On to Germany!
6/2/06
Collected the rest of the family unit today and flew to Frankfurt. Everone was tired and crabby, especially me for no particular reason. Mom had us get up early, expecting it to take 4 hours to get to the airport. It tooks us half an hour. Wincester is close to Londn. Sigh. They couldn't take our luggage so early so we had to sit for 2 hours, check our bags, then sit for 2 more hours. We found Dad and Heather in the terminal and there was much hatting and discussion. Mom wasn't really taking any initaive to give anyone else instructions, so I always do my best to figure it out and then she'd yell at me. grr. I think another reason I'm grouch is I kept getting lost in my book -- Angela's Ashes, and it's a bit more real to me at the moment. Weird how that happens.
So now we're staying at a NY themed hotel in the redlight district of Frankfurt (odd) and we leave for Berlin tomorrow. Woo!
Also, it's also been bugging me a bit not to be in charge of myself. I'm a child again, a dependent. Free money(ish), but at the expense of my adulthood.
6/3/06
Berlin! Ohmigoodness, Berlin! I'm feeling rejuvinated and super excited again to be in such an amazing city. I was starting to feel tired, run down, and ready to get home after all the travel yesterday, but today repaired all that.
Actually, our morning was pretty roucgh. We took the ICE (inter-city express) train from Frankfurt to Berlin and arrived here at noon. That was no problem -- then we got to the brand new Berlin Hauptbahnhof, which is HUGE. It has I think 5 levels of trans and subways and all kinds of shopping, all under one huge glass roof open to the sights of the city. It's the largest train station in Europe and it just opened a few weeks ago, just in time for the World Cup. It's one of the many massive construction projects that Berlin is famous for.
The problems started when we had to change from the S-Bahn (which I learned is for surface trains, not to be confused with Strassenbahn) to the Strassenbahn. We were hugnry and excited but anxious to get moving so that quickly turned into crabbiness. We took a tram (Strassenbahn) to East Berlin and wandered around IN THE RAIN for a bit and finally found our hotel at 2:30 or so. We got our bearings and then the fun started!
I'm responsible for the Berlin portion of our 'tour,' which is very exciting because Berlin is so historical (and we spent a month talking about it in German class). We visited St. Mary's cathedral, which was heavily bomomed in WWII (story of their lives...) and then the Berliner Dom, which houses the Hohenzollern monarchy's crypt. That church has been under reconstruction for 20 years and just reopened. Funny how the World Cup will do that. Cathedrals are always beautiful, but I'm getting a bit cathedralled-out. I found the Ampelmannchen store, though, and bought stickers and cookie cutters! Woo! I've actually done a good job this trip, I've hardly bought any misc. junk.
We hopped another tram to a place in my guidebook for dinner. Sadly, we couldn't find it (strike 2 against el book), so we ate at a place called Cafe Orange instead. Still good, though.
After dinner we made our way to the Brandenburger Tor-- which I've been dying to see. I'll be honest, it's not quite as big as I expected, but that could be because it was dwarfed by a giant soccer ball which pretty much ruined any chance at a good picture. Arg. Oh well, I managed. I guess I'll just have to come back :D The Tor is really pretty impressive, though and ti's seen so many uses-- city gate, checkpoing, rally point, tourist attraction... From ther we wandered over to the Reichstag, which has the World Cup arena in its front lawn. Heather fell down about 3 stairs in front of the whole world and it was quite funny, once we were sure she was okay. We stood in line for ages outside and I got to take to cute boys from Düsseldorf. They were in tehir last form of high school -- sketch... One guy was definitely flirting tons (chris) and I actually got his email. He studied in KY for a year and was quite charming. I hope he's older than 16... oh jeez, that would be awful.
The view from the top of the Reichstag is pretty incredible. Berlin is massive! you can see the places where they've rebuilt and the remnants of East and West. Chris doesn't understand why they do it -- germans disliking other Germans because of an artifical political border. Definitely something to pay attention to.
6/4/06
Floyd family public scene number one aside, today's rapid tour of Berlin was very intersting and personally fulfilling (to me...) This morning started off with more public transportaion drama w/ dropping off our luggage at the train station. H. broke her umbrella yesterday when she fell, so we had to stand around for 20 minutes waiting for the store to open so she could exchnage it. After that, everything was golden. We visted the Kaiser-Wilhlem-Gedachnis-Kirche first off, it's Coventry Cathedral's twin, left in it's bombed out state with a new memorial churhc attached. I've studied a fiar amount of German history and culture and it's been interesting to see its effects and implications. The memorial part of the church wasn't open today, as it's Sunday, but the view from outside expressed very clearly the human costs of war. 55 million people died in WWII, we never want to do that again, though the middle east may be the Balkans for our generation.
After that we worked our way to Checkpoint Charlie, via the new Holocaust memorial.
And I just realized that I wrote about most of this while I was there, so here's a link to that entry.
http://isiliath.livejournal.com/140665.html?mode=reply
I guess If I'm feeling motivated I could write what I have in my journal, which is more detailed, but ya'll will just have to let me know on that one.
