Final Conclusions

I realize that I ended my last entry on a very negative note, so, for that reason and because some friends have requested a final "goodbye" entry, I've decided to do one here.

Our flight home from Berlin to Minneapolis was pretty uneventful for the most part, but not particularly pleasant. We had to get up really early (about 5:30 am) to get going, and it turned out that both the Berlin-Paris and the Paris-Minneapolis flights were delayed...the second one by about an hour. I didn't enjoy the 8.5 hour Paris-Minneapolis flight, in particular. First of all, I got selected for a random security screening before they'd let me on the plane. Kerry didn't. Also, in my seat, I didn't really have room to type, but I did get some stuff done on my syllabus for Comp 2. Plus, the TV screens were hard to see, I managed to spill a soda on both me and Kerry, and I also cut my wrist on the seat pocket in front of me, of all things. And I didn't sleep much. I did manage to watch most of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, which I have always intended to see, but, honestly, it sort of bored me. Maybe because I was so sleepy. There were some beautiful scenes in it, to be sure, but there are other animated films that I like much better.

When we got to Minneapolis, we were told at customs that my name came up as a security flag.  But, fortunately, they let us through. "You're going to go home today," said the agent. Praise Jesus. I had had enough of flying and other countries at this point. That is why, after Kerry left to game, I went to dinner at Applebee's with Maureen, it was SO NICE to have free refills on water and iced tea, with lemon in both, and ICE!!!  Plus the waitress was great--nice and smiley. What a concept!  I think in the future I'm going to start tipping more. The customer service in the USA is much better than what we'd get in either China or Europe.

After dinner, I fell asleep pretty early. But I'm still waxing philosophical on this whole journey. I think it's given me a deeper appreciation for other cultures. I think that, for the rest of my life, I'll be comparing and contrasting the United States to other countries, or comparing other countries to each other. So the Fulbright experience has indeed broadened my global perspectives. Plus I am also happy that it seems to have given Kerry some direction: he seems to want to be an ESOL teacher now. I also think I want to travel more in the future. Not now, because I'm a bit burned out on travelling. But I would go to Ireland, Prague, and Paris again, for sure....maybe not Berlin. And, of course, I would go to China again, especially since we know so many people there now. It'll be interesting to see if I do teach there again next year. I have been invited back to SISU next summer, but we'll see if that comes to fruition. Regardless, though, I will want to travel more in the future. I can't stay at home in Minnesota for the rest of my life. So I will always make time for travel. The new perspectives I've gained have been invaluable.

So, goodbye, blog readers. I hope you enjoy what I've written. And happy travels to you!

Day 330: Berlin, Day 5--Reichstag and Good Riddance to Germany

The day started out okay today. I got us checked in online, and we have window-middle seats for both our flights home tomorrow. But, again, we got off to a very late start because I think we're just ready to leave this country. It's not completely Germany's fault. We've seen some great things and some people have been really nice here. But today we just had some bad experiences--particularly the last one--that made me very glad that I'm leaving Germany.

We walked to the Reichstag to begin things, the German house of Parliament. It's a beautiful building that someone managed to survive World War II. For many years it just sat there, but today it's very active and is a symbol of Germany's democratic government. Online, we had tried to get tickets to see the dome on top. We made a last-ditch effort today, but it didn't work. The gentleman at security said that we could get a ticket for tomorrow if we went to a certain line, but clearly that's not going to work for us.

So we decided to get a couple more souvenirs, and then we went to our usual food stand to get things to eat and drink. I wanted to try German potato salad, in particular. I ordered a currywurst and two bratwurst. He gave me two currywurst and one bratwurst. And no roll with the currywurst...he did give it to me when I asked for it, though. Of course, we had to sit outside and contend with bees. I AM SO SICK OF EATING WITH BEES. We had to do this in Paris and Germany both. Kerry has killed at least four of them; he's very quick and doesn't mind slamming them down with his baseball camp. I freak out and run away, particularly because I think they chase after me because I often wear cologne. So he is now a serial bee killer.

