Now we sit quite beautifully in the ink.

Sunset over Nantes:
airplane view

It's a little strange in France when the language assistants go out in public as a group, all speaking French but with very different and in some cases extremely heavy accents.  More exceptionally, we all manage to understand each other very well but from time to time struggle to understand French people when they speak French.  But, especially once we get outside of small towns, people assume that we're a group of foreign exchange students and it's not that weird.

Now take a French-speaking group of two Spaniards, one German, and two Americans and place them in Germany.  Even in an international city like Berlin, the two main languages are German and English...both of which we butchered fantastically.  The transition from bonjour to hallo, s'il vous plaît to bitte, merci beaucoup to danke schön, pardon to entschuldigung, and au revoir to tchüss was far from fluid.  Luckily, we had Lisa's expertise and native German language skills to guide us.  She taught me the handiest two words for shop and café situations (if you'd like to order, for example, a laugenbrötchen for breakfast but are mortified that you'll completely butcher the name):

das da - that one

"Das da, bitte" plus a finger point got me far in life in Germany.  At the very least, it got me breakfast much faster than, "Uh, bonjour, non, errr, nein, uh, bitte, ça?  Non, with fromage.  Er.  Cheese.  Käse?  Ja!  Merci!  Non non non - danke.  Danke schön."

Knowing nothing about the city, we decided to start our five days in Berlin with a walking tour.  Ironically, there was a Spanish tour for Claudia and Laura, an English tour for Elyse and me, but no German tour for Lisa...and no French tour, for that matter.  (She knows English well, though, and tagged along on our tour led by a man from Manchester.)  I highly recommend these tours to anyone going to Berlin for the first time; it was well worth it despite being outside in the freezing damp cold for almost five hours.  The tour we found was free, but you tip your guide as much as you think it was worth at the end.  And our guide was very good, despite having a bottomless pit of American jokes to fire at Elyse at me.  Besides getting a sense of the layout of Berlin, we also discovered the hidden but rich history of the city that you simply can't get otherwise; Berlin is now a modern city, the political seat of Germany, but it has been through a lot as has Germany as a country.

Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate); Berliner Dom (Berlin cathedral); Holocaust-Mahnmal (Holocaust Memorial)

We started at the Brandenburg Gate (first picture above on the left), which was built in the 1730s as a symbol of peace...ironic, since it played a role in several wars that followed its construction.  On the top of the gate, you can see the Quadriga, a horse-pulled chariot, which was taken to Paris by Napoleon I in 1806 after his victory over Prussia (don't worry - it was returned in 1814).  The Gate was a Nazi party symbol during WWII, badly damaged and later restored.  During the Cold War, one of eight checkpoints along the Berliner Mauer (Berlin Wall) between East Berlin and West Berlin was situated just east of the Gate.

One of the next stops was one of the most solemn but fascinating places in Berlin: the Holocaust Memorial, or Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (right photo above).  The memorial itself was designed in 2005 by Peter Eisenman, a Newark, New Jersey native.  It's a city block full of concrete slabs with uneven walking spaces between them; no two are the same.  Part of the beauty and genius of the memorial is that Eisenman himself will not tell you exactly what the slabs are: you have to reflect and decide for yourself what they mean.  For me, they looked like coffins; their plainness is what struck me the most, which is supposed to represent the lack of proper burial the Jews were given, especially in concentration camps.  Later during our stay, we returned to visit the memorial museum located below, which was extremely well-done and worth a visit if you have plenty of emotion to spare.

We moved from there to the parking lot which stands over the bomb-proof bunker where Adolf Hitler died.  The story is strange, almost comedic, and very dark all at once, and our guide did a fantastic job of spinning it.  In the spring of 1945, after spending too much time in down in the bunker with no sunlight, Hitler and his army had become slightly delusional...so much so that they didn't fully realize or care that they had already lost the war and were going to be overtaken.  He married Eva Braun in the bunker less than forty hours before they committed suicide; their bodies were burned at his command, but their skull and jaw fragments were later tested and confirmed.  A couple of years later, the Soviets attempted to destroy the bomb-proof bunker by bombing it.  It didn't work.  Today, the bunker still exists, but there is no memorial to mark the place so as not to give undue attention to Hitler; it is only a parking lot.

The middle picture above shows the Dom (cathedral) of Berlin.  It's an impressive building, but not as old as it looks: it was completed in 1905.  King Frederick William IV decided to build it because their old cathedral was not nearly as impressive as those of other cities; he told the designers to "make it look old".  Behind the cathedral to the left, you can see the Fernsehturm, or television tower, the fourth-tallest freestanding structure in Europe and one of the landmarks of Berlin.

In addition, you have Museumsinsel, or Museum Island, an area near the cathedral with many famous museums.  We later went to one recommended by our guide, the Deutsches Historisches Museum (German History Museum), which took half a day and reminded me a lot of Invalides in Paris - so much excellent information and so many artifacts, but no human possesses enough brainpower to take it all in during one visit.  There are a couple of other museums on Museumsinsel that I'd like to return and see as well.

