Category Archives: Berlin
Day 5 – Guben to Mücke
Travel Day
We were going to be riding the train for a long time. We had to travel from Guben to Mücke where Dirk’s friend Darius (Günni) lives. Mücke is a little south of Marburg, the city where Dirk was going to be living while at the university. This was my first time on a German train, but it wasn’t going to be the last. I had heard that the train system in Europe, and especially Germany, was very efficient and dependable. I had to activate my rail pass which would serve me for the month I was traveling. Dirk’s father drove us to the Guben train station and helped us figure out what we needed to do. Dirk translated to the woman at the ticket booth, and with only a few minutes to spare, I got my pass stamped and hopped on the train.
The Train Ride
The train took us back through Berlin and then headed on the long journey to Mücke. Dirk and I watched some of the videos from my video blog that I had put on a dvd for him. The German scenery was very nice. I was surprised how a country that is so small compared to the U.S. could have so much farmland. They must do a good job at preventing urban sprawl. I also noticed that the farms in Germany are not your normal American-style farms of giant square fields. These farms followed the shape of the land more. Their borders were not straight lines, it was much more aesthetically pleasing to watch pass by at such a high speed. We were riding the ICE (inter city express) which traveled much faster than any train that I have ever been on before. An American traveling to Switzerland to visit his daughter. I talked to him about my trip, about videoblogging, and the differences we noticed between our cultures. 
After a few hours of travel, we made a few transfers and then ended up on our final train. I listened to my brothers iPod as the final train clicked down the track towards Mücke.
The Arrival
We arrived at the small station and were immediately greeted by Dirk’s friends from the Dunenhoff. It was like a little reunion after a month of separation. His friends all came together to see each other again in Mücke and to meet me. Two of them would be living in the apartment where we were going to stay in Marburg. A mixture of English and German flew through the air as we walked to the grocery store with our backpacks in a shopping cart. We walked through the isles of the store while we talked and laughed. 
I still managed to be surprised by interesting German food products and followed Dirk’s friends as they looked for whatever it was they needed to buy. But this was no ordinary grocery store; this store had two floors. I had never seen a two-story grocery store, but the other people acted like it was a normal thing, so I just followed along. The upstairs had some clothes, plants, gifts, and Halloween decorations. Immediately Günni and Dirk ran to one corner of the second floor. They dove into a small pool of plastic balls. I looked around nervously expecting to be chided by someone in German, but no one came, so I too jumped in. It must have been a common practice for store patrons. After a while of swimming in the balls, we left the store and started walking to Günni’s house. The town was pretty nice, It felt more rural and peaceful. I was excited to spend the night there.
Settling In
All the friends kind of settled in and went their separate ways. We all stayed on the top floor of what I guess was Günni’s families apartment building (I think the family that lived in the apartment we stayed were out of town or something). I got an opportunity to check my email and talk to some people on instant messenger while Dirk and Günni Spoke in German behind me. They went off talking, so I went upstairs to hang out with Michi and Jacob. We sat down to dinner and talked about school and how to figure out our futures. Both of them spoke English very well and were kind enough to have an extended conversation with me over dinner. Dirk and Gunni came back, so I let all the German-folk hang out and talk in their native tongue while I talked to people online, updated my blog and tried to get used to the messed up keyboard. When I returned back upstairs, they were all watching some German comedy show on dirk’s computer. I felt a little left out since I couldn’t understand what was being said, but I figured that Dirk and I would have plenty of time to chat in English later in our trip. After a couple of hours, we all decided to go to bed, since we had to be up early in the morning to catch our train. We slipped into our sleeping bags, prayed, and went to sleep.
Google Earth Placemarks for Day 5: 
Open this map
Day 3 – Berlin, Cottbus, Guben
Morning in Berlin
We woke up in the morning and knew we had nothing really planned. We took it easy and packed up our things. Dirk and I grabbed a basket and headed to Aldi. (yes they Aldi is actually a German store, but there they have two branches, Aldi north, and Aldi South.) Aldi was pretty much the same as in America except that all the products were German. We got some potatoes, quark, and the best yogurt I have ever eaten (a custardy kiwi apple). I did not know what quark was, but supposedly it was quite german, and quite good. We went back to the parsnage and met up with Bise and Robert. We boiled the potatoes and mashed them together with the quark. It was like herb flavored sour cream, but different. After further research, I discovered 
that it is curd cheese and the kind we bought had more whey than traditional quark. I’m not sure if you can get it in The United States, but I wish it was more common because it was delicious. After finishing our lunch, we packed up our things, said goodbye to Bise and Robert, and headed for Guben
Some Quick Stops Along the Way
We stopped by the home of Dirk’s friend Mechthild in Werben. We said a quick hello and went on our way to Annett’s apartment in Cottbus. Anett, Dirk’s sister is the whole reason this trip happened. I met her about 3.5 years before I visited Germany. It was good to see a familiar face and to speak a familiar language. She was studying to be a nurse as was her roommate. The four of us decided to go to the town center and maybe do some shopping. I had my second H&M experience of the trip. I love the cool clothes, the low prices, the right sizes. I bought a few pairs of boxers and then met back up with the girls. It was raining, and we were planning on eating dinner in Guben so we headed out again.
