Wednesday, June 15th:
Boston Bruins Captain Zdeno Chara Holding the Stanley Cup Trophy:
The Boston Bruins are the Stanley Cup Champions of 2011!!!!!!!! It feels so good to say that, and I am so excited!!! I am very lucky to be able to say that I have witnessed a championship in all four major sports for my hometown city of Boston in only ten years. Pretty remarkable, but more on that in a bit.
Today was the first time we got to use our EU-Rail Passes on the European international railway system! We slept in a little this morning before waking to pack and eat a quick hotel breakfast before making our way to Prague’s Hlavní Nádraží train station. We got our passes activated and got on our train to Berlin at about 2:30pm. We did not wander down into the dining car, which I regretted because I basically ate a Snickers bar and some dried pineapple for lunch (Jen smartly ordered some Pasta-To-Go at the Prague train station), but the train was very smooth. We rode by a really cool castle and bridge in Northern Czech Republic before crossing the border into Germany and stopping at Dresden. Dresden looked fairly small but really pretty with its old churches, and it felt cool to be in the city of the famous fire-bombing which provided the background for my favorite book, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut.
The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at Night:
We rolled away towards Berlin in no-time, passing plains that looked like the sets for Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers. We got to Berlin and to our beautiful hotel, the Brandenburger Hof in the western Berlin area of Wilmersdorf at around 8pm. This hotel, despite being fairly small and not too pricey, is an amazing five-star hotel and it was a very nice break for Jen and I from all of our hostel travelling up until now. We got a quick nap in because I had told Jen that tonight would be a long night, as I had found a bar, Belushi’s All Night Sports Bar, that would be playing game seven of the Stanley Cup Finals, starting at 2am. We got dinner in the area known as Savigny-Platz at a Jamaican restaurant called Tastees Soul Food (we were hungry…). I ate some veggie soup and Jerk Chicken with plantains and dumplings, while Jen ate some Steamed Red Snapper with the same sides. It was fairly good, but we were just looking for some food as it was late and many restaurants were closing their kitchens.
My brother, Brad, had told me that the subway system in Berlin was as super efficient, so we tried to use it to go across the city to Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz where the bar was located, right next to the Berlin TV Tower, which is the tallest building in the European Union. While it looked to me like the system was as-advertised, we had some serious issues as one of the lines was having work done on the middle of it, right near our hotel. After struggling with this for about forty-five minutes, we just decided to take a cab across the city to the bar. When we got to Belushi’s, it dawned on me that it was a bar inside the great chain of hostels called St. Christopher’s, which a friend Cole Lupoli had recommended to stay in. Unfortunately for me, the inside was filled with a ratio of about 40:5 Vancouver Canucks fans to Bruins fans, but I was not deterred. Waiting for the game to start I enjoyed some Lübzer beer on tap (for 2 Euros!) and chatted with a Czech man who grew up in London but now lives in Berlin (yeah, I dunno). Strangest of all, he was a massive hockey fan, and a Bruins fan to boot! I also hung out with a Vancouver fan that seemed tamer than the others. When the tap ran out, we also drank some Franziskaner Weissbier, which was supremely tasty to me. Best of all, the Bruins were winning!
The Fernsehturm (TV Tower) at Night:
By the time the sun came up outside, the Bruins were minutes away from their first Stanley Cup Championship in thirty-nine years! Brad Marchand scored an empty-netter goal to seal the 4-0 victory, and my nervous shaking turned into pure excitement and joy. It was after 5am in Berlin, and I could have been the happiest person in the whole 3.5 million person city! The Vancouver fans congratulated me, and I stayed to wallow in the joy of watching my team skate the coolest trophy in sports around the ice. By now, Jen probably wanted to kill me as I had kept her up all night and was screaming and shouting like a madman, so we took a cab home around 5:30am. Before we got in the cab, however, we walked outside and watched a young Berliner get tackled by two cops as he ran down the street away from them. Good start, I guess?
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