amerikanerin in berlin

Oy. I went to the States for a week, and now I'm back. I took no pictures, but if I had, I could show you that my littlest sister is officially taller than I am now. Where was I when that happened? (Oh yeah, playing songs on my guitar.) (I mean, oh yeah, in Germany.)

(If you don't get it, I'm not explaining it. The only explanation is the 23 hours of traveling I just did. Which I'll explain below.)

So yeah. Grace graduated, and I went back to see her senior ballet recital, which is more important than high school graduation. The recital was a terrific show, largely due to the combined talents of the younger two Peterson sisters. And I spent some quality time with my family and some old friends, and also eating some good food. And I drove for the first time (first few times, actually) in 2007. (Also the first time since last September, but the former sounds more dramatic.)

Anyway. The week went quickly, and then I got back on the plane in South Dakota and we took off at 11:00 am Central Time. I got to Minneapolis, waited around a while, got on the plane, everything's beautiful. We were delayed starting because of water. Never really caught how or where, but water and the plane and a problem. But only like half an hour delayed.

The guy next to me was nice, but became less pleasant over the following 20-odd hours because he 1) couldn't keep his elbow off my side of the armrest, even though I ceded him the entire armrest due to his larger size, 2) sniffled and wheezed, and 3) made comments like, "Well, looks like we got some clouds." Strangers who make comments like that are not people I like to travel with. Unfortunately, my seatmate apparently decided that, based on the fact that we were both Americans headed to Berlin, we are buddies. My new buddy sought me out everywhere--upon landing, takeoff, transfer, baggage claim--to make more comments on the order of the above meteorological statement. I think he is lonely. But I still didn't want to be buddies with him. I was too tired.

I was tired because the trip took six hours longer than it should have, because somewhere over Canada the pilot told us that an engine was vibrating, and not good vibes, and we were going to stop in Detroit and switch planes. It took about an hour and a half to get down to Detroit, and then a while to switch people and luggage to the other plane, and then we took off around 10:00 pm Eastern Time.

But when we got to Amsterdam, they had new connecting flights all sorted out for us, so I just had to sleepwalk myself to the right gate and then off the plane in Berlin and then onto the bus and then onto the U-bahn. And then to my apartment. But the weather is wonderfully summery and hot here, and I took a shower that rates high on the list of Best Showers of My Life, and I ate some food, and life is good again.

I miss the family now, but am looking forward to the last month or so I have here before heading back to see what else I can think of to do with my life. At the moment, I will settle for doing laundry.

Labels: travels

by LP at 8:24 PM (Berlin time) | Permalink | Comments

It's been a really terrific Easter vacation. After Don's visit, I went to Amsterdam. Just got back to Berlin today, and now I have until Monday to reconcile myself to going back to work. Slaving away for 12 hours a week again. Ugh.

Since Don was rolling in cash, we spent a leisurely week going out to restaurants--rather nice ones, in some cases, though of course I also introduced him to relatively low-brow Berlin specialties such as currywurst and döners. We walked a ton, and had great weather for the most part. I'd saved some of the touristy Berlin things to do with Don, so we saw the Eastside Gallery, which is the longest part of the Berlin Wall still standing, and we went up into the Fernsehturm (TV tower, or "Tele-asparagus," as Berliners like to call it), which you can see on the left of that picture of the Palast der Republik (Palace of the Republic). Or what used to be the Palast; they're "disassembling" it because it was full of asbestos and also kind of ugly. And Communist. The East German Parliament was housed there, along with a sort of cultural center, including a restaurant, a cafe, a concert venue, and a bowling alley. For all its detractions, you have to give it to Communism that the Parliament/bowling alley combo is kinda brilliant.

We wanted to go see Knut the polar bear baby, but the line for the zoo was too long. On Tuesday we took a little day trip up north to Schwerin. It has a castle and it's quaint and medieval--something a little different from Berlin. And then one of the last days Don was here we went to the Wannsee on the outskirts of Berlin--infamous for having been the location Hitler's conference on the Final Solution to the "Jewish problem," but still pretty.