1,000 Year Old Tree
We drove through the country and then dirk and Annett started talking about some tree. I wasn’t sure what was going on but I followed along. We turned down a small street and then parked outside a house in the town of Bärenklau. In the yard next to the house was a thick gnarled tree with a sign on it. Half of the tree was dead but it was still quite impressive. Dirk said it was a one thousand year old tree. I had no idea what the sign said but I believe it was something roughly like this: “I have been here for a very long time. I have lived through good times and wars. I have been hit by lightning but still survive. When I am gone put another tree in my place so it can grow for another 1,000 years. At least that is what I think I remember it saying. Maybe someone will translate the sign for me someday.
A Night in Guben
We arrived in Guben and I was finally able to meet the rest of the Shneider family (except for Dirk’s older brother). After dropping off Annette’s roommate, we headed to his childhood home. His parents and younger siblings lived in an apartment building that was typical to East Germany. 
His mother greeted us with hugs and minimal English. I was fine with his family not being able to speak with me, it was however a challenge. Dirk’s father was not yet home from work, but that did not stop dirk’s mother from sitting us down to a nice afternoon desert. I showed the family some of my videos that I brought on a DVD, and spoke through Annett and Dirk. A friend of the family was throwing some sort of party, so Dirk and Anette decided to make an appearance and eat some dinner. We sat at a small table with the father of the family. For the most part I quietly ate my delicious German home-cooking while Dirk spoke about computers and technology in German. After a few hours of not understanding a single word, I was glad to leave. We brought Annette to the train station and made it just in time. 
After that, Dirk had to put some gas into his parents car that we had been using the past three days, so of course, we went into Poland. I guess gas is cheaper in Poland and since it was just a drive over the river, it was no problem to get it there. The border police stamped my passport and gave me a funny look (I imagine that not many Americans come to Guben on a regular basis). We crossed back into Germany at a different border crossing, so I got an additional stamp in my passport! Dirk stopped and showed me a cool overlook area to watch the sunset. Our time there was abruptly interrupted by Dirk dropping his keys into the tall grass. But that is all explained in the video. We headed back to Dirk’s home, I checked my email, made my first blog post for the trip and then got ready for bed. We retired to our bunkbeds, prayed, and went to sleep.
Google Earth Placemarks for Day 3: Open this map
Feel free to translate: 
Confused and Tipsy
Germans like beer. Germans like to speak German. I do like to drink beer (I am still learning to appreciate it fully) and I have no freaking idea what everyone is saying. (p.s. the Z and Y are switched on computers here and it is a real pain in the ass.)
I am very happy that my friend here speaks good english, but sometimes he gets sick of speaking in a foreign tongue (rightly so) so I just sit there quietly grinning as he has conversations that sound like “blooben gleeben showstuh foop.” It was really strange watching Austin Powers 3 dubbed in German last night while everyone around me spoke words I didn’t know.
In other news, I have seen things such as the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, along with some other famous things. We headed over to Potsdam yesterday to visit San Soucci, a really big palace, and a bunch of other mansions. It was very very beautiful! (pictures will come when i figure out how to get them on this darn PC.)
So finally, we are now in Guben where I met Dirk’s family. They don’t speak English, so everything I said went through translation by Dirk and his older sister who was there for the day. I found that video and photo’s do a lot better at communicating that words do.
Tomorrow I will make chocolate chip cookies (I brought the ingredients from America) and try to rent a German movie with English subtitles…All in all, everyone is very friendly and welcoming. Hoever, I am surprised that most people don’t really seem to care that I am from America. I thought that I would get the same reaction from people here that I give to foreigners in my friends houses. (lots of questions and try to speak their language) but I guess Americans are not that foreign of a thing here, they listen to our music, watch our movies, and have their own formed opinions of us. Either way, I did get a kick out of Dirk’s 7 year old brother and 10 year old sister looking at me and laughing as though I was some sort of animal in the zoo.
We will be in Guben one more night and then off to Marburg to meet with some of Dirk’s friends. I am having a very good time and slowly getting used to not understanding what anyone is saying. (my first German phrase that I learned was “I do not speak German, Sorry.”
Lesson to learn from this experience thus far: Learn some of the language before you go to a foreign country!
