Brandy and Bruce and Berlin

Two friends of ours from Victoria, Brandy and Bruce, are heading to Ghana next week to take part in a Habitat for Humanity building project. They've been planning towards this goal for some time, and worked tirelessly raising money for their trip. You can read all about the adventure here. They decided to take advantage of their time on this side of the ocean to visit some of Bruce's relatives in England, a friend of theirs in Switzerland, and us here in Jena. They were here from last Thursday to Monday, and we decided to take advantage of the weekend for a trip to Berlin, which we hadn't yet gotten around to visiting.

But first they had a couple of days in Jena, of course. Thursday evening, after I got home from work, we sat around catching up and sampling a variety of local beers before heading out on the town for supper. The first place we wanted to go to was completely full, as were the second and third places we tried. Finally we found a bar/restaurant on Wagnergasse, the cafe-lined street downtown, which had a vacant table and suitably German-style food. Over beers before heading out we were discussing some of the cultural differences between things in Germany and in Canada, and one of the things that had come up was the outfits worn by tradespeople, particularly carpenters. While they don't always wear the sort of protective gear that we're used to seeing in Canada (I haven't seen protective goggles on a construction site yet here, and hard hats are few and far between, even as people walk below loads), but the carpenters often wear these cute little vests and corduroy bell bottoms with two zippered flies. Construction workers in Canada wouldn't be caught dead wearing these things, but here it's completely normal and expected. I'd read an article on Der Spiegel online about their tradition as journeymen as well, where they go out in extra funny outfits and hitchhike around the country for three years and a day, staying at least 50 km away from home, with only a small pack, in order to learn different techniques to master their trade. The article explains that it's much less common than before, but they can still be seen sometimes around Hamburg, where there are lots of jobs.

Anyhow, I'd mentioned this earlier in the evening, not thinking any more of it, but while we were sitting down to a tasty supper two of these guys walked in with crazy outfits and hats, and one of them launched into a spiel explaining that they'd just arrived in town, and were collecting some change to get a hotel room for the night. Then they went from table to table, asking for money. I explained that we were foreigners and weren't so familiar with the tradition, and the guy (who spoke perfect English, as he's not from our region of Germany), gave us a bit of an explanation. They also had these awesome spiral-shaped walking sticks with them, which come from a branch of white beech which had a vine grow around it while it was still developing, and the wood grows into a spiral shape as it grows around the dead vine. Here's Bruce and Brandy with one of the journeymen, though he definitely had less crazy bell-bottoms than the other guy. They were super-friendly, and we saw them again later at another bar. One of them said that if we saw them a third time they'd buy us a round. Naturally, we didn't see them again.Friday Bruce and Brandy explored the city a little, checking out the market and some of the shops, and sampling the local bratwurst (three in Bruce's case!!!), and we had a relatively quiet night at home as we were catching an early train to Berlin Saturday morning. Our friends Calin and Susanne came along for the weekend too, and we all met up at the train station. Jeremi brought some snacks for the train, including some leftover sprout salad which we're picking at here, and a giant sausage, complete with giant knife and protective cloth, which Bruce cut up for us on the train.

After arriving in Berlin at 11:00 we bought transit passes for the weekend and headed to our hotel to drop off our bags. Our hotel was in the west end of the city, in a neighbourhood called Charlottenburg, and conveniently located near both a subway stop and an S-Bahn (commuter train) station. It was also located between two strip clubs, but the hotel itself was great. The room that Jeremi and I had was just hysterical. It was so narrow that with the two single beds in it there wasn't enough room to walk between them properly - only one calf could fit in the space at a time and you had to sidle through. But it was clean and friendly, and the breakfast was great.

