Ich bin ein Berliner

Berlin

Hey everybody. I went to Berlin for my last trip before the semester. It was easter weekend and everyone was headed to the big city for the holidays, so the train was packed and I sat in the aisle for a good bit of the 10 hour ride. Berlin is definitely a city under construction (it has been for sixty years) but still it is very impressive and very cool. It is absolutely enormous and chock-full of 'important' buildings and sites. In the picture you can see the former Nazi Luftwaffe headquarters, now the ministry of finance, on the other side of a section of the Berlin wall. This is a stone's throw away from the former checkpoint charlie. There are tons of little trinket shops lining the streets selling american, soviet, and east german paraphernalia. Most of my time was spent walking around, going into museums and eating Doener after Doener. A Doener is a turkish kebab, with lamb from the vertical rotissere, veggies and sauce stuffed in some freshly toasted bread. Went up into the huge glass dome that sits on top of the German Parliament and saw the city at night. I spent a good amount of time in former East Berlin - you can tell which part of the city you are in by looking at the buildings: If they look old, bland and communist, you are probably in the east. I had some great thai and iranian food and saw 'reefer madness' at a cheap sneak preview. The German kids loved it. Overall, I wish I had more time in Berlin. Five days was not enough. Ill be back.

The semester has started and I am sticking around here in Konstanz for a good bit. We are painting the walls in my building. Light yellow. It should be fun. Last night I went to a jazz club. The groups were really good but the highlight was Funkloch - 'funkhole', or a place with no radio reception. It was nice to see a Swiss guy do his best James Brown/Barry White/Prince impersonation.

Bienvenue en Provence

Just got back from a great trip to Provence. As you can see, it was beautiful and the weather was, well, better than Konstanz. I stayed with the family of an old high school friend of my mom. They were great, kids and parents - thanks if you are reading this. They live in a 200 year-old house in a little village called Lacon de Provence (which is spelled with the c character that I dont have on my keyboard), close to Salon de Provence. I definitely learned a lot of french while I was there. Now I can say hello, good bye, good morning, thank you, 'five baguettes, please', 'down with the CPE' and 'do you speak english/german?' I also, of course, started kissing everybody on the cheeks when I greeted them. It was nice. Ill make sure to do it as much as possible when I get home. Like Caren, my mom's friend said, life in France kind of revolves around food. There was a constant supply of bread at the ready and I was more than happy to take a chunk off at my leisure. It was great. The first day we went to Les Baux - a little village with a medieval castle perched on the top of a huge rock mountain. Next day we went to the coast. I saw the Mediterranean for the first time in my life. We had a picnic on the rocks next to the water. Baguette sandwiches, pickles, Saucisson (its a sausage-type deal), camembert cheese, fruit and chocolate - excellent. We walked around on the rocks and found an old wwII bunker filled with trash. We waded in the water - it was freezing - before collecting mussels for that night's dinner. I also went to Aix en Provence and visited Cezanne's workshop. Also went to the winery and bought some nice white wine and olive oil and then watched the french air force from the front yard of the house in Lacon - there is an air force base ten minutes away from the house. The jets shake the walls when they fly over. good times. The train ride from Konstanz was great - I had good weather, a nice view of Lake Geneva, and a great conversation (with hand signals, a map and a pencil and paper) with some french kids on the train between Lyon and Avignon. The trip back was a different story. I had all the times and trains worked out - leave mid morning from Salon to Avignon, then to Lyon, Geneva, Zurich, Weinfelden and back to Konstanz by 12:30 am. It went fine until Weinfelden - about thirty minutes by train to Konstanz. It was past midnight, so my eurrail pass was not valid for that day anymore. I had four minutes to buy a ticket from the machine and hop on the train home. Well, the train was a minute late and when I got to the machine to buy tickets I worked as quickly as I could. It told me to put the money in - I didnt have enough swiss francs on me, so I had to pay with euros. I put in a bill - which was folded because otherwise it wouldnt fit into my american wallet - and the machine wouldnt accept it. It kept sliding out the other side of the slot. So I tried it a couple more times and then decided to just get on the train. Of course, I got to the platform just in time to see the display on the back of the moving train. It said 'Konstanz'. It was just after midnight and the next train to Konstanz didnt leave until 5:40. shit. There was a taxi driver there and he gave me the number of the discount taxi service, which of course wasnt running that night. A regular taxi would have cost about 70 Euros - too much. There were no busses until the morning and there was also no youth hostel in Weinfelden, so I was stranded in the train station, alone, tired and cold. Feel sorry for me. There was a sign in the station that was an arrow pointing to Konstanz and it said '3 hours and 30 minutes'. By foot. I figured I would get home faster that way, so i decided to give it a shot. I walked and followed the signs until there was neither a sidewalk nor any light. It was raining, so it was very muddy and dark - I decided that walking home was a bad idea. I walked back through the city and I didnt see anyone at all. No cars, no nothing, just the sound of the Church bells every thirty minutes. It was creepy. I was really tired, so I just kept walking around to keep myself awake and warm and to pass the time. I went back to the train station, got some chocolate milk and chips out of a vending machine and waited in the little booth by the track. I saw the maintenance crews come and go, cleaning the trains that were there for the night. Finally, five and a half hours after I started waiting, my train came. I got on, collapsed on a seat and shut my eyes. Thirty minutes later I was on a bus in Konstanz. I ended up getting home just before dawn - no big deal. All in all, a great trip. To Berlin on Saturday.

