Berlin

Just spent two days in Berlin; now in Nuremberg. In Berlin it was astonishing to see photos and read stories of the days of the Wall and then to walk where the Wall used to be. Families separated suddenly, jobs no longer accessible, a shadow over the city. Yet few resisted. The bombed out Kaiser Wilhelm church still stands as a monument to what happened, yet next to it soars a modern church that carries on. And today the Brandenburg Gate is spectacular and open!

Behind the bombed out church is a commercial district that I found incredibly similar to Michigan Avenue in Chicago! Everything from McDonalds to Starbucks, from Nike to Espirit, and others that my low-budget outlook on life fails to recall.

The city is thriving--both east and west.

Now appearing . . .

Today Reg and I are both giving papers at the conference. The sessions are held in the classrooms of the University of Leipzig. The rooms I was in earlier this week had recently updated chairs and tables in a room with concrete walls and no air-conditioning. It's an odd combination of old world and new world. The temperature is predicted to hit 82 today, so it may be pretty warm when we present this afternoon.

Our hotel lacks air con, too. We got a fan from the front desk and that--together with open windows and cool weather--has done a great job keeping us cool so far.

Driving in Germany

Ok, so I made a mistake earlier. We aren't driving a Peugeot 206, but rather a Peugeot 207. Can I get a collective "Ohhhhhhh, Ahhhhhhh" from all of you?! Anyway, I put in 34.45 liters of diesel this morning (9.10 gallons) and saw that we had traveled 576 km (357.9 miles). That works out to a little more than 39 miles per gallon! This with me traveling at the speed of sound along the autobahn! Why can't we get this back in the States?

Soviet-era reigns supreme

Ok, boys and girls. Now for today's lesson from Cap'n Reg. I remember when my dad went to visit Moscow on a US medical tour. He came back with two important lessons learned. No, they weren't about the medical system in the Soviet Union. They were: (1) a lengthy discussion on how to properly drink vodka, and (2) ALWAYS take toilet paper with you when you visit there. This stuff is like cardboard paper . . . ROUGH cardboard paper, at that! No wonder there was such motivation for reunification in the late '80s.

We're not in Kansas anzmore, Dorothz

Yikes!! This is some strange German keyboard. The kezs are in the wrong places. Whz do thez do this to egocentric Americans? Don`t thez know that our kezboards rule the world? Thez have something called a Alt-Gr, in addition to the regular Alt kez. So first zou have to find that sillz kez to be able to tzpe an @ sign.

Oh, and the z and y kezs are reversed.

Imagine trzing to log into zour Google account with all of the displaz in German. I feel so handicapped right now.

The conference started zesterdaz and I´m off to a triple session on religion and geographz. I hope to staz awake through the whole thing!

World War II Flashback

It rained off and on all night, and was still drizzling this morning. We decided to drive around a bit, waiting for the weather to clear to see Weimar. We ended up at Buchenwald--site of a German concentration camp in World War II where somewhere around 56,000 died. Now there's a nice, uplifting way to spend some time.

It's a story we've all heard; pictures we've all seen. But to see the size of the place, to walk where human beings did such horrible things to one another, to read some of the personal stories . . . it broke my heart. And how sad to hear someone quoted saying about the liberation, "For a short period of time, we thought something like this would never happen again."

In August 1945, Buchenwald became the site of Soviet Special Camp #2. Over a period of 5 years, more than 7,000 additional prisoners (this time interned Germans) died within the camp grounds.

Fortunately it's now a memorial site, sparing it the usual tourist junk. In America they'd be selling t-shirts saying "I survived Buchenwald."

Here We Are

We had a non-eventful flight to Europe, arriving in Frankfurt at 8 am local time today. We rented an incredibly cute bright blue Peugeot 206 and drove to Weimar. On the Autobahn. At speeds in excess of 100 mph. Yes, mph! And cars were passing us.

After we crashed for a while, we walked to a local restaurant and sampled the local cuisine. Delicious food and wonderful dark beer (Kustritzer). And a group in the corner broke into spontaneous singing while we were there! Reg was thinking about teaching them the Michigan fight song.

Tomorrow--the sights around Weimar.

We're Off!

Stay tuned to keep up with our adventures in Germany. We'll be traipsing around the country for the next few weeks, starting with a conference in Leipzig where we're both presenting papers, and ending with two weeks of heavy touristing. Sounds brutal, doesn't it? I think we're up to the challenge!