We went back to the mall, but through a different route, so we saw some things we don't normally see. We got some groceries for dinner tonight: water, soda, hummus, cheese. But then we went to treat ourselves to ice cream. There's this one place in the mall, called Al Teatro, that always seems to be closed whenever we go, but today they were open. And, honestly, it was the worst experience we had in Germany. The guy selling the ice cream to us was INCREDIBLY rude to us. I picked up something, and then he tried to hurry Kerry along: "What? Finis?"  (I think he may have been French.) He kept chastising us for not knowing "the rules." At one point, Kerry moved a bit to the right, near another woman ordering, and the man said to him, "No! You stay there! She goes here!" Then when Kerry tried to pay, he places the money on the counter. The man said, "No! You put it on the tray!" When Kerry did, he said, "Have a nice day," but we were speechless at this point. Then when we tried to sit down, he said, "No! You cannot sit here!" I thought this was absurd; I noticed a sign that said you have to pay more to eat there. So I confronted him and asked, "What if we pay more to eat here?" He said, "No! You can't!" And then showed us a sign. Just out of curiosity, I stuck around to see how he treated other people. He seemed to be nicer to others, BUT I will say that he didn't seem to let ANYONE sit down to eat. What an incredible asshole. Was this the rude French behavior I thought we would get in Paris? It's a shame it had to happen here in Berlin.

And after that, we just wanted to go back to the hotel, even though it was still early. I think we're both over Berlin. I think we're both over travelling. We just want to go home.

Cheers and goodbye to Europe.

Close-up of the front detail.

Reichstag

Day 329: Berlin, Day 4--Day Trip to Potsdam (New Palace)

The day began with Kerry and me deciding to try the breakfast buffet here at our hotel. The verdict is that it's better than the one in Paris. I like the room, in particular, because it's less cramped. I also love the fact that the had lots of salmon and brie cheese! However, the bacon looked gross and the eggs weren't particularly tasty. Still, most of the food was good. I had three glasses of OJ....just carbing out all around today.

After breakfast, we departed for a long trip to Potsdam, Germany, partly because my late grandmother, Anna Ackerman, is from there. (At least, I'm quite sure she was.) So...it was a way of paying tribute to my German ancestors, in a sense. Kerry and I took the subway...it was a bit of a long ride....and then take a bus to the New Palace, an 18th century palace, owned by Friedrich II. Apparently, he didn't spend a lot of time there, but he had quite opulent occurrences, such as dances, fireworks, and musical showcases there. (This is according to the brief film we saw in the Visitor Center.) Speaking of the Visitor Center, I noticed that both the ticket seller in the Visitor Center and one of the tickets women in the Information area in the subway station weren't particularly pleasant to us. No smiles, just stern looks. I saw this from the guards at the New Palace, too, actually. So it's inaccurate to say that "everyone is friendly" here. It's usually the older people who are more stern.

The New Palace was quite beautiful!!  The Grotto room, in particular, on the ground floor, was exquisite, and the rooms had opulent furniture, colorful designs, and beautiful art. Much of it was done in the Rococo style. Upstairs, though, we had a bit of a different experience. Most of the rooms lacked audio guides, and the guards were rushing us from room to room, even though it was only 4:45 and the palace didn't close until 5:30. This ticked me off. I know Germans are punctual, but damn!  We did have time to marvel at the Marble ballroom...one of the prettiest rooms I've ever seen in my life.

I did complain about the tour to the English-speaking girl who handed out the audio guides at the end. She conversed with her colleagues in German about what I said and also apologized. Soon after we departed, I heard "Hello, hello" behind me. So we went back. There was a blond woman who agreed to "show us the rooms we missed."  To me, this wasn't exactly the point; my point is that we weren't allowed to use the audio guide on most of the upstairs rooms. Still, she "let" us back upstairs (now, keep in mind, the palace wasn't not yet officially closed...it was about 5:15 at this point). So we looked again at some of the rooms. It really didn't provide me anything new to have her let us back up, but I do very much appreciate her gesture of goodwill.

