From: Rainer Subject: Rainer's Europe Trip 1998 -- part 13 Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1998 19:47:01 EDT Greetings. I caught up a bit with the journal entries today on the train to Munich and in the hotel tonight. I'm sending part 13 tonight. We haven't seen the sun since Monday in Berlin. It's now Saturday (actually Sunday if you go by the clock). Lot's of cars are driving around Munich honking their horns (you can hear them on the 6th floor of the Holiday Inn) celebrating Turkey's soccer victory over Germany. There are lot of Turkish fans here. I hope they stop soon. Anyway, here's the update. Cheers, Rainer Tuesday, 10/6 Apartment buildings in Berlin are typically built around an inner court yard, or Hof. The Hof of the building that this hotel is part of was being renovated. You could tell because the the construction workers doing the renovation started at 0700. The acoustics of a Hof are quite good. A person standing on the scaffolding of the fourth floor can easily talk to a person standing under the scaffolding on the ground without having to yell. The guys doing the renovation liked hearing their echoes of the Hof walls, I think. So they yelled. They also did a lot of clanking and whatnot which was quite audible to me in the side room with the high ceilings. The sky was blue and the sun was starting to shine on the Hof walls. Vera stirred and we got up. We took turns creaking down the hall to the bathroom. I went to the breakfast room and brought back some coffee. The coffee in Berlin is good, more like coffee at home, and unlike the espresso served in France. We made plans for the day. Since the weather looked like it would be favorable, we decided that we should visit the Berlin Zoo this morning, something we wanted to do anyway. Monika woke up soon, and we all creaked down the hall to the breakfast room for, duh, breakfast. The friendly German aunt greeted us right away and asked us if we wanted coffee or tea. Kids in Germany typically drink coffee or tea at much earlier age than kids in the US. We did several go-arounds before the friendly aunt understood that only Vera and I wanted coffee, no Monika did not want tea, she wanted orange juice. Breakfast consisted of a boiled egg, rolls, bread, meat, cheese, and a large assortments of jams, honey, and preserves. We were seated in a sort of bay window seat. The sun shone in and it looked like it would be a good day. We walked down Meinekestrasse to the Ku-dam and took several pictures of the bombed-out church (Gedaechtniskirche, or literally, think-about- this church). Monika and Vera bought some postcards. I went to the bank again and, presto changeo, the ATM card worked first time. I guess I can eliminate the worst of my worries. I also converted our remaining Guilders into Deutsch Marks since we weren't going back to Holland on this trip. We split up at this point, my family going back to the hotel to pack and me going back to the train station to pick up the rental car. Bahnhofzoo (the train station at the zoo) is a huge place. I couldn't find a Hertz sign, but I did find a sign on a counter to pick up rental cars. The clerk and I had just a short exchange. After he called someone he told me to wait. Turns out the Hertz office has no space at the train station. They schedule a time for you to pick up the car, and you have to pick up the car at that time because they drive to the train station and wait for you at this clerk's desk. The time on our reservation was 1000. It was now 1105. So, the Hertz person had already been to the station at 1000, and since I wasn't there, she left. She returned at 1120 and we did the paperwork at the clerk's counter -- driver's license, Visa card, passport -- damn, I'd left the prepaid verification letter in the hotel. The Hertz lady was very polite and asked if I would bring the letter by the office today. I told her I would. She walked with me into the train station parking lot, showed me the car, a new VW Polo, gave me the key and wished me a good day. The VW is a dark blue, a welcome relief to the chartreuse of the Opel Corsa we had in Holland. It was a four door and seemed roomy to the last two cars -- even though it wasn't much bigger. It felt comfortable driving the VW (surprised?) even though the clutch is a bit stiff and engages in just milimeters of releasing it. The doors, the locks, everything is typical Volkswagen. The doors shut nicely. Reverse is where I expect it to be. The headlight switch glows in the dark so you can find it. There are not idiot alarms for seat belts or keys left in the ignition -- you just can't lock the driver's side door without a key. I've missed driving a VW. Gonna sell the Chevy Van when possible. Okay, so I stalled the car as soon as I drove forward after backing it out of the parking space. And I stalled it a couple of more times after that, in traffic, too. But I still like driving this car. I left the train station and quickly realized that I didn't know exactly how to get to the hotel -- most travel had been on foot so far. I drove around for a while, but eventually ended up in a Parkhaus (do you know enough German to know what that might be?) just across the street from Number 6 Meinekestrasse -- very close to the hotel. I parked in one of the first spots I could find. I didn't know why this level was marked Frauenparkplatz. I asked my cousin about it later and he said that those spots were specifically for women drivers -- closer to the exit doors for security reasons. I thought they were, perhaps, just wider spaces so it was easier to park. Oh well. Since I have to "Frauen" with me I hoped that it was okay and that I wouldn't end up with another yellow slip of paper under the windshield wiper when I returned. The Berlin Zoo is a short walk from the Hotel Kolumbus. Although the sun was shining, the wind made