Basel - quick pix

Tiny (delicious sandwiches), old church facade, boat being pulled across the Rhine by rope/current, and Basel's Hammering Man sculpture outside the UBS Headquarters.

Day trips from Berlin

While Jay was off to London for a long weekend I took the kids on three day trips -

1. Karl's Strawberry Adventure Playground (that's my English name for it). It's a free, strawberry-themed playground with lots of cool stuff including burlap sack slides, a water balloon cannon launcher, giant inflated pillow and several awesome playgrounds each with a theme.
2. Tropical Islands - an indoor waterpark with pools, a "beach", water slides and more.
3. Apple picking!

Day out in Potsdam

Finally got down to see the Prussian palaces outside Potsdam on a brilliant fall day!

Zip line smiles

Einschulung..Jasper starts first grade in Germany

Jasper is starting first grade next week and in Germany they do a couple things differently around this process.

On the Tuesday beforehand, Jay and I attended a parents' info session where we got to meet the teachers. He'll have three teachers - one who's focus is German, one who's focus is English and an "educator" who's focus is social, cultural interactions. She can speak both languages fluently, but does most of her work in German. She will be with the kids on the playground and has time with them each day to play games to work on character building and whatnot. I'm very excited about this balance of academic and social development opportunity. 

The German teacher has been at this school for a few years. The English speaking teacher is new. She grew up in South Africa then moved to the UK and Hong Kong before moving to Berlin this summer. 

I don't yet know where all the kids are from though at least one is 1/2 Japanese and one little girl is German but has been living in Bahrain! 

On Saturday beforehand, (Today), they have the Einschulung. This is a big ceremony where the incoming first graders all dress up and are "welcomed" into the school by the second grade class. Afterwards there is the traditional coffee and cake onsite and then many repair to a nearby park to celebrate with friends and family. It is a big deal. Also included is the Zuckertutte, a large cone that parents fill up with candy, toys and school supplies for the child. Finally there is the Schulerranze, the big backpack that will carry the pencils, books, snacks, soccer clothes and likely small woodland creatures before long.

We put this out in the library and entered the room to great fanfare after french toast breakfast.

We biked across to Wilmersdorf (15 or so minutes) on a beautiful Berlin Indian Summer day. 

The ceremony was held in the auditorium of the Nelson Mandela School, and all the kids went up on stage individually when their name was called. People clapped. It was a bit like graduation in reverse. A hand-picked buddy then met each kid and accompanied them later up to a classroom when all the kids took off and left the parents to chat amongst themselves for a half hour or so. We met a couple from South Africa and connected with various others from the Elternabend session a few days ago. Overall, English is more prevalent among this group than we had at the German Kita program, which has already made us feel better about things. Here it will be much easier to get the gist of what on earth is going on, which we never really had a clue about at the Kita.

At 2pm we went upstairs to collect our kid. We then went out to Monheim, one of Berlin's oldest ice cream parlours for some sweets. "Auntie" Sylvia came over from Friederichshain on the S-Bahn, which is a long trip to Wilmersdorf. Here Jasper opened up his Zuckertutte and we read him the letters from the grandparents. He seemed quite excited and proud with all the proceedings!

Back at home, we let Cody open his Zuckertutte (you cannot give one child a Zuckertutte and withhold it for the other) then we had a quick dinner and went out to play fussball at one of the local parks that line the U-Bahn tracks leading up to the main station at Yorkstrasse.

School begins at 8am, with a 15 minute check-in with friends time beforehand. This will knock forward our morning schedule by a good hour, so this will be quite the adjustment. It is possible of course, but just requires going to be earlier for everyone. We can't really go to be early so this is where the fun will begin! Jay will take Jasper and Cassandra will take Cody to Kita. Family travels are now officially bound by the school year schedule - this feels like some big milestone in our lives for some reason. Jasper is quite excited about everything and we're sure he will do just fine on this grand new adventure!

Afterwards, there was abundant face painting!

Wedgies* Abroad: GNelly Goes to Berlin.

*Wedgies = Wedgwood-based cycling club of fearless warrior-hero dads

THURSDAY

Luckily, Nelly came to Berlin just in time to put a gold star finish on the summertime. A big thanks to Denmark-based Lego Company for making this possible!