I took Don to the airport earlyish Sunday morning and then, to avoid wallowing in my sudden loneliness, got on a train to Amsterdam. I stayed with Elisa, the girl whose room I live in here in Berlin. She's studying in Amsterdam. I'd met Elisa a couple times when she came back to Berlin to visit but never really got a chance to have a conversation with her until this week. Turns out we have lots of common interests; we covered everything from Russian literature to modern art over super-delicious Dutch apple pie, and then later there was tea and feminist literary theory, poetry, and how much we hate reading translations and have resigned ourselves to never being truly happy until we've learned every language in the world. She has a head start on me--German, English so good most people think she's British, Dutch, French, and "a little" Spanish. Don't think I'm tooting my own horn here, cause really these conversations consisted of Elisa talking about all the stuff she's interested in studying and then me agreeing that it's fascinating stuff while trying furiously to remember whether I've ever actually read anything on the subject and which names I can drop to make myself sound legit. Anyway, she asked to read my honors thesis, so that pretty much makes Elisa an instant best friend.

Back in Berlin now, I feel like there are hardly any bikes around, because after only a few days in Amsterdam I got so used to having to look out for them around every corner. It's a beautiful city. I really love all the tall, narrow houses smashed up next to one another lining the canals. And houseboats. Houseboats are SO COOL. James and his friend Steve, who was visiting from Seattle, were in Amsterdam at the same time, so we met up on Monday and went to the Van Gogh museum and took a canal tour. On Tuesday I went to the Rijksmuseum and wandered through the Vonderpark, which is a really pretty green swatch in the middle of the city where lots of people ride bikes and jog. I spent an hour or so watching bikers from a bench where I was resting my very tired feet. I think that after all my travels and much walking in many of Europe's best cities, I will have to retire the shoes that I bought at Payless in Aberdeen, South Dakota--the ones that a flight attendant (also in Aberdeen) once complimented me on. She thought they were chic and "very European-looking."

I'm starting to get a little panicky, thinking of the quickly shortening amount of time I have remaining in Europe and the impossibly long list of travel destinations I still haven't made it to. But I have a feeling the list will never get any shorter no matter how much I travel...which is a good excuse to just keep coming back here. You can all come visit, k?

Labels: travels

by LP at 9:43 PM (Berlin time) | Permalink | Comments

Just now I got home from a leisurely trip to the secondhand shop up near Nollendorf Platz. I bought a skinny burgundy leather necktie. I wasn't even aware I needed a burgundy leather tie until I saw it there on the table among many other leather neckties, but now I'm not quite sure how I've managed so long without one.

See? Great, right?

Anyway, on to what I'm really here to blog about. (Hang on, cause it's gonna be a long one.) At long last, I made it to Prague. Met up with James here in Berlin last Wednesday and boarded the train for a quick little four-hour jog over to the Czech Republic. (Have I mentioned how much I love how easy train travel is? Cause I love it.) The city was absolutely as beautiful as I'd always dreamed. If you happen to find yourself in Prague, try to see the Charles Bridge for the first time by moonlight. And if you can manage it, add a little misty rain too. Here it is during daytime:

It's lined with old, blackened statues of saints, which are eerily cool by night. Also there were fewer people. During the day, artists set up shop on the bridge and sell watercolors and sketches (and caricatures, too, for the most touristy of tourists).

We saw the lunar clock, where on the hour a row of saints files past and peeks out two little windows at the top, and a skeleton rings a bell. The Jan Hus memorial is also really striking at night, though you might not believe it from this picture:

Thursday we went up to the castle and walked around, then wandered the city some more and sat in a super cool cafe and bookstore for a few hours, during which we played (but did not finish) the first and only chess game of my life. Now if I never play chess again, at least I can say I played once in Prague.

Later on we went in search of a brewery James read about in a guidebook, and when we found it, it turned out to be one of the best parts of the whole trip. These guys were walking around playing Czech folk songs, and hearty old Czech men with mustaches were singing all the words:

This place, U Fleků, is supposedly the oldest brewery in Prague--founded 1499. Right around Columbus' time, you know? It's always crazy to me how young my country is compared to Europe.

