No Place Like Home

Well, I don't think we'll be eager for more flying anytime soon. In general, Jeff and I have been fairly successful in both business and pleasure flights. But this trip was rather exhausting. We were up at 5:30 in the morning (Germany time) and at the airport with plenty of time. That was about the only thing that went right yesterday!

After sitting at the gate for 2 ½ hours due to a faulty fuel gauge, we finally took off for the 9 hour flight across the ocean to JFK. Since we obviously missed our connecting flights, we spent hours in the baggage claim, re-booking, baggage re-check, and security lines. Since it was a very large flight that was very late, most people had missed connections, so we were in good company in hot, crowded conditions. After we finally made it to our gate for our new flight, we found out that that plane was late. Not terrible in itself, but we still had one more connection to make with only a 50 minute layover between! So of course, there we were again, dashing through the next airport to make our flight, just as we did on the way over to Germany. I guess it all comes full circle!

Once we finally arrived in Alabama, we realized we had very little American money to pay for our taxi. We got home and had to search the house for spare change to make up the difference! We eventually got to bed, some 25 hours after we had gotten up that morning. Let me just say, Europe is wonderful, America is great, but somewhere in between is not much fun.

Goodbye Germany

We have seen Europe by plane, train, auto, tram, bus, bike...and of course, by foot! It's been a very enjoyable, educational, enriching, and, at times, exhausting experience. We are sad our time has come to an end but excited about the opportunities that lay in store for us back home. And I hope this won't be our last trip to Europe. So here's to all our new friends on the Continent, and may we meet again soon. Tschüss!

Note to self...

...Don't leave for the train station with only five or ten minutes to spare when Germany has just thoroughly trounced Argentina 4 to 0 in the World Cup!

It's normally only a quick 3 minute drive to the Salzgitter-Lebenstedt train station from our friends' apartment for our return trip to Berlin. But just as we were getting ready to leave, we heard the first joyful vuvuzela toots. A minute later the car horns started, and then mayhem broke loose on the streets as exultant Germans left huge public "watch parties" and private television sets to whoop and holler and fly flags. We got stuck in this traffic and had to jump out of the car, get the keys from the driver to open the trunk and obtain our bags, and jog the last five blocks or so in 96 degree weather to the railway to make the train! At least everyone was in a good mood; imagine how much worse it would have been if they had lost!

Life in the East

Jeff and I really enjoyed the DDR museum, an interactive exhibit all about life in East Germany (DDR for Deutsche Demokratische Republik, but of course we would say GDR in English). It covered the history of the Soviet influence, imposition of communism, the origins of the wall, and life behind the Iron Curtain from infancy to death. The museum displays artifacts and discourse on details such as collective potty breaks, socialized education, “equalized” salaries, anabolic steroid use in top athletics, the hunger for “status symbol” Levi jeans, the nudist craze, and, of course, the iconic Trabi.

Driving the 1971 Trabant

Cotton was extremely hard to find and clothes were available in only a few broad sizes, so most East German women sewed and/or tailored their own clothes

The engineer's salary was about the same as the bricklayer, the miner, the farmer...

Sculptures to commemorate the nude beaches, camp sites, and vacations of the DDR

Tick, tick, tick...

So strange to realize that we only have one more week left here in Germany. Time has flown so quickly, but I think two months has been the perfect length for us. One can never have enough time in Europe, but it will be good to get back home!

Red Comrade

Jeff and I have a tiny visitor who reminds us of home. There is an adorable red squirrel with little ear tufts who comes by our balcony and windows regularly to check for food. He, in fact, appeared to want to come in one day earlier this week; I was enjoying a snack at the table just inside the miniature french doors to the balcony when he popped by to see if he had left any nuts buried in my potted basil. When the answer was no, he came right up to the doors, stood on his back legs, and scratched at the glass a few times. When he started trying to taste Jeff's denim that was drying on the porch railing, I had to interrupt his pursuits and he left. Somehow the photos got deleted from our camera, but here is a shot of his identical twin somewhere in Berlin!

