Our girls. L - R: Sarah, Brooke, Annie, Ruby, Jamie, McKenzie
I think it's Tuesday; sort of out of touch with dates and times. My poor phone--the only one we brought, as Becci left hers and made Sarah leave hers at home--is totally confused and can't tell the time, it keeps sending me plaintive messages about re-setting the time; since it can't figure it out from the satelitte I'll get Sarah to set it manually. The clock on the TV thinks it's 3AM. Oh well, I'm on vacation, so I don't really need to know what time it is anyway! If this is Tuesday it must be Berlin.
Out on our lovely balcony; as noted before unitended consequences aren't always bad ones. Dropped off in mid-sentence when I was writing last night, just hit the jet lag wall and died at 8:30, but slept like one of the alte kaisers in the big mausoleums at Charlottenberg Palace, and now feel great. Birds singing, city waking up, just need some coffee and all will be right in my world. Yesterday is still sort of a blur, so much happening! And so tired and disoriented, but got through it all.
Berlin has really changed in the ten years since we were here last. Then it was all cranes and construction and you could still see a lot of evidence of the war-ravaged, cold war city. Now it's a big bustling metro city, with busy streets lined with new buildings, hardly a trace of the old tensions. Berlin is much newer and busy busy busy. The government buildings we saw from our boat tour are all finished and very nicely done, and I couldn't see any of the old vacant lots left over from the Cold War and the divided city. Today the tour group is going to Potsdam and the San Souci palace; but Becci and I toured that pretty well when we were here last time and I doubt it will be much different, so we are splitting off from the group and spending the afternoon on our own. I've moved down to the lobby, on one of the pink and orange couches, waiting for the group to gather. This is a very modern hotel, all colorful and trendy and industrial chic. One of the staff outside smoking a cigarette in that back-handed European way, very characteristic. I was just musing that a few days ago I was sitting in the mist at Rock Creek Ranch in Desolation Canyon, talking to Butch Jensen, a real live cowboy; now here I am in a trendy hotel watching a jaded Berliner smoke a cigarette.
Later, after breakfast. Very nice buffet it was too, with good coffee and all kinds of yummy selections; much more than the usual hotel breakfast. Alles ist jetzt in Ordnung! After we finished breakfast we walked a couple of blocks with the girls to find a bank with an ATM, so one of them could get some money out. Brooke's card worked but Ruby's didn't, so we called her mother on my cell phone and got her out of bed, but she was glad to talk to Ruby and it turned out she was using the wrong PIN, so after that it worked and all are set. Now on the bus, going to tour around the central city, to the BrandenbergerTor and Checkpoint Charlie and so on. Waiting for our local tour guide I noticed that the trees outside the window has a number on it. When I asked why Becci said "This is Germany; everything has a number on it." Then the local tour guide showed up, a kind of typical Berliner, even though he's just like Becci: his dad was in the US military, his mother is German, and he was born and grew up here. He's a doctoral candidate at the Univesity of Potsdam; all doctoral candidates are smart asses, full of themselves, and this guy is no different.
Later, at the Gendarmmarkt, right in the Mitte, or middle, of Berlin. We toured around seeing the sights and our tour guide giving us tidbits of info, which were very interesting; one place we saw was the courtyard where Count Von Stauffenberg was executed aft
er the July 20 plot, for instance. Then we stopped at the Brandenberg Gate and the Holocaust Memorial for an hour, which like the rest of the city is really changed. When we were here before it was still really run down and the wall, though breached, was still up in a lot of places. Now there's no trace of it save a line of white paving stones that go through the streets and sidewalks, and a stretch that's been preserved as a museum that we saw later. The Brandenbergertor was very cleaned up and crowded, lots and lots of tourists all over the place. Bought some postcards in a little shop and got my first cloth bag souvenir. Then walked over to where the Fuhrer Bunker used to be; when we were here before it was a big open field that even the dogs wouldn't cross, as was said; now it's all filled in with buildings and you can't tell where it even was. There were some info signs so all of our group walked over there and I gave t
hem a talk about the battle of Berlin, the tens of thousands of killed, the devastated city, the Russian sack of the city. Then we walked back and went to the Holocaust Memorial, which is right by the B-Gate. It's a square of coffin-sized concrete blocks lined up in a regular lines, but the ground below rises and falls so that even though the tops are level, sometimes you can see over them and sometimes you are below ground. I thought it very effective, like the US Vietnam Memorial; it symbolized the impersonal nature of the camps and how people were just lost in them. Across the street was the Gay Holocaust Memorial, for thousands of homosexuals were also sent to the camps and killed, so we walked over to look at it. It's a big concrete block with a little window that you look into, and there is a film loop of two guys kissing passionately. That set the little Utah minds a-flutter! Thence back to the bus, where the old ladies from Michigan (hereinafter The Biddies) were complaining about the kids talking too loud so they couldn't hear the tour guide. So go on an old people tour, not a high school tour!