On Friday we got back on the train to head over to Dresden, where James' friend Alice was kind enough to put us up for the weekend. On the way out, I took this picture, because I found it interesting how shiny and polished the (touristy part of the) old city was, while the scenery surrounding the (not main) train station is clearly a holdover from socialist times:

Dresden was beautiful too, and the cool thing about that city is how recently it's all been put back together. Only last summer was the restoration on the Frauenkirche finished; before that it was completely in ruins. The East German regime didn't put too high a priority on rebuilding a giant church after we bombed it to pieces.

Alice lives in Neustadt ("new city" part of Dresden), which is full of university students and all kinds of cool clubs and cafes. We met lots of great people. On Saturday we wandered around the city a bit. It was very cold. But the architecture is all really impressive because Dresden used to be the seat of the Kaiser. Here's the court church:

I didn't take that many pictures in Dresden, but there are a few, along with more from Prague, on my Flickr page.

Sunday we headed home. Our last hurrah in Dresden consisted of getting fined for not having tickets while riding the tram to the train station. We wanted to buy tickets from the automat on the tram, but neither of us had enough coins. So we're like, oh well, what are the odds the controllers will come around? We'll have to chance it. Should have known, though, that as soon as we said that, the controllers were pretty much guaranteed to come around. Which they did, leaving us with no choice but to play dumb American. We're all, ticket? what ticket? We had day tickets from Saturday, and in a stroke of creative idiocy, we took to arguing that we thought the 4:00 on the ticket meant it lasted until 4 pm (16:00), though we were perfectly aware that it was good till 4 am (that morning). The controller, who was WAY nicer than I would have been to a couple of stupid tourists waving around American passports, patiently explained multiple times that our tickets were expired and only made us pay €10 cash instead of the €40 normal fine. He also refrained from calling our bluff when we insisted on speaking English to him, even though when he asked at one point, in German, how far we were going on the tram, we both answered "Hauptbahnhof" without missing a beat.

On the train back to Berlin, there was an elderly couple in our compartment who told us they were from Prague. When James asked whether they'd always lived in Prague, the old man smiled a little and said he'd spent some time moving around a bit too, pulling up his sleeve to show us his ID tattoo from a concentration camp. Six different camps, actually, for six years starting when he was 17. He spends his time now traveling around to schools and talking about his experiences during the war, which include having met and worked under Dr. Mengele at Auschwitz (because he'd told them he'd been a medical student).

The woman said that students always ask the man whether he harbors any hate for the Germans, but he always answers that he doesn't because some Germans helped his family during the war. He's like God judging Sodom, she said, willing to spare the city if only ten righteous men could be found there--he's forgiven all of Germany for the sake of the few Germans who were kind to his family. So there I am, a girl from South Dakota, sitting in a train compartment with an 80-year-old Czech man showing me his ID tattoo and telling me he's forgiven the Germans, having just left a city which only recently finished putting itself back together after we bombed it to rubble...and I'm thinking, how did I get here?

This isn't history class anymore, you know?

Labels: travels

by LP at 2:17 PM (Berlin time) | Permalink | Comments

I fixed our Internet because I got skills, and--at long last--I've uploaded my many new photos from Copenhagen. You can see them in my Flickr account by clicking on the conveniently-located badge to the right. (Also, if you go look at M. Horning's photos--by way of the link to her blog, down there a ways--you can see the crazy Aussie we met at the hostel.)

Our first day in Copenhagen, we arrived on the bus from the airport sometime after 10:00 am and went to drop our stuff off at the hostel before heading out to explore in spite of the dreary, often rainy weather.

Copenhagen is full of castles, because the Danes love their royalty, and we even managed to stumble upon a royal procession leaving the Christianborg Palace. (Mary has a pic of that too; mine was too blurry.) At the Amalienborg Palace, where the royals actually live, we watched the guards in their furry hats march back and forth on the sidewalk and got in the marching path of one while [not at all] surreptitiously trying to take his picture:

How does one get to be a Danish Royal Guard, I wonder? And just think how many pictures of him there are out there, in people's travel photo albums all over the world, though no one would probably recognize his face. I wanted to introduce myself and tell him I had a Danish Royal Guard in my family, there's even a picture of him in the same furry hat hanging on the wall at my parents' house, but then he was shooing us off the sidewalk where he needed to march, so we ran away giggling instead.

