Ich Bin Ein Berliner!

Well, at least, I do feel like I have found my tribe. Perhaps I’m a couple of centuries removed, but, really, these are my people, here in northern Germany. In the US I feel like I don’t have an ethnic group, but in Germany, when everyone keeps speaking to me in German, it dawns on me that I am one of them. At least half of me is, the rest is Dutch — not so far removed from German there either! But this is neither here nor there … you’d rather here about our adventures in the 36 scant hours that we spent in this city.

The overnight train ride – started out being so much fun and ended with some of us in the top bunk not really sleeping at all.  You know, the train moves back and forth, it stops and starts and rocks and rolls and there was no sleeping during that.  Ouch.  So, we managed to get off the train with help from our porter (we gave him 5 euros) and made it to our hotel to deposit luggage and eat breakfast.  The sun was shining!  This is truly phenomenal, as we have not really seen sun for seven days now.  And we immediately head out to Checkpoint Charlie.  Remember, that we are children of the cold war, growing up with the specter of the USSR as our ultimate enemy and now, here we are staying at a hotel in East Berlin; a couple of subway stops from what used to be the wall.  And of course, our weather is deteriorating… darkness descends and the rain begins. 

Checkpoint Charlie is quite the tourist attraction complete with fake soldiers that you can snap a picture with…. Lenin is turning over in his grave along with several other Soviet leaders I’m sure.  We walked down to the last remaining part of the wall where they also have a museum called the Topography of Terror.  Strangely (or perhaps not), you can still tell the difference between East and West Berlin, the architecture is different — but everyone seems to have embraced capitalism with open arms.  The wall runs along the foundations of the old Third Reich main security office, the command center of the Gestapo and the SS.  The baddest of the bad.  The whole area seems vacant, grey and depressing.  We went into the museum and spent a couple of hours getting further depressed, as it describes how the Germans succumbed to Hitler’s political party and how the rule of law was thrown out the window. Opposition was brutally suppressed and then the systematic removal of so-called genetic deviations began. The pictures, the newspapers, the documentation. Could not BELIEVE the amount of original documents that they had detailing every move. The Germans are incredibly buearucratic and efficient, even while perpetrating wartime horrors.  And now it’s pouring rain outside and about 40 degrees.  Awesome.

What did we do after our trip through the hellish world of Nazi Germany?  Well, we were in need of major uplifting, so we went to Fassbender and Rausch to devour chocolate moouse and chocolate liqueur.  The liqueur was to die for, it has chili in it – oh my.  They actually had a replica of a volcano, built entirely out of chocolate, complete with lava spills…   So, did I mention that it’s pouring rain? We made an attempt to see the Brandenburg Gate with me desperately holding on to an umbrella that is rapidly flipping inside out, and it is damn unpleasant.  So…. we head back to the hotel for a glass of wine.  At this point, I am caving in, almost literally and we decide it’s so crappy and we are so exhausted that room service is a good idea.  Though Laura won’t let me go to sleep at 6:30 which is what I really wanted to do.  So our night in Berlin is rather tame.

Day two in Berlin – and we’ve slept like 10 hours, sweet. Hey, it’s not raining! We are tickled – and immediately take off into Christmas Market world. Actually a great Christmas Market where I purchased several Christmas gifts AND I got warm gloves!  Happy days. These markets are packed with people, today we even had entertainment with choirs performing typical Christmas songs.  They have all kinds of goodies too, like roasted seasoned nuts, all kinds of pretzels, wurst, and of course the gluhwein and other hot drinks with alcohol.  Very festive atmosphere, we should so do this in the US!  After our shopping we walked down to Museum Island and spent several hours at the German History Museum.  2000 years of German history to be exact.  It’s kind of overwhelming.  There was quite a bit of German armor, including a black helmet with rectangular slits for eyes, that reminded me of Monty Python, and I found myself humming the musical refrain, you all know the tune.  Otherwise it got really heavy again with modern history … which is all World War I and World War II.  Sigh.  These Germans have a very war-like past.  Does this explain my tendency to be bossy?  Or in control?  Are you laughing yet?!  Anyway … it rained some more.

And now, it’s time for Paris.  Again we find ourselves on the night train, though this time we made the mistake of getting on at the wrong end of our car and had to wait for EVERYONE to get in their compartment, including some idiot French folks who could not figure out what cabin was theirs.  That was kind of funny, I attempted to speak French … oh yes, very funny indeed.  Always amazes me how we know what we are doing and we don’t even live here or use trains frequently.  And now we are sitting in Hannover, for a very long time.  Smartly, we had purchased a picnic supper complete with a bottle of wine, for our training pleasure.  The party isdefinitely on in Cabin 10, including some rocking out to ‘I like big butts’ which I’m sure the rail employees in Hannover really enjoyed.  Unfortunately we are finding that one bottle of wine is not enough … and had to purchase some kind of German rotgut from the porter.  Not as smooth as our previous Chateauneuf du Pape… but what can you do?  We need to do something to knock ourselves out — cause this sleeping on the train thing is kinda rough.  And so our German adventure comes to a close, and we bid auf weidersehn to Berlin.