Step one: cruise up four floors to our flat dragging a suitcase and with a gimpy foot from Mt St Helens. With Jet lag. Nelly is to be commended on his super-human efforts. Also, big thank you to Sarah for giving the green light on the Berlin sidetrip.

Our flat:

From the flat we immediately departed on the bikes in search of Stone Berlin, located in a former gas plant about a fifteen minute ride south through neighborhoods, former railyards-into-trails and by forested hills formed by Berlin's WWII bomb rubble. The last part of the trip took us down a bumpy path between a field of solar arrays and urban garden plots. A break in the chain link fencing led us to the pleasantly-landscaped biergarten of Stone Berlin, set within the former Marienfelde gas generation plant buildings.

Newly-opened Stone Brewing Co.

JB, shortly before launching into a 4-hour dissertation on the disposition of Italian and Hungarian forces on the Slovenian front in WWI. (Ha-Ha, little bit of German humor there).

German drinking establishments have ever higher "cool quotient" levels they must exceed to attract people, since the competition is so fierce. Stone's biergarten leads indoors to a large oak tree sprawling across the main room, with benches cut into it. A stair-step bleacher construction adorned with pillows leads upwards behind it to a balcony. 

If you are opening a new spot here, ideally you site your establishment within a former grimy industrial complex with lots of exposed I-beams, gigantic rusty pulley systems, and century-old brick architecture. Incorporate old cabling, switch boxes and iron girders wherever possible. Artfully light up the exterior brickwork. Put infrared faucets and self-flush eco toilets in the bathrooms and piles of perfectly-folded & bleached handtowels on the counter. Maybe chop down a huge tree and throw it in the main entry hall for the hell of it.

Stone Berlin's large tree.

As a tour guide, I frequently must confront the question of where to take the visitors. Do you go for the hipster place carved artistically into factory ruins that has only two pilsners on tap? Do you go to the clean and pricey NW-style brew pub? Do you just grab a couple bottles from the corner shop and bike over to the riverbank to join 100 other people watching the sunset doing the same thing? As you can see, many of the decisions I am forced to make here are at once stressful and taxing.

After Stone we took the S-Bahn back to Schöneberg and took the necessary Bowie music history detour. Bowie and Iggy Pop lived around the corner from our flat between 1976-78 and his local bar the Neues Ufer is two doors down from his old apartment. It has become a shrine of sorts to him since his passing in January. Worth a stop.

FRIDAY

Double Eye espresso is a Berlin institution, having survived to its 15th anniversary this year in spite of the appearance of thousands of hipster coffee competitors around every corner.  This place is tiny, but the line goes quick and sitting on the steps outside is pure gold for early morning people-watching.

JB left for work and GNelly embarked on his own savage journey to the heart of Berlin's attractions, covering an amazing amount of sites in a short time. Incredibly, Nelly hit the Stasi Spy museum, the DDR museum, the Wall Memorial and the Berliner Dom Cathedral within a few hours.  Respect!

Berlin Wall remnants at Bernauer Strassse. 

Cathedral-top selfie!

Jay left work early and met back at the flat for the acclaimed JB Historical Berlin Bike Tour. First stop on the tour was Gleisdreieck Park, a former rail marshalling yard that was all but cut off during the GDR years and went to seed. Now trees grow up between the abundant tracks and poke out of windows of the crumbling and spray-painted railyard buildings. Ruins of freight warehouses are hidden in the young forest. The entire place was turned into a park and bike trails planted on top of old rail lines after reunification. In the summer they do outdoor concerts. It is one of my favorite places here since the sense of history is so palpable.

The northern part of Gleisdreieck Park is anchored by the former Anhalter Bahnhof, once one of the largest train stations in Europe. Bombed during the war, it then sat as a massive West Berlin ruin until the 80's when a wave of city-clean up policies knocked the rest of it down. The former hall was turned into a sports complex, a high-end spa and an event complex. They did leave the front facade however, one of Berlin's major wartime ruin examples.

