Ich bin ein Berliner! (To quote JFK.) - L

After a brief flight we arrived in Berlin late Sunday afternoon. Our hostel in Berlin was right near the center of things just a few blocks east of where the Berlin wall once stood. We didn’t do a terribly large amount of things that evening, we wondered around the city for a bit and saw some sights before heading to an excellent (and relatively cheap) Vietnamese restaurant for supper. I’m stupid and couldn’t remember if tip was included in the total and therefore accidentally left our waitress a very, very generous tip. I’m sure she appreciated it, but we could have used that money to get ourselves some Doner Kebaps. Which are cheap Turkish delights, containing seasoned lamb shavings and vegetables in a flat bread, and absolutely delicious. Later that night we went to my first club! The place was called Weekend and though it was fun , I think if we could have afforded some alcohol (and some serious hair product to fit in better) it definitely would have changed the experience. Oh! And I forgot to mention, Berlin has a very, very, very active prostitution business. I’m not sure if it’s actually legal, but as aggressively as these girls made their propositions (and let me tell you, dressed the part) they sure weren’t hiding what they were about. We ran into our first two on our way to the club and on our way back to the hostel later there seemed to be two on every block, working as a team. Let me tell you, it was ridiculously difficult to convince them that we weren't interested. It's sad really.


Anyway the next day we hoped over to the Brandenburg Gate for a free (well, the guides work for tips only) walking tour around Berlin. Our guide Katie was from Australia and she did an excellent job of providing us with the history of Berlin and the significance of several places around the city center.

Right away she pointed out to us Hotel Adlon where the recently departed Michael Jackson dangled Prince Michael II over the balcony (RIP MJ, you may have given two of your sons the same name, but Thriller is a killer song.) Next we saw the Reichstag, visited the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe, the location where Hitler’s bunker is now demolished and buried, remnants of the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie (the most famous access point between East and West Berlin), the sight of the socialist book burning and it’s present day memorial, the opera house, Museum Island, and the Berlin Dom, among other things. It was a pretty great tour and our hope our guide made some good money!



Later we attempted to get into the Stadtsoper to see Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio, but as no seats seemed to be available we opted instead to race over to the Deutsches Oper just barely in time to get into Puccini’s Turandot. Just as the stated to dim the lights and raise the current we caught a glimpse of someone we thought we recognized as a fellow Ole Choir member, but we decided it couldn’t be and the show began! Overall it was an okay production, unfortunately it was sung in Italian and super titled in German so much of the story line was lost on us, but the singers were quite excellent (though as seems to be the trend in opera, not very good actors). I also don’t much like European staging and the constant need to contemporize a productions, but it was fun and I think worth the time. By the time the opera was over we had indeed confirmed that John Andert (another first tenor in choir) was indeed sitting across the audience from us. He was staying with St. Olaf professor, Dan Dressen’s former voice professor and his wife who were chorus members in the opera and they treated the three of us and another singer/audience member to wine after the show. I think it’s easy to feel isolated from the “natives.” It was really nice to run into somebody we knew, and to sit down and talk with people for a change.


Our last day in Berlin we met John for lunch and headed back over to der Museuminseln to go into the Pergamum Museum. Inside it they had large scale antiquities such as the enormous partially reconstructed from remants of the ruins Pergamon Altar, Babylon’s Ishtar Gate, an amazing marketplace gate, and hundreds of Greek and Roman sculptures and artifacts.

The last thing Eric and I did in Berlin was to visit the Reichstag and to climb into it’s giant glass dome. We barely got in before closing but we were able to see the Berlin skyline and night and gaze down into the parliamentary chamber of the German government. It was a pretty neat way to finish our time in Germany. Whew. This was a lot to cram into one post, sorry!

Kjeks eller beger? - E

Sorry for the lack of updates the past 2 weeks! We’re having a hard time finding time to sit down and write a blog post- so much to do, and so little internet access! Right now we're in Verona with a wonderful family, and we've seen so much! But I still have to fill you in about our last weekend WWOOFing in Norway, when we sold ice cream at a town market in the mountains! We've been writing blogs on the trains, but haven't gotten a chance to post them!


Two Fridays ago, June 19th, Øystein, Logan, and I drove through the fjords to Røldal, a mountain village that used to have an important annual market, and it has recently been reincarnated as a handcraft market. It’s the site of a stave church that, even after the reformation and its turning in to a protestant church, was a popular pilgrimage site because of its crucifix that supposedly drips healing sweat on midsummer’s night. Hence the important market weekend happening around midsummer’s night. We didn’t get to see the sweaty crucifix though.



So I got to put my basic Norwegian skills to use, serving ice cream to the locals. Most of the time we got along fine, but if they said anything other than a flavor or number, we just looked confusingly at Øystein for help. It was definitely a unique experience, selling organic ice cream in the mountains of Norway, and so much fun. That weekend stayed at Øystein’s family cabin a half an hour from the town, in the middle of the snow-patched mountains, hiked a bit, played cards, and learned a lot about the history of migrating sheep herders in Norway!



We drove back Sunday, and the next morning we milked the cows for the last time. I wanted to record our last moments with our lovely cow-friends, so here's some video of we took of us milking in action! (and some video of us hiking, made as tacky as possible with MovieMaker...)



While planning our travel to Denmark, we realized that we wouldn’t be able to make it all the way to Kristiansand in one day, where had to take a ferry on Wednesday to Denmark. So that night we sent our first requests on Couchsurfing.org to people in Stavanger. Couchsurfing.org is a internet site where people who need a place to stay can find hosts who want people to stay with them for free. It’s all about cultural exchange and experiencing the people, not just the sights, of the places you go. So I sent our requests for a couch Tuesday night on Monday night, and the next morning got a reply from Isak, a 20-year-old who was already hosting a couple of Germans but could take us too. So we got to Stavanger by bus, walked around the city for a little while, and me Isak downtown. He took us back to his parent’s basement (which was actually a lot nicer than it sounds) where we met his girlfriend, and after a while the Germans showed up. Then we all went to the park and had a picnic, cooking our hamburgers on little disposable grills. Great inventions.

Norway was beautiful, and we were so lucky to be able to stay with the Kolles and the other wwoofers. I'll miss them! Here's the whole family (including the kittens), the day we left to Stavanger.

More to come: Denmark, Berlin, Naples, and Rome!