Walk to work

It's been 2 weeks of real summer here (in the 80's). Thank goodness, otherwise I'd go crazy!! Everyday I try and make the most of being outside. This morning I took the bus into town and got off at the Central Station. It's about a 20 minute walk from there to work. It was such a beautiful morning I couldn't help but walk!

I walked through town past the University Admin building

By lots of cozy old world European streets,

And through a park.

 

It couldn't have better a better start to Monday, unless of course I didn't have to go to work at all!

 

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A Quick Visit

Chris worked with Stephanie from First Book while he was at ABC. A few years ago, she moved to Italy, where her dad is from. On midsummer weekend, she came up to visit. She's from Baltimore, and it was nice to share stories of expat life in Europe. She got here Friday evening and left Monday morning. We had Swedish food, rode bikes, went to Copenhagen, visited Malmö and watched soccer. It was great getting to know her and we were excited to have a guest!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I could live in Berlin

We really liked Berlin as a city. It was so easy to get around. The public transport ran so often that we never waited more than 5 minutes for a train. It was so cheap we thought servers had forgotten to add things to our checks. Speaking of food, we had really good food in Berlin. We had been instructed to eat a curry wurst while we were there. Chris researched the best places and found this gem tucked under a train track. Of the few he had while he was there, this was the best. Funny story, he was filmed by a camera crew while he ordered.

It's a sausage topped with a "ketchup" style sauce and sprinkled with curry powder

 

We ate German, Italian, Mexican, Chris had lots of Indian, and we ate in the top of the TV tower in a rotating restaurant! The last night we ate tapas in a super shady neighborhood and it was my favorite.

 

 

 

It's not a pretty city by any means, but there are a lot nice things to see and a ton of art.

 

This is the ampelmann. In 1961 it was introduced into East Berlin traffic for pedestrians. The west side lights don't look this way. It is unique to East Berlin, so you can find lots of things printed with ampelmann.

The shopping near our hotel was fantastic with lots of little unique boutiques. We also visited KaDeWe, a super fancy department store. Shopping everywhere was great. It was way less expensive than shopping in Sweden. Needless to say I came back with more clothes than I left with.

 

 

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Markets and Museums

While walking around Berlin, we saw a lot of markets. Most open areas had food you could order as already made, or food as base ingredients like meats and veggies. Also there were clothes and jewelry and such. They set up a large markets in the morning and by the evening they were gone; they did this everyday. I love the thought of grabbing some fresh ingredients on the way home. The markets were all so conveniently located near the public transport, that it would be super easy to do this as part of a daily routine there.

Veggies, salads, beef organs, pasta

There are also a number of museums in Berlin. As interested as we are in history, we really just don't have the patience to enjoy museums quite the same as other people do. We tend to take the drive by approach. We can wrap up a museum tour in less than 30 minutes easy. Mostly I only want to see actual items, so the more plaques I read saying something is a replica, the less interested I am.

My host at HZB said there was one of the wonders of the world in the Pergmon museum on Museum Island. We decided since we were that close we should probably at least see that. The Pergmon museum houses things that were taken from Turkey, like parts of buildings, giant buildings. A lot of the artifacts the Germans had collected preWWII were taken by the Soviets. Some were returned, but a lot are still in Russia.

I couldn't confirm that any of the things we saw was a wonder of the world, but it was pretty crazy to see that such large things had been transplanted.

 

This was the front of a building in Babylon

We are more inclined to spend money on food than museum tickets, so most all museums we saw from the outside.

 

 

We saw the Brandenburg Gate and the public viewing area set up for World Cup.

 

Just to the left of the gate was a little piece of home, literally.

We made a special trip to see the computer museum. It was pretty much just a trip through video game history. It was pretty cool to be reminded of all the games we used to play. And no matter how old boys get, or how fancy the new games are, the old games still suck them right in.

This game made me super happy. Mark and I had one and we played it so much the buttons stopped working.

Of course we couldn't pass up pictures with these guys.

 

 

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Berlin!

I had the chance to visit a neutron source, Helmhotlz Zentrum Berlin, along with the Free University, which by the way is free and was established by the US, and an x-ray source, BESSY, in Berlin. It's a city I've always been interested in so I strategically planned the trip for Tuesday/Wednesday allowing me to holiday till Sunday! Chris and I packed up and headed to Germany.

The Wall

The fall of the Soviet Union happened in my lifetime, while I was in high school even, so the Berlin Wall has always been very intriguing to me, and I was hoping to see some of the wall. There are pieces around, but most of it was torn down within days of the fall.

The East Side Gallery is the largest open air gallery in the world. It is 1.3 km of the Berlin wall painted on the East Side with 105 paintings by various artists. It was commissioned in 1990 as a international memorial of freedom.

 

 

 

Potsdamer Platz has historically been a hub for commerce with a large government presence as well dating back to the Prussian Empire. It had Germany's first traffic lights, installed by Siemens. Most of was completely destroyed by the WWII bombings. There is a memorial of the wall located here.

There is also the spectacular Sony Center, and the restoration the the Esplanade, which was a very famous hotel in the 30's having guests such as Charlie Chaplan and Gretta Garbo.

 

Just around the corner from here was the SS/Gestapo headquarters and the last stronghold of the Nazis. What little rubble was left after the bombings, was cleared away by the Soviets. It seems that the Soviets wanted people to remember nothing of their former allegiance and tried to wipe out whatever they could. There is a section of wall that borders this area and some plaques to show which Nazi buildings were where.

 

I learned that there were actually two walls side by side with a gap large enough for the Soviets to patrol. Something like 100 people were shot on sight after having been found between the two walls.

Checkpoint Charlie is a few blocks away from here. There were some guys dressed like US soldiers taking money from tourists to have their picture made. Seems like we could put real soldiers there and make a fortune!

Notice the McDonald's in the picture. How appropriate!

I was torn about standing in front of the wall and taking a picture as I smiled. Seemed somehow inappropriate. In the end we decided that a pic by the art installation would be ok. So we took this pic that looked so cheesy and staged we redeemed it with a normal one.

 

 

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