Berlin and home again

After Dresden, it rained, so on our first evening in Berlin, we had an abbreviated tour of the neighborhood. Afterward, Jim and I wandered and found a vaguely French restaurant, where I had ‘Flammkuche’. Who knew, this rectangular, pizza-like dish: thinly rolled dough covered with white sauce and toppings, is Germanic. According to Wikipedia, it is, specifically, from “Alsace, Baden-Württemberg and Rheinland-Pfalz region. (northeast France, south Germany).” It was ‘lecker’.

Next morning, we took the U Bahn (subway) to central Berlin for a tour. The tour guide was excellent, but I never bonded with the city.

We had to detour around a church where Angela Merkel and other dignitaries were attending a service in honor of “Unification Day”. On October 3, 1990, just ten months after the precipitous fall of the Berlin Wall, the former East and West Germanys reunited. Berlin became the unified capital as it had been before the partition in 1945.

We had the afternoon to ourselves and our first act was to touch the column of the Brandenburg Gate. It is so named because it leads to the city of Brandenburg, made famous by Johann Sebastian Bach’s six concerti. Here's number three. Since the gate was in Soviet-controlled East Berlin from 1945 to 1989, I never imagined I would actual touch the iconic gateway.

We spent quite a bit of time at an outdoor exhibit about the rise of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi). It is chilling to follow the timeline and realize how quickly they built an efficient and effective political machine and dismantled civil liberties. Within weeks of gaining power, dissidents were being systematically arrested, tortured, and often murdered.

For our last evening, we went to supper with our tour group, all 26 of us seated at a long wooden table in a noisy restaurant called ‘3 Schwestern’ (Three Sisters). As our guide, Caroline, predicted, where twelve days before we had been complete strangers, we were now all friends. It was a delightful evening. I think Caroline was hoping for some nightlife by herself, but she sensed our collective panic at the idea of finding our way back to the hotel without her (none of us had come near to mastering the public transit system), and agreed to lead her ‘ducklings’ home once more.

Next morning, Jim and I arose early, took a street car to an express bus to Tegel Airport. I won’t bore you with the frustrating  details, but we were ‘bumped’ from our flight and spent an anxious time wondering when we'd get home. British Airways took pity on us and their seats were more comfort than those on our outbound flight.

Now we’ve been home five days. Today we were trying to remember each of our hotel rooms. The memories are already fading. I wish I’d taken pictures of each one; it would be so satisfying to have a memory aid.

I so enjoyed practicing my German. I tried to decipher each billboard and sign. Jim said I noticeably improved as the time went on. Returning home, I’ve decided to continue studying German for the next six months and then evaluate. It’s not as practical as Spanish, which is one big reason I haven’t kept it up since college. But it has given me such pleasure and satisfaction to study and improve. I love the German language. And with my German heritage, it could be useful in family history.