Hitchhiking is kind of a strange thing, it’s basically the only activity I can think of that consists primarily of standing in one place and listening to an mp3 player yet is somehow edgy, cool and exciting.
No, I didn't start flying a sign for Graz in front of the opera in downtown Vienna.
I’m in Vienna right now. I had a lot of ideas for decent, interesting blog posts I was going to write. I still want to write about Christiania, the automated train system in Copenhagen and some stuff for Berlin.
But yeah, I just spent 15 hours on a bus. It wasn’t Greyhound-level terrible. (Note to Europeans thinking of touring the USA by bus: Don’t. Just don’t.) They had a bathroom that was mostly usable, and you could get tea and coffee for not-insane prices, but still, spending 15 hours on a bus is always pretty miserable and I’m totally burnt out.
On Saturday, I went to see the DDR Museum in Berlin (a terrible example of an historical abbreviation striking mental miscues). I had originally been planning on seeing the Deutsches Technikmuseum instead, but it occurred to me that I’ve seen a couple other technical museums on this trip (most notably in Zagreb). While the one in Berlin is reportedly very nice, it probably doesn’t offer anything unique. The DDR Museum, on the other hand, is the only one of its kind and explores a subject particular to East Germany.
The museum, for its part, turned out to be pretty interesting. So many museums are focused on “important” things: epoch-shaping wars, timeless art, science−it was cool to see one devoted simply to daily life in the DDR. The tone of the museum reminded me a little bit of the charming comedy Good Bye, Lenin, a sort of bemused appreciation for communist kitsch, but with recognition of the negative aspects as well. I learned a bunch of things I never knew about East Germany.
Living room in the DDR