We then took a bus back to the subway station in Potsdam. At the subway station, I had a currywurst and Kerry had a bratwurst. The lady behind the counter was very friendly and smiling, which was nice. But not everyone is nice here, as I have pointed out. And, to add to this, apparently I bumped into a guy getting on the subway. He said something to me which I couldn't understand. "Oh, did he give you a dirty look!" said Kerry. So I'm sure it wasn't anything good. I noticed that on the subway, people were allowed to bring their bicycles! I thought this was very odd since I haven't seen this in Shanghai or Paris. But in Germany, I've noticed that the subway trains tend to be roomier and the seats tend to be more cushy. So maybe they can allow something like this.

We went to a potato restaurant for dinner--called Kartoffelkeller--and we both had schnitzel. Sehr gut!  Mine was covered with "spicy" onions (that weren't spicy) and a cheesy, garlicy sauce. Kerry's had a chicken-stew sauce with cheese on it. We were both also served fried potatoes and a little salad with our meal. It was worthy to note that, all over Germany, we have to SERIOUSLY pay for water: they don't do tap water here, like they do in Paris. It's 7 euros for one bottle of water, 14 if you want two. That's 15 bucks for water, boys and girls. I also had a "Berliner Pilsener" beer, just to say I had a beer in Germany. It was pretty good...for beer.

Then we went to the grocery store for liquid, band-aids, and shavers. We popped in at McCafe for some dessert because I hadn't had quite enough carbs today. :)

Tomorrow is our LAST FULL DAY overseas. We'll see what transpires.

A small part of the Grotto Hall.

Center front of the New Palace.

The bird and spider detail was unique on this room's ceiling.

The majestic Grand Hall.

Another room's lighting and ceiling detail.

Day 328: Berlin, Day 3--More Bus Touring, Block House (steak dinner)

We got off to yet ANOTHER late start today but still managed to do more bus touring, on the same bus we were on yesterday. We rode on the bus until Gendarmenmarkt, which is, according to Google," a square in Berlin and the site of an architectural ensemble including the Konzerthaus and the French and German Churches. In the centre of the square stands a monumental statue of Germany's renowned poet Friedrich Schiller." It was quite beautiful, probably the most beautiful area of Berlin we've seen so far, so we just wanted a closer look at it. There we took some pictures until we saw another bus come by, so we quickly scurried on to it because we thought it would be our last opportunity to catch a bus, since they stop service at 6 pm. on Sunday. Around 5:56 pm, there was a very calm announcement on the audio: "Service stops at 6 pm." Then the bus stopped an people immediately started getting out. Me being ever hopeful, I sat there for a minute, but we decided to head down. The driver was saying, "That's it! Finis!" to us. "Like we couldn't figure that out!" said Kerry.

Since we hadn't spent any money up to this point in the day, we decided to get a steak dinner at the steak place we noticed earlier in Frederichstrasse, called Block House. It had good reviews online. We first walked around a very touristy area: people were selling food and drinks, and there was even a man showcasing wire sculptures of a fire-breathing dragon and a horse. Both of them moved, and the horse even nudged me a bit. We struggled a bit finding the correct subway platform--the Information lady was helpful--but we bought our tickets, got on, and it was only two stops from where we were.

At the station, we kept noticing these two guys all over, one of whom had green hair. I figured out later that I think they were collecting bottles, but we saw them at least three times. It was a bit unsettling. Before going to eat, we stopped at the supermarket in the mall. Oddly enough, we were told we had to wait in line to go inside. As we were waiting, the guy with green hair came up and started loudly talking to a security guy. It was all in German, so we didn't know what was going on. But we decided to return later.

