Klimaanlage

One week from today, I will be boarding a plane for London, to begin the second part of my European adventure. Again, I don't know where the time has gone, and I feel not quite ready to say goodbye to Berlin.

I had my last German class on Tuesday and yesterday I wrote the exam. The exam was optional, and cost extra (seriously, the Goethe Institut must be rolling in it with their ridiculous tuition and on top of that these test fees), but I decided to do it mostly just to get some kind of closure from this course, and, hopefully, assuming I pass, a sense of accomplishment that I actually did learn some German here. I also decided to take the test because one never knows when an official certificate proving my successful completion of beginner's level German will come in useful. I hope to continue to take German courses back in Toronto. What's kind of crazy is that the next level, B1 (I completed level A2), is the minimum level of fluency that employers require here. Personally, I don't feel like another level would leave me with enough German to hold down a job here, but it's a bit comforting that Germans believe that!

Don't worry, Mom and Dad--I'm not planning on seeking out a job here in Germany. At least, not now. :)

Speaking of parents, mine are coming to visit me tomorrow! I'm in the midst of cleaning my apartment right now, haha, and am writing this post as a bit of a break. I tell you, I'm going to miss this little apartment a lot. It's served me very well over these last two months. If I could somehow transplant this place to Toronto, I'd sign a lease in a heartbeat.

The last couple of weeks here in Berlin have been busy, with the course winding down and what not. Last week, Berlin suffered a really gross heatwave, seeing the kinds of temperatures I thought I was escaping this summer by leaving Toronto behind. It got up to 40 degrees and was all kinds of nasty. Klimaanlage (this post's title) means "air conditioning." Frankly, it's surprising the Germans have a word for air conditioning, considering that most of them seem to really, really hate it. I think this is a European thing in general, and to be sure for the most part Northern Europe doesn't usually get so humid and hot in the summers so as to really need air conditioning. At any rate, I can only speak about Germans when I say that they are actually quite afraid of air conditioning. It has to do with some kind of old wive's tale about how fans and air conditioning can make you sick. It's proven to be a tenacious little superstition, and it's really quite ludicrous in a country that has nurtured some of the greatest minds and intellects in human history.

Most buildings don't have air conditioning here, but fortunately the Goethe Institut did install individual room units in each classroom (with all their money, it's the least they could do). Perhaps they were thinking of the sensibilities of their entirely non-German student body when they installed them. Certainly they weren't doing it for the teachers. Our teacher, Sandra, only reluctantly agreed to turn the Klimaanlage on, and even then, she asked us every ten minutes or so if she could turn it off. I started to sneeze because of my allergies, and she took it as a sign that I was getting sick. It freaked her out. In the end it was easier to just let her turn the thing off!

Germans are a funny people.

Because it was so hot, I didn't do much for that entire week except seek out places with air conditioning--these places included the mall at Alexanderplatz and the movie theatre at Potsdamer Platz, where we watched the new Superman movie.

Cooling off in the mall with some frozen yogurt with rhubarb sauce.

One day when it had finally cooled off a bit, I went for a Spaziergang (walk) in the Tiergarten, a huge park in the middle of Berlin. Its name means "animal park" because back in the day it was in fact outside of the city and served as the hunting grounds for the Prussian king. There are statues of hunting scenes and exotic animals that the Prussians shipped over from Africa for the king's hunting pleasure. Today, it's a pretty park with ponds and walking and running trails.

The Tiergarten, on a Sunday afternoon.

Fox hunting.

Some goddess of...victory? hunting?...giving some fierce side-eye.

Water lilies.

Detail from a monument honouring famous German composers, in the Tiergarten.

Last night we went out for dinner to celebrate finishing the German course. I have no pictures of dinner, but I did take a couple on my way. I decided to walk from my apartment to the restaurant, which was in Kreuzberg. It was about an hour's walk, and it led me through my old neighbourhood in Kreuzberg where I lived during my first Berlin sojourn! I got a little sentimental.

Adalbertstrasse 64! My old, communist apartment!

This park lies in what used to the be the no-man's land between the Wall. Just footsteps from my old apartment on Adalbertstrasse (located just on the east side of the Wall).

