Düsseldorf: An overdue visit!

Back from 4 days visiting my good friend Andi in Düsseldorf. Unfortunately his girlfriend Ruth was visiting her parents in Ostfriesland, so she didn't get to come with us down to visit his parents in Koblenz. Andi picked me up at the train station on Saturday afternoon. We went back to his and Ruth's apartment and after lunch at their favorite restaurant, the 12 Apostles, he took me for a little tour of Düsseldorf. I barely got to see anything before it started raining cats and dogs- we got soaked through and through! 
After showers at home we packed up and hit the road to drive down to his parents house, about 1 1/2 hours south. It was so much fun to cruise along the autobahn at over 100 mph! 

Sunday, after lunch with the family (his mom Hannelore, dad Hermann, grandma Antionia and brother Stephan) we all went to the french festival together for some ice cream. Then Stephan, 

Andi and I went to another festival and saw a comedian named Rene Marik, who does hilarious puppet shows of a mole with a speech impediment, whom I don't really understand, but find 

great. :o) 

Afterwards we took a walk around the Deutsches Eck, where the 

Rhine and Mosel rivers meet, but since it was so hot out, we headed home to chill out. 

That evening we BBQ'd and played a few hands of Skip-bo

 before watching Jürgen's vacation video... which started with his visit in Berlin and ended with his trip to the South of France

 and Monaco. It was great, although a little long. ;o) 

The next day Andi's mom, Hannelore, Andi and I went on a little tour of the Rhine. We went to Germany's oldest authentic medieval  Castle- the Marksburg. (which made me giggle- since it's 

basically the "my dad's castle" since his name is Mark) :o) 

It was amazing. It was never destroyed (unlike the others- the French ruined most of them or during WWII) because it was 

on a hill that was too much trouble to climb up. ;o) ha. Also apparently it's wasn't that important strategically. We took a tour and saw the wine cellar, the kitchen, blacksmiths, bedroom (with the smallest bed I've ever seen- for 2 people!) and the main hall. 

It was great. My favorite was the small herb garden circling the castle. Very pretty :o) From there we drove to see the Loreley- where we watched a 3D movie at the info center and then Hannelore showed us a secret place to get great views- we even found a little farmhouse in the middle of nowhere which sold drinks and cake. It was great! After we went a little further south to the city of  Kolb, where Marie Antoinette was passed off to the French, on a little island in the Rhine. All in all, it was a great day! 

That night (after a delicious dinner) we met some of Andi's friends at a beach bar on the river- where we could drink and wriggle our toes in the sand. It was great! 

Tuesday we got up early and drove back up to Düsseldorf- where I finally got a bit of a tour without rain. Well, for a bit. Luckily we ate lunch while it rained, so we weren't caught. 

We also got asked to be test subjects for new gum that wriggly was testing- all not so great- probiotic gum? What? Yeah. ;o) After we shopped a bit and then picked up Andi's girlfriend Ruth at the train station, went for dinner, then they dropped me off and I sat on the train for 5 hours back to Berlin. ;o) That was about it. But it was such a good visit- Andi and I both thought it was like nothing every happened- like we hadn't not

seen each other for 3 years! It was great :o) Hopefully I can get back there next summer too :o)

Only one week till I leave for home! Oh the sadness! I'll miss Berlin, but I'm super excited to see my family and friends at home! 

Berlin: Obama-rama!

The past two weeks have been crazy busy! I attribute it to no more school and tons of free time. Last weekend Debbie, Clover’s best friend, came to visit. We had a little dinner party and then went out dancing. :o) 

The next night we all went out to a bar called “Zu 

Mir Oder Zu Dir” which basically means: “Your place or mine?” ;o) There we met up with two of my british friends, Dicky and Julian, who are hilarious. Everybody started getting tired around 1 or 2, so people were dropping like flies, and Dicky, Julian, Jordan and I ended up drinking beer in a little park afterwards. It was “good fun”, as my scottish friend Kelly would say. 

The next night I went out to dinner with Clover and Debbie. We took a long walk which took us along the berlin wall, which was neat to see up close. 