So we went to Block House. We both had steaks with salad and baked potato--both were really good! I had a T-Bone and Kerry had the "Mr. Rumpsteak." Our potatoes were excellent: they came with sour cream, and we were served a lot of herb butter, too. The salads were good, but not amazing: the staff made them at a salad bar before serving them to us. Afterwards we both had vanilla ice cream. Interestingly enough, we paid less for this nice meal than we did for cheeseburgers at a cafe in Paris!!! (85 euro vs. 90 euro)

We made another attempt at the supermarket after dinner. This time there was no line, so we just went in and got some drinks to take home. And we went home after.

Tomorrow we plan to go to Potsdam!

Interesting statue in the town square!

Steak at the Block House!

Berlin Concert House, which we saw after getting off the bus.

Day 327: Berlin, Day 2--Bus Tour (City Sightseeing)

The focus of today was a city bus tour; our company was BEX Sightseeing, the "yellow bus." We walked to Brandenburg Gate and there was a sign pointing to the stand selling the tickets. We bought two-day passes because we figured it might be a good way to get around the city. Today we learned that, while Paris is 105 square km, Berlin is 893, and Shanghai (get this) is 6,300 square km!!  Holy cow!!  Shanghai is about 60 times as large as Paris!  That's incredible.

So the bus came along soon enough--a yellow hop-on, hop-off one. We managed to find a couple seats at the top. In the first seat I located, the audio wouldn't work, of course, so we found some other places closer to the back. We ended up going through the complete ride once, and then we went through it again about 2/3 of the way through and got off at the Checkpoint Charlie stop. Over the course of the ride, here are some of the things we saw:

• Brandenburg Gate (obviously)
• Victory Column
• Charlottenburg Palace
• Antiques Street
• KaDeWe (department store)
• Philharmonie
• Postdamer Platz
• Checkpoint Charlie

We were on the bus about 3.5 hours. Berlin's a big city. One thing that's difficult about a bus tour is that it's REALLY HARD to get good pictures because the bus is constantly moving. But, it definitely did save my feet.

At one point, a woman behind me started saying "Monsieur" in French...I think she was just trying to close a window, but I wasn't sure what was going on. "Is there a problem?" I said to her in English. "Je ne comprends pas, monsieur," she replied. I figured out that she couldn't understand what I was saying. "D'accord. Pas de probleme. Je parle un peu de francais," I answered. (Ok. No problem. I speak a little French.) She seemed to relax and everything was fine.

Once we got off at Checkpoint Charlie, we walked around a bit (Steves is right...there's not a ton to see here, and it's VERY touristy). Then we popped into KFC for dinner. Our cashier, Jonas, asked us where we were from. We said we were from America, and he wanted to know what state. He told us that he's been to Florida--including Disney World. "Enjoy your stay in Germany," he said. Wow! Nice guy!  It is worthy to note that the KFC here is not the complete garbage that they serve in USA KFCs, where you get overheated chicken and fries. The chicken was fresh, and even the mashed potatoes tasted real...not processed. The price was right, too: 21 euros (we are trying to save money!). But we also got some soft-serve at McDonald's afterwards.

We decided to take the subway home. Turns out we were about 1 minute from one, and the stop nearest our hotel (Frederichstrasse) was only three stops away. When we got to this station, it went right down to the subway platform, and we had to buy our ticket right there, and then validate it at this machine. 1.70 euro per ticket. We didn't have to put it in a machine, as we did in Shanghai or Paris. The seats on the subway were very comfortable and even cushy, and it was not crowded at all for 7 pm on a Saturday. Amazing!

We popped into the grocery store for some water and cheese--the cheese is great here. Then we went back to the hotel.

An interesting day, but I sort of wish we accomplished more. I think we're going to take a day trip to Potsdam on Monday. Berlin's interesting, but it's definitely--so far--the least beautiful of the four places we've been.

Modern Berlin mural, seen from the bus.

The goddess atop the Victory Column.

Checkpoint Charlie.

Me and Kerry--selfie on the bus!