So thence to a section of the wall that's been preserved as an open air museum, and some of the art works are being restored and cleaned. Everyone took pictures and marveled; I left my Zia sun symbol mark on one panel. Then our final tour stop at Checkpoint Charlie Museum, which was very crowded and seemed a lot bigger than when Rachel and I had gone to it ten years before. Still the same place but it seemed they had expanded upstairs, and sort of changed the mission to a museum against oppression everywhere. Still very interesting, especially with
Becci who remembers it all so well. She gathered up the kids and told them that when she was their age, she remembered going through Checkpoint Charlie and getting searched (i.e. felt up!) by the East German guards, and how it was always really scary. So after we got through the museum we were waiting outside; we had an hour or so before the tour bus for Potsdam showed up. It had clouded over and suddenly there was a huge BOOM of thunder and a flash of lightning, and then it rained like crazy for about 15 minutes. I don't know why I was surprised by the lightning and thunder, but I was. So, since we had time for lunch, and right across the street was a doner kebab shop, I led everyone over there through the rain and introduced them all to the delights of doner. Thinly shaved meat, cabbage, tomatos, garlic or yogurt sauce in a flatbread, yummy! My favorite food in Europe. Cheap, delicious, and filling. So then we shopped around a bit and it was time for them all to get on the bus for Potsdam.
One aside there: so we are all standing up under an awning, crowded in because of the rain, and Herb is collecting money for the extra that it's going to cost for the bus to Potsdam. He's waving around a whole fistful of Euros, saying loudly "Anyone else have money to give me?" We're in this dense crowd with all these gypsy women hovering around eye-ing the money he's holding out, and I was thinking "could this guy be any more clueless?" It was a perfect place to get your pocket picked, but as they say the gods look out for maroons, so he got away with it.
So by now the rain had eased and we were right by the Dom, the big cathedral (that our local tour guide had just hated; he went on and on about how much he hated it, for some artistic reason; I didn't care one way or another). So we sat for a while, fending off the gypsies, feeding the Berliner sparrows with the last of Sarah's doner, and wondering if we were in the right place, when finally here comes one of the guys from our tour, who had also skipped the Potsdam
bus, and thus we knew we were in the right place. Then shortly thereafter here came the bus. Dinner that night was at a cafeteria/buffet family style chain that was over in the Alexanderplatz, the old central square of East Berlin. So, despite my sore feet, we marched over there past the famous TV tower and found the place and actually had a very good dinner. The place had ice water, of which I drank about half a gallon, or a couple of liters I should say, ice water being such a rarity in Europe. Also at dinner was our local tour guide, who had accidentally left his briefcase on the bus, containing his whole dissertation and all his research! He was glad to see that. So afterwards, some were tired and ready to go back, and they followed Steve the tour guide to the subway, but the rest of us were rejuvenated by dinner and decided to stay out and see some sights. So we walked back past th
e Dom to another Ampelmann store so others could get souvenirs (and take a great picture of our girls with the statue outside), had what Steve described as the best ice cream in Berlin, and then caught the #100 Bus toward the Zoo. When everyone said oh, we could go to the Zoo, since it was late I made my best ever joke in German, "Die Zoo ist Zu!" The zoo is closed. Ha Ha. We got the bus, it was a double decker one, so we all piled on, Becci being the tour guide as this was her home town. Got off by the "Rotten Tooth," the bombed out church, and walked through the Europa Center, a big indoor shopping area; I loved the big fountain, "wasserklops," but by then we were all starting to feel jet lagged so we found our way back by the U-bahn, Becci once again taking charge and navigating. She was a great tour guide and really seemed to be having a good time; she deserved it after the rigors of the past winter and all, I was really proud of her! But that last spurt of energy did us in, and we got back to the hotel and once again collapsed.
