Rain and sun.
Lately, when the weather hasn't been bad, I've been riding my bike to and from work. It takes about 30-40 minutes and is a great way to see the city. However, it's also a great way to get COMPLETELY soaked when I underestimate the threat of rain, as happened today on my way home. Right in front of Rathaus Schöneberg (the Schöneberg Town Hall - no quite halfway home), the sky opened up and it poured in sheets of rain for about 5 minutes. I took cover in the entryway of a building, but eventually went back out in the rain to ride the rest of the way home.
As I rode home, laughing about how completely wet I had gotten, I thought back to the last week of April, when my cousins were visiting and we had unseasonably warm, sunny weather. And the whole time we kept telling Lisa and Tim to enjoy, since our memories of Germany around this time of year are more like what I experienced today!
We had a great time with Tim and Lisa, who showed real spunk in getting their almost-two-year-old daughter Abby all over the city. I took this picture of them bringing her stroller down a huge set of stairs so that someday, if Abby has no recollection of seeing Europe, they can pull this out and give her a little guilt.
One of the most interesting parts of the visit was over the weekend when we decided to go to Poland. It's only 60 km from the outskirts of Berlin, and Dave and I felt that we had been here too long to not venture over there. Tim and Lisa, incredibly good sports, agreed to come along. We justified the trip nby saying we wanted to get them out of Berlin and show them a city in the region that wasn't bombed so that they could see some nice, old buldings.
Well, how can I say it best...Poland was great, but totally not what we were expecting. We arrived at the train station in Stettin and found it in horrible condition, a lot like the train stations I saw in Moscow when my dad and I went there in 1994. We spent a lot of time trying to follow a red dotted line around the city, which supposedly was supposed to show us the best sights of the town. We found ot pretty quickly that Stettin, as a part of Pomerania, was carpet-bombed by the Allies in WWII, so there were basically no original buildings there. We were able to have a lovely lunch of Pierogi (kind of like ravioli with potatoes, meat, and cheese) overlooking the Oder, and got some great pictures of other interesting parts of the city.
Lisa and I were wanting to hit a jewelry store and buy some funky earrings or something, since shopping in Poland is supposed to be such a great deal - but after walking around the city for hours we found -literally - no stores, only row upon row of run-down looking apartments and Plattenbau (communist-era apartment blocks).
It was only at 6:00 that we came across the 'Galaxy Center,' a really modern-looking mall that was full of people. 
I thought it was kind of sad to see how all the streets in town were basically empty because of this mall that had been built, and it gave me more appreciation for city planners in Germany who have really worked to keep malls out of cities so that storefronts along the street are still the place to walk and shop.
At the end of the day we found a great rustic Polish restaurant, where we all had great food and some Polish vodka. On the way back to the station (Abby kept saying 'Run, run, run!' since we were walking fast to make the train), we stopped and got four beers to drink on the ride back to Berlin. Tim was a little skeptical about walking around the train station with open drinks, but I assured him that, as a 10-month resident of Germany, that this think is legal. Then I got approached by some Polish Police, who addressed me in German (who else would be wandering around a train station with an open beer in her hand?). They said that open beer was not allowed in public or on trains in Poland, and told me to put the beer away. I ran over to Tim and told him he was right, so he tucked the rest of the beer into his jacket while we got on the train. We had to hide the beer when the border patrol came through, but other than that we were able to drink it on the train once we crossed the German border.
Ah, Deutschland!
Lately, when the weather hasn't been bad, I've been riding my bike to and from work. It takes about 30-40 minutes and is a great way to see the city. However, it's also a great way to get COMPLETELY soaked when I underestimate the threat of rain, as happened today on my way home. Right in front of Rathaus Schöneberg (the Schöneberg Town Hall - no quite halfway home), the sky opened up and it poured in sheets of rain for about 5 minutes. I took cover in the entryway of a building, but eventually went back out in the rain to ride the rest of the way home.
As I rode home, laughing about how completely wet I had gotten, I thought back to the last week of April, when my cousins were visiting and we had unseasonably warm, sunny weather. And the whole time we kept telling Lisa and Tim to enjoy, since our memories of Germany around this time of year are more like what I experienced today!
We had a great time with Tim and Lisa, who showed real spunk in getting their almost-two-year-old daughter Abby all over the city. I took this picture of them bringing her stroller down a huge set of stairs so that someday, if Abby has no recollection of seeing Europe, they can pull this out and give her a little guilt.
One of the most interesting parts of the visit was over the weekend when we decided to go to Poland. It's only 60 km from the outskirts of Berlin, and Dave and I felt that we had been here too long to not venture over there. Tim and Lisa, incredibly good sports, agreed to come along. We justified the trip nby saying we wanted to get them out of Berlin and show them a city in the region that wasn't bombed so that they could see some nice, old buldings.
Well, how can I say it best...Poland was great, but totally not what we were expecting. We arrived at the train station in Stettin and found it in horrible condition, a lot like the train stations I saw in Moscow when my dad and I went there in 1994. We spent a lot of time trying to follow a red dotted line around the city, which supposedly was supposed to show us the best sights of the town. We found ot pretty quickly that Stettin, as a part of Pomerania, was carpet-bombed by the Allies in WWII, so there were basically no original buildings there. We were able to have a lovely lunch of Pierogi (kind of like ravioli with potatoes, meat, and cheese) overlooking the Oder, and got some great pictures of other interesting parts of the city.
Lisa and I were wanting to hit a jewelry store and buy some funky earrings or something, since shopping in Poland is supposed to be such a great deal - but after walking around the city for hours we found -literally - no stores, only row upon row of run-down looking apartments and Plattenbau (communist-era apartment blocks).
It was only at 6:00 that we came across the 'Galaxy Center,' a really modern-looking mall that was full of people. 
I thought it was kind of sad to see how all the streets in town were basically empty because of this mall that had been built, and it gave me more appreciation for city planners in Germany who have really worked to keep malls out of cities so that storefronts along the street are still the place to walk and shop.
At the end of the day we found a great rustic Polish restaurant, where we all had great food and some Polish vodka. On the way back to the station (Abby kept saying 'Run, run, run!' since we were walking fast to make the train), we stopped and got four beers to drink on the ride back to Berlin. Tim was a little skeptical about walking around the train station with open drinks, but I assured him that, as a 10-month resident of Germany, that this think is legal. Then I got approached by some Polish Police, who addressed me in German (who else would be wandering around a train station with an open beer in her hand?). They said that open beer was not allowed in public or on trains in Poland, and told me to put the beer away. I ran over to Tim and told him he was right, so he tucked the rest of the beer into his jacket while we got on the train. We had to hide the beer when the border patrol came through, but other than that we were able to drink it on the train once we crossed the German border.
Ah, Deutschland!
posted by Erin at 4:43 PM
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