We took the train back downtown, and started walking toward Checkpoint Charlie, which used to be one of the controlled crossings between east and west Berlin, going from the American sector to the Soviet-controlled side. We wanted to stop somewhere along the way for food but it took us a while to find a restaurant as the neighbourhood was a bit posh, and filled with brand-building flagship stores. There were several car dealerships (including Bugatti, Ferrari, Mini, and VW) which were all about the showroom experience rather than actually having a test-drive or anything like that. Finally we stumbled into a lovely Italian restaurant which had great food and was conveniently located at Checkpoint Charlie. They also let us hang out for a while after the meal, lingering over desserts and coffee, as we waited out the terrible hail storm outside. Finally the weather was clearing up a bit, and we headed out to read all about it on the various information panels. (Unfortunately we don't seem to have the pictures that Brandy and Bruce took that day - we forgot our camera so we're relying upon theirs, and the pics from this day seem to have gone missing from our computer.) From there we walked over to one of the few surviving sections of the wall (or sort of surviving, it's pretty chipped away) and then on to Potsdamer Platz, a square downtown, where we were able to warm up with some Gluehwein, as they were having a sort of winter carnival, complete with a man-made toboganning run for innertubes. From there it was just a short walk to the Brandenburg Gate, but we were poorly dressed for the conditions, and we were cold, so we took the subway one stop instead. The Brandenburg Gate was pretty impressive at night, all lit up, and we went through and just beyond it to the Reichstag, the German national parliament building. While the building dates to the 19th century, it's been significantly renovated, with a very modern-looking house of commons (or equivalent), and an impressive glass cupola which is open to the public until 10:00 every night. We waited in line out front so that we could check it out, and it was a great view of the city. What was most impressive to me is that the top of the cupola is completely open, and all the glass panels on the sides aren't quite sealed, but rather overlapping with open air in between.

At this point it was getting later, and we were starting to think of supper. Calin had heard that there were lots of bars and restaurant around Oranienstrasse, so we headed there. (In addition to forgetting the camera, we also forgot the guidebook. Not the most organized when packing early on a Saturday morning I guess.) There we lucked out, and found the best Turkish restaurant, where we ate like kings and queens for a surprisingly small amount of money. It was truly amazing, and I want to go back just to eat there again. (It was called Hasir's, if you're ever in Berlin and looking for Turkish food. I think they have a few locations throughout the city.)


After this we were really full and tired, and decided to head back to the hotel to recharge for Sunday rather than taking advantage of the much-touted nightlife that Berlin has to offer. It was still midnight by the time we were done eating, so we weren't such big wimps. The bars that we went by seemed pretty cool though, and it reminded me of some areas of Montreal a bit.

The next day we got up and ate our fill at breakfast, and then headed out to explore more of the city. We took the train a couple of stops and got off at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. This church, built in 1895, was partially destroyed by bombing in the Second World War (though it was the only building left even partially standing in the Platz where it's situated). Rather than rebuilding it completely or tearing it down, the city decided to leave it standing, but heavily damaged, and they built a modern (and charmless) church next to it. Today it's seen as a powerful war memorial, which was especially fitting as we were there on what is Rememberance Day in Canada, Veteran's Day in the US, and Armistace Day in the UK. (Jeremi and I were even wearing poppies, as he'd brought them back from Halifax.)
A brief aside about the significance of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month: we were all taught that this was significant as it marked the signing of the peace treaty with Germany which ended The Great War, and this is why it was remembered. In Germany, no one knows this, and this date is celebrated as the beginning of Karnival, or Fasching, as it's sometimes called. This carnival season lasts straight through to lent, but from what I can tell (thus far), they really only celebrate at the beginning and the end of this period. In their case the celebrations are not at 11:00 am though, but rather at 11:11 am. Could it be that the Germans just wanted to hurry up and sign the treaty so they could make it to their Karnival party in time? (I'm really just kidding about this, but it is strange that this solemn day of remembrance for many Allied countries is a party in the Fatherland.)

I'm not sure if it's related to the carnival season or not, but November 11th is also Martinstag here, or St. Martin's day, which is seriously celebrated in Austria and parts of Germany. Part of this celebration is a traditional meal of goose, which is because of the legend of Martin hiding in a barn because he didn't want a crowd of people to find him and to make him bishop. The geese made so much noise that his hiding spot was discovered, and the crowd was able to make him their bishop. To remember the good deed of the geese, they're now regularly eaten on this day. (Not how I'd like to be remembered.) Okay, sorry for the aside, back to Berlin.

