Ich bin ein Berliner...I WISH!

Ok I think I might just start crying. I wrote a giant blog just this morning…took me over an hour. I saved several times! I specifically remember! And now I just turned my computer back on and it’s all gone! Only the first two sentences are there!!!!! I’ve checked everywhere but it’s all gone! I don’t understand. Dad always said that with computers it’s “garbage in, garbage out”. WELL I PUT LOTS AND LOTS OF VERBAL AND EMOTIONAL GARBAGE IN AND NO GARBAGE IS COMING BACK OUT! I WANT MY GARBAGE! Dad, this might be the first time ever that you’ve been wrong. My faith in technology has been shaken straight to its core. And just thinking about rewriting my entire post makes me feel exhausted. But I guess there’s nothing I can do about it…so here goes. Hang on, let me just press the ‘Save’ button. OH WAIT…THAT DOESN’T REALLY SEEM TO BE ALL THAT IMPORTANT ANYWAYS! MY COMPUTER JUST DOES WHATEVER IT WANTS.

Kay, I’m going to try to calm down now.

Ah I’m still so frustrated. I already wrote all of this down! And it was so good, too! I don’t know if I can do this again!!!!

Sigh.

Knowing me I won’t be able to rest until it’s done, so here goes attempt #2.

Berlin - shall be immortalized in my mind as the city where I spent waaaaaaaaay too much money but it was so worth it. :) It’s one of the many reasons why I’ve become half-anorexic and am usually covered in layers of sweaters and mounds of blankets in my as-unheated-as-possible apartment.

So Tuesday morning I took a bus and a train to Zwickau where my friend Claudia lives. Daniela joined us there in the evening and the three of us spent the evening excitedly going over our mini-vacation plans for Berlin. We kept trying to go to sleep, but we were so restless that we just kept chatting and chatting, long after the lights were out. 4am came far too early, but we were so ready to get on with our adventure. We immediately inhaled some cappuccinos and finished our last-minute packing, showered and made sandwiches, all the while practically going nuts with excitement. And soon it was 5:30am – time to make our way to the train station. And then we opened the front door. Rain. Grrrrrr. But we refused to let it dampen our soaring holiday-ready spirits. We got to our train well on time and at 5:57am we left the dreary skies of Saxony behind us. We took the Vogtlandbahn, which is a super-cheap and super-fast route to Berlin. It’s basically there so that you can easily do daytrips to Berlin without paying an arm and a leg. It leaves early in the morning and comes back late in the evening. So I bought a coffee as soon as humanly possible and settled back into my seat, chatting with two of my best friends for the next 3.5 hours til we made it to the capitol of my beautiful Deutschland. Once there we scouted out a german rail office and bought our transportation tickets for the next four days. Can you believe that for only 28 euros each we got tickets that let us use any city train, subway, street car, or bus in all of Berlin AND covered our train ride back home to Saxony on Saturday? Well, believe it! I mean we used the trains and subways so much, it’s crazy! And the transportation system in Berlin is jaw-droppingly awe-inspiring. I mean, the street cars come by at least every 10 minutes, the subways and city trains every 4 minutes. It’s psycho! I mean, it really honestly doesn’t matter if you “miss your train”, cuz the next one is practically coming in as its predecessor is leaving. Incredible. But we still saw some hilarious movie-like moments where certain desperados got stuck in the train doors in a frantic attempt to avoid said loathsome 4 minute wait. It was such a Jim Carey in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” moment as this one middle-aged dude totally got his entire body stuck in between the doors of the train across the tracks from us…and it must have hurt! Those doors do NOT open easily. And another girl got the back wheel of her bike stuck in the doors of one of the trains we were on. HILARIOUS, people.

