Auf wiedersehen!

I leave Konstanz, and Germany, very early tomorrow morning--I land in Newark around 1 pm Eastern. I've already had my first incident of reverse culture shock--telling people when I'm coming home in 12 hour time no longer looks correct to me after 4 months of European 24-hour time! But I'm sure once I get home I'll readjust to most things as quickly as I did coming home from Paris.

I've spent the last few weeks preparing for everything when I come home--my classes and teaching schedule, ordering textbooks, even arranging to audit an Intermediate German course--but I still don't feel quite ready to leave. Over the summer, and over the past month in particular, I've really fallen in love with Germany. I've spent almost four months working daily on learning the language, and it turns out I've completed about a year's worth of college curriculum--I'll be skipping the two beginner classes and going straight to auditing Intermediate German at Rutgers. I've done a lot of reading for what I hope will be productive and more directed future research projects (and I have 50 pages of single-spaced typed notes to show for it...). But I've also really gotten to experience Germany and German culture in such a unique way by being here.

I don't normally make spur of the moment decisions, so deciding to come here so spontaneously was really out of character. Spending the summer in a country I'd never been to, where I knew no one, and when I literally did not speak one word of the language--not normally a decision careful, plan-in-advance me would make. But I'm so glad that I decided to make the leap. It's been incredibly rewarding. I learned that I can really handle more uncertainty than I ever thought. I can handle spending some time alone, I can handle not speaking the language and trying to learn and asking for help. I've always wanted to learn a third language--I can't say I ever thought it would be German, though! Before I came here I knew virtually nothing about German culture, had never set foot in the country, etc. Now all I want to do is keep exploring! I love it here--it is an absolutely beautiful, culturally rich nation that I think everyone should visit :-)

I definitely had my homesick moments, and many, MANY moments where I got frustrated with my poor German language abilities--life here wasn't always traveling and fun and games. But four months is plenty of time to fall in love with Konstanz, with Germany, and with German. When I got here all I could do was ask "Sprechen Sie Englisch?" Everything was foreign and incomprehensible, even going to the grocery store. Now I'm almost done with my second Harry Potter book in German, I can run all sorts of errands with no problem, and even hold short conversations. Yes, speaking and understanding are still difficult for me, my reading is far better than either one, but I'm learning more every day. I'm so glad I got to live here, and I will miss a lot of things about Konstanz--as well as being a beautiful place to live, it is an amazing college town--I'm going to miss all these coffeeshops and cafes and bookstores when I go back to New Brunswick...

So at the risk of waxing too nostalgic, I want to say thank you to a few people who made my experience here better:

Erin--thank you for encouraging me to apply for the grant when I was hesitating. without you I would not be in Konstanz. I can't wait for office fun when I'm back home!!

Kelly--thank you so, so much for making sure I had friends when I got here. if you hadn't contacted Laura and Alessia, I would not have known anyone here and probably would have had no social life at all.

Thorin--thank you for our awesome coffee dates and for showing me how to get around town without bus or bike. and for giving me another reason to go visit Oregon! you are a fabulous friend and I am so, so glad I met you. meet me at Das Voglhaus?

Alex--thank you for helping me settle in when I arrived and teaching me some basic and all-important Deutsch! :-) it was so nice to know I had a sister in town.

Alessia--thank you for being there for me when I first got to Konstanz, inviting me to meet people, and for our amazing trip to Berlin! I'm so excited for you and Tobi to come to visit me in America hopefully sometime soon!

Tobi--thank you for being your wonderful, smiling self, and for giving me tools to help me learn German (like Lena, liebe meines lebens ;-) ), and for being part of the best intercultural and interlingual lunches ever! I can't wait for your visit!