Next we walked through this big park in the middle of town, where there's a Tiergarten (Zoo). We didn't actually go in to the zoo (it was a bit pricy), but here, through the bars, to the left of the tree trunk, you can almost make out this poor elephant getting snowed on.
I've actually only been to one zoo in Europe, the one by Le Jardin des Plantes in Paris. Aside from the monkey house and possibly the lions (the exhibit was closed while I was there), the most popular animal was the raccoon. They don't have any in Europe, so they actually have them in zoos, and they're so playful and dextrous and cute that they actually do make pretty good zoo exhibits, if you weren't raised to think of them as giant vermin. But I digress. Here's the gate at the zoo, with lots of cool animal heads around the sides.While we were walking Brandy also noticed this billboard, which is kind of cute. The message translates to "Save our horse chestnuts", and down below there's a message saying "Stop the moths, collect the leaves". I'm guessing that they have some sort of a parasitic problem with the horsechestnuts here, which, come to think of it, I often saw turning brown in the middle of July or so. But Brandy also just thought the little chestnut-helmut guy was cute, which brings me to another not-completely unrelated aside.

The little chestnut man is put together with matchsticks, as you can see better from this enlarged picture I downloaded from the website of the city of Berlin. This is a common craft-like thing here, it seems, an activity commonly done by children, something like we used to do with toothpicks and peas or pasta and marshmallows, or any other such stick and joint combinations. But here they don't just use pieces of wood the size and shape of matchsticks, they use genuine matches, complete with heads. Yup, children in Germany are actively encouraged to play with matches. Don't believe me? Here's a picture from a couple of months ago, in September, at the Neugassefest, a street party in what seems to be the pre-gentrification Fernwood of Jena. (For those of you not familiar with Victoria, I mean a fun neighbourhood with lots of dirty hippies.) The picture's not great, but we didn't want to seem incredibly creepy and over-interested in a children's craft table with other people's kids at it. But see? Look! Kids playing with matches, all under the watchful eyes of their parents and volunteers at a neighboorhood street festival.
Here's a zoom in on the offending matchstick and chestnut crafts - sorry for the poor resolution. Safety Bear Julia was not impressed.
Okay, the asides are over for now, back to the Berlin narrative.

Our next stop was the Siegersaeule, or Victory Column. This quite impressive column used to be located quite close to the Reichstag (parliament building), but was moved to the centre of the park back in the 1930s (I think). There's a spiral staircase through the middle which opens onto a lower observation deck with decorative mosaic scenes of war and glory, and also an upper observation area which looks over the whole park and much of the city.

From there we headed into the city, to walk along "Unter den Linden" (under the Linden trees), the main boulevard through the city, lined with embassies and museums. We stopped for lunch at a place serving some good German fare, where Jeremi got to have Currywurst (a hot dot with a curried tomato sauce and fries), Bruce had 6 Naumburger sausages with sauerkraut, and Brandy had a schnitzel bigger than her head. (Calin, Susanne, and I had less "German" meals, so they don't get mentioned here.) Here's Brandy with her giant schnitzel...

...and Bruce with his sausages.
From there we headed over to the museum island, which is literally an island filled with museums in the middle of town. In another Remembrance Day-related item, we stopped at a war monument which consisted of an almost empty columned building, with a statue of a woman holding her dead soldier son inside, lit only by a hole in the ceiling above her head. Given the grey weather and rain, this was particularly evocative. A wreath had been placed in front of her, complete with British-style poppies.

Despite the terrible weather, we decided to keep walking around rather than exploring any particular museum. I loved the sign at this traditional-looking art museum though, in huge neon letters, reading: "ALL ART HAS BEEN CONTEMPORARY".
From there we headed yet further east, checking out some statues...
...and the red brick city hall, opposite the giant TV tower. (It's actually called that - Fernseherturm, which means television tower in German.)
From there we wandered around a bit further, through a nice section of town around the Nicholaikirche, until it was time to head back into the city to warm up with gluehwein and beer before our late train back to Jena. All in all, it was a great trip, and I look forward to visiting again. And it was a good chance to catch up with Brandy and Bruce before their big adventure in Ghana. I can't wait to hear all about it!

Next exotic destination

At the end of October I was called to Canada to help out a friend in a time of need. Francis Laframboise, or Laffy, as I have always called him, was (is) going through some hard times. His common law partner had fled the province with their daughter Alyshia. That's as much as I'll go into that except for saying good luck in court tomorrow buddy.