Berlin Ballet

Last night Jeff took me to one of the most beautiful ballets I've ever seen. For only 17 Euros a seat, we got great, unobstructed views from the balcony, melodious notes from the full live orchestra in the pit, classic choreography, stunning sets, and lush costuming!

I was unfamiliar with the ballet Die Bajadere (or La Bayadére, the original French title), the story of a love triangle set in majestic India. It premiered in 1877 and I'm so glad it is being produced today. It is considered the precursor in style to the far more famous Swan Lake and Les Sylphides.

The dancing was superb and the audience very receptive and appreciative of it. Jeff found the principal ballerinas and the corps de ballet very elegant and beautiful. For me, I would quote Gretel's firm statement in The Sound of Music (while watching the ladies and gentleman dancing at the ball), "I think the MEN look beautiful". There is something so awe-inspiring about the unexpected combination of grace and power and flexibility in a classically trained male dancer. There was spontaneous applause and "Bravo"s from the spectators several times during the various male solos.

All in all, it was an incredible three hours and an absolute bargain. If you ever make it to Berlin, the Staatsballet is a must see! I forgot to get the camera out when I checked my bag in the cloakroom, but here are a few photos from the website.

Sachsenhausen

Sachsenhausen Tower A, entrance to the camp

On Sunday, Jeff and I toured Sachsenhausen, a Nazi concentration camp about 20 miles from Berlin.

There is so much and yet so little that I can say about the experience. The stories, images, artifacts, and facilities themselves contain such a huge burden of history. But you know standing there before all those facts and pieces that there is no way to grasp the magnitude of it. I could write pages and pages on what we learned yesterday and it would still never capture the whole.

Sachsenhausen is not as well known as other concentration camps such as Auschwitz or Treblinka, two of the six infamous extermination centers in eastern Europe. But there are two horrible facts that make it significant nonetheless. Firstly, Sachsenhausen was designed as the model facility by the Nazis. It was built from the ground up for its terrible purposes and was held as the standard by which others operated. While the world's attention was on the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, only a few miles north slave labor was being used to construct this “thoroughly modern concentration camp”, as Heinrich Himmler proudly called it. To this end, many of the up and coming SS officials trained here and then went on to oversee other concentration and extermination camps.

Secondly, the headquarters and top officials in charge of administering all concentration camps were located just outside the gates of Sachsenhausen. From here, decisions such as food rations, medical experiments, torture practices, extermination methods, and all other aspects of camp life and death were determined for the whole system of around 20 main concentration camps and many hundreds of smaller satellite camps.

Though it was built to house around 10,000 prisoners, by 1944 it held almost 70,000. In total, over 200,000 men, women, and children were prisoners in Sachsenhausen at one time or another during its nine year span under Nazi use; 30,000 of them are estimated to have been killed or died. Terribly, the compound was used as a Soviet special camp for prisoners of war and enemies of the state for another four years after WWII, resulting in at least another 12,000 deaths from illness, malnutrition, and epidemics.

This is only the dry quantitative information; I can't begin to describe the hanging gallows, torture devices, gas chambers, crematorium, execution trenches, punitive and forced labor assignments, and the multitude of other horrors we saw and learned about. I can only say that if you ever have the chance to visit such a site, I urge you to do it.

Fresh air and sunshine!

Today is an absolutely lovely day here in Berlin. We haven't had too many, as it's been a very long, cold winter and springs seems to have barely arrived. But today is sunny and gently breezy and perfectly pleasant (it's a high of 25 C, for those of you who speak Celsius; for the rest of us, that's about 77 F).

I decided to enjoy the fantastic weather and take a bike ride around the area. The Grunewald (a huge forested nature area right on the edge of Berlin) is only a few miles away, and there appeared to be many trails through it. So I hopped on my borrowed bicycle and headed off. It took a mixture of sidewalks, bike lanes, and streets to get there, some in busy traffic. This isn't the Netherlands with immaculate bike lanes paralleling every street, nor is it America where you take your chances with oblivious pedestrians or obnoxious cars. Germany is somewhere in the middle, but it was still a bit of a challenge to navigate.