Day 2 – Berlin, Potsdam
First Morning in Berlin
We woke up and had a slow morning. The English service at the church started around noon so we had plenty of time to eat breakfast and get ready. The shower in the parsonage was very tiny. In addition to being tiny, the floor was tilted and the showerhead was not affixed to the wall. I was a little bit worried that all showers for the rest of the month were going to involve me constantly slipping and washing separately from rinsing. The whole time getting ready, I looked wide-eyed at the European bathroom fixtures. That was probably the prominent way that I could tell I was in Europe.
Dirk and I went for a walk through the neighborhood before church started. The whole area had a feeling of familiarity. For some reason I had this thought that since I was in Germany, that everything was going to be different. But in actuality, the trees were the same. People looked the same. The houses looked a bit different, but nothing all that striking. Maybe it was just my state of mind, but even though things didn’t look all that different, they felt different. I was still on my “I’m actually in Germany” high.
I was excited that the church (International Baptist Church) offered a service in English. The people attending were a mixture of tourists, Americans working in Berlin, and people who just liked the language. The songs we sang were mostly new to me. Some were in English and some were in German. There were two pastors, one was African and one was American. The American Pastor preached a sermon about truth. He talked about how God is truth and God is in all things, therefore truth can be found in all things. It was a good sermon and it it was good to hear some English after a few days of hearing mainly German.
Off to Potsdam
After church, we made a quick trip to the ATM and to a nearby backpacking store to pick up some things for the rest of our trip. It was a pretty nice store. Dirk bought some hiking socks and a new thermarest sleeping pad. I bought a new backpacking stove, fuel and a sleeping pad for the trip. We were set for future backpacking adventures.
Dirk, being my personal tour guide, said that since we were close to Potsdam, we should go for a visit. Dirk said there was some sort of cool palace there, so I gladly accepted the idea and off we went.
It was drizzling slightly, but that didn’t stop people on the autobahn from driving quite fast. I was amazed at the condition of the highway. There were no billboards, everyone drove correctly, and there were no speed limits. I guess Germans are better drivers than Americans, after all you have to go through a lot more to get your license (including over 1,000 dollars just to get one). We arrived in Potsdam and followed the signs to Schloss Sanssouci.
Sanssouci
A rhino hung In the square near the parking garage. Of course it was a sculpture, not a real rhino, but it was quite life-like and strange nevertheless. We walked on through some gates and down a nice walkway through lines of trees. When we turned the corner, there it was: a magnificent view of the palace. It sat atop a series of terraced gardens. The palace and the gardens were built by Frederick the Great around 1750. Tourists milled around as the giant fountain sprayed high into the air. We walked up to the palace but found out that, like most things in life, you had to pay. It being only the beginning of the trip, and us being poor college students, we opted to just look through the windows and carry on. The palace was actually somewhat small compared to the impressiveness of the gardens. In the distance we saw a windmill and decided to walk to it. We walked through more archways, past a man playing a flute and up to the windmill. Again we had to pay to go up in it, so we went on our way.
I hadn’t realized that Sanssouci was more than just a palace and gardens. It was a giant plantation with numerous palaces and buildings on the grounds. We walked past more fountains and took some great photos from the top of the orangerie. We decided to actually pay the few euros to walk inside one of the palaces (We made sure that it was one of the more impressive ones). We had to put on these big felt slippers so our shoes didn’t mess up the uber-fancy floors. I couldn’t believe the ornate furniture, the stone sculptures and the beautiful paintings that adorned each room. I can’t imagine that people actually felt comfortable hanging out in places like that. Everything was built to impress not to be comfortable. We kept walking the grounds through gardens, and past more impressive buildings. After a few hours of doing that, we had our fill of fanciness and decided to head back.
The weather continued to be a mix of sun and clouds. We encountered two interesting things on our walk out of the grounds. The first was what appeared to be little wood figures standing under a tree. They looked similar to garden gnomes from far away but upon closer inspection I discovered that they were coming from the tree itself. It looked like the roots were coming up through the ground but had been routinely cut off at a certain height. I had never seen anything like it before. The second thing was an older German man. He was nothing special, but it was what he did that was so special. As he walked passed us he asked me a question in German. Now you might be saying “so what, you are in Germany, of course they are going to talk in german.” But to me it was an honor. To me, it meant that I looked like a local. I looked European, not an obnoxious American tourist.
A Night in Berlin
We headed back to Berlin and met up with Bise and Robert. They were going to a friends house and we tagged along. We stopped for my second Doner of the trip (oh so delicious). The guy’s friend’s apartment was actually pretty cool. It had a few bedrooms and the kitchen/living room had very high ceilings. We sat around, drinking beer and chatting (mostly them in German). Then the movie came on: Austin Powers 3, Goldmember. It was on television with only a few commercial breaks. The strangest thing was seeing an American movie dubbed into German. The Character Frau was no longer the only German character (but the guys said that she had a different German accent then the rest of the characters). After the movie we headed back to the Parsonage, drank some beer, prayed and turned in for the night.