I got to Halifax after a wonderful travel agent named Julia was able to find me a way of getting there cheaply via two trains to Frankfurt International, then another train and a bus to Frankfurt Hahn (another airport), where I spent the night, and then a flight to London Stansted, a bus from there to London Gatwick (three hours away), and then a flight from there to Halifax. Not the most straightforward route, but the return trip was much more direct, and the total cost, including all trains, buses, and planes, was under $700 Canadian return. Not bad, for booking it the day before I left.

Laffy picked me up at the airport after a slight delay at customs. Apparently they had to inspect my chocolate because it was a dairy product. I think that the customs agent was just jealous. After a nice quebecois spaghetti meal from Laffy's mom (his parents were also there) we got to some of the Legal stuff. I then collapsed in bed after my 30 hour journey.

But the next night we went out to Tom's little Havana.
Here's Laffy backing away from Colette who's jumping in the picture just behind the back of Rishad's head and in front of Marie who is sitting across from Veronica who has to her left the back of Lynn's head. Nick, seen below, also joined us there and Meagan, also seen below, joined us once we had gone over to the Economy Shoe Shop.
Here we can see Laffy waking up to a whole new bar and Lynn drinking pop.
Glamour shot!


That weekend Neil and Holly had a pretty awesome Halloween party complete with first, second and third prizes for best costume, dance competition and a drunk competition. The latter came much later in the night.

Holly as a Caesar, which for the non-Canadians is a vodka drink with Tomato and Clam juice (or Clamato) garnished with a stick of celery and a celery salt rim. Holly was also the Queen of Hearts earlier and later that night,

Veronica as a Charlie's Angel,
Marie as the Paperbag Princess with flight attendant,
later on literally falling out of her dress,
Colette in full form,
Laffy as "The Butcher" and me as a large man with very small fairy wings,
Trailer trash girl and last but certainly not least: Lynn as the best Phylis Diller ever, complete with voice and jokes.

Resemblance uncanny.

After a stay in the Marie Suite chez Holly and Neil's that night, I headed to NB to see the familly. Grammy came over for supper and we had some deer steaks from the little buck my dad shot earlier that month.
My dad (above) and my mom (below),
The next day I babysat my goddaughter Taryn and her sister Olivia. We played all sorts of games and had lots of fun.
Me and Taryn,
and Taryn and Olivia.

Big thanks to Rishad for the use of his car.

After that I was back to Halifax to help out Laffy some more. My flight home wasn't nearly as interesting as I had a direct flight from Halifax to Frankfurt and then a short three hour train ride. It was good to see everyone.

Happy Birthday to Julia

For one's birthday in Germany one is expected to make cake for other people, like the people at work and friends. Different. Well Julia transformed the pumpkin from the last post into two pumpkin pies for her colleagues. I was nice enough not to make her bake me a cake also and instead made her a Middle-Eastern feast for supper.

Here we have (from top to bottom) baked Hummus, flat bread with Zaatar as appetizer, tamarind onions, Tabbouleh, beef stew with apricots and there is also pitta bread somewhere.

Here is Julia with the rain-poncho my parent got her and the multitude of gifts Calin and Susanne brought.
Julia also received a few things in the mail that morning from her parents and Baba, the most interesting of which was the way this bouquet of flowers was packaged. It came braced in its own box and the stems were plunged in gel chunks. The other box was full of Belgian goodies, chocolates in a Tintin tin, cheese balls, high end pasta and sauce, and a chocolate fondue kit.


That night Susanne tried to imprison the Cat in her experimental mutant cat lab, being the evil scientist that she is...



But the cat ran away and hid in the flower box.


I didn't have time that night to make a cake for Julia. But I did make her favorite German cake later that week, sour cherry cake with streusel topping. (Here it's all mashed into little pieces to help it cool, because she wanted to eat a piece as soon as it came out of the oven.)

Erfurt

The weekend after we got back from Dublin, we were invited to go to Erfurt, the capital of our State (Thüringen), by Calin and Susanne. It was a cold but very sunny day. They had a fair-sized market there where Julia got this Muskat Pumpkin with very deep orange flesh. Hmm... pretty!














