My love for Europe’s Beer gardens and Public Parks

A major highlight of my first trip to Europe in 2018 were the public parks and the beer gardens. I was incredibly lucky to have been in Europe during the biggest event of the year — the 2018 FIFA Worldcup. Yes, yes so go ahead and feel envious, I know I would have.

I remember during one of the matches we saw in Prague, we went to Riegrovy Sady.

Riegrovy Sady (Credit:Google)

Riegrovy Sady has a beer garden eponymously named the Riegrovy Sady beer garden.The ambience on the day of the match was electric — Trees and benches, a big screen & greasy food and hoardes and hoardes of screaming football fans. We were sharing our bench with a young polish couple from a small village in Poland. I took a video that day and you can see how thrilled we looked. It was the most fun that I had watching a football match.

On the last day of trip to Prague, we hiked up to this beer garden Letenske Skady. This place has sweeping views of the city. You must have a beer or two here and enjoy a panoramic view of Prague.

View from Letenske Skady

While Prague was quaint and beautiful with it’s beer gardens and pastel coloured buildings, the kind of impact that Amsterdam had on me was on a completely different plane. Last year, I travelled to the Netherlands and we spent most of our time exploring Amsterdam, Delft and Leiden. The biggest highlight of the trip was yet another public park — Vondelpark. This park is spread over a whopping 128 acres in the posh and chic borough of Amsterdam-Zuid. All we did that day was to lie under canopies of trees, reading and sleeping and watching dogs jump happily in ponds.

Our day at Vondelpark

I think that day, as i lay under the blue skies, my views changed on what really made a city livable.

It’s not just public transport or big jobs that make a city great. When young and old women lounge in a park with abandon, that is the stuff that makes a city great.

Whenever I visit public spaces like beaches and parks in India, I crave to have that lack of inhibition which I experienced in Vondelpark that fateful day.

I hope that someday i can hit the beach in Bombay, with a book in my hand and nap happily under the open skies. Lazy. Happy. Safe.

Berlin – My first European City

Hello Guys!

I am writing after many months. In the month of July, I made my first sojourn to Europe. It was just a 2 week trip across 4 cities. A little about us (husband and yours truly) -We host travellers from across the world in our Mumbai home via couch surfing. Most of them are European and are on year long sabbaticals from work or University. However, I don’t have the good fortune to either take that time off.  So I had to do with 2 weeks of travelling through 4 cities which might seem ‘more touristy, less travelling ‘ to many.

We landed in Berlin on a sunny afternoon. However, before I go on, a little something about my bum. Does any of you get a terrible tail bone ache after a long flight?My poor bum was on fire while flying from Mumbai to Berlin. If you guys have a solution to the bumache, please tell me in the comments.

So we landed in Berlin and after going back and forth on trains, we managed to reach Grand Hyatt in Potsdamer Platz. The hotel is in a beautiful avenue where trees make canopies overhead and you can take a leisurely stroll down the street. My husband and I walked down to the nearby Fansmiele to see a crowd getting together for the England Vs Sweden match. Husband was feeling jet lagged and went back while I stayed back to watch the match. Some of my favourite moments from the match included the kiss cam. So far, I had only seen kiss cams in American sitcoms so it was a lot of fun watching it happen in person. I walked back to the hotel stopping  midway at the Holocaust Memorial midway. While the memorial evokes a sombre mood, however, I enjoyed watching kids trying to feed sparrows.

On day 2, I slept in for much longer while husband went on a walking tour with sandeman tours. The Eng vs Sweden match had awakened the football lover in me. We decided to watch the match at a pub famous for football matches where you could sit on cushions placed on steps and sip on some brewed beer. Post the match, we decided to walk with no destination on our minds and found ourselves at the Hackescher Markt station. I haven’t seen a more beautiful metro station. It was hauntingly beautiful. We still had the better part of the night to enjoy and so we headed to BERGHAIN. So Berghain is famous for it’s bouncer and the screening system. Nobody knows who gets in and why they get in. There is even a website that predicts if you will get into BERGHAIN or NOT. We didn’t and we still loved it!

After going to Prague-Vienna-Budapest, we came back to Berlin. We attended the flea market at Mauerpark on a Sunday and saw the best open air karaoke of our lives.

Here are some pictures from my Berlin Trip –

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