Germany Adventure: DAY 2, Berlin by River

June 20, 2008, Germany Day 2

The second day in Germany began about 8am local time. We woke up in the most comfortable hotel bed I have ever slept in, got ready and headed to breakfast where we were greeted with a healthy, fresh spread. My favorite part of the whole thing was the ridiculously large bread selection separated into a bunch of little baskets behind a cutting board. You selected your bread, cut it fresh and topped it with one of the adjacent cheese selections. My favorite: “cream cheese” which was very similar to what we know as brie. That on top of a whole grain roll was heavenly! My colleague Ivy (from North Dakota) and I continued our Starbucks love affair and walked to get our familiar coffee from the Americanized Starbucks that was attached to our hotel. Somehow, it didn’t feel right to be drinking American coffee in Europe, and after my second coffee of the trip which was a true German “kaffee” I won’t make the same mistake again! We noticed last night that it was light for so long and inquired about the hours of daylight. What I learned was that Germany is situated further north than the US, comparable to northern Canada. Daylight during the summer is from 330am to 1030pm. In the winter, it is just the opposite, offering only 5 hours of daylight from 1030am to 330pm. Makes for a great summer, long winter. The climate is quite similar to the bay area, upper 70s during the day dropping into the 50s at night. It is such a lovely break from the 100 degree heat of Texas!

We boarded the bus and drove to our “Berlin by River” tour which was a two hour boat ride up and down the main waterway through Berlin.

I quickly became known as the boat photographer and was asked the rest of the day (by others on the boat) if I knew what I was doing or had a special passion for it since I was “taking some of the most interesting shots” according to one colleague. I just smiled and said I had a different eye since I have taken up photography. I so thoroughly enjoyed the trip, the scenery and the endless photographic opportunities. I took well over 300 pictures and was most intrigued by two things. First fascination: the bullet holes that lined the old walls of the river. The river runs through the city and is lined by buildings and had a polka dotted pattern than went on for miles, preserved so visitors would try to imagine what the hostile times were like during the “World War Second” as the locals call it. It made me close my eyes for a second and think of how hostile things must have been. The volume of bullet holes in the concrete is enough to make any one shiver.

The second fascination is the combination and strong contrast of old, intricate architecture and brand new, extremely modern buildings. One minute you are studying the carved stone, gilded turrets and historical masterpiece of a cathedral and the next building is a square box that is orange and covered in deliberately minimalist windows and lines, sometimes they were even attached together!

Since the city was leveled, there is still major building going on and while there is a lot of preservation of anything that still remained standing, there is also a lot of recreation of the old style of buildings. Sometimes only the facades remained and the building was added from the back so the front stayed about the same. Some building were left with just the original front door and built up with modern architecture around the original door; it is quite strange. We were on a boat that was over a hundred years old and had a large steam pipe sticking out the top. Since the bridges in Berlin are so low, every time we came to one (and there were about 15 on our short tour) we had to go into a “lock” where they blocked us into a holding cell, lowered the water a couple feet and then the boat staff lowered the pipe so we had enough clearance to go under the bridge, often just a couple inches! It was crazy! It changed my perspective for a couple of pictures that I wouldn’t have been able to get otherwise! Also worth noting, is the large city telecommunications tower than has a huge silver ball with many panels of reflective glass, not unlike a disco ball, but large enough in size to be compared to the Seattle Space needle. There is and was a lot of controversy regarding the ball, since as a complete coincidence, there is a reflection of the sun that is the exact shape of a cross from every angle the tower is viewed. After the war, the government here wanted to create an Atheist nation and was so upset about the strong presence of the inadvertent religious symbol that they tried everything to get rid of the reflection. Obviously nothing worked and I actually think it is kind of neat. Makes for a good story!

Few more shots from the boat( I would have done a slideshow, but picasa hates me today):

By this time I have completely fallen in love with this city. Tommy and I have always entertained the idea of a European tour with the Military since the largest Military hospital in Europe is in Germany and it may be a reality someday. The current medical flight path for the most critically injured is from Iraq to Ramstein Air Base in Germany and then to Lackland AFB, transferred to Tommy’s hospital, Brooke Army Medical Center. I would live here in a heartbeat. There is such social conscience that is long forgotten in the US. Only certain vehicles with certified emissions efficiencies are allowed into city center. What is seen is streets lined with smart cars and miniature Mercedes that are not offered in the US. Even the Honda civics is different, smaller. One tour guide remarked that people who bought the very expensive vehicles are out of luck as they sit with their hundred thousand Mercedes and can no longer drive them to work because they are not clean or small enough for the color sticker needed to head downtown. Bikes are ridden everywhere here, even by people in full business suits. Most remarkably, I have yet to see an obese person that is not American. There is no rushing on the street, there are warm smiles everywhere and what can only be described as a genuine love of life. I love it here. I could live here and not miss much of anything in the US.