Kreuzberg buildings.

Oh, and on a completely random and unrelated note, this is for Luciana and my old co-workers who might be reading this blog, and who will appreciate this and understand what this is all about:

Esprit stores don't really exist in Canada anymore, but they're still quite popular over here! And look what I got!! :)

This post was a bit of a jumble, I'm sorry. I also need to write about my trip to Hamburg last weekend with Amy and Alex, but that's going to have to wait a while, I'm afraid. As mentioned, my parents are arriving tomorrow, and I'll be spending the next 10 days with them. We'll be flying off for London together next week and then they're spending a few days in England with me before returning to Toronto. Me, I'll stay in England for part two of my trip! Anyway, basically that all means that I'll be busy and likely won't be able to post anything for a couple weeks...

So! Let's finish off for now with a pretzel update:

From my favourite pretzel chain, Ditsch!

And another one!

BREZELN COUNT: 16

Part II: Berlin Besuch

After Paris, my friends came to visit me in Berlin for a few days. The title of this blog post means "Berlin visit." It got off, sadly, to a bit of a rocky start.

French people like to go on strikes, did you know that? My friends and I learned that first-hand, when French air traffic control workers suddenly went on strike on June 11th, grounding most flights out of Paris--including, of course, the one my friends were due to take to Berlin. (Incidentally, never fly Air Berlin. They literally have no customer service--their customer service number is to a pre-recorded message directing you back to their website. Seriously. Never fly with them.) I had flown out from Paris the night before, in order to arrive back in Berlin in time for my German class. The plan was for my friends to follow me the next evening, and then spend a good four or five days in Berlin together. With the sudden strike called to last for three days, however, their time in Berlin would have been cut quite short. Luckily, I have some pretty super friends, and they opted to take a 14-hour bus ride overnight from Paris to Berlin to minimise the disruption. In the end, we only lost a day and a half or so together in Berlin, which did alter our plans a bit, but it could have been worse.

My little studio apartment was pretty cramped with the four of us sharing it, but of course we spent most of our time out and about exploring the city. Time restrictions (I have the final exam for my German course tomorrow!) mean that the best I can do for now is a photoblog of the tour of Berlin I designed for my friends (not in chronological order).


The Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park:

The scale of this memorial, built after the war by the Soviet occupiers, is insane. It's all just so immense, and...very Soviet. Stark shapes and strong lines, and everywhere symbols of the triumph of the Hammer and Sickle over the Swastika.

The East Side Gallery and Berlin Wall:

The East Side Gallery, which I have mentioned in a previous post, way back when, is a 1.3-kilometre stretch of the Berlin Wall that has been famously painted with murals and has been left, more or less, intact. Of course, land is too valuable to just let lie empty, and lately there has been a lot of controversy in Berlin over plans to develop some of the no-man's land that used to run between the Wall, including the picturesque, riverside stretch by the East Side Gallery. I'm not sure where I stand on the issue. Instinctively, and as a historian, I'd want to say that of course they shouldn't build on that land. But there's so much land in this city that has strong associations with one dark period in German history or another that surely at some point one needs to simply plow doggedly onward. One simply cannot raze all of the buildings that once housed Nazi ministries, nor leave forever empty plots of land that once ran along the most infamous border in the world. It's just not practical, in the end.

In parts of Berlin, buildings have been repurposed--the water tower in Prenzlauer Berg, for instance, once served as an SA torture centre but now houses luxury apartments that are very much in demand. On the other hand, the Topography of Terror takes the opposite approach--this museum quite literally preserves the foundations of the Gestapo's headquarters and, along with them, the crimes that were dreamed up and carried out on that spot. Of course, many of these places are very important historical sites and they should be left intact, more or less, as they are. But in a city like Berlin, left ravaged by the 20th century, one runs the risk of immobilisation by constantly tiptoeing around history. It's a fine a balance, I suppose, that's needed. Overall, I think that Berlin has done a pretty good job with preserving the past while at the same time carving out a name for itself as a modern, cosmopolitan city. Invariably, dealing with the past is always going to be an issue here.