"Stop Wars" written on the side of a derelict building.

Day 326: Berlin, Day 1--Brandenburg Gate, Pariser Platz, Memorial to Murdered Jews, Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted under Nazism

We got up kind of late today, but we did manage to do some sightseeing on our first full day in Berlin. We got much more accomplished than on our first day in Prague, when we were so tired from the flight delay and (still) sick that we pretty much just slept in all day.

I began by trying to get us an online reservation to visit the famous dome at Reichstag, but there were no available reservations. So our future plans are just to admire it from afar. Alas. When we finally got going, we walked about 15 minutes to the Brandenburg Gate, which is, according to Rick Steves, "the last survivor . . . of the 14 original gates in Berlin's old city wall." It represents the former division between east and west, and has great social and political importance to Germany. It's a beautiful gate, too: a chariot on top (won back from Napoleon, who initially placed it in Le Louvre) and classical architecture all over (including a beautiful Athena statue on one side). Near the gate, there's the Room of Silence, where people can go to meditate "on the cost of freedom," as Steves puts it. It's a very small room where people just go and sit. It was kind of nice, actually: it was deliberately created to be non-denominational. As we were leaving, the receptionist kept speaking to us in German, even though I said, "Ich vehrstehe nicht." Kerry figured out that she wanted to know if we could hear the music that was playing outside in the room, just from her gestures to her ears.

On the way to the Gate from our hotel, Pariser Platz is located: it's a square with a lot of people milling around, vendors, and more moden buildings. On the other side of the Gate, there's a beautiful park called Tiegarten, bisected down the middle, leading to a Victory Column (the walk was too long, so we didn't go see it). Instead, at Steves's suggestion, we looked at Pariser Platz some more. It includes the US Embassy, the DZ Bank Building (with modern architecture in the lobby...although the guard wouldn't let us in), and the Hotel Adlon, where the movie Grand Hotel was shot!

Next we headed to the Memorial of the Murdered Jews in Europe. It's quite a display: many different "coffin-shaped pillars" (Steeves) of all sizes--some standing lying down, but as you get further back in the labyrinth, some are standing up. It's easy to get lost in them. Maybe that is part of the point: maybe you're supposed to feel lost like the Jews did in the concentration camps. We also explored their "Information Center," which turned out to be a small museum.  It took us awhile to get in; we had to get in a line and go through security. But it was free!  One thing that was interesting: as one information guy was making announcements, he said to the entire crowd, in English, "Do all of you speak English?" Everyone nodded. It's so interesting to note that English is sort of the "default" language in most places we go here, not German.

Once we got in, first we saw, on a wall, a short history of Nazi occupation. This led to pictures of six individuals who died in the Holocaust, and then to a room with letters from people who were saying goodbye to their loved ones. One that impacted me the most read, "Dear father! I am saying goodbye to you before I die. We would so love to live, but they won't let us and we will die. I am so scared of this death, because the small children are thrown alive into the pit. Goodbye forever. I kiss you tenderly. Yours J." That was from a twelve-year-old girl. We also saw histories of families destroyed, and one dark room described histories of individual people one by one (on audio), some of them only 10 or 20 years old. It was a moving tribute. It was interesting to me how much Germany was willing to acknowledge the past of the Holocaust and not bury it.

This was also true with the next memorial we saw across the street, the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted under Nazism. It's a 3-D concrete hexahedron building that has a window, through which one may see a movie playing on loop of male and female homosexuals kissing. Someone had placed a rose in front of the screen. We saw many people stop there, which surprised us. One gay couple stopped. However, when one family went by it, I heard a little girl ask her father, "What's that?" "You don't need to know about that," he replied. It made me a bit sad.

We walked back to the hotel after that. But first we stopped for some food. I had my second currywurst of the day: the first I imbibed right before we got to the Brandenburg Gate. And, of course, I needed water. We walked back to the mall we briefly went to last night: went to the grocery store for snacks and more water. (Sadly, our hotel room has no fridge, so our big bottles of water will get warm!)  We stopped at the McCafe: Kerry had some cake; I had a Sprite slushie (just because).