The afternoon took those of us employed by Bayer to Bayer-Schering headquarters, where we toured the production facility and the only building that was left after the War, which now houses the Schering Museum. The production facility is where all of the drugs we sell are made and is lines and lines of sterile, sophisticated supply chains. The US YAZ was not in production today, but the European version of the product (same ingredients, different name), “Yasminelle” was. The packaging was completely different.

We saw where the US YAZ was produced and learned that just after the launch, there were additional personnel hired and production occurred 24 hours a day, 7 days a week just to meet the new demand. We almost faced backordering since the uptake of the product was so quick and successful. We also saw how Magnevist was packaged (a contrast medium for digital imaging-MRIs) and one of the Oncology drugs. Unfortunately, Mirena is made in Finland, so we were unable to see any of that in production. Much of Mirena production is still by hand, which would have been neat to see! We found out the night before that we had to have our legs covered in order to enter the plant and since many of us brought skirt suits, the trip director bought a massive amount of pantyhose and we all had to wear them. (gross!!!) Mine were tap/jazz costume style and were thick and shimmery and very tan. Lovely. Once we had those on, the white foot booties, the lab coat and hair cap, we were all sweating in our monkey suits. I was expecting the tour to be fascinating. I was a bit disappointed. The museum was interesting and preserved a lot of the history of our company. Who knew that Schering used to have a photography company?!? We were not in there long due to the lack of air conditioning, but it was nice to see where the home base of my company resides. Best fun fact: Berlex (what my company was called before Bayer bought out Schering AG and the US subsidiary, Berlex) stands for “BERlin EXport” since all the medication was and still is made in Berlin. Yep, those little YAZ & Yasmin pills still come from Germany, check your box!!

Once we got back, we decided to go have dinner at a rather disappointing restaurant, but dessert in a very hip, bustling place. There is a large Sony Center around the corner and a huge dome that is lit in changing colors that casts the most interesting ambiance over a huge courtyard full of restaurants and colored fountains. This area is called the Potsdamer Platz. I saw a picture of it on my yahoo homepage this morning as one of the most emailed photos regarding Berlin's upcoming fashion week!

[from outside the center]

[one of the main anchor buildings, I thought it was cool that all of the lights were on at night]

[in front of the fountains that constantly change colors]

[how cool is the roof? Also changed colors...]

We parked it at Josty’s for a latte (best I have ever had) for me and a sundae for Tori and enjoyed the light show. I ordered a carmel latte and it came with a side packet of carmel, which I definitely never used because the espresso was soooo good! Check out that froth! That's what you DON'T get with skim milk! I think tomorrow we are going to try another restaurant we saw for dessert, which had all white couches and white roses and candles. They even provided blankets if you were cold! It was a great way to end the day.

[inside the platz looking out towards the street]

Tomorrow is the last day in Berlin before we fly to the other side of the country, to Munich which we hear is the polar opposite of the cosmopolitan place!

Germany Adventure: DAY 1, Welcome to Berlin!

I promised my family that I would carefully document my recent trip to Germany and I am happy to say that I followed through with my promise! Each day in Germany, I wrote an e-journal so I wouldn't forget everything I did. I also (much to poor Tori's frustration) carefully photo documented EVERYTHING...which literally led to her taking pictures of me taking pictures just so she could show me what she spent the trip watching!

Well, I have plenty (well over 1000) gorgeous pictures, especially as the trip went on to the country, that I have to sort through, and then will choose my favorites for posting here! My full set of pictures will be on my personal picture website so if you would like the link to that, just shoot me an email. I will go day by day, all seven of them, and share my journal and favorite pictures. So enjoy! I would love to hear your thoughts so please comment and let me know what you are thinking!! Here it goes...