Berlin Zentrum:

We hit up most of the main tourist sites in the centre of Berlin, including the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag (FYI: there is no longer a "Reich" in Germany, but the building is still called the "Reichstag," while the institution of the parliament is known as the "Bundestag"), the Holocaust Memorial, etc.

All of the Birkenstocks:

All four of us have long loved these hippie, German sandals, and they go for nearly half-price here in the Vaterland. Hitting up multiple Birkenstock stores was therefore high on our agenda. I've been here for six weeks already, but have been waiting especially for these gals to arrive so we could buy our Birkenstocks together! We are a bit lame. But look at all those Birkenstocks! How could we resist?

And, finally, all of the eating:

Eating was a bit awkward for the four of us, because Robin and Tiff understandably wanted to try all of the German meat, but Lise has her own dietary restrictions and I'm, of course, a vegetarian. The result was that often we'd up going to two different places for dinner, one place after another, or we'd eat on the go at different places.

The place we came the closest to finding common ground was the Ritter Sports Schokowelt (literally, "chocolate world"), where we gorged ourselves on desserts and even made our own custom Ritter Sport bars!

Oh, also, let me catch you up on all of this:

BREZELN COUNT: 14

Part I: The City of Lights

Sorry for not posting for so long! It's been busy. All of a sudden, my two months in Berlin are nearly over and I have no idea what I've been doing for the past month and a half.

As noted in my previous post, I went to Paris! I met my old Artsci roommates there, and after a long weekend in Paris they came out to Berlin to visit me! It was one of those rare instances where someone mentioned a terrific idea in passing without thinking it will actually happen but then it really does. We dreamt this up months ago, and somehow, we all managed to find a week that worked for everyone and all the other pieces fell into place. 

Paris was super. Unlike most of my other trips in life, the pace was relaxed. We didn't try to cram a gazillion things into a handful of days. As a result, it actually was a relaxing holiday, and mostly was full of catching up with my friends whilst eating French pastries and walking around Paris. At the same time, though, I didn't get to see everything I had wanted to see, so a return trip to Paris may be in my future later this summer. We'll see how the cookie crumbles. There are so many cities to see...

So, I flew out to join Robin and Tiff in Paris two weeks ago, a Friday evening. The first thing we did together? This:

Parisian crepes.

We had a suitably late dinner of delicious crepes at 10pm, followed by a midnight walk along the Seine to see the Eiffel Tower. What we had thought would be an hour walk was in fact a two-hour walk, but it was a lovely walk--Paris on a beautiful summer's evening never sleeps. Throngs of people lined the river, drinking and eating early into the morning.

Midnight in Paris.

The Notre Dame.

We finally reached the Eiffel Tower at 1 am, and the park in front of the tower was still packed with people. I had started the day in Berlin by going to my German class as usual and ended it in front of a sparkling Eiffel Tower, reunited with two of my closest friends. Not too bad for a Friday.

Our first clear view of the Eiffel Tower, after two hours of catching tantalising glimpses of it. Paris is BIG, y'all. Also, we ended up eating a delicious lunch at that restaurant seen there on right a couple days later. More on that later...

Every hour on the hour at night, the Eiffel Tower sparkles like crazy. It's pretty gorgeous. This is the best my camera could do. I kinda love it.

We had rented an apartment in the east part of Paris through airbnb (my new favourite way to find accommodation, apparently, seeing as I've been to three cities on this trip so far--including Berlin--and have used airbnb on each occasion!). The apartment was small but renovated and quite suitable for our purposes, which was basically to have a place to eat breakfast and sleep. The next morning, Saturday, Lise arrived from Toronto and we were officially all roommates again, if only for a few days! And, of course, this time in Paris, not Hamilton, Ontario. We're moving up in the world.

View from our apartment.

Breakfast: baguette, brie and jam.

We were very lucky with the weather. It was sunny and hot our first full day together, the next day drizzly but refreshingly cooler, and the final day sunny and comfortably warm. On Saturday morning, the four of us headed out in the blazing sunshine to the Arc de Triomphe and then hit up Paris' famous Ladurée patisserie for some serious macaron action!

My Mr. Sub girls! (We rented an apartment together in Hamilton during our undergrad that was above a Mr. Sub.)

Underneath the Arc.