Video from this day posted at Stone Farm:
Google Earth Placemarks for Day 2: Open this map
Day 1 – Berlin
Getting There
I had never flown overseas before. I have, however, taken an extremely long flight to Anchorage, Alaska which lasted almost as long as a flight across the Atlantic. I love flying so I was not worried one bit. Of course I did have a layover in Brussels, but I figured that airports are usually pretty easy to figure out and cater to international travelers pretty well. I booked my tickets on Orbitz and got a round trip flight from Chicago to Berlin and back for $697.77. I Couldn’t believe that I was going on a month long trip so far away form home, but I was unbelievably excited. The more outrageous thing was that I was spending every day of this month with someone who I had only met in person for a total of 3 hours!
Anyway, so my flight left at 5:40 on August 5. It was an overnight flight and I would be arriving in Germany at 11:05. From Chicago to Brussels, I sat next to a woman who was from Belgium. She, her husband and their two children were coming home from a long vacation in the Southwest states like Utah, Arizona and then some of California. They traveled all over to see the sites. She said that they took these kinds of trips fairly often and have been all over the world. I was jealous that their employers let them take a good month off to see the world. We talked here and there as we flew through the darkness over the ocean. I arrived in Brussels around 8:45, walked through a number of empty hallways, and ended up in the most spacious Airport Terminal I have ever seen. It was just one big metal arch, much more spacious than was needed, but it was quite visually impressive. I waited there a little while for my plane and then had a short flight over to Berlin. The plane was small, and so was the Airport. I flew into Tempelhof Airport, which is located very close to the main city of Berlin. I had to walk from the plane to the terminal and then wait while they got our baggage. The airport was practically empty, and there was no traffic on the other runways, I was very surprised. Once I got my bag, I walked through a door and there was Dirk. I did not have to go through any lengthy inspections, no customs, no metal detectors, just a glass door. It seemed very strange. I was expecting more technicalities and fanfare…nope, just my German buddy waiting behind a simple glass door.
Exploring Berlin
We gave each other a big hug and then loaded my bags into the Ford station wagon. It was all a bit surreal, being in a different country, with someone who I had not seen in a long time. I had known him for about a year at that point, but I still had no idea what to expect. We stopped off at the church parsonage where we would be staying the next few nights, and then went on our way to explore Berlin and do some sightseeing. Berlin is a very new city. There are historical buildings, but they are few and far between. I suppose it is all because of WWII. Dirk always described the large, bland, metal and concrete buildings as “GDR buildings.” It was an overall lack of esthetic and it all felt very cold and sterile. For me, the architecture had a feeling of the 70’s in America.
We took the train to the main part of the city, to see some of the more famous areas of Berlin, but we also made sure to stop at Starbucks, and H&M (mostly to hide from the pouring rain). We saw the Brandenburg Gate, the Sony Center, pieces of the Berlin Wall and a GIANT Holocaust memorial. Huge concrete blocks of varying sizes filled acres of land. I was frustrated by the children running and playing on the blocks. I didn’t think their parents were raising them right, they didn’t instill the sense of reverence for what it symbolized. But looking back at my video, the running children add a whole new element to the space. An innocence amid tragedy.
Some Thoughts on Berlin
We spent the day walking through the city and enjoying the random rays of sunlight. I can’t say that I was all that impressed with Berlin, maybe I was still in shock that this was the first day of a momentous journey in a country where I couldn’t speak a single word of the native language. Maybe it was it’s similarity to many large American cities. I think I would rather visit medieval cities than new ones. I did, however, make two important discoveries While in Berlin: Döner is heaven in edible form, It is very similar to a Gyro, but somehow better. The other discovery was that being able to drink in public places is really great! Dirk and I bought some bottles of beer that we would drink later. My eyes widened when he popped the cap off that bottle right there on the street. It was refreshing, I mean we weren’t going to get drunk, we just wanted to sit in a nice area and have a beer, It was so logical yet so freeing! There we sat sipping away on German beer in the Alexanderplatz the promise of an amazing trip sparkling in our eyes.
Done for the Day
We took the train back to the parsonage where we were staying and met up with our hosts. Two brothers (Bise and Robert) were watching over their uncle’s home while he and his wife were out of town. The brothers (who were our age) rolled their own cigarettes and played some card game that I could not understand (different cards and different language.) We all just hung out in the house, I think I took a nap and tried to catch up on my missed sleep. We pulled out the couch, prayed, and then went to sleep eagerly awaiting the next day of our trip.
Video From this day posted at Stone Farm:
Google Earth Placemarks for Day 1: Open this map