Here is a big cathedral that was right next to the market. I was trying to hide the sun behind it in this picture.
Another sight in Erfurt is this bridge. It has a bunch of buildings on it with lots of shops. When we walked over it, we didn't even know it was a bridge.

That night we had a delicious lasagne for supper at the Arens and played Rummy(with tiles) until late. Lots of fun!

catching up with old friends in Dublin

The weekend after Chris and Karen left in October we were travelling again, this time to Dublin. We got an early morning flight from Leipzig on a Saturday morning, and arranged to meet up with Steve, an old friend from Victoria, in Leipzig that Friday afternoon. Steve was travelling around a bit to meet up with some other friends in Germany and France, and asked if we'd be in town around that time, and we were lucky to find a way to hang out for one afternoon/evening of exploring the pubs of Leipzig. Unfortunately, we didn't actually take any pictures while there, which is strange. I was sure we'd taken at least one picture in a whiskey bar, but it seems to have completely disappeared. You'll just have to take my word for it that it was a fun evening, though the morning came much to early at 5:00. Our flight was also packed with soccer fans, complete with cheers throughout the flight, as the national football teams of Germany and Ireland were playing that afternoon in Dublin. But back to why we were going to Dublin in the first place.

Through the magic of Facebook I not only managed to get back in touch with a bunch of friends from high school, but I also arranged to meet a couple of them during a vacation to Dublin where they'd be staying with a third friend who was there doing medical school. The first two, Pam and Jen, I did actually see in Belleville about a year and a half ago, but Mary, who was going to be hosting the madness, I hadn't seen in over 10 years. Mary lives in a house with three other girls from Canada who are studying medicine in Dublin, and there was yet another Canadian on the trip, Crystal, who went to college with Jen in Belleville. So not only was it the first time that I'd been in an English-speaking country since January, practically everyone I was talking to was from Canada. And just to make sure we got our fair dose of Canadiana, the first night we all went on a bus trip to see a hockey game.

Now hockey isn't exactly popular in Ireland, so much so that there's only one arena, and it's only a couple of years old. (Also, like most of Europe, they call it ice hockey, as the term hockey is reserved for what we'd call field hockey.) We were going because Mary knew a few of the players, who of course were Canadian. It also gave us a nice bus trip about an hour and a half outside of Dublin, with pleasant views of the countryside, seen below.
We were drinking on the bus, naturally, and after a couple of pints the three girls from Belleville really couldn't go any further without a bathroom break. The driver accommodated, pulling over to the side of the road, much to the delight of the (sober) hockey players. Luckily Jeremi and I were able to hold it until the arena, but only barely. Here's Pam going back to her seat, amidst much applause. (We, unlike some of the hockey players, decided not to photograph the actual act.)
The game was okay, but our team (the Dublin Rams) were slaughtered. The only thing that kept the score close at the beginning was their goalie, who Pam and Jen randomly knew from when he played on the Belleville Bulls a few years back. Most of the players were Canadian, with some Czechs, a few Latvians, and even a couple Irish guys mixed in. At the intermission they had kids from minor league play a bit, and they were really cute to watch, as ever. A definite favourite in the group shown below was the little guy in the Mats Sundin jersey at the right.
After the game we hung out at the bar at the arena for a while, and then headed back into town, drinking all the while. Upon getting downtown around 1:30, Jeremi and I decided that, after our early-morning flight, we were done for, and started heading back to Mary's. The girls stayed out for a while longer, going to a party at the house of one of the hockey players, who lived above Temple Bar, on one of the busiest pub/club streets in Dublin. Getting home was plenty of adventure for us though, especially as it proved impossible to find a cab on a busy Saturday night. Instead we decided to walk back, but it was about a 40 minute walk, and we didn't really know where it was. After asking a few people for directions (without much luck), we got a tourist map from a hotel and used that to guide us in roughly the right direction.
One of the streets we passed on the trip home was called Irishtown Road. Jeremi spent the first few years of his life in Irishtown, New Brunswick, so we figured that it called for a picture.
Not far from here the map started to let us down a bit, as it was only a tourist map that showed the major streets, not every side street. We stopped to ask a large group of youngish men who were drinking in a parking lot for directions, and thus came into contact with knackers, or, more politely, Irish Travellers, for the first time. They have a pretty rough reputation, but were quite nice to us, though one particularly drunk man did hold the map we were looking at upside down while explaining to us that we were actually looking for Strand Road rather than Beach Road. Luckily his more comprehensible friend pointed us in the right direction.