Ulf--thank you for being an awesome tandem partner and a great friend :-) I had so much fun eating ice cream and exploring Konstanz with you and your encouragement helped a lot with my learning! I'm so excited to hear about your adventures in Canada.

and of course thank you to my wonderful family, friends, and boyfriend for being supportive, listening to my endless stories and frustrations, and for welcoming me home!! I'm excited to see you all very, very soon! It's been a fabulous summer and I am going to miss Konstanz and Germany and Europe like crazy (I already can't wait for the next time I get to be here) but I am really excited to be going home again. So auf wiedersehen, Deutschland--until next time.

Last week in Konstanz & trip to Freiburg!

Freiburg Münster

Freiburg Altstadt with Bächle

inside St. Stephan's, a church in KN

dipping my feet in--the next day my whole body went in!

This week was my last in Konstanz. Which meant a lot of forms to be filled out (ah, the joys of German bureaucracy), some shopping to be done, plans to be made, etc. I wasn't planning on packing til Sunday but some arrangements with the Hausmeister for room inspection threw a wrench in that plan. So instead, I got to pack early, which meant I had some time for a day trip! More on that in a moment.

I spent the week wandering around Konstanz and spending time with friends! I got to have several lunches with Tobi and his friend Lukas, and a few coffees with Svetlana while I helped with her bachelor's thesis, and I went to the lake with Laura! Swimming in the lake for the first time (well, really wading) was really fun. It got quite warm here this week, up to 90 degrees F and 32 C, so it was nice to take a jump in the water even though it was so cold it actually made my legs hurt for a few minutes until I got used to it. But it was fun to finally get to take a dip in the Bodensee and lie on the "beach" in a bathing suit! The word "beach" is used very loosely in Konstanz--it's either rocks or grass depending on where you are, no sand. But the view is fantastic. I did see way more men in Speedos than I ever need to see in my life, but at least I missed the nude beach haha.

Since the hausmeister's schedule forced me to change my original plans, I decided to take Maya's advice and go on one last day trip with my newly found extra time :-) After some asking around, I decided on Freiburg! It's a city just on the outskirts of the Black Forest, near the French border, about 2.5 hours from Konstanz by train. So I headed up there early this morning and spent the day there. It was intensely hot, which is getting more and more bothersome, I'm glad it's been a cool summer.

But on the upside, Freiburg is a really cool town! It has a beautiful church and Altstadt, as well a a famous university, and is also known for being one of the "greenest" cities in the world. It also features these little canals/rivulets in the streets called Bächle--the legend goes that if you fall into one you will marry a Freiburg native. After eating a quick pizza for lunch, I spent the day wandering through the streets seeing the various sights. There's the two town halls, the Altes Rathaus and the Neues Rathaus, and the famous Münster. It was a really gorgeous church, full of tiny interesting details--random statues and hidden stained glass windows, etc. I climbed the tower to get a beautiful view of the town and the Black Forest (Schwarzwald) all around. Then I kept wandering the streets, saw some famous buildings and towers, wandered into stores because it was so hot, etc. Eventually I had seen pretty much everything and was pretty overheated, so I headed home. It's really hot here and I'm not adjusted to summer weather, especially summer weather with no AC. kind of glad I'm heading home soon to get out of the heat--in less than 48 hours I'll be landing in Newark!

Seenachtsfest

This weekend in Konstanz was Seenachstfest! Seenachtsfest is a festival held every summer by the lake (literally it means lake night festival). It includes live music, food, and a huge fireworks display put on by Konstanz and Kreuzlingen, and people come from all the surrounding towns to see it.

I got to see the start of the festival on Friday, because for our last time meeting, Ulf and I were hanging out by the lake near the live music part of the fair. They also had this weird little ride contraption that looked kind of like a hang glider, where people got strapped in, flown up over the trees, and then dipped down into the lake (which has to be FREEZING since it's only broken 80 degrees a couple times this summer)--didn't really get that, haha. I thought it was really funny that all of the music was American, or at least in English. Ulf was really sweet and got me a present--a book of pictures and descriptions of places all over Germany, so that I can show everyone at home what a beautiful, amazing country I got to live in this summer! I'm excited to return the favor and show him around New York when he studies abroad in Canada. Participating in the tandem program was a really nice thing to do while I was here, I'm glad Thorin made me aware of it so that I could sign up!

