Still, here’s a little video of the Glockenspeil at the Town Hall in Marienplatz.

But back to the autobahn . . . As I was leaving Munich, Free Me from Uriah Heep was playing on AFN Eagle.

I had also become fast friends with my GPS navigator by now. I could almost hear her saying, “Nice job, Priya” every time I turned right at her command.

My regret: I wish I could have taken a picture of my speedometer hitting 220 km/p/h. Only half kidding.

Tchuss!

“You are going to Hyderabad?” He would ask in a thick accent.

May be it’s because he would always start the conversation with a “namaste.”

Heidelberg might be prettier. It attracts a lot of tourists and it’s easy to see why.

Here’s a gallery of some ornate, some fantastical, and some unhappy ones I came across in Europe.

The Berlin Wall did come down in 1989! On the east side of town, portions of the wall have been preserved as a canvas for the city’s artists. A great use for one of the most unattractive relics of history. The unadorned wall is seen near the Topographie des Terrors, which marks the site of Gestapo and SS HQs.

The Reichstag is easily one of the world’s most stunning buildings, both symbolically and architecturally. Its interior had to be completely rebuilt after the country’s reunification. Art from many countries, including America and France, commemorate both dark and prosperous periods in it’s history. A new, large glass dome atop the Reichstag provides visitors with excellent views of the city in all directions.

During the day, we took a walking tour courtesy of the free iPhone app, City Walks. It took us from Bebelplatz and the Deutscher Dom to the Museum of Terror and Checkpoint Charlie. On the way, we also took in the Jüdisches Museum for a few hours. We all wondered about the meaning of the Superman sculpture by the entrance.

Nightlife in Alexanderplatz: Edited to avoid boredom. We did walk about 15 zillion miles that day.

Here, the mundane drone of the Paris metro is pepped up by a traveling crooner.

We wandered around in Montmartre and Le Marais, got chased off the footpath outside President Sarkozy’s residence, and hung out at cafés. But the most magical was the Eiffel Tower sparkling on the hour.

Check out a snippet of a philosophy debate in progress as we wandered by Bastille Place.

Some still of Le Marais and, and finally, exhausted but thrilled in the dining car of the train back to Giessen from Paris via Strasbourg, Karlsruhe and Frankfurt.

Where representatives from EU countries meet

At the European Commission in Brussels

Two experts gave us deeper insights into how the EU functions and its historical context. Appropriately, it parallels the formation of the federal government in the United States during the time when the Articles of Confederation were in force.

I’m going to have to see if the Berlin Wall really did come down with my own eyes. That’ll be a new post soon.

In the meantime, we managed to get in some amazing jewelry shopping, take in a few sites, hangout at a shisha bar, and have dinner with a Saudi sheikh and his wife at a Lebanese restaurant. That Samantha, she’s so friendly.