Jordan came to live with me for 10 days, after leaving the student dorms. We had so 

many adventures! We visited a town called Spandau, which is medieval and has a citadel (which we didn’t pay to tour, but was impressed -nichtsdestotrotz- nonetheless). We also saw the site of the ’32 Olympic Games- um, which we also didn’t pay to tour. ;o) But the next day we went with our friend Kyle to Potsdam- and it was beautiful! There is a palace called Sanssouci surrounded by a giant park- with more palaces hidden around it! There was an old windmill, an orangerie (which, I’ve come to d

iscover, is quite a popular thing with the royals), a “summer” palace, and a chinese tea house. It was all so beautiful, and all so spaced out! When we got back into “town” we discovered the dutch quarter- very dutch indeed :o) My highlight of Potsdam was a restaurant we discovered called - seriously - “Der Butt”. Classic!

The morning Jordan was going to leave, I had set the alarm for 9, so that we could go to the store and she could get some chocolate before catching her ride to the airport. Getting up at 9 was harder that day than ever before, but we managed to get up and go catch a bus to the store by 9:30. I looked at my cell phone to see when the bus was coming, and was confused to see it said 7:30- so I shook it because I thought maybe it was broken. Anyways, the bus came and we noticed it was mostly older people on the bus- and when we got to the grocery store, we looked at the big clock on the Pankow city hall and burst out laughing- it WAS only 7:30!!! My cell wasn’t broken at all- my alarm clock was! We’d gotten up 2 hours too early! So we went back home to sleep before “actually” getting up. 

This last week I’ve also discovered a new passion: cemeteries! I really really like cemeteries. I’ve visited 3 so far and seen the graves of many famous people (ok ok famous to me) - The Brothers Grimm, Hedwig Dohm (by accident, ha!), ETA Hoffmann,

 Bertolt Brecht, usw. I even went to the place at Wannsee where Kleist shot himself and Henriette Vogel.  Crazy! 

The last few nights were big movie nights for me. Tuesday night Joanna and I saw “Get Smart”- which was hilarious! I was quite literally rolling around laughing. Wednesday I went to

 see Checkpoint Charlie and at  night I met up with Jenny and Kelly to see Mama Mia- and am still singing in my head- “mama mia, here I go 

again, my my, how could I forget you”. :o) The german man next to me kept dancing in his seat- snapping his fingers and bouncing his knees. I kept waiting for him to burst out of his seat and into song. But don't worry Sal, I'm still going with you when I get back! (and buying it as soon as it comes out!)

Last night Joanna and I met up for Obama's speech in Tiergarten. 

While I was waiting for her at Potsdamer Platz I noticed tons of people crowding the doors to the Ritz Carlton, and before I know it, Obama walked out! Well, surrounded by gaurds, but still! Exciting moment. 

Anyway, Jo and I made our way to the Siegessäule, where 300,000 people were expected to hear him talk! We got a good spot near one of the big screens where we could see and hear pretty well. He gave a great speech- which, although cheesy in a few places, also pretty uplifting. Good stuff!

Today it's over 90 in Berlin- and I have a cold!! I litterally laid in bed all day and dragged myself out to go to an internet cafe. Tonight I'm going over to Dicky's for a drink- maybe it'll help! Tomorrow I'm taking the train to visit my friend Andi in Düsseldorf. Hope my cold doesn't kill me before then! 

Verliebt in Berlin

First of all, I just want everyone to know what a good mood I'm in!!! Berlin is beautiful. I can take the trains without looking at a map now and earlier I got asked directions and was able to give them! Now I'm siting in my favorite cafe drinking ice tea and getting ready to work on my paper for class. The guy next to me is drinking a latte and reading a Calvin & Hobbes anthology, and, like usual, there is fantastic music (this time it's Air) :o). [that's me at Potsdamer Platz- out to dinner with Valerie]

The last few weeks have been pure soccer fever here due to the EM. German played against Turkey last wednesday (which is quite significant in relation to German/Turkey relations). We went to watch the game with 500,000 other people at the Fan Mile at the Brandenburg gate...

 

which was... an experience ;o) It was awesome, but let me say, I was glad to survive it. Germany won in the last few seconds,

 which of course lead to utter chaos. Then sunday night, we played

 against Spain in the finale (Spain had beaten Russia). I decided to do something nice for myself and not watch the game with 500,000 people, but instead with 30 outside at a cafe with Nate,

 his girlfriend and some others. It was pretty fun since his friend's girlfriend was spanish, as were the friends she brought, so we had a friendly multi-language rivalry going on for a while. Unfortunatly Germany was no match for Spain... on the way home I overheard someone talking about how much more gracefully the Turks lost compared to the Germans. Interesting. 