Saturday night was the fireworks! In the morning, I met up with a friend of one of my apartmentmates from Richmond who had just moved to Konstanz, so that I could show her around. It's weird that now I know enough about Konstanz to give someone a tour! But hopefully she enjoyed it. Then I headed out to the fireworks in the evening. There were SO many people. Each town has a turn at their own fireworks, and then they finish with a joint show. I liked Konstanz's fireworks better than Kreuzlingen's--they were also set to American oldies music, stuff like Dancing Queen and Billie Jean, which I thought was so funny. I watched them from a bridge over the Rhine called the Fahrradbruecke--far enough away so that I didn't have to pay 16 euros admission, but still close enough for a fabulous view of fireworks over the Altstadt and the lake. It was a great show, especially at the end!!

I try to do everything I need to do around town and when I travel "auf Deutsch", as much as possible. I am getting pretty good at reading, but I still have trouble with speaking and understanding. Often when someone says something, I have to ask them to repeat it more slowly. Sometimes when I ask this they switch to English instead of repeating what they said in German, which really frustrates me. I want to learn and the only way I'm going to learn is by practicing! The most understanding person I met was in Berlin, with Alessia. We went to an Italian restaurant for lunch. The waitress heard us speaking English and started to bring us English menus and then said "oh, no, you probably want to practice your German!" and brought us German menus and spoke to us only in slow German. We told her how much we appreciated that and I gave her quite a nice tip, haha. I wish more people had that attitude, because I am working so hard to learn and I don't want people to just speak to me in English. But I guess it also must be frustrating for people to communicate with me when I don't understand.

I can't believe in a week I'll be packing my things to get ready to leave the next morning! This summer flew by...

Die Abenteuer in Bayern/Adventures in Bavaria

For the first three days of this week, I decided to take a trip to Bavaria, the next province to the east of Baden-Württemberg. I spent my first day of the trip in the city of Munich! The trip from Konstanz took just under 4 hours. After some train mishaps (i.e. getting on one that was going to the same place just ten minutes earlier than the one I had booked), I was in Munich!

My hostel was really close to the main train station, which also meant it was about a 15 minute walk from Marienplatz, the main square in Munich. I had a nice walk through the pedestrian shopping district to get there, which was really nice! So many old and beautiful buildings. Marienplatz is famous for the Neues Rathaus, or New Town Hall, and the Glockenspiel, the dancing clock. I admired the Rathaus quickly and then set off to see the rest of the Altstadt, since I planned to come back for the clock's 5 pm performance. I saw the famous Frauenkirche first, a huge brick church Munich is well-known for. Next up was the Residenz-the palace where several hundred years' worth of Bavarian royalty resided. It was well over 100 rooms, although some were closed. Parts of it were destroyed in WW2 but have since been rebuilt, so everything is opulent and beautiful. After the Residenz I went to the Neues Pinakothek, one of Munich's art museums, with their Impressionist collection. It was a really nice, small museum. Then I headed back to the main area of the Altstadt through the Hofgarten, a beautiful park behind the Residenz. I wandered around the Altstadt a bit, saw some more churches, including the oldest one in Munich (Michaelskirche, I think) and the Asamkirche, the most beautiful and ornate tiny little church I have ever seen. Bavaria is Catholic so the churches are pretty here. After all that, I headed back to the Glockenspiel for the adorable 5 pm performance of the clock! Then some Thai food for dinner and I was exhausted--got up very early to make my train!

