Einfugen means 'paste' in German

We're in Erfurt. We’re at a very nice (and quiet!) hostel that John and Kristen recommended to us and have settled in for a couple of nights. We plan to meet John’s sister for breakfast in the morning.
Today, we took the train from Berlin to Wittenberg…first class! We’re too old to buy second class Eurail passes and we were feeling sorry for ourselves about that until we experienced first class! Fabulous! Leg room! Privacy!! Leg room! Temperature control!! Leg room! We’re never going back :).
Wittenberg was great. It far surpassed our hopes for it. We got in just before lunch and started with food before finding the information center and grabbing maps. Our fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants navigation continues to work out for us. :) We started with Schlosskirche (Castle church), the church where Frederick the Wise attended in Martin Luther’s day and the church where Luther nailed the 95 theses to the door (no longer original--it burned in a war--pictured below). Luther is buried there. The church was cool, but felt more like a monument to the Reformation than a place of worship (in fact, I‘m not sure it‘s used for worship anymore). I appreciated having Abbey along as a reference because it’s been over 10 years since I actually studied the Reformation. From there, we found the Town Church, St. Mary’s where Luther actually attended and preached. It was filled with Reformation-era works of art by Lucas Cranach (both Sr. and Jr.) and some of those were pretty cool. The churches were both free (!) and so nice and cool on another warm and humid day.

Abbey and Luther :)
After the churches, we went to Lutherhaus, a former Augustinian monastery that became Luther and his wife’s home. It’s now a huge museum about Luther’s life, writing and effects and we both had low hopes for it. Happily, it turned out to be well worth the admission price! It had incredible amounts of first-edition copies of Luther’s pamphlets and writings. And it was pretty amazing to stand there and read excerpts of his writings--things that are such basic tenants of the Christian faith-- and to realize that the average “believer” in Luther’s day had never heard these things until Luther published his pamphlets; that we are saved by grace alone through faith, that we can have a personal relationship with Jesus, that there is freedom from sin! At the same time, it was sad to see what Luther became in his later years, replacing his Scripture-based pamphlets with anti-Semetic writings…I guess it’s a reminder that he was just a man and that it was not his words, but God’s truth that transformed the church in the 16th century.
From there we headed out to catch a train SW to Erfurt. We missed the train we’d hoped for, but pleasantly waited two hours for the next one. We got to witness a great thunderstorm (appropriate since a thunderstorm scared Luther into his decision to be a monk :) and the whole train ride to Erfurt was through the same amazing storm system…it poured rain and lightning flashed directly overhead for most of the trip! Thankfully, it held off here in Erfurt until we’d reached our hostel, but it was thundering as we reached the door and shortly thereafter, the skies let loose! Mmm. I love a good storm!

Yma enjoys the passing scenery

Sorry no pictures uploaded to picasa today. We're using the hostel's computer (a considerable challenge! All error messages are in German, the y and z are switched, symbols are in strange places! But I now know how to say 'cut' and 'paste' in German and at least I can figure out 'ja' and 'nein' :) So uploading pictures will have to wait until I have wireless for my computer. Thanks for the comments being made...I like to know that you're reading!

Saturation point

Our final day in Berlin. Tonight we pack up and tomorrow we hit the trains!

We packed a lot in to this day. Abbey and Amy did set out on their own this morning and did not get lost. Most of Berlin's major museums are located on an island in the Spree River, so we walked down to that island and looked around a bit...there wasn't time to go in museums, but there was time to buy a cold drink and sit in a cafe along the Spree, people-watching and looking across at a gorgeous museum building. We took more pictures of some of the famous buildings (Berliner Dom pictured below) and then walked back to the apartment for lunch.

After lunch, we took the U-bahn to another section of town to "cross off" some of Berlin's most famous sites. We started with the Reichstag (below with Yma), Germany's current Parliament building and full of historical meaning. From there we walked to the Brandenburg Gate...again so full of historic significance to this country and one of those sights that "I can't believe I'm seeing this." The American embassy is directly next door to the Gate and kitty-corner to that is a strategically placed Starbucks (though they're all over the city) with a view of the Gate. Crazy.

We met with Amy's friends (Ryan and Kelly) again after that and went to see the Holocaust Memorial (pictured below). It was a stark, silent and striking memorial, made all the more meaningful by a later experience in the day...as we walked in search of our next famous sight, we happened upon a display called "Topography of Terror." It's an outdoor display waiting for the funds to make it indoor (pictured below), but currently is situated in the ruined foundation of a building that once served as headquarters for Hitler's SS. It chronicled, in pictures, documents, newspaper headlines and letters, the rise of Hitler to power and the atrocities that followed in Berlin, Germany and throughout Europe. The photos they had were amazing and I felt by about 1/4 of the way through that I'd already reached my saturation point of learning about the horrible things of which mankind is capable. Picture after picture was looking into the face of people moments from their death and knowing it. Document after document was cold propaganda about the Jews and all other such "enemies of the state." Letter after letter told of abuse, torture and death. I cried as I read an excerpt of a letter a man wrote to his wife after learning he'd been sentenced to die the next day. He spoke only of his love, his gratitude to God for his 4 children and his peace with leaving his family in the hands of God.