Speaking of German/Turkey relations earlier, we went to the open air theater and saw a film 

called "Auf der anderen Seite" (on the other side) by Fatih Akin, a turkish-german director. I've seen 2 of his other films, both good, so I had a feeling this was worth a peak. It turned out to be 

a great film (I'm not going to spoil the plot though: check it out!)- I highly recommend it!! 

My friend Jürgen from Koblenz visited this last week. Since he wakes up at the crack of dawn, we were running around Berlin for 10 hours a day. No wonder I'm exhausted! We went and went and went. I was excited to be able to visit the Pergamon Museum finally, and saw the 

special exhibit on Babylon- truth and myth. "Truth" be told, the truth section bored the crap out of me... which is kind of to be expected when compared with something as thought-provoking as Myth, which was really interesting. My favorite part was the

 special room for "language confusion". An artist had written a letter in german and then sent it around the world to something like 26 different countries to be translated- like a giant game of telephone. The final translation was from Hindi back into German and it nowhere even resembled the first letter! I found that pretty interesting. The Museum also houses a large part of a greek alter which is considered one of the "new" world wonders [see picture]. 

Jürgen and I also visited the DDR museum- which was fantastic as well. It was an interactive museum, which meant we got to try on DDR clothes, pretend to drive a Trabi (oh, and dad, I was wrong, they had to wait up to 16 years for one!), and even walk into a 1960s DDR style apartment. They had food, textbooks, tv shows 

and more for us to play with. It made it a lot more real for me- I

 love interactive museums! 

Tuesday we met up with Jordan to go to the Zoo!!! It was fantastic- really beautiful. I had a good time making fun of the german words for some of the animals... for example: 

"Erdmännschen" (Little Earth Man) = Meerkat and "Flußpferd" (River Horse) = Hippopotamus.  I laughed myself Kaputt. Of course the highlight was seeing Knut the Polar Bear. (see left - and heck yes he has his own Wikipedia page!) He's a bit older now and a bit dirty from playing, but still quite the attraction.  

Last night we went to the "Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas" (the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe- [see picture right]). I'd been before, but never to the underground info center. It was incredibly well done- each room seemed to appeal to a different sense and

 each was appropriately quite dark- one room was all for reading the history along the walls and included pictures of key events,

 another for reading personal letters/diaries/telegrams of the murdered to family members, which were illuminated on the floor. Another room had "family" stories- giant plaques dedicated to some 10 families throughout europe who were persecuted. They had family portraits, then explained the fate of each family member. There was a room where you could sit in the dark and hear short personal histories of people murdered. In another room you could listen on phones to people telling about their story- which I found the most chilling. I only listened to one- about a woman recounting how she was lined up with 

others along a pit to be shot, but jumped in before she was hit. She talked about the dead bodies falling on top of her and being scared that she'd be crushed to death. She could feel being buried by earth after the guards had checked that everyone was dead. After laying still till she knew the coast was clear, she lifted her head out of the earth and said she could see places in the ground which were rising up and down- the wounded breathing. Pretty chilling stuff. 

Afterwards, we checked out the New Synagogue in Berlin, which had been part of Kristallnacht and pretty scary to see in person. 

I also finally made it to KaDeWe (Kaufhaus des Westens)!!! It's the second biggest department store after Harrod's in London- A dream come true, might I add. My favorite section (besides books/dvds, of course) is the 6th floor- completely dedicated to gourmet food- they even have the liberty bell made out of chocolate! I took a picture of all the tasty cakes for my grandma [see below], who I knew would have had a ball there! I wish I could bring a piece back for ya, grams! 

Tonight I'm going to the Gorki Theater with Joanna to see Urfaust, then to the birthday party of someone I don't know :o) I'm pretty excited! 

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Ok, so took me a while to open this post. :o) Theater on Saturday was good [picture of the theater] – Urfaust was done up a little modernly- a bit more blood, holy water and lipstick as I would have expected. Afterwards Jo and I met up with my friend Dicky and had some delicious red wine. Sunday I brunched with some friends at "Bilderbuch Cafe" where each breakfast is named after a fairy tale! I had 1001 Nights. ;o) Tomorrow it's off to see one of my favorite bands, the Mad Caddies!!

LG aus Berlin!