Out on our lovely balcony; as noted before unitended consequences aren't always bad ones. Dropped off in mid-sentence when I was writing last night, just hit the jet lag wall and died at 8:30, but slept like one of the alte kaisers in the big mausoleums at Charlottenberg Palace, and now feel great. Birds singing, city waking up, just need some coffee and all will be right in my world. Yesterday is still sort of a blur, so much happening! And so tired and disoriented, but got through it all.
Our hotel was right by the Sophie Charlotte U-bahn station, only a couple of blocks from the Charlottenberg Palace.
Berlin has really changed in the ten years since we were here last. Then it was all cranes and construction and you could still see a lot of evidence of the war-ravaged, cold war city. Now it's a big bustling metro city, with busy streets lined with new buildings, hardly a trace of the old tensions. Berlin is much newer and busy busy busy. The government buildings we saw from our boat tour are all finished and very nicely done, and I couldn't see any of the old vacant lots left over from the Cold War and the divided city. Today the tour group is going to Potsdam and the San Souci palace; but Becci and I toured that pretty well when we were here last time and I doubt it will be much different, so we are splitting off from the group and spending the afternoon on our own. I've moved down to the lobby, on one of the pink and orange couches, waiting for the group to gather. This is a very modern hotel, all colorful and trendy and industrial chic. One of the staff outside smoking a cigarette in that back-handed European way, very characteristic. I was just musing that a few days ago I was sitting in the mist at Rock Creek Ranch in Desolation Canyon, talking to Butch Jensen, a real live cowboy; now here I am in a trendy hotel watching a jaded Berliner smoke a cigarette.
Later, after breakfast. Very nice buffet it was too, with good coffee and all kinds of yummy selections; much more than the usual hotel breakfast. Alles ist jetzt in Ordnung! After we finished breakfast we walked a couple of blocks with the girls to find a bank with an ATM, so one of them could get some money out. Brooke's card worked but Ruby's didn't, so we called her mother on my cell phone and got her out of bed, but she was glad to talk to Ruby and it turned out she was using the wrong PIN, so after that it worked and all are set. Now on the bus, going to tour around the central city, to the BrandenbergerTor and Checkpoint Charlie and so on. Waiting for our local tour guide I noticed that the trees outside the window has a number on it. When I asked why Becci said "This is Germany; everything has a number on it." Then the local tour guide showed up, a kind of typical Berliner, even though he's just like Becci: his dad was in the US military, his mother is German, and he was born and grew up here. He's a doctoral candidate at the Univesity of Potsdam; all doctoral candidates are smart asses, full of themselves, and this guy is no different.
Later, at the Gendarmmarkt, right in the Mitte, or middle, of Berlin. We toured around seeing the sights and our tour guide giving us tidbits of info, which were very interesting; one place we saw was the courtyard where Count Von Stauffenberg was executed aft
er the July 20 plot, for instance. Then we stopped at the Brandenberg Gate and the Holocaust Memorial for an hour, which like the rest of the city is really changed. When we were here before it was still really run down and the wall, though breached, was still up in a lot of places. Now there's no trace of it save a line of white paving stones that go through the streets and sidewalks, and a stretch that's been preserved as a museum that we saw later. The Brandenbergertor was very cleaned up and crowded, lots and lots of tourists all over the place. Bought some postcards in a little shop and got my first cloth bag souvenir. Then walked over to where the Fuhrer Bunker used to be; when we were here before it was a big open field that even the dogs wouldn't cross, as was said; now it's all filled in with buildings and you can't tell where it even was. There were some info signs so all of our group walked over there and I gave t
hem a talk about the battle of Berlin, the tens of thousands of killed, the devastated city, the Russian sack of the city. Then we walked back and went to the Holocaust Memorial, which is right by the B-Gate. It's a square of coffin-sized concrete blocks lined up in a regular lines, but the ground below rises and falls so that even though the tops are level, sometimes you can see over them and sometimes you are below ground. I thought it very effective, like the US Vietnam Memorial; it symbolized the impersonal nature of the camps and how people were just lost in them. Across the street was the Gay Holocaust Memorial, for thousands of homosexuals were also sent to the camps and killed, so we walked over to look at it. It's a big concrete block with a little window that you look into, and there is a film loop of two guys kissing passionately. That set the little Utah minds a-flutter! Thence back to the bus, where the old ladies from Michigan (hereinafter The Biddies) were complaining about the kids talking too loud so they couldn't hear the tour guide. So go on an old people tour, not a high school tour!
