which definitely put a damper on things. Despite the crabby moods, Chick-Fil-A cravings, and one nasty bout of vertigo I did love this city and tried hard to soak up as much as I could of its tragic past and promising future.

Berlin is also interesting because, like much of Eastern Europe and especially eastern Germany, it was almost completely destroyed during WWII. As a result, much of the city is fairly new construction or reconstruction. Berlin also has an incredible vibe! There are a ton of young people and internationals and it has a hip music and art scene. I also think a lot of what made me like the city so much was our incredible guide Jonna. She was kind of a stereotypical no-nonsense proper German lady but she had been a rebellious teen and had so many amazing stories about her world travels and being a young adult in Berlin after the wall came down. She was a true gem!

Here are some of my recommendations for must-see and must-eat adventures in Berlin:

Reichstag

I won’t go into all of the history of this building and the huge part it played in Germany’s history (it would take hours and several posts!) but I will say that climbing the Reichstag Dome is something that you absolutely have to do if you ever visit Berlin. It’s free but you have to make reservations before hand. The tour comes with a great audio guide explaining the history of the Reichstag and the major Berlin landmarks you can see from the top of the building. Great views!

"To the German people"

Brandenburg gate from the top of the Dome 

Inside the Dome

 Pergamon Museum

Berlin does NOT lack on the museum front. They have an entire museum island and a museum pass that gets you into over 60 different museum. Holy Cow! With company visits during the weekdays, I didn’t have much time to go to all of the museums I wanted to but I made a special effort to check out the Pergamon. The museum was built to house and is named after its main attraction, the Pergamon Alter. The altar was built in the city of Pergamon in the 2^nd century B.C. and features a gigantic frieze depicting classic scenes from Greek mythology. The altar was discovered by a German archeologist and the scenes were reconstructed after looking at pictures of the altar etched on coins found during the excavation in Peragmon, which is absolutely incredible!  Like a giant jigsaw puzzle! The Pergamon also houses the Ishtar Gate, which was built under King Nebuchadnezzer’s Rule and is the 8^th gate to the inner city of Babylon. It is absolutely massive and a beautiful, vivid blue color. Experiencing something that colossal and picturing walking into the city of Babylon through those gates was breathtaking, intimidating, and overwhelming. This museum also came with a top notch audio guide! I spent 2 hours in three room and didn’t mind it at all. It was fascinating.

The smaller scale of the Pergamon Alter. The Frieze around the bottom wraps around the entire room.

A model of the city of Pergamon. The Altar is the white rectangle to the right of the large white space. 

A close up of the frieze on the top and an artist rendering of what the complete frieze most likely looked like on the bottom

the Ishtar Gate

A model of what the gates looked like in all of their glory. The smaller outer gate is the one on display in the picture above. The gate behind it was too big for the museum. Does this remind anyone else of Daenerys conquering Slaver's Bay on Game of Thrones?

Topography of Terror

This is a free, open-air museum along one of the few remaining stretches of the Berlin wall. It’s located in front of where the Gestapo and SS buildings stood and takes you through the heinous crimes of those institutions and goes into depth about the political and social situations that allowed a man like Hitler to gain absolute power. I highly recommend spending and hour or two at the Topography of Terror to gain a better sense of what Berlin went through and how exactly dictatorships are born and spread.

Enough with the heavy and educational and onto the food and shopping!

Beer and Dancing

When in Germany (and Czech Republic and Poland) one must drink beer and lots of it! German beer is so wonderful and drinking it outside in a garden by a lake makes it taste even better! I enjoyed a lemon shandy at the Tiergarten Biergaten one sunny afternoon. The whole group also enjoyed a few beers at Berlin’s famous dance hall, Clärchens Ballhaus.  After beers at the dance hall, Jonna took us to an outdoor swing dance party by the river where we drank lemonade in the grass and watched so pretty awesome swing dancers as the sun set over Berlin. It was pretty special and definitely one of those experiences you only have when you’re hanging out with locals.

