Germany

I spent about two weeks in Germany. Most of the time I was staying with a family friend, a lady named Inge, who lives in the small town of Borna, which is near Leipzig, in Saxony. With Inge I visited Altenburg, major town of playing cards, and Dresden, the capital of Saxony. Dresden was beautiful, and it was really striking to go home from our day there and look at before and after photos of the bombings of 1945. The city was rubble, and its been almost totally rebuilt - a true example of determination and perseverence. I also spent one afternoon in Leipzig, which wasnt enough! So many interesting things happened in Leipzig! I visited Bach's church, and the church where all the meetings happened which led to the protests which led to the fall of the Berlin wall, but there was so much more I didnt get to see!

Inge and I spent a lot of time visiting, and I also got to meet a lot of her family, but it was hard to not be really busy because, having just left Brittany, I was kind of sad, and needed to be preoccupied. So I decided to go to Berlin for a weekend.

The weekend was lovely, though tiring. I arrived in Berlin at 11 on Friday, and had four hours before meeting Tine, the girl I was staying with, so I wandered from the Hauptbaunhauf (Central Train Station) to Alexanderplatz, the next train station over, while passing through most of the major downtown sights... it was lovely, although i mostly had no idea what i was looking at. Then met Tine, who is a very nice girl, had a bite to eat with her, then walked from her place to the East Side gallery, a stretch of the berlin wall that is covered in graffiti. at various points on the West side of the wall, there were some interesting cafe/bar type places that seemed like cool spots to hang out. but I headed back to Tine's to join her at her friends place to ogle adn admire tiny little week old kittens. they were very cute.

The next day i took a free bike tour, saw most of the same sights as the day before but had a fascinating and theatrical explanation of what they were. i think my favorite was the simple but striking memorial in front of... i cant really remember any names... a library. The square was the sight of the nazi book burnings adn the memorial is just a glass in the ground that lets you look down onto an empty room filled with empty bookshelves... and up at your own reflection in the glass.... its pretty cool. really strikes it home. the 'memorial for the murdered jews of europe' was pretty interesting too.

Then I took a train out to Potsdam to meet Tine and wander through the grounds and palaces of Fredrick the Great, and then play some pool and darts with Tine and her friends. Sunday was too hot to walk so I took buses everywhere.. went to another free outdoor berlin wall exhibition, then the jewish museum, which was interestingly laid out, but which i was too tired to enjoy, and then the train back to Leipzig.

In general, I found Berlin to be fascinating. an incredibly varied history with so much revolutionary sorta stuff in it. I had seen the film La Vie des Autres, (the Life of Others?) i watched it in the cinema with the german students of the lycee. it gave a perspective on East Berlin, and maybe Eastern Germany, that i didnt really see during my visit. which is good, i think.

So that was the condensed version of my trip to Germany!

And now I am home. And sorta kinda working, and sorta kinda applying for things to do next year.

return to the blog

ok, so ive decided to keep the blog going even though im back in canada and i really only started it to keep people posted on life in France. Turns out more people read it than I had realized and many of them I dont see very often so.... here goes.

Im going to go back in time to April when... I went to Amsterdam! With Robert and Alisa and two of Alisa's friends from University. It was a wonderful time. I really like Amsterdam, possibly my favourite European city. Its totally teh best kept secret of Europe because all anyone ever hears about is the coffeshops and the red light district, but it actually has a lot more to offer! Its laid back, beautiful, really unique architecture. the whole city is totally built on canals and its totally worth doing a canal tour and checking it out from that perspective - way better than a trip on the Seine in paris, thats for sure. And the museums are more interactive than i have ever seen, which was phenomonal. THe Heineken experience, a tour of the old heineken brewery, which involved singing, dancing, videos, DJing... it was fantastic! And everywhere we went had these little booths where you could email a video of yourself saying 'hi! Im at the Anne Frank house!' or whatever. Other sites we saw were teh Van Gogh Museum and the Anne Frank House. We also rented bikes one day which was fantastic! the bikes rule the roads in Amsterdam, teh have the right of way over traffic AND pedestrians! I think there are more bikes in the city than people, and it was really cool seeing people riding along, in their high heels and skirts, or business suits, obviously on their way to or from work, smoking, sending text messages, whatever. We did of course, also visit the red light district. In fact, our hostel was pretty much in it. Ill try to add pictures at some point, either to flickr or maybe directly to blogger, we'll see how it goes.

So after Amsterdam, I returned to Dinan for my last two weeks of school... it was a bit hard, a bit sad. some classes i was happy to never see again and others i was really quite sad about saying goodbye to. the teachers threw a little goodbye party for us one afternoon, which made me get a little teary, especially when Susan showed up (she was the first teacher I met, way back in teh beginning, who invited me to that kayak event my first weeked in Dinan). I had about 10 days in Dinan after classes ended to. I did a lot of going to the beach, hanging out with friends, just trying to enjoy every moment I had left. Sara, Maria and George all left the same day, which was sad, and then I left a few days later. I was forced into an awful goodbye situation with dave adn alisa. we had spent my last afternoon in Saint Malo, met some other friends and had lunch at a Creperie, then headed back to Dinan to get the bus to Rennes to spend the night and then get the train to Paris the next day. but the bus was early! So I was literally throwing my bag on the bus as it was about to pull away and had the bus driver honking at me as i hastily hugged dave adn alisa goodbye. it totally sucked. so the ride to rennes was fairly teary, but it was nice to spend the evening with Anita (the first person I met in France, we met in Paris way back at the beginning).

And then I went to Germany. but ill post about that later cause i have no time now.