So thence to a section of the wall that's been preserved as an open air museum, and some of the art works are being restored and cleaned. Everyone took pictures and marveled; I left my Zia sun symbol mark on one panel. Then our final tour stop at Checkpoint Charlie Museum, which was very crowded and seemed a lot bigger than when Rachel and I had gone to it ten years before. Still the same place but it seemed they had expanded upstairs, and sort of changed the mission to a museum against oppression everywhere. Still very interesting, especially with
Becci who remembers it all so well. She gathered up the kids and told them that when she was their age, she remembered going through Checkpoint Charlie and getting searched (i.e. felt up!) by the East German guards, and how it was always really scary. So after we got through the museum we were waiting outside; we had an hour or so before the tour bus for Potsdam showed up. It had clouded over and suddenly there was a huge BOOM of thunder and a flash of lightning, and then it rained like crazy for about 15 minutes. I don't know why I was surprised by the lightning and thunder, but I was. So, since we had time for lunch, and right across the street was a doner kebab shop, I led everyone over there through the rain and introduced them all to the delights of doner. Thinly shaved meat, cabbage, tomatos, garlic or yogurt sauce in a flatbread, yummy! My favorite food in Europe. Cheap, delicious, and filling. So then we shopped around a bit and it was time for them all to get on the bus for Potsdam.
Sarah without care ("Sans Souci," the palace at Potsdam)
One aside there: so we are all standing up under an awning, crowded in because of the rain, and Herb is collecting money for the extra that it's going to cost for the bus to Potsdam. He's waving around a whole fistful of Euros, saying loudly "Anyone else have money to give me?" We're in this dense crowd with all these gypsy women hovering around eye-ing the money he's holding out, and I was thinking "could this guy be any more clueless?" It was a perfect place to get your pocket picked, but as they say the gods look out for maroons, so he got away with it.
So, breathe a big sigh of relief, Becci and I are alone in Berlin. No mother-in-law, no tour group, just the two of us to take a stroll and four good hours to do it. So we did. Strolled by the Gendarmmarkt, where some Kaiser or other kept his French guards, went into Lafayette, a very-upscale French department store, thinking to get a cup of coffee but it was way too expensive, and then found an Ampelmann store for souvenirs. Ampelmann is the walking man signal on East Berlin traffic lights; after the wall came down there was a push to get rid of them but the public revolted and demanded that they keep and indeed expand the Ampelmann to the rest of the city. It's kind of a jaunty little guy with a hat, sort of insouciant, if you can imagine anything in East Berlin being insouciant. Apparently it's all the rage among the tourists so of course we had to get some postcards, pins, magnets, and so on. Thence up the Unter Den Linden, one of the classic streets of Europe, and were thinking about going to the Museum Insel to the Pergammon or one of those, but decided at the spur of the moment to go to the German History Museum; we were thinking it would have a nice cafe and we could get a cup of coffee and get out of the rain, which was intermittent. Alas for that plan, there was some big event planned so the cafe was closed to get ready for some big cheeses that night--and they were putting up a big TV set, stage, cameras and lights--but the museum itself was fabulous, just full of great exhibits of German history. Becci said that just a few years ago it had been a museum about the oppression
of the bloated capitalists and their running dogs, this being the former East Berlin, but now it has been totally re-done and was really something. We went first to the I.M. Pei wing in the back, just to see it; the whole wing, including the elevators, were shaped like a lozenge (rhomboid?). Inside was an exhibit of photos of the wall coming down, since this is the 20th anniversary of that event, that was very interesting, since we'd just been through the Checkpoint Charlie Museum and the Wall. It was also full of loud and obnoxious German high-school kids, which are the same the world over, I'm sure. The other big exhibits were Polish views of Germany (not really good, I daresay!) and a big one on Calvinissmus, or Calvinism. We skipped the latter as we get plenty of Calvinism in Utah. But the main part of the museum was really nice; it was a shame that we were both so tired, Becci more than I was since she hadn't slept as well. At one point she sat down and fell asleep, which I went off to look at exhibits. When I came back there she was, fast asleep in a chair, holding the exhibit book. I tapped her foot and said "Kein Schlaffen im Museum!" like a guard would and she came awake with a start. But the museum was someplace I'd definitely go back to. In the visitors book I wrote the same sentiment as I mentioned earlier: "A week ago I was on the banks of the Green River talking to a real cowboy, and now here I am in Berlin. What a world!"
