From: Rainer Subject: Rainer's Europe Trip 1998 -- part 14 Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1998 02:26:14 EDT Hi everyone again. I still haven't caught up with my journal entry. You can't believe how much time is spent running around and getting things done. The five weeks won't be nearly enough. Please send money to help extend the trip for another five weeks (just kidding, but only a little). Cheers, Rainer Wednesday, 10/7 -- part 14 Side note: Today is actually Saturday, about 1715, and I'm writing this in a first class compartment of the train from Berlin to Munich. There are 3 other people in the compartment with us. We're about 2 hours from arrival. But more of this when I write about Saturday. I am behind in the journal writing ever since we arrived in Berlin. I plan to catch up this weekend. It was nice to wake up and be able to make our own breakfast. The sunny day we had yesterday had given way to drizzly morning. The air traffic from Schoenefeld airport was quiet most of the night. The jets started around 0600, although most of us didn't wake up until later. After breakfast I figured out how to hook up the little washing machine. Vera started a load of laundry and Monika and I set out to find the grocery store that we'd received directions to last night. We planned with Thomas to meet at his apartment around noon, so we thought we had plenty of time. We didn't know the name of the grocery store. Brand-name recognition doesn't mean much. Is the store an Ikea, a Metro, a Hoffman, a Plus, or a Lidl? I didn't know either. Ikea and Hoffman are building supply and home improvement places. Plus and Lidl are grocery stores. They're not grocery stores like Thriftway or Safeway, however. They are much smaller and as a result with much less selection of stuff. I thought the instructions from last night indicated that we should drive down this one road. We did. It appeared to be a country road through the woods. Monika and I decided that after 5 minutes of driving at a good clip through the woods that it did not look like a shopping center was coming in this direction, so we headed back. We found a Plus store and shopped there. Our shopping list was only partially filled. The much-hoped-for refried beans and tortillas were not to be found. Mexican food cravings would have to be calmed another way. We called Thomas at 1030 to tell him we were leaving. We expected to driver just over an hour. We got there just after 1430! I won't even try to explain were we ended up. Suffice it to say that the at 1130 we ended up stopping for lunch at the same McDonald's we'd had dinner the night before, just a few kilometers from Bohnsdorf. I tried using the pay phone to call Thomas. We were outside the Berlin city limits and the number I dialed the night before didn't work today. I learned later that I was required to dial the city code from that particular pay phone. I digress for a moment. It's amazing how many things we do regularly and take for granted become an issue or a puzzle when you have to do them in a foreign country. Can you turn right on a red light? What are the speed limits when none are posted? How much does a pay phone cost? Do you dial first and then put in the coins or vice versa? When do you dial that leading zero that's in parentheses on so many business card phone numbers? How does the toilet flush? How much money do you need to go the the restroom in the train station? Does the bill include a tip? Is the gas station self service? What does the blue sign with the red X through it mean? Why don't they have bags in the grocery store? Since we were so close to "home", and since I had this slight doubt about whether I remembered the phone number, I quick drove to the house and called from there. Thomas wasn't home, so I left a message telling him that we had done a huge circle and would try again. I still didn't think of the GPS -- what a dumb thing to do. When we did finally pick Thomas up, we drove the Unter den Linden, the Berlin's one-time equivalent to the Champs Elysee. We were amazed at the amount of construction going on everywhere -- especially in the area that used to be called East Berlin. Cranes grow out of every tall building. Cement and sand and rebar are seen at almost every other corner. Huge networks of pipes carrying water from the river to the construction sites are built above ground and run high over the streets in pink, yellow, and blue pipe systems giving you this feeling that you're on a set from the movie Brazil with all of it's duct work. The new construction and the old, ornate buildings, some from the 1600s provide a juxtaposition that I've tried to capture in pictures. You can still see the patched damage caused by gun fire on walls and columns. You see empty spaces between buildings where bombed out rubble has been removed but not yet rebuilt. You see brand new structures next to old ones. You hear jack hammers. You hear church bells. You see graffiti everywhere. Your mind and your eye don't know how to make sense of this scene. You see where the wall once was. There are now trinket salesmen there with Russian military medals and insignias for sale. There's a row of crosses along a fence by the Brandenburg Gate noting people that died crossing the wall. The last person shot trying to escape died just six months before the wall came down. We now walk back and forth across a battle zone a few years ago. It doesn't make any sense at all. We stopped for a coffee (or a beer and korn)at Zum Nussbaum -- a very old inn/pub in the Nikolai quarter, one of the oldest sections of Berlin. It had a very cozy and friendly atmosphere. We walked back to the car via the old Rathaus (next to a huge telecommunications tower whose top was obscured by the low clouds. On the way to drop off Thomas, we stopped at the Bahnhof Zoo to make reservations for our train travel to Munich. It was very crowded and all of the lines moved slowly. Naturally, the line I got in moved slower than all the rest. The white ICE trains, the really fast ones, had no seats available for all legs of the trip. So we booked just an IC train (inter city) but we wouldn't have to change trains. We dropped Thomas off just as it was getting dark and declined getting together for dinner. We wanted to drive back to Bohnsdorf while it there was still a little light left to read the map. The last minute instructions from Thomas on how to get on to the inner city Autobahn proved faulty. We were supposed to get on heading toward Templehof airport. Well, the signs only showed Zehlendorf or Schoeneberg. Our first wrong turn and we'd only just started the trip back. Several U-turns later we were on the right Autobahn. We took the Templehof exit but shouldn't have. We got back on the Autobahn. We managed to get all the way to Schoenefeld airport. That's when the real trouble started. It was now totally dark, too dark to make any sense out of the map while driving. Vera had had it. We drove in circles. We asked directions. People don't know street names. They tell you to go this way, or that, using lefts and rights to a point where you have trouble just remembering the first part of the instructions. Like in France, the popular instructions in Germany are "immer gerade aus", keep going straight. We did make it even though Vera was probably convinced that we'd end up sleeping in the car on some street this night. It was just after 1930 when we got back. Monika and I had heard from Thomas that the really large shopping center we were looking for in the morning really was down the road that we were on, just further. We were going to try to get to the center by 2000, when stores close, and see about getting the missing shopping list items. We found the center in less than the 15 minutes drive we were told were required. It was 2005 or so. Still not knowing one store name from another, I asked at the first gas station where a grocery store was. "Just around the corner" was the reply. There we found the Lidl store with the doors still allowing us entry. As soon as we walked in I heard the woman at the cashier say to her co-workers, "We need to lock the doors." Lidl was about the size of Plus. No refried beans. We decided on a can of spiral noodles with tomato sauce and tiny meatballs, and can of chicken soup. It was good to eat a "home-cooked" meal. We finished our night-time activities on our respective surfaces. I tried to complete a journal entry, but this time the Schwarzbier worked earlier.