Suffice it to say, I found the Grunewald and was a bit disappointed. The paths indicated were almost all dirt hiking trails, which my old fashioned Swiss street bike, with its handy baskets mounted front and back and little headlamp, was not really designed to take. In fact, Jeff noted that the bike looks a lot like the one Miss Gulch/Wicked Witch of the West rides in The Wizard of Oz!

The only alternative was the main entrance road through the park, and it was not pleasant. It is paved with the ubiquitous rectangular cobblestone, like half the streets in Berlin apparently. I rode it about ½ mile before I decided I couldn't take anymore and turned around. The cobblestones that are so charming to look at, decent to drive on, and tolerable to walk upon are torturous to bike over! I have biked on them briefly here and there in the past, but the nonstop rumbling, bouncing, and rattling was too much. I felt like one of those vintage ladies in the 1930's-40's ads for fat removal machines. I must have lost a bit of cellulite just on that mile alone!

Second Hand Information

I am a confirmed bargain hunter. I loath paying full price for anything, and I would much rather buy something used rather than new. This is for two reasons: often, you get better quality in an older item than something new carried in the stores today; and you almost always get a much better price.

Given this, one of my Berlin excursions has been to locate some thrift stores. It's interesting to note that there aren't very many here. I finally tracked down a nonprofit secondhand chain, rather like the Goodwill or Salvation Army in the States, called Humana. They have several large stores around Berlin, so I made a visit to the two largest on separate occasions.

There was a legitimate reason, as the weather here has been much colder than expected and my wardrobe was not entirely adequate. So I went hunting for sweaters in late May, hoping to catch a winter clearance. As an aside, I happened upon just such clearance sales back in Alabama in April at my favorite consignment and thrift stores and stocked up on some beautiful designer label wool and mohair sweaters for $1 and $2 each! So imagine my surprise when all the used sweaters, blouses, and tops here in Berlin were priced around 8-12 Euro! And that's Euros, which is anywhere from 1.4 to 1.2 times the dollar at the moment. The store was very clean and orderly with several floors of clothing, furniture, books, household items, etc., but everything seemed overpriced. So I will consider our Goodwill and Craigslist and yard sales as another blessing of living in the States. My closets and house would be barren if not for the abundance of lovely, inexpensive used items we can obtain in America!

Four floors in this building are for the thrift store; maybe they're paying too much for real estate!


The orderly (but expensive) racks of used clothes

Finding Family

If you haven't guessed from Jeff's fair appearance and robust nose, he is of German descent. His maternal great-grandfather was one of several brothers who emigrated from north Germany to Texas in the late 1800's. He married a German/Swedish woman, and Jeff's grandmother spoke a little German as a child and remembered some German songs. Most of this came to our attention several years ago after his grandmother died and we found a letter she had written to her father's brother's daughter (her Cousin Sophie) back in Germany in the 70's. Sophie had died by that time, but her 18 year old granddaughter had written back and provided a few family details such as names and ages of the current generation. Given this, Jeff utilized the Internet and located the granddaughter and her brothers (his third cousins). There was a little email correspondence and the exchange of a few old pictures to confirm the shared ancestors. Nothing much more happened, but it was nice to find a connection in the Old Country.

Fast forward a few years. Jeff decided that since we are in Germany, he would get in touch with his distant relations over here. Amazingly, the three cousins and their father live only a few miles from several of our church friends who had been inviting us to visit them in their home! So we arranged to stay overnight with our generous hosts Saturday evening, and Sunday morning we met the German branch of Jeff's family tree. We were able to see two of their homes and meet all three third cousins, their father, and several of the spouses and children. We spent a lovely morning and afternoon before taking the train a few hours back to Berlin.