Along the Champs-Élysées.

Ladurée.

Heaven.

We didn't try any of these pastries, but my goodness weren't they pretty.

I tried two macarons--pictured here is the vanilla one. There was also a salted caramel one that didn't make it long enough to appear in this picture.

Oh, did I mention that we also bought pains-au-chocolat? Did I also mention that I definitely gained a couple pounds over the course of my weekend in Paris?

Fueled up on sugar, we then headed to the Marais neighbourhood for some (somewhat affordable) boutique shopping! It was a pretty Parisian neighbourhood, the kind I imagined I'd wander, so I was pretty trigger happy with my camera. Here's a selection of photos:

The history nerd in me was very excited when we happened to pass by the National Archives:

For dinner after a long day of wandering Paris in the June heat, we hit up Tien Hiang, a little, tucked-away vegetarian Chinese restaurant that came highly recommended by my brother and sister-in-law. And it was certainly delicious! My photos of the food didn't turn out so well, but here:

Appetizers: Fried tofu and some kind of pakora-like things.

My entrée: "poulet" (fake, of course!) and veggies in a delicious hoisin and soya sauce.

We started off the next morning with a pastry pick-me up at a busy bakery we walked past, and I had what amounted to the best croissant of my life thus far:

We opted to just go to the Louvre, rather than in it. I asked some German tourists to take our picture and successfully carried on a short conversation with them that left me with a high for quite some time afterwards.

We then headed off for lunch at a fancy French restaurant at the foot (ish) of the Eiffel Tower. We opted for lunch instead of dinner, thinking it might be a bit cheaper and that it would be more acceptable for us to show up to lunch in our jeans and rain jackets. It was a cute, tiny little restaurant with only the owner, a waitress and the single chef. The chef balked a little at my request for a vegetarian entrée (there was, of course, none on the menu) but fortunately the restaurant was empty when we arrived and I suppose he was feeling up to a challenge. Also, contrary to stereotyped expectations, the French chef, restaurant owner and waitress were all very friendly and helpful! It was a delicious meal, a decadent one I'm glad we treated ourselves to.

Heading to the restaurant.

How close we were.

The cute restaurant.

Not my soup. Robin and Tiff shared it as an appetizer. Cold cucumber soup with escargot.

My lunch. A fancy schmancy vegetable plate. Delicious.

My dessert! Another salted caramel macaron. Even better than Ladurée's!

After dinner we were feeling drowsily satisfied and wanted the luxuriating to continue--so we wandered in search of a salon where we could get pedicures, because really, what else should four women do in Paris after having a wonderful lunch? Problem was, it was a Sunday and, like in Germany, most things close down in France on Sundays. Stupid traditional Europe. So we found plenty of closed nail salons, and when we finally found one that was open, they of course had no space for the four of us. We made an appointment to return the next day, and spent the rest of the day wandering Paris in the rain. Dinner was one of the most amazing falafels I've ever had, at Paris' famous L'as du Fallafel.

It's hard eating a falafel while standing outside in the rain. Here are some of Tiff's casualties.

The next morning, Monday, was my last day in Paris--I was due on a flight heading out at 7pm--and also Robin's birthday! We got an early-ish start and headed directly for the Arc de Triomphe. We had gone on Saturday, but this time had plans to climb to the top to take in some views of Paris. It was touristy and crowded but oh so worth it:

We had a very French breakfast at a café (baguette with butter and jam) and then hit up the spa for our pedicures!

The birthday girl getting pampered. Parisian birthdays are the worst. (Sorry, Robin, but I couldn't resist!)

Sadly, I couldn't linger too long at the spa because I had to head back to the apartment to pack up and head to the airport for my flight back to Berlin. The others were to fly out the following evening to spend several days in Berlin with me.

One more for the road? Sure!

Charles De Galle.

They had a little store right at the airport, right by my gate! What was I to do?? Here, vanilla again and also strawberry candy/

Part two--my old roommates' visit to Berlin--will follow...eventually. And then of course I need to catch you up on this past week. But it may be another while between posts, I'm afraid. Tomorrow I'm heading to Hamburg with Amy and Alex.

So for now...à bientôt!