Day 2 was a tour of Neuschwanstein Castle! I signed up for a day-long guided tour with a company Eric and I used in San Fran, because I was feeling lazy and didn't feel like looking up how to get there. It was also nice to have contact with other people. The tour took the train from Muenich to Füssen (2 hours) while the guide told us all about crazy King Ludwig II, who built Neuschwanstein. We arrived in Füssen (which means feet! what a funny name for a town) and took a bus to Schwangau (roughly, Swan land), where we had a brief lunch and admired the Hohenschwangau, an older Bavarian castle that is bright yellow. I spent most of the tour with a French Canadian girl who was also alone. After that the guide gave us a choice of a 25 minute, steep climb to the castle, in the intermittent, ever-present rain, or a bus. I took the bus to save my energy to see the gorge afterwards! So then we went to Marienbrücke, the famous bridge with the postcard shots of the castle--it was just as beautiful in person as on all the postcards. Next was the walk to the castle, where we had a guided tour. The castle was only partially finished at Ludwig's unexpected and mysterious death, so the tour is short but the finished rooms are so lovely. It makes Versailles look honestly a bit ostentatious and overdone. No pictures were allowed inside but obviously I snuck a few. The castle is dedicated to the works of Richard Wagner, the composer--he composed operas like Lohengrin, Tristan and Isolde, etc. It even includes a grotto. Ludwig was really into swans so there are swans everywhere. Most of the walls are murals showing scenes from various operas, and everything is carved. The throne room is complete except for the throne, which was never finished.

After the disappointingly short tour, our guide walked us down to the gorge below the castle. Ludwig really picked a breathtaking spot. Giant mountains, a beautiful waterfall...it was gorgeous. Then we took the train home, exhausted and wondering exactly how King Ludwig died....he was deposed under accusation of insanity, and taken to a sanitorium. On his second day there, he took a walk with his psychiatrist and never returned. Both their bodies were found in the lake, in waist-high water. The autopsy reported that the doctor had drowned, but Ludwig's results were never released. It was assumed that Ludwig had drowned the doctor and killed himself, except for one thing-the doctor's watch had stopped over an hour later than King Ludwig's. Mystery...

I ended up spending all of day 3 on my Dachau tour. I've spent most of my time in Germany kind of in awe of old buildings and castles and fairy tales, so I thought it was important to make this little journey to pay my respects, in a sense--both to that tiny bit of my own heritage, and just to that part of German history. Dachau was actually the first permanent concentration camp. The site, now a museum and memorial, is just outside the town of Dachau, which is a 25-minute metro ride from the center of Munich, then a bus ride to the site. Our tour guide was a bit of a Third Reich nerd (he said he had been very interested in the Nazi regime from the age of 6 or 7, which personally I found a little bit weird, but he didn't seem interested in a neo-Nazi kind of way, so I guess to each their own). He explained in detail the political and socioeconomic conditions that led to the rise of Hitler and the Nazis before bringing us into the camp/memorial. Most of the buildings were partially destroyed by American troops post-liberation to symbolically end the Nazi regime, but many are still standing and the rest were restored. Dachau was a camp for men only, and it was not an extermination camp like Auschwitz or Treblinka. Most extermination camps were placed in Poland and Eastern Europe to keep the German citizens unaware of the reality of the situation--Dachau is literally in the middle of a quiet Bavarian town. Before we walked in, our guide, Keith, pointed out the former guard buildings next door, used to train Nazis. Today they are used to train German riot police. This leads to the sounds of boots marching, gunshots being fired, the whole nine yards, which really does add a certain sense of...I guess, reality...to the visit. I'm not sure I think it's the most appropriate use for those facilities, but again, to each their own.

We then walked through the gates, which were the first to have the inscription "Arbeit Macht Frei" (work makes you free). The original entrance processing center is now a museum, which Keith showed us around. It included a map of all the large and subsidiary concentration camps in Europe. I was surprised to see several quite nearby Konstanz, including Friedrichshafen and Radolfzell. As a visitor, the Bodensee area has seemed to me to be somewhat untouched by the Holocaust and the legacies of World War II. After the museum, we saw the reconstructed barracks, then the different religious memorials. Then we were shown the crematoriums and gas chamber. Dachau was not an extermination camp but the gas chamber was used for experiments and for murders once the soldiers started having psychological problems from shooting people all the time. Finally, we saw the ironically beautiful and peaceful wooded area where the ashes of the thousands of burned bodies were found. Visiting Dachau was emotional. It was strange to be standing on a spot where so many terrible things happened-where 200,000 people were imprisoned and as many as 40,000 were murdered.