Grub

I think I only ate German food once the whole time we were in Berlin. It’s such an international city so I tried as many different types of foods as I could. We had amazing Thai food and delicious Italian. I also tried Turkish and Armenian food for the first time. Both of which were on point! I was not a fan of Berlin’s famous street food- currywurst. It’s a light colored sausage covered in a generous amount of ketchup and curry powder. Yep, it was as weird as it sounds! I couldn’t handle that volume of ketchup. Ick!    

One of my favorite shopping experience was Fassdender andRausch chocolatiers. I spent a good hour in there and over half of my shopping budget for the trip (oops!). The chocolates were melt in your mouth delicious and they had chocolate sculptures of just about anything you could imagine. I was in heaven and so were all of my family members who enjoyed edible souvenirs!   

A chocolate version of the Brandenburg gates 

That about does it for Berlin. There are a million and five things to do in this city and I didn’t write about everything but I will leave you with a few more photos. Enjoy!

The beautiful Holocaust memorial

Berlin Cathedral

The Victory Column

I was digging this quote in the museum at the Royal Porcelain factory 

The Berlin TV Tower. It was the pride of East Berlin. There are a lot of really cool boutiques and restaurant around this area in former East Berlin. 

Inside the new portion of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Memorial Church. Very blue!

Berlin's First traffic light!

P.S. Sorry this is forever long!

Wroclaw highlights

Hello again! My trip may be long over, but I still want to try to document the highlights for myself before I forget too much!

Wroclaw was and interesting city and incredibly different from the other cities we visited on the trip. It’s a pretty small town with very few non-European visitors. There aren't a ton of museums or tourist attractions but the city has a great vibe, friendly people, and everything is pretty much in walking distance (a big plus when you’re trying to navigate public transportation with zero language skills).  Here are some of the highlights from this quirky little city…

                           

The gnomes!

I wrote more about them here. These guys were so precious and dad and I had a great time hunting them down!

The Raclawice Panorama

The Raclawice Panorama is a building that houses a massive painting depicting the Battle of Raclawice in which a small group of Polish peasants defeated a much larger Russian army in 1794. This was definitely the most unique way I’ve ever seen a piece of art displayed, but I guess you have to be creative when the piece is a 374 ft circular canvas. The 30 minute “journey” around the Battle of Raclawice was innovative and educational, which is why I highly recommend making reservations and stopping by the panorama if you ever find yourself in western Poland.  You can read more about the piece and its storied history here.  

Source

Rynik Square

This is the large square in the middle of the city surrounding the old town hall. Rynik Square was really the only touristy area of the city, but it was a great place to people watch. In the summer the turn part of the square into a market/lounge area. There was a small beach with lawn chairs, a grassy area with picnic tables, and strange bubble chairs...it was all kind of wacky, but still cute. The market featured beautiful handmade pottery, delicious pierogi, and lots of gnome figurines! And yes, I did buy one for my fridge.

Please note the bubble chair

Wroclaw University

Wroclaw is a major college town and is home to one of Poland’s best engineering school, which is why Wroclaw is considered the Silicon Valley of Poland. The company visits in Wroclaw were among my favorite. Most of them were tech companies filled with brilliant people working on some pretty innovative technologies. The university’s chapel and ceremonial hall, Aula Leopoldina, were breathtaking and made me really sad that I graduated in a gigantic coliseum built in the 1960s and not this baroque masterpiece…

Sorry for the poor image quality. I didn't have my real camera with me

View from the top of the hall. It had finally stopped raining and the clouds were just perfect!

The result of Dr. Shook accidentally taking a video instead of a picture and the giggling that followed. 

 Pro tip: the cafeteria at the university also offers culinary delights on the cheap!

Other food recommendations:

- Pierogi Ruski from the market

- Vega for incredible Indian food right on the square

- Amalfi Pizza for well priced brick oven pizza when you're in the mood for something familiar 

That about does it for Wroclaw! I also stopped by the National Museum and Centennial Hall. They were fine visits but not necessarily highlights. Centennial Hall is a UNESCO world heritage site but I didn't find it too spectacular. However, the park surrounding Centennial Hall was definitely worth the short bus ride! Be on the lookout for Berlin highlight and a quick post on Franz Ferdinand’s castle soon.