Stuttgart

On tuesday I took a trip to Stuttgart - the capital of Baden-Wuerttemberg, birthplace of the car, and home to Porsche and Mercedes-Benz (see tower). We bought a really cheap group ticket, and we were on the train for about 5 hours total, but not once did anyone come by to check that we actually had a ticket. oh well. We didnt have a planfor the day, so we firgure we would just walk around and see what there was to see. We went to the altes Schloss (old castle) and looked at the ridiculous crown jewels of the Wuerttemberg family. We visited a 900 year old church (that was destroyed in 1944 and rebuilt in 1958) that was the most important protestant church in Wuerttemberg during the reformation. We also went to Rice-man, a restaurant that advertised itself as all-you-can-eat, but it was really put-as-much-as-you-can-on-a-tiny-plate. Regardless, I ate way more chop suey than i wanted to. After feasting on a dessert of Haribo gummibaerchen some german chocolate eggs with at least a shot of whiskey inside we went to a photography museum that was closed. We stayed and looked at the photography books in the gift shop for a good while, though. In the afternoon we walked around and had a look at the various interesting sculptures and buildings that Stuttgart, and pretty much every other german city has to offer. Before we got back on the train we ate a stuttgart specialty - burger king - and decided not to buy lederhosen. Yesterday, back in Konstanz, it snowed again. Other than yesterday, the weather has been getting really nice. I have worn shorts outside only once so far, though. Next up is a trip to Salon-de-Provence for a week. And now a breakfast of Nutella and bread. Tschuss.

I've caught the german fashion bug.

The man who made it all possible. This bust was in a building at the University of Freiburg. We toured the city it was really easy to see the effects of world war 2 just from walking around. There are new buildings (in place of buildings that were destroyed) next to century-old houses, and the buildings that were there during the war have cracks and holes in the walls caused by shrapnel and bullets. It was an eerie feeling being able to see them. History is something that definitely has a huge impact on life in this country, and they do a really good job of recognizing and memorializing what should be remembered. In just about every city in Germany that I have been to there is a memorial or open space where a synagogue once stood and memorials to those who died in the holocaust. Last week I went to an exhibit in Konstanz about young jewish people who live in Germany today. The jewish population in Germany has grown steadily in the past decade or so (many came from former soviet republics) after being virtually non-existant from WW2 until the breakup of the soviet union. I just finished with my language course here in Konstanz and now I have three weeks of leisure time. I plan on taking several trips in Germany and one to France before the semester starts. Bis Bald.