I think what shocked me most was Keith's description of some of the weird and inappropriate things he has seen as a tour guide. They included stories of Asian tourists doing their typical grinning V-sign photograph in front of the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign; a small girl climbing on a machine used for torturing prisoners and grinning while her mother took a picture; and a few teenagers taking photographs in sexual positions on top of the mass graves. I guess people can be pretty callous sometimes. I can't decide if I made the right decision, taking a tour. On one hand, I feel like I could have seen everything much faster on my own with an audioguide and then had the time to do something else that day--while the tour was advertised as beginning at 10, we did not get going until 11 and didn't get back until after 4, so I couldn't really do anything else with my day. On the other hand, our guide was really knowledgeable, the people on the tour were really nice, and it was nice not to have to do something as bleak as that alone. It was also good, I think, to really have the time to take in the experience and process what I was seeing.

My overall impressions of Munich and Bavaria are really positive. I really love traveling in Germany--I have now seen much more of it than of France, actually, particularly with the long train and car journeys. Germany is really a wonderful country. I think Americans have a bad association because of WW2, and it was never on my top list of places to visit, but I absolutely love it. The more I see, the more I want to see. And there is still so much! Hamburg, Frankfurt, more of Berlin & Potsdam, Dresden, Cologne, Stuttgart, Freiburg, Tübingen....the list could go on. I HIGHLY recommend it to people traveling through Europe. It really is a magical country with so much to see.

Idioms :-)

inside the Swiss chocolatier in town: it says "For some flowers speak the language of love; for others, chocolate feeds the flames!"

a better picture of the Rathaus-gorgeous building!

So before I leave for my Bavarian adventure on Monday, here's some pictures and idioms! My trip will be three days long: Day 1 in the city of Munich, Day 2 at Neuschwanstein Castle, and Day 3 at Dachau concentration camp in the morning and then more of the city in the evening. Thursday I'll be back to Konstanz for my last week and a half here! Next weekend is the Seenachstfest, the Konstanz summer festival, which should be fun. I can't believe it's almost time to come home!

more idioms I've recently learned from Harry Potter (I'm on page 210 and going strong!):

mit ihr wohl nicht gut Kirschen essen--with her you cannot eat good cherries (English equivalent: don't get on her bad side)

einen Blauen Brief--a blue letter (English equivalent: a pink slip)

aus dem Häuschen sein--to be over the little house (English equivalent: to be over the moon)

Heidelberg

a square in the old town of Heidelberg

inside the castle courtyard

view from the castle

Yesterday I went on a day trip to Heidelberg! Since Heidelberg is in the same Lander (the German version of a state) as Konstanz, Baden-Wuerttemberg, I was able to buy something called a Baden-Wuerttemberg Ticket. This ticket is 21 euros for one person or 29 euros for up to 5 people, and allows unlimited travel within that state for one day, starting at 9 am. Unfortunately it limits you to the slower regional trains, but that meant I got to take the Schwarzwaldbahn again! Of course, as I was leaving Konstanz a huge thunderstorm began, including pouring rain, but that cleared up somewhere in the Black Forest. It took about 4 hours all told to get to Heidelberg, and I only had a few hours before the last train that would get me back to Konstanz in time to take a bus back to my apartment. Heidelberg is pretty small, though, so a few hours was all I needed!

