Hakuna Matata

Phew! It's hot and we're tired, but it's the best kind of tired! We've done a lot in two days here in Berlin.

Kristen and John have served as excellent tour guides, taking us around their city. They really live in the heart of the city here, in what used to be East Berlin. On Saturday, Kristen took us around their neighborhood and surrounding area...we walked through a Saturday market; we saw Zionskirche, where Dietrich Bonhoeffer was ordained and preached; the Berliner Dom; the Berliner Rathaus (city hall) and ate gelato in a park surrounded by some of these old and famous buildings (didn't Yma do a good job taking the gelato picture?) Amy and Abbey find that they are actually of average height here in Germany...it's kind of weird! Lots of people ride bicycles to get around in this city and there are "bike" sections on all the city sidewalks...beware all pedestrians who accidently wander there!

Here's some pictures of us around Berlin: In the front of the Berliner Dom, at a tourist shop posing with a statue of the "walk" symbol, and Yma with the Rathaus in the background.

Today, we went to John and Kristen's church to worship with them. One of my favorite experiences in travel has been to worship in churches around the globe...the church universal lived out! The first three worship songs that we sang we knew in English and were able to sing along and Kristen translated the rest of the songs for us and we sang along in German, as best we could. John translated the sermon for us, a message about returning to our first love, our first passion for Christ.

After church, we headed out to Potsdam, where the Prussian kings had their palaces. We drove in John and Kristen's car and ended up stuck in quite a bit of traffic that we later found out was related to road closures for a huge bike ride in Berlin.

The grounds and gardens were huge...expansive! We had a great time just wandering down all the paths. They were lined by high hedges or overgrown "forest" and so there was a surprise at every intersecting path...to the right perhaps a trail to a sunny field with a statue in front and to the left a manicured flower garden with a fountain in the center. Spread throughout the grounds were elaborate palaces and teahouses and such. The center picture above is the main palace, Sans Souci (It means "no worries" :). We spent hours and hours exploring the grounds despite the hot weather.

The highlight of the day for me was meeting my college friends, Ryan and Kelly, at the base of the steps to the palace!! You have to love global friendships like that! They're living in Cambridge currently (there's a link to their blog on mine). We're now all hanging out at John and Kristen's together and the pizza's ready, so I'm off!

Kelly and Ryan taking a break on a garden bench and Yma enjoying the fountain (and finally having some arms).