Walking the walk & Talking the talk

Walking the Walk

Tuesday, 7/12

With no need to make it to the breakfast buffet before it closes or catch a train, we slept in! Blissful and much needed sleep, we did wake up a few times in the night as some sort of party had erupted from the bar on the corner across the street, but such are the joys of big city living!

We enjoyed our yogurt and corn flakes at our leisure and headed out to explore our sector of Berlin on foot. Walking toward the Fernsehturm (TV tower), a large ball on a spire in the sky, was an easy place to start. From here we easily found beautiful Marien church and the Berlin Cathedral. We also found the neighborhood of Alexander Platz, whose unique architecture made a nice backdrop for a cup of coffee and Greg's favorite pflammenkuchen (plum cake, a local specialty). We wandered through museum island, admiring the facades of the buildings rather than the artwork inside. Late afternoon landed us back at our apartment, I didn't realize how much we had walked but I was beat. We took a rest and then I delighted in making us a simple dinner. The dried truffle pasta we had been packing with us since we left Tuscany made for a nice meal with some tomato sauce procured at the corner store and the bread we had bought from the bakery on the way home from our sight seeing. We did decide to leave the nest once more for an evening walk to an ice cream shop only five or six blocks away, as they boasted the best ice cream in all of Berlin. While it was good, I'm going to keep looking! (For me nothing has compared to the gelato we had in Rome, but I'm keeping an open mind and an open mouth to see what the rest of Europe has to offer in terms of frozen treats.) Completely walked out, we dropped into bed and were not awoken by any party goers. Peace in the big city!

Talking the talk

Wednesday, 7/13

Today we were excited to be reconnected with an old friend (and a new one). When Greg last traveled to Germany (ten years ago) he stayed with his friends, Jan and Winnie, for a month in Berlin. Greg had met Jan through an exchange program when he had come to home-stay at the Jackson residence for a summer program in the states, about fifteen years ago. His girlfriend at the time, Winnie, had also come to California often, so we had a chance to meet her and visit back then. Since then they have both gone their separate ways, but somehow ended up back in Berlin again. So it was a joyful reunion when Winnie rode up on her bike to find us in front of our cafe. We were introduced to her current boyfriend, Tammo, a very friendly gentleman. As we proceeded on foot to the closest U-bahn, we began the process of getting caught up on each other's lives, a process that would punctuate our sight seeing time together (there is plenty of catching up to do after ten years!) Winnie and Tammo were taking us on a Spree river cruise where we could see some of the main sights of the city, from the comfort of a slow moving barge and drink beer at the same time. Sunshine penetrated patchy clouds, making for a lovely day for a boat ride. We saw the Reichstag (the parliament building with it's glass cupola), the wall victims memorial consisted of crosses chained to the gate on the river front, and many more architectural and historical sights. Mostly we enjoyed chatting with our friends. Winnie is a very confident English speaker and she did a great job translating things into English for me and translating our conversation into German for Tammo who spoke English a bit more tentatively than Winnie. After the cruise we walked to the Brandenburg Gate and saw Pariser Platz. We also stopped to walk through the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe. This is basically a sea of concrete slabs, like coffins in shape and size rising up out of the square at different heights creating a labyrinth of sorts. Interestingly the monument is meant to be somber but the layout invites visitors to climb and perch on the markers, guards discourage this, but they are clearly out numbered. We briefly walked through the Sony Center to get to Potsdamer Platz and then back to the U-bahn. When we parted ways with our friends, believe it or not, it was only about 2pm. Greg and I were in need of lunch, so we returned to our favorite Asian place. Today's specials; a mango curry coconut milk soup with rice and a salad with rice noodles and ginger dressing. We headed back to our apartment for a brief nap and decided that since we had a U-bahn pass for the day, we may as well use it. We decided to head in the direction of Check Point Charlie. This is the sight of the boarder checkpoint between the previously American and Soviet sectors. We saw blocks of the old wall laid into the actual street that wind a path through the city, signifying where the wall used to be and we got to read quite a bit about the history of the wall. While in this neighborhood of Berlin we hopped back on the U-bahn to see nearby Gendarmenmarkt whose twin churches frame the concert hall and the German cathedral in a quaint little square. We braved the U-bahn one last time (I have to say Berlin has a very clean underground compared to some other cities we have seen!) returning home to attempt some bath tub laundry. Using bath water mixed with tide packets, we managed to get some clean underwear, socks and few shirts. Drying them would be the challenge. In the mean time, it seemed my spicy curry lunch was presenting me with a bit of a tender tummy and I was craving a bland baked potato to even things out. Greg, my hero, found the only baked potato only shop in Berlin only a block or two away, but they were closing in five minutes. He ran the distance to arrive just in time, coming home with two gourmet baked potatoes for our supper. He is the best husband! We enjoyed our calming meal while the laundry dried in a cool evening breeze tied to a line we strung between a pillar and the wall radiator by an open window.