Anhalter Station WWII ruins. Fashion Point: you aren't supposed to wear bike helmets in Berlin. We know we aren't cool, but we're moving on.

From Anhalter, it is two blocks over to Checkpoint Charlie, the main crossing point between East and West Berlin during the GDR years. They took down the original gatehouse in the post-reunification rush to erase the Wall evidence, then somebody realized the tremendous tourism potential of the site and they brought back a replica gatehouse, complete with sandbags and the Cold War icon "You are leaving/entering..." signs.

KFC has occupied East Berlin.

There are three main existent sections of the Wall left in Berlin. This one borders the lot formerly occupied by the Gestapo headquarters. 

From the heady Cold War checkpoint zone we cruised by the site of Hitler's bunker, which is currently a parking lot. The Russian's didn't want it to turn into a shrine, so they filled the structure with dirt then paved over everything. There is currently just a sign outlining its size and role at the end of the war.

From there, one block over is the soberingly-named Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. A large area filled with stelae that you wander down into to experience. The first thing that happens is that you get disoriented since the ground rises and falls and the heights of the blocks grow the deeper you venture into the monument. The effect is designed to mirror the disorientation of the Jews.

Jewish Monument, US Embassy in back.

On the other side of the Jewish monument and the US Embassy lies the Brandenburg Gate. Originally part of the customs wall that surrounded the city in the 1700's, the gate was one of several that merchants would pay an excise tax on their goods in order to sell them in the city. Brandenburg Gate is the only one left, the others falling to city expansion over the years. A few were still left before WWII until they were blown up by Russian howitzers in the final battle.

Win!

From the Gate we cruised by the Reichstag, the meeting of the German Parliament. It was the focus of the fighting at the very end of the battle with the Russians. The building sat as a ruin for decades then the cleaning up started after Reunification. Tours through it today lead visitors past walls scrawled with graffiti left by Russian soldiers. The Legislators walk the same halls on their way to the chamber with the message being "Don't ever forget what can happen here.."

Finally, beer time. A cruise through the Tiergarten, Berlin's Central Park, lands the Wedgies at Cafe am Neuen See, a biergarten situated on a lake in the forest just west of the government sector.

Tiergarten Path to the beer.

SUDS, Wurst and Brezeln.

Tour continued by snooping around Kurfurstendamm, the old glitzy West Berlin shopping street. Home to the KaDeWe (Kaufhaus des Westens, or Department Store of the West), Europe's largest store.

The other major Berlin war ruin sits on this historic street, taking the form of the blasted Kaiser Wilhelm church. Here, Geoff can be seen ascending to hipster fixie nirvana on a golden-lit staircase fringed with angels. Use your imagination!

Kaiser Wilhelm's Kirche is now a war-blasted museum. Odds are it won't fall on you if you go in.

And finally we still had some daylight so we cruised over to the former Tempelhof airfield, one of the prime entry points to West Berlin utilized during the Berlin Airlift in 1947-48. It was shuttered as an active airport ten years back and turned into a massive park. Just missing sunset, we pedalled down the main runway before ending up finally at the Dolder Maden brewpub in Kreuzberg for a final drink.

Once again, the weekend reinforced that strange parallel that expatting in Berlin has to high school: your bike is your freedom since a car is not an option.

GNelly was on a plane the next morning at 8am. This Wedgies Abroad episode comes to a close with an invitation to other intrepid wedgies: Come over here! 

OMG back in Seattle. The miracle of jet travel!

First spontaneous dinner invite

Yesterday Jasper had a play date after soccer camp with his friend Jasper (pronounced the German way "Yaspar"). When I called Sophie, the mom, to let her know Cody & I were on our way to pick him up she asked if we could stay a bit. They had the BBQ going when we arrived (and the two Jaspers were covered with mud.) And she asked us to stay for Abendsbrot. I helped her prepare a little salad and we grilled up assorted sausages. We split a baguette into pieces, sliced some cheeses and enjoyed this little picnic in their back courtyard. Afterward the kids jumped on a trampoline and played games. So much fun!

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Cassandra Allen

German mobile: +49-160-740 0053; US mobile: 509.855.7453

cassandra_allen@hotmail.com