Berlin Trip

Last weekend we boarded a train for Berlin. It just screams, "Visit me in Autumn!", doesn't it? My favorite time of year! I was in Berlin for only one day about fifteen years ago and we've been anxious to get to Germany's big city since we moved here. We like/love cities, but Marc's last two jobs have taken us to small towns, so we need our occasional city-fix! Unfortunately, our trip got off to kind of a rocky start. We loaded the boys, our bag and big stroller onto the train and settled into our seats. Ah! How delightful! Aren't we clever! But when the ticket guy came around he told us we were in the wrong place and our actual seats were ten cars back. Oopsies. Rule #1 in Germany: Follow the rules and do not make mistakes. Because next, I had the lovely task (while carrying sleeping Doren in the Ergo) of pushing our huge jogging stroller through the narrow aisles of ten long train cars saying my best "excuse-me-pardon-me's" in German every two steps because someone's leg or bag was sticking out just a tad and I needed all the room I could get to fit that thing down the aisle. Let me tell you that inconveniencing ten train cars full of Berlin-bound Germans made me feel like a wad of gum under their shoes. I could feel their scorn burning a hole in my forehead! "WE followed the rules and are comfortable in our seats, reading our papers and sipping our tea and giggling about how clever we are! Who is this disheveled, obviously foreign mother, schlepping a baby and gigantic child-wagon through the aisle forcing me to shift my knee three milimeters to the left?! What an imbecile!"

Believe me, that is what they were thinking.*

The ride was pleasant enough, youngest child considered, but then in all the kerfuffle of getting off the train, I lost Doren's adorable navy blue pea coat that his brothers also wore. [lips trembling] So we found a second-hand store and nine Euros later I walked out with this puffball.

UH! He's so adorable! And he's 100% walking now, but sort of stumbles around like he's had a few too many.

Now he's flirting with me. 

Now he's spotted something more fun than me. Bye.

We stayed in an airbnb apartment in a really cool part of town. Tons of ethnic restaurants, boutiques, modern houseware stores, expensive stuff that I would never buy but like to look at, etc. Definitely my kind of place. It reminded us a lot of Portland, only on a much bigger scale and with ninety-nine percent less homeless people. My friend, E, asked me if we went to various must-see sites around the city. [PeeWee Herman laugh for two straight minutes] Um, no. No we did not. Do you think we can do any of those things when around every corner there is yet another incredible playground?! Basically, we go to a city with a list of all sorts of places we'd like to see but what ends up happening is us sitting on the edge of sandboxes while the boys burn energy at fifteen different playgrounds. But I do have to say the playgrounds are really amazing. My other friend, S, commented on how nice it is that they're all made of wood rather than metal or plastic. They do sort of look like they just grew out of the ground. I didn't take pictures of the really natural-looking ones, but here's some anyway.

Ok, there is some metal. I wouldn't want to slide down a wooden plank!

This was on a hill above one of the playgrounds. Gorgeous!

I'm pretty sure there is a Kindergarten on the first floor of this!

 I enjoyed many deep breaths of crispy Fall air.

Here's Doren sharing the swing with a little Spanish señorita. It was fun until it wasn't.

Ahh, this. Can you see me in there? Its some sort of play structure but it looks exactly like a hammock and it was the best part of any of the playgrounds. 

The natives were all out in their Fall finest. A lot of tweed and leather. And a lot of beards. Is this happening everywhere or just in Europe? We noticed this is Copenhagen, too. So many men with huge beards and man buns. Even the kids were so hip and fashionable in their little outfits. Not MY kids, obviously...other kids..

We did broaden our site-seeing on one of the days and went to a few iconic Berlin sites. Ahem...on the way there, we rushed to the metro station and without thinking jumped onto our train because it pulled in just as we arrived. We didn't even think about tickets because there was no turn style thingy or gate. Naturally, naturally, a ticket agent climbed aboard at the very next stop asking to see everyone's ticket. Oopsiedoodles. Here we go again. So they escorted us off at the next stop and wrote our tickets and fine. One of the agents made some comment about only the adults being fined and not the children because adults should know better. Ouch. Obviously we deserved this but I swear we're not rookies! We're just having a bad streak!

Brandenburg Gate 

Reichstag

Same place but looks different in this light

Doren was really into the street scene.

I don't even know what this is but its famous. 

Some other pretty place. We had to stop because the boys wanted to run on the lawn.

In our cozy rental

Berlin is such a beautiful city with so much diversity that makes it really dynamic and fascinating. I heard many different languages being spoken as we walked around and I realized I haven't experienced that in a very long time since there wasn't much diversity in Korea. And since we live in a small town, there aren't many options for eating anything other than German food or really bad, salty Thai. We ended up going to this Vietnamese place twice because it was so, so good, cheap and fast. You can get anything! That's what's so great about cities!

And finally, my art piece...

JFK once gave a speech in Berlin and said, "Ich bin ein Berliner." He meant to say that he was like them...a Berliner, but what he actually said was, "I am a jelly donut!" So here's me eating a Berliner in Berlin and being ironic or artistic or something.

Bis später, alligator!

*But no, Germans are extremely nice. I'm amazed on a daily basis at how nice everyone is. But, seriously just follow the rules, ok? You can do that, right? How hard is it, McFly? EARTH TO McFLY! Just follow the rules! Just. Follow. The. Rules.