Collected the rest of the family unit today and flew to Frankfurt. Everone was tired and crabby, especially me for no particular reason. Mom had us get up early, expecting it to take 4 hours to get to the airport. It tooks us half an hour. Wincester is close to Londn. Sigh. They couldn't take our luggage so early so we had to sit for 2 hours, check our bags, then sit for 2 more hours. We found Dad and Heather in the terminal and there was much hatting and discussion. Mom wasn't really taking any initaive to give anyone else instructions, so I always do my best to figure it out and then she'd yell at me. grr. I think another reason I'm grouch is I kept getting lost in my book -- Angela's Ashes, and it's a bit more real to me at the moment. Weird how that happens.
So now we're staying at a NY themed hotel in the redlight district of Frankfurt (odd) and we leave for Berlin tomorrow. Woo!
Also, it's also been bugging me a bit not to be in charge of myself. I'm a child again, a dependent. Free money(ish), but at the expense of my adulthood.
6/3/06
Berlin! Ohmigoodness, Berlin! I'm feeling rejuvinated and super excited again to be in such an amazing city. I was starting to feel tired, run down, and ready to get home after all the travel yesterday, but today repaired all that.
Actually, our morning was pretty roucgh. We took the ICE (inter-city express) train from Frankfurt to Berlin and arrived here at noon. That was no problem -- then we got to the brand new Berlin Hauptbahnhof, which is HUGE. It has I think 5 levels of trans and subways and all kinds of shopping, all under one huge glass roof open to the sights of the city. It's the largest train station in Europe and it just opened a few weeks ago, just in time for the World Cup. It's one of the many massive construction projects that Berlin is famous for.
The problems started when we had to change from the S-Bahn (which I learned is for surface trains, not to be confused with Strassenbahn) to the Strassenbahn. We were hugnry and excited but anxious to get moving so that quickly turned into crabbiness. We took a tram (Strassenbahn) to East Berlin and wandered around IN THE RAIN for a bit and finally found our hotel at 2:30 or so. We got our bearings and then the fun started!
I'm responsible for the Berlin portion of our 'tour,' which is very exciting because Berlin is so historical (and we spent a month talking about it in German class). We visited St. Mary's cathedral, which was heavily bomomed in WWII (story of their lives...) and then the Berliner Dom, which houses the Hohenzollern monarchy's crypt. That church has been under reconstruction for 20 years and just reopened. Funny how the World Cup will do that. Cathedrals are always beautiful, but I'm getting a bit cathedralled-out. I found the Ampelmannchen store, though, and bought stickers and cookie cutters! Woo! I've actually done a good job this trip, I've hardly bought any misc. junk.
We hopped another tram to a place in my guidebook for dinner. Sadly, we couldn't find it (strike 2 against el book), so we ate at a place called Cafe Orange instead. Still good, though.
After dinner we made our way to the Brandenburger Tor-- which I've been dying to see. I'll be honest, it's not quite as big as I expected, but that could be because it was dwarfed by a giant soccer ball which pretty much ruined any chance at a good picture. Arg. Oh well, I managed. I guess I'll just have to come back :D The Tor is really pretty impressive, though and ti's seen so many uses-- city gate, checkpoing, rally point, tourist attraction... From ther we wandered over to the Reichstag, which has the World Cup arena in its front lawn. Heather fell down about 3 stairs in front of the whole world and it was quite funny, once we were sure she was okay. We stood in line for ages outside and I got to take to cute boys from Düsseldorf. They were in tehir last form of high school -- sketch... One guy was definitely flirting tons (chris) and I actually got his email. He studied in KY for a year and was quite charming. I hope he's older than 16... oh jeez, that would be awful.
The view from the top of the Reichstag is pretty incredible. Berlin is massive! you can see the places where they've rebuilt and the remnants of East and West. Chris doesn't understand why they do it -- germans disliking other Germans because of an artifical political border. Definitely something to pay attention to.
6/4/06
Floyd family public scene number one aside, today's rapid tour of Berlin was very intersting and personally fulfilling (to me...) This morning started off with more public transportaion drama w/ dropping off our luggage at the train station. H. broke her umbrella yesterday when she fell, so we had to stand around for 20 minutes waiting for the store to open so she could exchnage it. After that, everything was golden. We visted the Kaiser-Wilhlem-Gedachnis-Kirche first off, it's Coventry Cathedral's twin, left in it's bombed out state with a new memorial churhc attached. I've studied a fiar amount of German history and culture and it's been interesting to see its effects and implications. The memorial part of the church wasn't open today, as it's Sunday, but the view from outside expressed very clearly the human costs of war. 55 million people died in WWII, we never want to do that again, though the middle east may be the Balkans for our generation.
After that we worked our way to Checkpoint Charlie, via the new Holocaust memorial.
And I just realized that I wrote about most of this while I was there, so here's a link to that entry.
http://isiliath.livejournal.com/140665.html?mode=reply
I guess If I'm feeling motivated I could write what I have in my journal, which is more detailed, but ya'll will just have to let me know on that one.