Copenhagen is also full of statues. In the yard of the Marmorkirche (Marble Church, which is what they call it, though it's actually named after someone whose name I've forgotten) are a whole bunch of them just standing around, as the Danes apparently ran out of room for them elsewhere:

And then there is, of course, the renowned Little Mermaid. We had a heck of a time getting out to the rock she sits on, because this big fortress surrounded by a moat got in our way, and Mary almost died when a gust of wind caught her umbrella while we were standing upon some very steep ramparts, but I managed to get a blurry picture of the forlorn creature after all:

Mary, as a soon-to-be-famous writer and illustrator of children's books, was on a sort of H. C. Andersen pilgrimage in Copenhagen. We even managed to find the attic room he once rented, preserved the way it might have looked when he lived and wrote there (at about 22 years old), in the middle of this department store, which apparently used to be a hotel:

Our second day in the city we had very welcome sunny weather, and we went to explore the free city of Christiania, which looks something like a cross between a community garden project and some kind of gypsy camp, right in the middle of Copenhagen. If you go look at Mary's photos, you'll see the forbidden one she took of a cafe on the main street--the aptly named Pusher Street--which got her a scolding from a guy nearby who said that they don't allow photography on the main street "because people are selling illegal stuff here". This is why they've declared themselves a free city. I only got a picture of street sign, but I should have taken more, cause the place is indescribable:

We went to the National Gallery, where we saw some stunning statues (I think they're my favorite form of art to look at), some confusing modern and abstract stuff, and this room full of pretty much everything else, which has to be the most overwhelming I've ever encountered in any museum anywhere:

The next morning we took a bus to the ferry back to Germany. The only experience with ferries I've had is on the one that goes to Mackinac Island in northern Michigan, and this one, to say the least, rather exceeded my expectations. On board were multiple restaurants, a duty-free shop that opened once we reached international waters, and lots of tables and seating areas on two decks, not to mention the room underneath for cars and stuff. Here's Mary at the window, musing over the grey Baltic horizon and looking "like a world traveler":

We landed in Rostock, which is also a much bigger city than I expected it to be, so didn't have time to explore at all cause it took quite a while to make our way to the train station, where we got on the train for Wismar. James met us at the station there and we went to Andy's for dinner before going to a birthday party for Cony, of which I have no pictures.

I wasn't ready to come back to Berlin this time around, like I usually am after vacation. Having a hard time getting back into it. First day back, I was at school from 8 am to 5 pm, helping one of the English teachers grade essays. It was crazy, like having a real job or something.

Next vacation is a week at the beginning of February. No plans so far...don't know if my bank account will withstand more travel just yet.

Labels: travels

by LP at 2:43 PM (Berlin time) | Permalink | Comments

A while back when Pete (another American TAing near Hamburg) came to Berlin to visit, we met this Spanish guy named Luis. We were out in Friedrichshain (one of the "boroughs" of Berlin, in the northeasterly region) at this place that I love. It doesn't really have a name, but people who know about it call it das Loch--the hole. People who don't know about it don't call it anything, cause if you don't know where to look you won't find it. The hole is an opening at sidewalk level, about a foot and a half high or so, and you scoot down into it and land on a couple cement steps which lead down into three or four basement rooms. The ceilings are low enough that Pete couldn't stand upright. The walls are decorated with grafitti and the furniture consists of one couch, some barrels and boxes, and a swing made of a long board suspended on ropes. There's a bar and a foosball ("kicker") table. This is how we made friends with Luis--and his father, also Luis, who was visiting from Spain. Luis Sr. is probably, oh, 60ish. And we met him playing foosball with his son at 4 am in a place they call the hole. Classy guy. He only speaks Spanish, so his son was translating for him from English and German.

We talked to the Luises for a while, and then Luis Jr. said I should come over sometime and he'd make paella, so I gave him my email address. The emails I received from Luis, whose English is rather broken, are a story on their own. My favorite phrase to date has been, "I have a more illusion for see you."

So I finally went over to Luis's apartment last week for paella, which was very tasty indeed. His roommates are from Sweden and Denmark (and I think there's a girl from Japan who wasn't there), all very nice people. It was a good time.

