I am hearing way more English than I expected to. I wasn’t aware until I got here how strong the dollar is against the Euro. Americans are taking advantage and are in Berlin! I’m sad to report, however, that a lot of them don’t seem to be trying to speak German at all, at least not within my earshot. That makes me sad. Yes, I have a near-fluent German speaker with me, but I also try German first when interacting with the people we speak to.
Today started about 6:30 am for me. I’m happy to report I did not hear the tram through my earplugs. Yay! I got up and Mom was still asleep so I sat at the desk and powered up my ipad and sent a WhatsApp to Kenji. Hmmm… it didn’t seem to go through. So I sent a message request through Messenger and we chatted for a bit there as he and Leo were winding down their day back home. After rebooting my phone connectivity to WhatsApp returned. Phew! Mom got up and showered and we both got dressed and set out to find the restaurant we decided on last night for breakfast today. Now, which direction was it? What side of the street was it on? Was it down the side street? It had an A-frame chalkboard menu. Let’s look for that. Let’s walk and we’ll remember it when we see it. Fat chance. We walked up and down all the streets we thought it was on for 30 mins. We didn’t find the fruhstuck (breakfast) place that was the one we wanted. So we found a suitable replacement. After waiting a while for a table outside we settled for a shared common table inside. We found a couple of items we agreed to share. Mom had dark bread toast with guacamole, a poached egg and alfalfa sprouts with a salad. I had a yogurt bowl with granola and berries. Yum! I seriously need to start making these at home. I eat it frequently when I’m traveling. Too bad berries are so expensive and leave a huge carbon footprint. We chatted with a young couple we shared a long common table with and they had been in Berlin for 4 days and were on their way to the Czech Republic for 3 days before heading back to Saudi Arabia. She works for Price Waterhouse and he’s in a PhD program for climate studies. She’s a native of Saudi Arabia and he’s Ecuadorian.
Returning to the hotel to put on shorts and leave our sweaters there (it was chilly when we left for breakfast) we were on the side of the street as our hotel, about a block away, when we spotted a familiar A-frame chalkboard on the other side of the street. Was it the right one??? We crossed the still slightly sleepy street and indeed, it was! Ok! Mark the spot! What’s it called? Why didn’t we see it earlier? Looking at the side of the street we had been on, we both noticed a statue of an elephant that had taken our attention away from looking across the street at that moment. *sigh*. Ok. Tomorrow.
After changing into our clothes for the day’s walking tour around Prenzlauer Berg, the neighborhood we’re staying in, we set out. We agreed that while we were following Rick Steves’ recommended walking tour, and he suggests it’s a 90 min. walk, we didn’t have anything else on the schedule today and we’d take our time. 6 hours later… no joke. We saw historic architecture, water towers on a hill (berg, hence the name of the neighborhood), Germany’s oldest synagogue, home and statue of Kathë Kollwitz (a local printer and sculptor), a gargoyle water hole that apparently lots of folks parking their car in front of fail to judge how far it sticks out into the slot as there is glass on the ground as evidence, and we finally made our way to the DDR (GDR to us, East Germany) Museum. There we were instructed on how to use the free audio guide in English on our smartphones, which we did.
We spent 2+ hours learning about life in East German after the Soviet Union occupied it after WWII. It was a well curated glimpse into a dismal life of near-constant food insecurity, knowing you’re being watched and listened to and not daring to speak out for fear of certain death and how the citizens managed to exist under the scrutiny of the Soviets and how every aspect of their lives were controlled and formed around what was best for the regime. It was especially sobering to see the videos that were shown go from black & white to color and to see the women in the stores in the 1980’s with similar hairstyles to what I was wearing then and realize that this hateful way of treating people was not all that long ago. Those who do not learn from our history are doomed to repeat it. I’m looking at you, Critical Race Theory fear-mongerers and book banning folks!
By now my feet hurt and I was eager to return to the hotel to put them up, but as we headed that way we realized we were going to pass Rick’s suggestion of the oldest Currywurst stand in Berlin, Konnopke’s Imbiss, under the U-bahn bridge. It was definitely time for a snack! Mom ordered 2 currywurst and 1 small pommes (fries) with a bottle of apple-rhubarb soda, just to be fun and try. Currywurst is street food, so we stood up and ate, as is tradition. It was yummy, but for me, it could’ve had more curry sprinkled on top. The pommes were tasty and well fried. Mom got both ketchup and mayo for us to dip in. She has decided, prior to today, perhaps in Belgium on her most recent Rick Steves tour, that she’ll not use ketchup for fries anymore, that she likes mayo on them. I decided to try it and didn’t hate it as much as I thought I would. Perhaps German mayo is better than American mayo.
We walked back to the hotel and I got to put my feet up finally. About an hour later we decided to head out for dinner and had already decided to go to Prager’s Biergarten, Berlin’s oldest Biergarten. It was lively and had a large seating area, as you would expect a Biergarten to. We investigated the walk-up counter and they were only serving sausages on a roll or meatballs on a roll. We were wanting something else, like schnitzel. So we went to the “formal” sit down restaurant in the garden and shared a schnitzel, which came with potato salad and a cucumber salad, as well as chilled cucumber soup. Both were schmecked lecker (pronounced sh-meck leck-ah, definition - delicious)! We also ordered Berliner Weisse. This time they came in individual bottles and the server told Mom that if they were too tart she could give us some syrup, which they were and she did. She brought us each a shot glass of syrup which improved the drink a lot!
After paying we walked back to the hotel, changed into jammies and I wrote today’s blog while Mom emailed the airport hotel we’ll be staying in the night before we fly home to ask a couple of questions then she started to write her blog.
Today was a journey of learning about uncomfortable pasts, but knowing that knowing the history of what happened and why is important, as well as learning about and celebrating our present.
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