It wasn't very warm today, so that helped. Nothing like the heinous 95 degree weather in Paris, only about high 70s today. We plan to do a bus tour tomorrow.

Brandenburg Gate

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

The most moving letter inside the memorial information center.

Hotel Adlon

Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted under Nazism 

Day 325: Another Travel Day--Paris to Berlin

Today was pretty much a travel day, so we didn't see a lot of exciting sights or anything. We got up at 10 am and were out the door by 12 noon. When I said goodbye to the desk clerk, he seemed much nicer to us. He called a cab for us, and he even helped us carry our backs out and shook our hands. Nice! We also left a gift for the maid: a small jar of peanuts and 20 euros. I hope she gets it okay.

It took about 45 minutes to get to the airport. When we got there, it turned out that we had to go to a kiosk and get our own baggage tags and THEN go into a line to drop our bags. That's kind of a new one; there was no real explanation for this. We were directed into a self-weigh bag area. My bag was a bit overweight at first, but we put some of the books into my carry-on, and then everything was okay.

Security wasn't bad at all! Pretty quick, actually, even for Kerry, who normally has all kinds of issues with his CPAP, battery chargers, and computer slowing him down. Immediately, we noticed that our flight had been delayed 15 minutes: tragic foreshadowing #2...we suspected another trial like we had in Ireland, with the four-hour delay. So we went to a French restaurant for lunch: I had a caesar salad (with breaded chicken and bacon) and Kerry had a cheeseburger and fries. I'm so sick of fries; I couldn't stomach anything with fries. However, we both managed to stomach two chocolate mousse desserts, which were SCRUMPTIOUS.

At that point we headed to our gate, but it really didn't look like anything was going on. So we looked online....to discover the flight had been delayed not 15 minutes, but TWO HOURS. Damn. During this time, we decided to go over our finances for the trip a bit, and see what we have left in our bank accounts. We've really been spending too much in Europe, which isn't a shock to me, even though I've tried to be careful. I feel a bit disappointed, but it's hard to do Europe--Paris especially--on a budget.

We discovered--again, via the Internet--not by any announcement in the airport--that they changed the gates on us twice (from F52 to F56 to F55). Finally, we boarded. But when we did, they made us sit on the plane for another hour. They served us water to compensate, which I declined. The flight was fine once we were up in the air: from take off to touch down it was only about 1 hour, 15 minutes. The woman in front of me was annoying: she pushed her carry on UNDER her seat (taking away my leg room), not in front of her, and she took about a million pictures of the landing, sticking her chubby fingers in my window view. Sometimes people act worse than children.

We had to take a bus to the terminal. I was surprised how OLD the Berlin-Tegel airport looked. Fortunately, it took us right to baggage claim, and then we went to the taxi area. The taxi manager pushed us aside for a few moments, but he managed to find us a taxi guy. In the middle of the ride, he "claimed" he forgot to turn his meter on. However, at the end of the ride, he said, "Normally, a ride like this is 22 euros." So that's what we paid him. It was better than the 50 euros we paid this morning.

The woman who checked us in was very nice and even said she could give us info about the Hop On, Hop Off Bus Tour. (Later, when we went back for info, the guy behind the counter said he'd "never heard of it.") So we went back to our room for a bit. It's a bigger room than what we had in Pairs, but no refigerator, and the air conditioning is lousy. We decided to walk to a nearby McDonald's for dinner; it was in the train station area. There's also a Dunkin Donuts there and a Burger King. All the comforts of home. :) 

When we got back, we noticed that the TV did have a couple English stations, including a music station and CNN. Phew! Also, we noticed that some of the commercials are VERY sexual, showing women with no tops on, and almost no bottoms. Oh my.

More tomorrow....

Chocolate mousse in the airport!  Magnifique!