Symbol of Warsaw - mermaid with a sword and a shield

From May 24 to June 5, we traveled 3960 kilometers by bus across six countries — Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, the Czech Republic — and seven major cities (with stops in picturesque towns between them) — Frankfurt, Berlin, (Poznan), Warsaw, (Czechostowa), Krakow, Budapest, (Györ), Vienna, (Brno), Prague, (Rothenburg), and back to Frankfurt.

“We” refers to a group of friends whose bonding started in De La Salle University in the 80s, with some additions: Tony and Nida Africa, Tish Bautista and aunt Ely Venzon, Isagani and Medy Cruz, Virgie Diaz, Lydia Echauz, and Paulino Tan. This was not exactly a young and healthy group, with the youngest at 62 and the oldest almost 80. We joined 23 other people from different countries, for a total of 32.

Here is an account of those 12 days (given in two parts), reconstructed from notes provided by the tour guides and scribbled during the tour, supplemented by information from brochures.  I will not rattle off different sights, foods, hotels; rather, I will focus on the most memorable experiences, stories, incidents.   

May 22, Day 0, Friday.  Manila — Singapore — Frankfurt.  Singapore Airlines gave us a wonderful flight with its movies-on-demand and nice meals and a very pleasant stopover at Changi Airport’s newest terminal, Terminal 3.  A young management trainee named Tim showed us around the terminal, indeed a very nice way to wait for a connecting flight. It was a long flight, three and a half hours Manila-Singapore, two hours layover at Changi, 12 hours Singapore-Frankfurt.

May 23, Day 1, Saturday.  Frankfurt.  After landing at 8 a.m. in Frankfurt and going through immigration and customs, CATASTROPHE!  Paul’s backpack —  with his euros, camera, watch, laptop, credit cards, passport-and-Schengen-visa — was stolen at the arrival lounge of the airport.  He stepped to the Money Exchange Counter for 30 seconds leaving behind his trolley among three other trolleys in the presence of four other members of the group, and the backpack vanished. All we could do was report the theft to the Frankfurt police. We met our Trafalgar Tour Director, Xavier from Belgium, and he provided reassurances of Trafalgar’s assistance in Paul’s plight.

He also introduced us to our driver, Lada from Slovakia, and we had a tour of the city. Evening brought glad tidings that Paul’s backpack had been found. The Frankfurt police came to the hotel with the backpack (retrieved by an old man at a park and turned over to the police), minus the euros, camera, and watch.  But his old laptop, credit cards, and passport-with-visa were there and that was good enough for us. 

May 24, Day 2, Sunday.  Frankfurt—Berlin. We left Frankfurt at eight and went east and then north towards Berlin. Xavier told us that after WWII, Berlin was divided into four sections, jokingly referred to as the champagne section (French), the vodka section (Russian), the whiskey section (British), and the Coca-Cola section (American). Berlin was in the center of East Germany, and therefore West Berlin was surrounded by Communist Germany. 

From afar, as directed by Xavier, we caught a view of the television tower in Alexander Platz. This was supposedly built by the Communist rulers against the will of the people. The irony is that when the sun shines on the shimmering globe of the tower, a cross is formed on the surface, and thus it has been dubbed “the revenge of the Popes.” 

May 25, Monday, Day 3.  Berlin.  Our Berlin guide Jan told us that 40 percent of the buildings were destroyed during the war, and that the “hills” in their parks were formed from mounds of rubble from destroyed buildings. 

We had a driving tour of Berlin, full of historic sites. We visited the Berlin Wall, a system of walls with security equipment, started in 1961 (virtually completed in one hour, but every day there was work on improving the wall) and finally completed in 1963; it was 3.2 m. high and 15 cm. wide, 162 kms. long and effectively walled in West Berlin right in the center of Communist Germany. People had been crossing over from East Berlin to West Berlin to work but eventually the Communist authorities got tired of people leaving East Berlin for good and thus the Wall.  More than a hundred people died trying to cross it to freedom.  Ronald Reagan in 1987 famously declared, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”  In 1989, the wall came down through people power. 

We also saw Checkpoint Charlie, the guardhouse for West Berlin, used by diplomats and non-Germans when the Wall was still up. We passed by the Holocaust Memorial (Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe), only four years old, consisting of 2,711 concrete and steel slabs, a gray field of stones. We saw the Chancellery, 400 m. long, the center of Nazi rule, and behind it, the bunker where Hitler and Eva Braun had committed suicide. History all around!