Anyways, once we got to Berlin (9:30am) we took a couple of trains out to Ostkreuz-Berlin where Claudia’s crazy computer-nerd-hacker friend Theo lives in a crazy man-apartment with another crazy computer-nerd-hacker guy whose name we never found out – we only know him as “Bär”, which is his Internet name. They had just kicked out their third roommate two days before we came so we even got a room to ourselves! No living room couches! Yay. But seriously, that apartment lacked the feminine touch. Or any kind of touch, really. We affectionately referred to that neighbourhood as our ghetto. :) But the price was right – we just had to cook them supper for the three evenings we were there. Easy ‘nuff. So as soon as we had dropped off our bags we took the trains back towards the center of Berlin and decided to spend the day doing what girls do best. Spending money. Oh the shopping, ladies. The shopping! We eventually hit up the most famous street in Berlin…well, at least the most famous in terms of shopping possibilities. The Kurfuerstendamm. I could live there. Chanel, Gucci, Mango (Penelope Cruz’s line which is now one of my fave places to shop), Prada, Escada, Cos, Burberry, and anything else you’ve ever seen inside of a Vogue. And of course also the stores that fit our price ranges :) - H&M, Esprit, United Colours of Benetton, etc. And then at the end of the street is the most famous store in Berlin – the KaDeWe, which is chalked full from basement to top floor with only designer everything – clothes, makeup, perfume, shoes, and so on. Obviously we didn’t buy anything there, but it was intoxicating none the less. Maybe one day I’ll be able to afford a pair of gloves or, like, an earring…from that place. :) Heaven on earth.

So by the time we were shopped out it was getting dark outside and our feet felt like lead anvils. Sure sign that supper is in order. So we headed back to our ghetto and made hawaiian toast for all of us (as in Theo and Bär included…).

Thursday was declared sight-seeing day. We wanted to visit anything and everything in Berlin that had to do with culture and history and was worth taking a look at. Now if you know anything about this city you’ll know that this really does take an entire day. Well, really you could spend an entire week doing that, but we only had so and so much time and cutting down on the shopping excursions … well, that’s just a silly thought. I mean really. Let’s be serious. Not even an option.

First things first, tho – Dunkin Donuts.

Berlin is OVERRUN with Dunkin Donuts shops. I think there are more in this city than in all of the US combined. Every street corner and train station seemed to have one. Claudia is slightly obsessed. And by slightly I mean beyond comprehension. So we satisfied our sugar cravings every single day with some delicious donuts and coffee. And for an ex-Tim Hortons employee whose gag reflex tends to act up at the mere sight of said hole-y desserts I have to say that I really really enjoy Dunkin Donuts donuts. Lol. And they had Tchai Tea!!!!!!!! You have NO idea how hard it is to find Tchai in this country. I order it wherever I find it!

So we saw everything! Siegessaeule, Soviet Memorial, Brandenburger Gate, the Reichstag (german parliament building), the new Holocaust memorial, Checkpoint Charlie, … and we walked the whole Straße des 17. Juni….. that's a really long street, basically. I cannot even begin to describe how incredibly perfect the weather was on this day. I think when you take a look at the pics you’ll have an idea. But seriously. The bluest skies I’ve ever seen….the kind that only come around in autumn. Big fluffy white clouds. Crisp sunshine. A layer of gold, red, and orange leaves littering every flat surface. Giant ancient trees lining walkways and sidewalks. It was a dream and it just made the experience spectacular.

So many sights threatened to take my breath away permanently. I can honestly say that I have never felt so animate…so vital …so existent in my entire life as I did on that day. It was like every second was even more overwhelming than the last and it was just moment after moment of thinking to yourself “this is living”.

It’s impossible to describe, possibly because I had never quite felt that way before in my entire life. Strange and awesome. By the time we were finished our feet felt mangled and shredded but it just didn’t matter. After an awesome homemade supper of shishkabobs (how do you spell that correctly????) and potato wedges we were just exhausted. But Friday was a new day! Time for a trip to Potsdam, a relatively good-sized city just a half-hour or so from Berlin, famous for Babelsberg, where many movies and tv shows are filmed. Also home to one of the most important universities in terms of film studies and of course the well-known castle of Sans Souci. We walked and walked. And found the most romantic neighbourhood in the entire universe. It was beyond gorgeous - made both me and Claudia think of Nesthaekchen, mom!!! I’ll have to get the pics we took from Daniela cuz it was just breathtaking. Claudia and I are gonna buy an apartment there when we’re old widows. And I’m not even joking.