From there, we headed to Checkpoint Charlie. It's simply a former checkpoint in the middle of a busy street that cars now dash right through. Yesterday, we drove through checkpoint Bravo on the autobahn at about 80 kph! Strange how they once divided the city and now don't even slow traffic. The displays at Checkpoint Charlie had some interesting history about the wall, escape attempts (and successes) and deaths. By then we all felt like we'd definitely reached saturation and exhaustion point and so we headed for ice cream, viewing of more Wall remains (below) and then home from there.

There's so much more to see in Berlin, but it will have to wait for future visits.

The Berkompas compass

Guten morgen! John is working and Kristen is off to practice German with a friend, so this morning Abbey and Amy and I (Yma speaking :) are going to spread our wings and see if we can do Berlin on our own for a couple of hours! Amy has studied the map of our neighborhood and thinks she can get us where we want to be...but she's also promised us that her "inner compass" will probably fail us at least once on this trip...Hmm.

We played cards last night with Amy's college friends. We all had a great time playing "Rage" and Abbey won a decided victory. I personally didn't do so well, but enjoyed the selection of Finnish (?) licorice as pictured here. Well, the laundry is out of the washer and hanging on the drying rack and we're off to explore!

Oh yeah, Amy added more pictures to her Berlin2 album and wanted me to make sure you saw that she posted a London: part 2 blog and pre-dated it so it'd be in order even though she wrote it after Berlin: part 1.

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).

Ich bin in Berlin

Translation: I'm in Berlin!!
Sorry there's no pictures with this post, but I'm borrowing my friend Kristen's computer until we can figure out how to get mine hooked up to their wireless internet, so only text for now. I'm sitting here on Saturday afternoon in John and Kristen's sunny and spacious Berlin ground-floor apartment. Getting here was a trial of our patience, as travel can be so often. We flew out of Gatwick airport, which is way the heck outside of London, so we took the rather overpriced Gatwick express train and got to the airport two hours before our flight was supposed to leave. Supposed to leave. In fact, by the time our flight was supposed to be taking off, the departure board at Gatwick airport still said "Please wait" where our gate number was supposed to be. Really, what's the point of the "please" when we have no choice...it might as well say "Wait, losers" :) About 20 minutes after we were supposed to leave, the "please wait" was replaced with "Flight closing at gate 111," which started a mad dash to the farthest gate in the terminal. Abbey and I did fairly well in the ensuing "Amazing Race: Gatwick edition" and gained a tremendous advantage over the competition on both escalators as we had no rolling luggage. You see, like Southwest airlines, EasyJet has no assigned seating, so it's every (wo)man for himself. We managed to get two seats together in an exit row, and then proceeded to sit on the tarmac for at least another 30 minutes. We ended up taking off about an hour late, which isn't so bad except our friends were waiting for us on the other end and we got in at midnight, when John had to be up at 5:30! :( But it was such a great feeling to get off a plane in a foreign country and have smiling, familiar faces to welcome you with excitement. We took the train into the heart of Berlin and got to their apartment at about 1:15, I think. Their place is so cute and homey and spacious. I think our guest room could fit three of our London hotel rooms in it! I'll post pictures as soon as I can. We slept until 11:30 (!) this morning and woke up to a wonderful breakfast of fruit and fresh home-made muffins and coffee. How great is that!! Now we've got a load of laundry in the washer and we're off to explore the city with Kristen as our guide! :) I added a link to John and Kristen's blog to my blog, so check it out! They're working with campus ministries in Berlin and have been living here about a year now.

There's no place like London!

Thursday evening we got all dolled up (Amy even wore some make-up! :) and headed to London's West End. It was raining big fat drops, but that didn't dampen our excitement to see Chicago at the Cambridge theater. We did get a bit of a late start and so after picking up our tickets at will-call, we searched around a bit for a place to grab a quick dinner. We happened upon a tiny little cafe on a back street near the theater called "Candy Cakes." They had a nice bistro-type menu, so we got some food and then finished with a wunderbar cupcake that looked like it belonged in the Candyland game. I think that meal was a London highlight--sitting at a sidewalk cafe under an awning, watching people walk by in the rain, enjoying a lovely meal and anticipating Chicago!

The show was amazing. We had second row seats near the center and we could see every facial expression and detail of costume. What a fun experience! The leads were all great (though I'm afraid no "Mama" will ever compare to Queen Latifah) and I love the music of that show so it was hard to not sing along :)

Yma really enjoyed our dinner...she's taken to drinking Perrier in an effort to appear European and she loved the Lemon-White Chocolate-Meringue muffin that the girl at Candy Cakes recommended...it was bigger than she is!

We've perfected fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants navigation. We wanted to eat breakfast in Kensington Gardens on Friday, so we took an Underground stop that sounded like it was familiar and headed in what we thought was the general direction of the park and we found it! :) We walked down embassy row, found Kensington Palace and then spent the next 3 or 4 hours wandering the length of Kensington and Hyde Parks. It was so beautiful, so green, so peaceful. We played our favorite London game: Mom or Nanny? in the park. :) And we found the Princess Diana memorial fountain which was under construction last time I was there and it was a beautiful and unique fountain...a big circle of granite on a grassy slope.

In the afternoon we went to see A Midsummer Night's Dream at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. We paid 5 pounds (about $10) to be "groundlings"...uncovered standing-room tickets in the yard of the theater. It was a great way to experience that theater because the actors used the yard quite a bit for entrances and exits and play off the crowd a lot. We stayed for a couple of acts before we headed back to our hotel to heft our packs onto our backs to head to the airport....

I added a link to my pictures!

Try out a link to my pictures on the left side of my blog...