Labels: friends, Hamburg, travels

by LP at 11:59 AM (Berlin time) | Permalink | Comments

I've been skipping around the country again, spending first a few days in Cologne again with the Fulbright folks for a "diversity" conference, and then up to Wismar for the weekend to hang out with James and Pete. The conference was interesting and informative, and there was, to Fulbright's credit, a TON of most wonderfully delicious food and drink to be had, all on the State Department's tab. Maybe I'll write more about it later, but probably not. (If you really want to know, ask.)

Instead I'll post pics from Wismar--and some of them have PEOPLE IN THEM.

Labels: travels

by LP at 10:45 PM (Berlin time) | Permalink | Comments

*edit* There were going to be pictures in this post, in order to make it not completely worthless, but Blogger is being petulant again. So you'll have to find the pics yourself over at Flickr. Sorry.

All right, so I got lazy. The rest of my vacation is old news by now. I put the pictures up on Flickr already, but I'll make an attempt to finish the story too...

Labels: travels

by LP at 1:49 PM (Berlin time) | Permalink | Comments

I can't believe I forgot to tell you about the Tomato Lady on the U-bahn in Munich!

On our way to the Hofbräuhaus Friday night, the subway was relatively empty. Across from us, and a ways down the car, I noticed a lady eating a tomato--like an apple, just chomping into it. Strange enough. Not too many people eat tomatoes that way. But then, still chewing the last bite, she reached into her backpack and pulled out another tomato. This she ate in the same manner. Then another. She picked up speed, until she was blazing through each one in three aggressive bites.

By the fourth tomato, I was watching avidly, with barely concealed wonderment, and saying frequently to Lindsay, "I can't believe this!"

By the sixth, I started to get a little worried. Lindsay and I speculated on how many tomatoes are really too many for a person's health.

By the tenth, I knew I had to take a picture:


There she is, looking perfectly normal, doing something on her cell phone--and all the while, stuffing her face with tomatoes.

We lost count after twelve.

Labels: travels

by LP at 11:05 PM (Berlin time) | Permalink | Comments

So I lied. I did see multiple countries over a relatively short period of time. Since last I blogged, I've been in Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, France, and back to Germany. But I was gone a solid two weeks, so that's not too breakneck a pace.

I'm daunted by the task of fitting two weeks into one post, I must admit. Let's see, I'll try to hit on some highlights...


I'm not sure what exactly I expected to find at Oktoberfest, but nothing could have prepared me for the sheer masses of people. Here's a beer "tent", which is really, as you can see, more like a beer "building the size of an airplane hangar":

There are fourteen of these on a big fairgrounds they call the Wiesen, and lots of carnival rides and food stands in between.

Apparently I spent the entire weekend saying, "There are SO MANY people here!" and then taking pictures of them, because all of my Oktoberfest pictures look pretty much like that one. You don't need to see much else, I guess, except this, the most central part of the madness:

And this, to prove that, contrary to my former beliefs, your average Bavarian does, in fact, own and proudly wear Lederhosen:

That's Hasi in the blue checks. Lindsay and I stayed with him, his wife Gitti (whose head you can also see at the bottom of the picture), and his two daughters--definitely four of my favorite Germans.


I took the train from Munich to Innsbruck, through a lot of impossibly picturesque villages and meadows full of sheep. I kept thinking of The Sound of Music, seeing scenery like this:

You can go up to the ski jump they built when the Olympics were in Innsbruck and get an impressive view of the town from above, which I did:

I can't even describe to you how windy it was the day I was up there. I took a picture instead:

Vaduz (Liechtenstein)

I spent an afternoon in the capital city of Liechtenstein, because why not go to Liechtenstein if it's on the way? I walked up a very steep path to the prince's castle, but he doesn't let tourists in (can't say I blame him) so I only have a rather ordinary-looking (for a castle) picture of the outside:

And here are some rare Liechtensteinian brass horses--hatching, I guess:

All right, that's enough for now. I don't feel like uploading any more pictures at the moment, so I'll leave you hanging for a while.

Labels: travels

by LP at 10:27 PM (Berlin time) | Permalink | Comments