Berlin

Bags packed and ready, Chance out of school, and Ryan done with work for the day.....we ate dinner at home, got pretty much ready for bed and then headed for the train station Friday night for a sleep on the train. Last time we took a sleeper car was on our honeymoon in Spain and although somewhat traumatic for other reasons, we do remember the room having a decent amount of space.....you know, a 2-3 feet walkway along side the bunk bed. "Hmmm" was the first words out of me and Ryan's mouth as we saw the room we were supposed to spend the next 12 hours in. There was a bunk bed and....enough room for one person to stand. Yes, STAND, not sit. 2 people standing was next to impossible....and 3 of us in there with luggage? It was interesting nonetheless. Chance and I shared a bunk and didn't get the best nights sleep but we awoke in another city without the hustle and bustle of getting to and fro an airport.

Berlin was fantastic. A history lesson for sure. It was to me a reminder of war, and was a clear example of the aftermath's of war. Very interesting. Everywhere you went there was a mix of the old and new. Of course during WW2 the city was bombed all to hell and so there wasn't too much left of the old stuff. In the east part especially it seemed as if they were still recouping....and I had to keep telling myself it had only been less than 20 years since the wall fell. Everywhere was empty building sites, as if they still hadn't done anything with some of the empty spaces left from the bombing. Our friend Stirling described it perfectly "I kind of feel WWII, the cold war, and the New Europe all in one place..."

We saw the interesting contrast of street lights in the east and west parts of Berlin. In the east they still had the old lights from the Soviet days with the little man wearing a hat. I googled this and all I could find was "The East Berlin Ampelmann was created in 1961 by traffic psychologist Karl Peglau. He theorized that people would respond better to the traffic signals if they were presented by a friendly character, instead of meaningless coloured lights." I thought it might have to do something with something political, but who knows.
The contrast between East and West was striking. We strolled thru a west neighborhood, basically the center of the old west and it was very vibrant, colorful, charming and full of life. The east was so repressed and still shows it a bit.
My favorite building was the old church in the west. A reminder of war and how when you drop bombs, you ruin beautiful buildings. This church was never refurbished or recreated, it stands as a reminder. I really liked it.

So 2 days in Berlin we walked the whole city. We tried to take a "third reich" tour to learn about Nazi Berlin, but after 2 hours of listening to some old British guy ramble on about nothing, we made up some excuse and got outta there! Walking the old wall and reading about the Nazi history on the signs near it was much more worth our time.
I did feel a little bad for Chance this past weekend. He was so excited to go to Berlin, was telling everyone about it at school on Friday and couldn't wait to get on the train to go. He was also excited to hear that we'd be taking his stroller. Little did he know he'd spend the entire 2 days in the stroller being wheeled around to very boring places for a child. Lucky him he got to play his gameboy the whole time, so basically he'll remember nothing about the place!
Sunday night it was long wait to catch our train back to awake in Zurich Monday morning! Lots of Berlin pics in the Picture Column.