Hello Everybody. It's time for another update.
We are on a train headed for Prague after 2ish fun days in Berlin.
Berlin is the home city of our recently wedded friends, Brian and Claudia. They put us up for three nights in the living room of their new apartment on WarschauerStrasse (Warsau Street) - a bustling street in East Berlin. There is scarcely an un-graffitied surface in East Berlin. Every wall and every window of every street level store or apartment building is covered. Brian said sometimes people paint over the graffiti, but it just gets graffitied again as soon as the paint dries, so most people have given up the fight. Berlin has the most well-behaved dogs we've ever seen! They're everywhere and they don't wear leashes, they just follow their humans wherever they go.
On Tuesday, Brian showed us around his quaint-yet-busy neighborhood. We also walked over the Oberbaumbruecke, an old bridge that used to be closed because of the wall. Then we took a stroll down the longest stretch of the old Berlin Wall that still stands, called the East Side Gallery. It is covered by gigantic, beautiful paintings, and of course graffiti. We also walked through the Brandenburger Tor, one of the most famous symbols of Berlin.
A few years ago, in school, Thayer read about the building of the Holocaust Monument. In Berlin, we got to see it, and it was a pretty intense experience. It is a huge uneven plot of cement holding rows and rows of rectangular cement blocks (reminiscent of graves or smokestacks, perhaps) in sizes ranging from flush with the ground to fifteen feet tall. The shorter blocks are around the edge of the monument, so as you walk toward the center, you seem to be walking down, down, down, and the blocks get higher and higher and higher until you feel completely overwhelmed by the scope of the monument and the weight of knowing what it is for. The name of the monument is Denkmal fur die Ermordeten Juden Europas - Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Europe. A must-see if you ever go to Berlin.
Yesterday, Thayer and I went to Treptower Park and saw the (also giant) Soviet Monument, dedicated to the soldiers of the Red Army who died between 1941 and 1945. Those Germans sure know how to say Thank You.
It was really nice to be staying with friends for the last few days. Most of the time we will be on our own, so we really enjoyed spending some quality time with Brian and Claudia and getting to know some of their friends.
Current favorite memory:
Drinking wine with Brian, Claudia, and their friends Anna, Sandra, and Mathias. Thayer and Brian in heated discussion over organized religion, Claudia and Hayley reminiscing about Catholic upbringing and the joy of Christmas in a Catholic church. Inevitably, Hayley and Claudia break in to Stille Nacht (Silent Night, the only German song that Hayley knows) and try to drown out the rest of the conversation.
Poll time
It's a long trip from Prague to our next stop in Switzerland, so we want to break it up by stopping in either Vienna or Salzberg for one day and night. Which one should we go to and what should we see---- I cannot find a question mark on the keyboard, so you don§t get one.
It§s been great hearing from you guys. We will send another note out as soon as we can.
Cheers
Hayley and Thayer
Memorable trip quote:
(Brian's friend Rafael telling story about a man who ate a Snickers and drank a Coke every day, and then sued Snickers and Coca Cola for giving him diabetes...)
Tanner= "What are they supposed to do, put a disclaimer on Snickers that says WARNING, THIS IS NOT A BANANA"?
Please note the immense effort it took us to edit this because of the keyboard differences, and symbols like +ìšèáøužéíáý§ù.
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