Day 1, June 18/19, 2008

I am writing this after my first time sleeping after over 36 hours of being awake! Feeling much better than I did last night! After flying from San Antonio to Dallas (1 hr) I met up with Tori, where we hopped our big American Airlines jet to London at about 6pm (9hrs). They sure have done a lot to improve the entertainment opportunities on those long flights because I hardly tapped into the 30 lbs of magazines & books that I brought to keep me busy. Each seat had their own TV and its own controller so we could watch movies, tv show episodes and even play video games on the remote that popped out of the seat and was used sideways (wii style) which was very helpful! I watched two movies, a few episodes of the office and caught up on my US gossip and before I knew it, we were touching down at Heathrow. My strategy was not to sleep so I would be able to get a good night’s sleep the first night that I could be in a real bed. Since we were flying into a time zone that was 6 hours ahead we flew through the darkness for only a couple of hours and by the time we landed it was bright and sunny, 8am London time but 2am CST. Sun really does wonders for the brain because I really had no trouble staying awake once I got to London. The Starbucks helped. I was amazed at the efficient use of vertical space as we flew into London. The tall row houses were visually interesting and looked so much cooler than any US housing. Heathrow was the nicest airport I have ever been to. It was nicer than any mall I have seen in years. Stocked full of Prada, Coach, Ted Baker and many other fancy stores; it really was an upscale shopping center. I was amazed at how the merchandise was just sitting on display very close to the entrance to the store and not attached with wires to a table. You would never see a Prada bag worth a thousand dollars anywhere near the entrance to a store in America, especially if it was on display in an airport. My favorite new item of the day was a huge line of Tiffany Sunglasses was debuting. I haven’t seen these in the US but there was a gigantic display with about 50 pairs of new glasses with the obnoxious Tiffany bling on the sides. Not a huge fan of Tiffany, I thought the line was just okay. I am sure Americans will jump on this bandwagon as soon as it hits the US…just watch and see!
We flew from London to Berlin (2h) albeit delayed about two hours. When flying into Berlin there were a ton of windmills, much like those that are in California. Huge multistory energy generators were all over the countryside.

The baggage area was SO efficient and was right outside the gate we landed. We hopped a bus with all the other Bayer people to the Hotel and had a tour guide talking us through some history of Berlin. We arrived at the hotel at about 3:45p local time, which is 7 hours ahead of US CST. We had 45 minutes to get both of us showered and dressed for a cocktail/dinner party to make it for the 4:30 sightseeing bus tour which was happening before the dinner. We made it! Two girls, ironed, showered and all dressed up in 45 minutes! NICE! My flat iron won’t work here (none of my teammates’ will!) so the hair situation is going to be interesting.

The sightseeing tour went through the history of the city and to many landmarks. Most of the story was holding up a binder with pictures saying “this is what USED to be here” since the whole city was virtually blown up during the world war. Most things here are new. Some buildings are very intricately designed and most are very modern, almost Scandinavian in design style. I thought it was especially weird that every tree in the city was numbered with a little white tag. Here are some pictures from the bus on the sightseeing tour:

[the multitude of cranes that littered the city's sky scape]

[rental cars for touring the city]

[I loved the street crossing signs! The woman was wearing an oscar de la renta style dress in every one, and holding her child's hand-so cute! I did notice, none of the signs had men!]

[look fake? that's because it is! before a new building is revealed, it is covered my a mock up of what it will look like. This was all a printed paper/plastic that covered the construction scaffolding]

[this one's for Kim--EVERYONE had bugaboos! They were all over Berlin!!!!!]

[even the streetlights were beautiful]

[Bebelplatz, site of the 1933 Jewish Book Burning by the Nazis. All literature written by Jews was burned here and now there is a memorial for the lost art. It kind of seems wrong that we are smiling...but this was taken before we knew what happened here.]


[Bebelplatz Memorial-this is where the books were burned. What you see here is a reflection on a piece of glass and below the glass are empty white bookcases that symbolize the loss of the literature. At night, a light shines up through the glass and from anywhere on the square it looks like there is a small fire coming from below.]

Cocktails were on a rooftop overlooking the whole city. It was hard to find a place to take a picture that did not have a crane in the background since there is so much construction going on.

Wait staff hand passed beer “with syrup” which were tinted green and pink. One tasted like Juicy fruit gum and the pink tasted very floral, but was amazingly good.

My favorite, favorite, favorite thing is that they serve carbonated water before anything else here! My Pellegrino habit is laughed at in the states, but here it is hard to find water “without gas” or uncarbonated. I LOVE it! Dinner was AMAZING! I was definitely reminded of my German heritage, as some of my family recipes that both of my grandmothers have served all my life were represented at the German dinner we had during the evening. What I know as “German potato salad” was on the vinegary side, and fabulous. My other two favorites were the potato pancakes (w/ applesauce) and the potato soup, which was much like chicken noodle soup but no noodles and potatoes instead. It was a lot like Grandma Denow’s chicken dumpling soup, but richer in flavor.