Then there's Gendarmenmarkt, maybe my favorite square in Berlin.  On one end is Französischer Dom (the French cathedral) and on the other Deutscher Dom (the German cathedral), in theory completely identical except that the German cathedral was the second built, and may have made its dome just a little taller than that of the French.  Between the two is the Konzerthaus, or orchestra hall, where the Berlin Philharmonic plays.  It was closed when we stopped by, but the inside is supposedly incredible.

Brandenburger Tor in chocolate

It was right next to Gendarmenmarkt that we discovered heaven on earth, Fassbender & Rausch.  This was either the most wonderful or terrible place I've discovered.  In France, chocolate is typically expensive; just under one Euro for once small piece.  In Germany, prices in general are lower; in the chocolate world, that means that for the absolute best chocolate in the country, the price was equivalent to so-so chocolate in France.  So we made a daily meal of it.  When Elyse's dad emailed her to ask if she'd been to his favorite historical museum in Berlin, she responded, "No, but we went to Fassbender & Rausch five times."  To be fair, the chocolate shop was definitely a cultural and historical experience, with Berlin monument models in every corner.

Bundestag in chocolate

East Side Gallery

One morning, we visited the East Side Gallery, the longest-standing portion of the Berlin Wall (about 1.3 km) which is now decorated with 105 paintings by artists around the world.  The paintings are all vibrant and varied; they all stand for change and hope for a better future.  It's an experience to simply stroll along the wall.  There's one area where you can see a bit of the second wall and get a sense of the space between them - the Berlin Wall was actually double-walled with several awful traps set between them for anyone who tried to escape from one side to the other.  Sadly, many sections have been severely vandalized and some of the painted wall was recently knocked down to make room for the construction of modern apartment buildings along the river.

Afterward, we took the tram to Mustafa's Gemüse Kebap - the best street kebab place in Berlin.  We waited in line at least thirty minutes, and it was so well worth it.  The line luckily deters you from ordering a second and third and fourth.  If you are in Berlin, don't miss it.

View from the Bundestag

We had also made a reservation to visit the Bundestag that afternoon - the government building of Berlin and of Germany.  With a reservation, you can go up and down the spiral walkway in the glass dome at the top, listen to an audioguide describing Berlin, and take in many excellent views of the city.  As you look down, you can see straight into the room where the German parliament meets.  The principle is that the government is always below the people, and if they forget that, they just need to look up and see civilians circulating above them...but the reality, as our tour guide pointed out, is that they are really just seeing a bunch of American tourists.

Elyse, Laura, me, Claudia, and Lisa at the Bundestag

Today, aside from being a historical site of interest and political center, Berlin actually doesn't have a main industry like many other German cities...aside from tourism.  It therefore seemed very liveable if you know and can avoid the areas swarming with selfie-stick-wielding tourists and pickpockets.

Germans are fascinating and incredible people.  Their undergrad college tuition is free because value is invested in the next generation and what they will do with their education.  So many efficient, intelligent, and artistic people who have contributed to the world in positive and revolutionary ways have come from Germany:  Gutenberg, Einstein, Beethoven, Marx, Luther, Nietzsche, Klee, Liszt, Kant, Goethe...  But the stereotype and image of Germans that prevails in the world is still that of Naziism during WWII.  It's a terrible thing to have to take responsibility for something like the Holocaust, but the Germans do it with dignity.  Everyone would like to say that they would never participate in something as terrible as the Holocaust, even in the smallest way, but it's truly easier said than done.  At the time, even at the beginning of the Nazis' ascent to power, no one knew how it would end.  Today, Germans still tend to be quiet about their national pride, even during events like the World Cup and Olympics; they also have war memorials and monuments placed front-and-center in their cities so that they are reminded every day of the painful parts of their history.  They don't sweep their historical failings under the rug: they rehash them out in the open, educate themselves, and try to make sure that they don't repeat the horror.  Something I'll think about the next time I see an "evil German" reference in the media.

To end on a lighter note, Lisa introduced me to something called Denglisch - German phrases that are directly translated into English...that are not parallel and make no sense.  They are all over Germany on postcards and T-shirts.  For example, the title of this blog:

Take the German phrase Jetzt sitzen wir ganz schön in der Tinte.
Directly translated, it says, Now we sit quite beautifully in the ink.
The real English equivalent is something like, Now we're in a real mess.

Try also:
No one can reach me the water.
Meaning: No one can be as good as me.

There stand me the hairs to mountains.
Meaning:  (You're driving me crazy;) I'm going to pull my hair out.

And, probably the most famous:
I think I spider.
Meaning:  I think I'm going crazy.

After five full days in Berlin, Elyse, Laura, and I continued on by train to a new city, country, and language...  Prague, Czech Republic.