I started my visit with the Schloss Heidelberg. It's pretty far up a steep cliff (Heidelberg is situated on the cliffs over the Neckar River), so since I had limited time and it was 80 degrees out I decided to go with the Bergbahn--one of Germany's oldest cable cars, which carries you up the side of the cliff to the castle and even farther up! I got out at the castle. You could take a guided tour, which would have been cool, but I was really short on time and wanted to spend awhile in the old town, so I just wandered by myself. The castle is a mix of architectural styles and part of it is in ruins. Its first building was put up in the early 1400s, and it functioned as a castle for awhile, then later became a fort. The reason part of it is in ruins is due to a few wars in the area: the Thirty Years' War and the Palatine War of Succession. Apparently Goethe, the famous German author, used to like to wander around the park surrounding the castle. Since it's so high up, the castle has beautiful views of the Altstadt (old town) of Heidelberg. The castle also includes the Grosses Fass and the Kleines Fass--two GIGANTIC wine barrels. The Grosses Fass holds over 58,100 gallons of wine and had to be at least 30 feet high. It was huuuge.

After seeing the castle, I headed down a very steep, uneven path to the Altstadt (still wondering how I didn't fall and hurt myself) and decided to spend the remaining time before the train wandering around. The Altstadt is bigger than the one in Konstanz but still small, so I think I got a pretty comprehensive tour. There was the Heiliggeistkirche (Holy Ghost Church), a really pretty Gothic church, as well as the Jesuitskirche. The Hotel zum Ritter is one of the few buildings to survive from the Renaissance because of all the wars--it was really pretty. Heidelberg's university is really well known so I got to see some of the older university buildings as well. The adorable windy streets and shops and restaurants were really fun to see! There was even a tiny Hard Rock Cafe crammed in, as well as two Starbucks....ah, Westernization...but I did get iced cocoa from a more unique chocolate shop. Iced cocoa is really a concept we should import to America. I also got to check out the bridge across the river, and take pictures of the castle from below. Luckily, the weather held off! It was warm, humid, and cloudy, but it didn't rain (until I got back to Konstanz in the middle of a huge rainstorm, of course). Heidelberg was a really beautiful town! I wish I had gotten a little more time there, I would have liked to explore things at a slower pace, and check out nearby Mannheim as well. Another time!

In other news, I found out that Alessia and I accidentally wandered into Berlin's biggest prostitution district while we were making our long walk as a result of the metro closure. I thought the area looked somewhat sketchy, and there were a few younger women standing in doorways, but it was daytime and no one was bothering us, so I wasn't concerned. I looked it up when I got home and found out we were walking on a corner that is home to a huge brothel. I was telling the head of the PhD Welcome Center about it, and he laughed and said that it happens, since it's not that far from Potsdamer Platz and the tourist areas.

Berlin!

in front of the East Side Gallery, a section of the Berlin Wall turned into murals

the Reichstag

the Berliner Dom

the Brandenburger Tor

This weekend was my trip to Berlin with my friend Alessia! Berlin is a wonderful city and we had a great time--we didn't see nearly everything there is to see in two days, but it was a great weekend!

To get there, we chose the cheapest option for transportation--mitfahrgelegenheit. No, it's not gibberish, it's a German website that has been organizing carpools for the past 10 years. We found a ride going from St. Gallen, Switzerland (about an hour away) to Berlin for much less then the train or flying. I was a little worried about what basically amounted to a ride with a stranger, but I picked a driver who had 8 years of good reviews. It turned out that he was driving a minivan and had 4 other passengers riding to Berlin, all about my age, including two Swiss French boys, so we chatted in French for awhile. The ride took over 7 hours--we didn't get to Berlin til 12:30 am (left at 5). Jan, the driver, dropped us off at the S-Bahn, kind of like a subway that runs in a circle around Berlin, and we eventually found our hostel. We got to bed late Thursday night/Friday morning.

Friday morning we woke up excited to see the city! Unfortunately it was raining, but that's kind of just a hazard of travel, especially in Germany this summer...but our hostel was really centrally located so convenient to walk. We spent all of Friday in Mitte, the Berlin tourist attraction district. We started with Potsdamer Platz, Berlin's Times Square, and walked past the striking Memorial for Murdered Jews in Europe--it's really interesting to see and takes up a whole city block. Then we went to the famous Brandenburger Tor, which is really impressive and beautiful, and walked down Unter den Linden, Berlin's main tourist street--full of beautiful buildings, cathedrals, palaces, etc. We stopped at the Berliner Dom, which is a beautiful cathedral on the Musueminsel, or Museum Island. We didn't go to any museums there this time because I wanted to see as many things as possible, but Berlin has about a million museums.