After a long day (nearly 36 hours awake) we made it back to the Berlin Marriott (beautiful!!) and crashed. No trouble sleeping here! Gathered across the street in an open grassy are were about 300 people (hovering under umbrellas when the sprinkles picked up) watching the Germany vs. Portugal soccer game. We sure knew when Germany scored, sheesh! We could hear the game (broadcast on loud speakers & projected on a big screen) with our windows shut! Tommy was at home watching it on TV and really wishing he was across the street with all the enthusiastic Germans drinking beer in the beer garden. It was really neat to see how much they get into it here!

Time to breathe...

ssiiiggggghhhh...

most of the house is now painted.

whew.

My worker-bee parents came into town for a week to help me whip this place into shape while my husband, the zombie, is working about 18 hours/day at the hospital or reading! We got A LOT done this week and I am so relieved/thrilled/comforted by the results. I have tried some new colors and patterns outside my usual comfort zone and it is slowly coming together! Since the house is still littered with painting supplies, new light fixtures, tools, boxes & general clutter (my pet peeve!) I took some teaser shots so you can at least see some colors & textures that I am playing with:

[living room, walls=color matched to Gallery Taupe by Behr, in RL Paint]

[kitchen]

[living room & kitchen rugs, Panache window panels in Chocolate are from LNT and there are now ten, 95" panels calling my home, home. inspiration from here]

[reeeaaaally wanted a cozy orange accent wall and I now have one in my living room, just a small one, but it looks perfect! Color=color matched to Earth Tone by Behr in RL paint-and yes, there is a stupid piece of lint on my lens that I didnt see until editing...]

[1/2 bath on the first floor got a beautiful coat of earth tone too...]

[loft, color=cameroon green by RL]

[one wall of the guest room, color=colormatched to Chocolate Curl by Behr in RL paint]

also just noticed I may want to try another angle with my camera...boring! feel like you are turning your head right a lot? I will work on that...

Rooms you didnt see: foyer, laundry, front room that we have no use for yet and the future nursery...or the master. My bedding didnt end up looking right and the hubby is sleeping (boooo to working nights!) so I cant go take a picture of the wall color. Just ordered the Lindsey Paisley Bedding to see how it will work with my Charcoal walls...we'll see. Dont have high hopes as this "cool" color scheme is what is throwing me off my decorating flow.

This is really my favorite part of the moving process. Organizing, color choosing, decorating...I just cant get enough. I am so blessed at this point of my life to have a brand new home that I got to design top to bottom. I wouldnt be able to afford this anywhere else in the country and am going to enjoy every second of it because as we military folks know, we never stay in one place for too long so this six year stay might be the longest one of our 20+ years of military life.

back to work...

ooh! and today is our 4 year wedding anniversary. I will never forget that magical day. =) Here's to four years of marriage, and 10+ years of togetherness! might just have to have myself a glass of wine by my lonesome tonight! cheers!

I'm alive! Promise!

Oh my what a month it has been! I have to get painting our bedroom but since so many of you have been kind enough to ask how things are going I am going to do a short picture blog--more pictures than words! Short update: Made it to Texas, moved stuff into storage, stayed with a friend for three weeks since house wasn't ready, I went to Germany, made it back, moved stuff out of storage & into house & now we are getting settled! Tommy officially starts tomorrow so here we go!!!!

[favorite part of front exterior: carriage style shutters, complete with polka dots & stripes!]

[living room, basic beige selected. Ralph Lauren paint, color matched to Behr Gallery Taupe since I hate Behr paint! Curtain sample draped over entertainment unit, will cover all windows on first floor living area/kitchen. See a few posts back for the inspiration, dark orange pillows & one orange wall to come]

[ugh...slowly but surely. I can only reach the first two shelves in each cabinet so that stupid step stool will be a permanent fixture. Paneling visible on back of cabinets will be replaced since it isn't the right color, chandelier has been replaced by my wonderful hubby! Love my sparkly new fridge!!]

[back splash view. so glad we did this upgrade, I love it!!! all outlets will be replaced with black covers so they dont stick out so bad!]

[loft area, getting ready for a ceiling fan. walls will be darker sagey green]

[Rusty, so glad to be home from three weeks of daycare, is mesmerized by our new LG Tromm steam washer & dryer! He keeps staring at them go round & round and gets extra confused when they play their song at the end of each cycle!]