The next day we headed downtown to explore a bit, checking out the shops along Grafton Street, among others.

Here's a view showing the striking Dublin Spire, which I thought was really cool. (It's the big spike in the middle of the picture, and is a polished stainless-steel spike coming out of the middle of one of the main roads. The bottom part is etched in these cool organic-looking patterns. I liked it as a modern structure in an old city, which didn't look too out of place.) Afterward we headed to one of the places Mary had recommended for lunch and had our first food and drink at a traditional Irish pub, which was festooned with flags for the World Cup of Rugby. From left are Jen, Crystal, Pam, and me.
The bar was great, but the women's washroom was just plain weird, starting with this mosaic-covered cobra-headed idol-looking statue in an alcove.
Also, as I've seen before at McDonald's on St. Catherine Street in Montreal and now in several European cities, there was black light in the stalls, apparently to make it harder for drug users to shoot up in there as the veins are harder to see under this sort of lighting. What was different here was the intensity of the black light and the almost complete absence of light at other wavelengths. I've never seen the specks of dust glow so brightly before - even my fingernails and cuticles were glowing. And the toilet paper was unbelievable. Though you may not like to look at pictures of toilets, it really was pretty crazy. If only I could get a video of what it looked like while flushing...The next day we decided to do like all good tourists, and go on the Guinness brewery tour. On the way there I stopped to be charmed by this old Basset Hound in Mary's neighbourhood.
Something funny around Dublin is the way they paint "look left" and "look right" on the pavement at many intersections. I'm figuring it's just for tourists, who are used to the cars coming from the other direction. While I can see it being useful, I found it a bit distracting. Maybe because sometimes I have to stop for a second to think about which way it's telling me to look...
Here we are checking out some of the propaganda-filled information panels...
...and here's Jeremi in the barelling exhibit.
The tour was fun, but it didn't quite leave me with the same successfully-brainwashed feeling as the Keith's tour in Halifax. (That may be because I went on that one three or four times though.) The highlight was claiming the pint included in the price of admission in the glass-walled Gravity Bar at the top of the old storehouse. Here are Jeremi, me, Pam, Jen, and Crystal, with sunny Dublin behind us.
The view from there was great, and we got there just before 6:00 so the sun was setting over the city, making everything look lovely, and a bit less like a dirty old town.
That night we met up with Mary and some of her friends for some nice French food, and some drinks afterward in a cool old market building. Again, no pictures from this one.

The next day the girls were heading to Amsterdam for a couple of days for a mid-week trip to get out of the hair of Mary and her roommates, but Jeremi and I weren't flying out until early (6:05) the next morning. We took the opportunity to head to the end of one of the commuter train lines into Dublin, to the fishing community of Howth, for some nice harbour views and some fresh fish and chips. Here I'm trying to figure out what the figures on this column are trying to communicate with their cryptic hand gestures.

Jeremi on the seawall......and Jeremi and I with the view out to sea. I've realized by looking at this and other pictures that when I squint, one eyebrow goes up and the other goes down. But I thought that symmetry was supposed to be more attractive...

By the pier there were a couple of seals competing with sea birds for the scraps thrown off one of the fishing boats.A view from the bench where we ate our fish and chips in the sun...

On the way back to the train we came across this humourously-titled pub.
And also the shell of this old church, which had graves both surrounding it and inside it. There were bars on the door to the actual church part, though there was a helpful sign telling us that we could ask Mrs. O'Toole for the key (with her address). We chose to just look in from outside.And finally, on the way back to Mary's place, we stopped at a pub where we'd tried to go another night, but had found it closed - The Baggot Inn. It was a new place, with the alluring gimmick that you could pour your own pints at the table. We had to try it out, not least because my brother had just been discussing this with us as his perfect plan for a bar to open in Canada. It seems to be working well in Dublin, so it might just be worth a try.

Here's Jeremi pouring his pint...



...his effort at making a shamrock in the head (poorly photographed by me)...

...and after four days in Dublin, he was still thirsty for more.