We ate lunch at a delicious Italian restaurant and got warm for awhile (I had gnocchi in butter and sage sauce, mmm!) and then went on to Alexanderplatz, which has 3 landmarks: the TV Tower, a really tall building you can go up to the top of (we didn't because of the weather), Marienkirche (the 2nd oldest church in Berlin), and the Rotes Rathaus (red town hall). It was really pretty. Next up was Nikolaiviertel (Nicholas' quarter), an adorable little neighborhood with windy streets. Then on to the Deutscher and Franzoesischer Doms, two cathedrals facing each other, and to the Faussbender and Rauch chocolate store, where several Berlin landmarks are reproduced in chocolate. We were soaked by this time so we took a break in Dunkin Donuts (yes, I was excited to have a donut) for some hot cocoa. Our last stop of the day was the Neue Synagoge, which is modeled after the Alhambra and survived being burned in Kristallnacht.

Saturday, unfortunately, was also rainy. We hopped around the city a bit more instead of sticking to Mitte. Our first stop was the Reichstag, or German Parliament building. They had just made a new rule that you need a reservation to go inside, so we didn't go in, but the outside was beautiful! Next up was the East Side Gallery. This is the longest preserved stretch of the Berlin Wall, turned into a series of murals by various artists. Looking at all the different murals and reading the words was really cool! Next up was the Jewish Museum in Kreuzberg. It was really interesting and informative--the building was beautiful and the architecture inside was really interesting. We tried to go to the Schloss (Castle) Charlottenburg but unfortunately unannounced metro construction made it too hard to get there--next time! Instead we walked to the Gedaichtnis Kirche. It's a famous church nicknamed the "hollow tooth" because it was bombed during WWII and its spire was damaged. I was sad to find out that they were reconstructing the spire and had covered it up--the pictures looked so cool! Our final stop of the weekend was KaDeWe, the Berlin answer to Harrod's. It was really cool, plus they had a section of American groceries, which was exciting for me--I got to show Alessia all my favorite foods!

This morning we got up super early to take the train for 9 hours, and got home this afternoon....thoughts on Berlin as a whole: I really liked it! It reminded me of Paris in that it seemed that there was always more to see and do. I feel like there was a lot I didn't see. Two days barely scratched the surface. I was surprised at how few tourists there were, how early things closed, and how empty the city seemed in general. New York would have been super crowded on a weekend in July. Maybe the weather, or maybe everyone was on August vacation early? I liked the architecture a lot as well, and all the history in the city. I would love to go back. A lot of things in Berlin seem new or almost new--I guess it's all post-war and post-fall of the Wall. The Hauptbahnhof (main station) especially looked really futuristic.

Thoughts on Germany after seeing most of the country by car and train: I saw sooo many wind turbines and solar panels. I'm so impressed with Germany's alternative energy commitment. The Autobahn was not as scary as I expected. By train today, I got to see Frankfurt (looked a lot like New York, with all the skyscrapers) and the Black Forest (Schwarzwald--really scenic). Why is the Black Forest called the Black Forest, I wonder? Throughout the entire car and train rides it always seemed like there was a castle up on a hill somewhere not too far away. I think all of rural Germany is just full of castles.

So in other news, last week was pretty quiet except for a surprise visit from my friend Tony last weekend! He is stationed in Bavaria and drove over to see me before deploying to Afghanistan Monday. He probably won't have time to read this but good luck and stay safe!!!

I am about 110 pages into my German copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. It's teaching me so many new words! One new idiom: jemanden auf die Palme bringen: literally, drive someone up the palm tree, or in English, drive someone crazy!