of the bloated capitalists and their running dogs, this being the former East Berlin, but now it has been totally re-done and was really something. We went first to the I.M. Pei wing in the back, just to see it; the whole wing, including the elevators, were shaped like a lozenge (rhomboid?). Inside was an exhibit of photos of the wall coming down, since this is the 20th anniversary of that event, that was very interesting, since we'd just been through the Checkpoint Charlie Museum and the Wall. It was also full of loud and obnoxious German high-school kids, which are the same the world over, I'm sure. The other big exhibits were Polish views of Germany (not really good, I daresay!) and a big one on Calvinissmus, or Calvinism. We skipped the latter as we get plenty of Calvinism in Utah. But the main part of the museum was really nice; it was a shame that we were both so tired, Becci more than I was since she hadn't slept as well. At one point she sat down and fell asleep, which I went off to look at exhibits. When I came back there she was, fast asleep in a chair, holding the exhibit book. I tapped her foot and said "Kein Schlaffen im Museum!" like a guard would and she came awake with a start. But the museum was someplace I'd definitely go back to. In the visitors book I wrote the same sentiment as I mentioned earlier: "A week ago I was on the banks of the Green River talking to a real cowboy, and now here I am in Berlin. What a world!"So by now the rain had eased and we were right by the Dom, the big cathedral (that our local tour guide had just hated; he went on and on about how much he hated it, for some artistic reason; I didn't care one way or another). So we sat for a while, fending off the gypsies, feeding the Berliner sparrows with the last of Sarah's doner, and wondering if we were in the right place, when finally here comes one of the guys from our tour, who had also skipped the Potsdam
bus, and thus we knew we were in the right place. Then shortly thereafter here came the bus. Dinner that night was at a cafeteria/buffet family style chain that was over in the Alexanderplatz, the old central square of East Berlin. So, despite my sore feet, we marched over there past the famous TV tower and found the place and actually had a very good dinner. The place had ice water, of which I drank about half a gallon, or a couple of liters I should say, ice water being such a rarity in Europe. Also at dinner was our local tour guide, who had accidentally left his briefcase on the bus, containing his whole dissertation and all his research! He was glad to see that. So afterwards, some were tired and ready to go back, and they followed Steve the tour guide to the subway, but the rest of us were rejuvenated by dinner and decided to stay out and see some sights. So we walked back past th
e Dom to another Ampelmann store so others could get souvenirs (and take a great picture of our girls with the statue outside), had what Steve described as the best ice cream in Berlin, and then caught the #100 Bus toward the Zoo. When everyone said oh, we could go to the Zoo, since it was late I made my best ever joke in German, "Die Zoo ist Zu!" The zoo is closed. Ha Ha. We got the bus, it was a double decker one, so we all piled on, Becci being the tour guide as this was her home town. Got off by the "Rotten Tooth," the bombed out church, and walked through the Europa Center, a big indoor shopping area; I loved the big fountain, "wasserklops," but by then we were all starting to feel jet lagged so we found our way back by the U-bahn, Becci once again taking charge and navigating. She was a great tour guide and really seemed to be having a good time; she deserved it after the rigors of the past winter and all, I was really proud of her! But that last spurt of energy did us in, and we got back to the hotel and once again collapsed.
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