One interesting note: we asked about visiting the grave sites and cemeteries where some of the ancestors might be buried. We were informed that in Germany, one doesn't own the burial plot, one basically “rents” it. Once the family or descendants stop paying, the marker is often removed and the site can be used by someone else. Now, they weren't quite sure what was done with the casket or the actual remains, but essentially, unless there is an interested party that preserves the ancestor's final resting place, it is very unlikely that you can locate the actual grave site. The village church may have records, but don't expect to get a rubbing of the headstone!

Jeff with his third cousin Martin and his family
(Of all things, Martin is a Ph.D. materials scientist and used to teach at a university; Jeff is a Ph.D. metallurgist and is a professor at a university! Maybe it was in the genes.)


Jeff and I with his third cousins (back row) and their father

What exactly is "American"?

I have to remark on an oddity here in Europe. We have encountered a number of items that are referred to as "American...". So, for example, there is American hotdog sauce in the grocery store. Now, I'm an American, but I'm not sure what "hotdog sauce" is. It turned out to be something like a combination of ketchup and relish. Not a bad idea in itself, but not exactly "American". Then there is the "American kitchen". This means basically an open kitchen, where the floorplan is designed for flow into the main living space. Certainly something we have and enjoy in American, but not so exclusively that I feel it must be designated as "American".

And then there were the "American potatoes" I was served this evening with my Argentinian beef. I felt silly asking the Czech waiter what "American potatoes" were. Are they mashed? No. Are they steak fries? No. Is it whole, baked in the skin? No. In the end, I was served fat wedges that had been fried. It was close enough to fries that I requested some ketchup to enjoy them. But the funny thing is that they do have fries (called pommes frites through most of Europe); this restaurant served those with other menu items, so I'm curious what the difference is.

But all this makes me think about the things in American which we have named for other nationalities. French fries. Dutch oven. Belgian waffles. Swedish massage. Canadian bacon. White Russian. French braid. Polish sausage. German measles. The list goes on and on. It makes one wonder, how many of these things would be recognized by citizens of the very country for which they are named? Judging from my experience with "American" items in Europe, not very many!

More Meals

The food here in Berlin has been quite good. Groceries are extremely reasonable, many items such as fresh produce being more readily available and less expensive than in the States (and beer is literally cheaper than water most places)!

Meals at home; Chicken and capers in lemon-butter sauce on the left,
Florentine pasta with roasted cherry tomatoes on the right

We have eaten out a few times but try to keep it to a minimum. This gives me the full experience of really living in Berlin, needing to shop and cook at home. But we have enjoyed some home-cooked traditional German food made by friends as well as ethnic restaurant fare such as Italian and Turkish.

My very large plate, from our meal out with colleagues a few evenings ago

All in all, we are eating very well. There is only one small spot of tarnish on an otherwise glowing report. If only we could get large, cold glasses of water to accompany our meals, all would be right in our gastronomical world! As any of you who have traveled to England or Europe likely know, our friends across the pond are not fond of ice cubes, nor do they seem to think drinking from the tap is very couth. So one must constantly order small (and I do mean small!) bottles of mineral water to accompany the meal and whatever other beverage is being enjoyed. We have been able to get child-sized glasses of lukewarm water at a few restaurants, but several waiters have told us they are unable to serve tap water by order of the owner!

Laundry Woes

If cooking is a bit of a challenge here in Berlin, laundry is a down-right chore! I usually don't mind the task at home with my washer and dryer just steps from the kitchen. In fact, I enjoy sitting down with a laundry basket of clean, fluffy, warm clothes straight from the dryer in need of folding.

But here, we are on the third floor. And the washing machine is in the basement. So that means I have to carry the dirty clothes down four flights of spiral stairs. The washer is a tiny front-loading European model. The regular cycle takes an hour, so if I had several loads, laundry would drag on and on. Thankfully, we are a rather clean people so I use the “quick” mode for a light wash that only takes about 40 minutes. Then it's over to the clothesline to hang, pin, and arrange everything for maximum drying and minimum wrinkles. The drying takes at least a day for most items, and more if it's cold out or the items are thick. I'm just glad we don't have manual labor jobs that produce lots of heavily soiled garments!