it a very brisk day. Unlike the Portland Zoo, the animals in the Berlin Zoo were very active. The lion was pacing back and forth, his frequent roars and growls carrying through the entire zoological gardens. In fact all of the large cats were active. One of the giant pandas was pacing, the other asleep. But, before we left, both were quite mobile. It's ironic that one of the first animals we happened to see was the hooded crow. This is a European bird, new to us and new for this trip, that is all over the zoo. The are more abundant than sparrows or starlings. They are in all respects like a common crow except that only their heads and wings are black. The rest of their bodies are a cool grey. By 1400 we were all quite chilly and decided to head out of the zoo and find a place to eat. On the below-ground level of the complex where we'd eaten the night before we found Allegro, a nice Italian restaurant. Pizzas in Europe (so far) are always considered to be individual ones. There is no choice of crust. There is a considerable choice of toppings, although this seems to vary slightly from country to country. The names of the pizzas, however, seem to be standardized. A "marguerite" is the same in France, Holland, and Germany -- cheese pizza with tomato sauce. It's also amazing that fresh strawberry desserts are available in most places. This is October. After lunch we collected our cars and drove to Bohnsdorf after a pit stop at my cousin's apartment and some more coffee and cake. Coffee and cake are a very large part of people's afternoons in Germany. I was stuffed and didn't want to think about dinner again, ever. The drive to Bohnsdorf took 40 minutes. The traffic in Berlin isn't as bad as in Paris, but it's still bad. Since I was following Thomas' Audi, I didn't pay attention to where I was going as much as I would have liked to. This was a crucial error when we were going to drive this stretch without a pace car to follow. I had totally forgotten about the GPS in my backpack. This was exactly the reason that I took it along with me in the first place. The traffic was very dense all the way to Bohnsdorf. Streets change names when there's just a slight bend in the road. For the casual visitor Berlin is a very confusing place to navigate. The streets got narrower and finally turned to cobblestone as we got closer and closer to the Priebornerstrasse where I grew up. Although I'd had the opportunity to see and stay in the house on one of the weekends of my Munich workshop with Siemens, it was still very exciting to get closer and finally to get there. You'll be able to see form the pictures -- the tiny house has a bathroom with shower, a kitchen with dining nook, a living room, and a bedroom . It's property is bordered with a thick hedge on three sides. I recognize a lot of it from the pictures that I'd seen over the years. But there is that occasional feeling of deja vu that I first experienced in May when I was puling weeds in the back yard. Sitting on the lawn my visual perspective of the small house was closer to that of a little kid, and even though it been over 45 years since I'd been there, I could catch glimpses of childhood memories -- what was around the corner from the house, where I rode my bike, the garden, the fruit trees, eating whole apples, digging in the dirt. They were brief glimpses and they validated that this was the place of my childhood. Thomas showed us how to adjust the hot water controls for the heat and the shower. Hanelore showed us where the bedding and towels were and what had been stocked in the full refrigerator. We opened a bottle of wine and finally some "schwarzbier". We chatted a bit more and then we were left alone after getting some brief instructions on where a store and a McDonald's was. We unpacked, tried out the phone connection (the German phone connections are different again than the ones in France and Holland -- but I had acquired the correct converter during my May trip). We fiddled with the A pulse dial instead of tone, and a few other things -- and were online. A short drive down the well-paved Waltersdorferstrasse landed us at the Golden Arches restaurant. The service was efficient, and quite witty in the well-known Berliner style. We'd hoped to get some groceries, too, and found a huge Metro store still open. We had difficulty finding the entrance. I asked a man pushing a shopping cart full of stuff to his car where we could go in. He pointed it out but indicated that the store was probably closed. It was after 2000. Turns out the store was still open, but that we couldn't shop there because it was like a Costco, and we didn't have a membership card. The woman at the entrance told us where a "regular" grocery store was which we'd go look for it in the morning. Finally, we were back "home", fiddled with the hot water controls to ensure that all of us could shower. The first one and half showers were okay. The last one and half showers were on the very cool side. We quickly found our respective "surfaces" again although they were more dynamic than in Holland. Monika's either on the sofa reading, on the floor in front of the little table holding the laptop, or in bed (when the sofa was pulled out into a bed). Vera's was either the kitchen table or the bed. Mine was either the large chair to flip through the TV channels (when the chair didn't have stuff in it), the kitchen table when the laptop was free, or the bed. Vera and Monika retired to their bed surfaces around midnight. I stayed at the kitchen table until close to 0300. I was ruminating over all that had happened so far and what was still to come. I wrote a lot but I thought about stuff even more. The schwarzbier that Thomas and Hanelore had so thoughtfully stocked in the hall wasn't making me sleepy, no matter how many I drank. It was a full day. I lay down still wide awake.