It was another beautiful day with clear blue skies – chillier than Thursday, but still beautiful. We walked through the Park Sanssouci, which was fantastic. I have never been in such a giant park before! Just wild and gorgeous. You can get lost in there pretty quick but you’d probably never notice because it’s just so beautiful. Oh, plus there’s just this GIANT CASTLE in the middle of it. Only Europe, seriously people. It’s called the Neues Palais and it is ginormous! At first we assumed that this was the Schloß Sans Souci but then we realized we had gotten lost in the park (see, I told you it was easy) and so we had to find the Hauptallee (Main Alley), also absolutely gorgeous; it's a giant path lined with some of the tallest trees I’ve ever seen…I want to get married there! Lol. And this led us to the real castle Sans Souci. Very very pretty, although smaller than I thought it would be. After this we took the train back to Berlin to continue satisfying our shopping urges and once we could go no further and had probably seen every shop in Berlin twice we mosied on home to fall into our beds and regenerate for one final day.

Saturday morning we made our way over to the Potsdammer Platz where the wall used to divide east from west Germany but now houses the very new and very modern Sony Centre. A definite must-see if you ever go to Berlin. And we went to see “Whales and Dolphins” in the IMAX 3D center, which was a first for me. I never really thought 3D would be that cool, but I was totally wrong. Loved it. Oh, and I had the best chocolate croissant of my life in this little underground bakery there. The world of pastries will never be the same for me. I could bathe in that batter. Oh yum.

And by the time we were done there we had just enough time to squeeze in one last shopping run, which yielded a fantastic encounter with an all-natural face product store (first of that brand in Germany!) that I am now in love with. And I made sure I can order these products in Canada, too, before I left with my purchases. Oh yummy. (Yes I do realize they are supposed to go ON my face, not IN my mouth… :) )

And then it was time to cast our final glances towards what I like to call the city with a pulse. My childhood love, memories, and expectations of this city have been anything but disappointed. I am really quite frustrated that my words don’t seem to be expressing anything close to what I feel. I mean, this post is now over 2 pages long (in Microsoft Word) and yet I feel like I haven’t actually said ANYTHING. Why am I not able to adequately express myself? Why are my emotions ‘uncapturable’, inexplicable? See, I am one of those peculiarly paranoid persons who is constantly afraid that she will forget. Just anything and everything. I have been keeping journals since grade 6 as this anxiety steadily increases over the years. The more I realized that my recollections of past experiences (especially my time in Germany) seemed to become blurry, unrecognizable, and even indistinguishable, the more I started to worry that all my experiences and emotions would one day just be a giant messy haze. I am terrified of forgetting how certain situations and circumstances made/make me feel. How strange am I?

So that is actually the second half of the reason that I blog. Not only do I want you to be able to keep up to date with my life this year, but I also want to print these entries out and turn them into a giant journal. Some days I can’t stop my mind from racing or my fingers from fidgeting until I have written. Something, anything, that will ease my fears of forgetting. To think that everything I go through and experience could one day end up as one distorted, nonsensical, and disfigured mass of retrospection is just too much for my little mind to bear. Why can’t my brain just be like a book? Everything permanent and immortalized, with the possibility of highlighting the important passages, or writing insightful, analytical comments in the margins. That seems ideal to me. But I guess these incompetent ramblings and descriptions will have to do…

In any case Berlin was heaven and the three of us had an absolute blast. It was the kind of trip that was so perfect you don't even feel sad about returning home because you know that you got to see and experience everything you had wanted, and more, so there is just a wonderful feeling of contentment and satisfaction.

If you need more proof, check out more pics by clicking on these links. :)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=79102&l=652de&id=573967603

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=79120&l=3180a&id=573967603

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=79131&l=60709&id=573967603

So now I'm back in Ellefeld for my last week of holidays. Phone in Eilenburg is still unplugged. :)