But whenever I get a bit “loaded down” by all the work, I think of my long-suffering sister-in-law. She has been hauling the laundry for a large family to and from the laundromat several blocks away for over a decade now. Surely I can manage to make it to the basement and back for two ;-)

Socks drying on the steam radiator in our bathroom

Heart of Berlin

Another big day on Sunday! We took the S Bahn, U Bahn, and bus and finally arrived at the German Historical Museum. It's a huge building loaded with information and artifacts of significant events in the German region since 100 BC! That means there was a lot to cover. We only saw about half the building, up to the 1900's. That might sound like there isn't much left, but of course Germany has had a lot happen in the past century, so we can't wait to return for the remainder.

Panel showing the heraldic shield of Charles V,
Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation

Suits of armor worn by the knights

Mask worn by doctors during the Bubonic Plague

We left the museum by mid-afternoon and walked up the famous Under den Linden street to the Reichstag, the seat of the German government. Jeff had prearranged for a guided tour in English, so we were able to bypass the lengthy lines and go right in. After a security check, we joined our group and enjoyed a two hour journey through the Reichstag and the glass dome on top.

The Reichstag is the equivalent of the US Capitol Building. It was completed in 1894, but due to the famous fire of 1933 and damage during WWII, it was basically unused until after reunification. Restoration was completed in 1999.
Russian graffiti on the interior walls from the fall of Berlin to the Soviets
during WWII. The architect responsible for reconstruction of the Reichstag
wanted to preserve all the signs of history, so the graffiti remains, as well as
bullet holes on the exterior.

The Plenary Chamber where the Bundestag meets

Another view of the Plenary from the visitors gallery. The German
constitution dictates that the public always be allowed access and viewing.

The French art project, one of several pieces contributed by members of the
Allied Nations. The Jewish artist replicated small post boxes and added a name plate for each elected member of the Bundestag from 1894 until 1999 (including Adolf Hitler). The black square in the middle is representative of the Nazi reign when all other parties were forced to disband and democracy was suspended.

In the Plenary under the dome, which functions as a cooling system and air exchanger

View of Berlin from the top of the Reichstag

Following the Reichstag, we had dinner at a nice outdoor cafe and then consulted our S Bahn map again. We had tickets to Carmina Burana, so we found our way to the Konzerthaus, a lovely old building at Gendarmenmarkt. Jeff and I have sung Carmina before in the Arkansas Master Chorale, but we have never heard it as passive audience members. It was very enjoyable, certainly the more-so because of our familiarity with it. We both loved the soprano soloist, and the tenor was very engaging (especially in the drinking song, which he essentially acted out ;-). I also enjoyed the countertenor, but that's not really Jeff's cup of tea!

Inside the Konzerthaus, seated on the main floor

Street musicians

Like any large city, there are many people on the street asking for your money. But my favorites are the street musicians; they are really talented here!

The most common instrument seems to be the accordion. They play mostly upbeat tunes. I've heard classics like the William Tell overture and traditional songs like Hava Nagila. Of course, those are only a few pieces in their huge repertoire that they shift amongst effortlessly. They sit very politely in the S Bahn station or down in the underground terminals and accompany the passengers as they hurry to and fro. I enjoyed listening to a guitarist today on the U Bahn, and we even had a trio hop on the light rail train one evening with an accordion, a recorder, and some other instrument I couldn't see. Good culture and talent seem to pervade many aspects of German life!

All things bright and beautiful

Overlooking the pond

Yesterday (Wednesday) was a rare sunny afternoon. Jeff and I made plans to go to the botanical gardens not far from our apartment. Of course, by the time early evening came it was already cloudy again, but the temperature was still comfortable. So we took the S Bahn one stop up and walked to the Berlin Botanischer Garten.

I have been to several botanical gardens in my life, but I've never seen one so large and so thorough! We were there for several hours and barely scratched the surface. We didn't even make it into all the greenhouses, let alone the rest of the grounds. We were very impressed by the collection, categorization, and display of the myriad of plant species. But more importantly, we were awed by the amazing variety, array, and beauty that God had created.