|
The first thing we did was jump on the first Strassenbahn (city metro train) and left downtown Berlin and headed out to the eastern Berlin suburb district of Pankow (pronounced Punko!). I had visited Gesine in Pankow the previous December as well, so I was back in familiar territory, but I was a bit nervous since I was going to meet Gesine's mother this time around. In December 1998 we had met only briefly while I was half-asleep in bed, and acted like a slumbering fool. It was around 5:30 a.m. and I was totally groggy and out of my senses, eyes half open and vision totally blury, and babbled endlessly about random blah blah blah before she had to run off to work. So for and entire year I felt like the biggest idiot and was completely angst ridden this time to meet her again after such a freaky performance in 1998! Fortunately, this year's official introduction went spectacularly and we hit it off right away! In stark contrast to the German tradition of addressing strangers or people of higher status (professional, socially, age) or the parents of friends as Frau/Herr (Mrs./Mr.) and using the pronoun Sie (the formal/respectful pronoun for 'you') Gesine established right away that I was to address her mother by her first name, and I was to use the pronoun "du" ('you' informal) since there was to be no formality between her friends and her family in the Wernecke household! Although this should have been easy for me since English no longer differentiates between formal/informal pronouns (you/thou), and in California I almost always referr to my friend's parents by their first name, it was in fact just the opposite - I had the hardest time referring Gesine's mom as "du" and not as "Sie" or "Ms. Wernecke"! I tried my best, but sooner or later "Sie" or "Frau Wernecke" would slip out and I had to correct myself!
We chit-chatted for several hours in the dining room and the living room then turned in for the night, bellies full, completely ready for bed! On the 26th I woke up to a nice, tasty German breakfast of fresh breads, cheeses, vegetables, spreads, tea, coffee and juice. In the early afternoon Gesine and I walked around Pankow and she showed me where she had gone to high school during the communist era of the DDR (German Democratic Republic) and of course I found it all very fascinating. After noting all the graffiti everywhere around town (and Europe as a whole for that matter) I asked if there had been so much graffiti during the communist era and Gesine replied, "no way!" It seems, to me at least, that with the end of communism, many folks have chosen to use their new found freedoms to deface and ruin as much wall space as possible. Oh well, that's a social commentary for another time.
While getting dressed, I noticed the weather report on TV talking about this giant storm just now making land fall in northwestern France and was expected to march across eastern France, southern Germany and northern Switzerland with fierce, hurricane force winds! For some reason I didn't really believe it when they arrows plastered across the screen with "160kph!" (100mph) scrolled on top of them moving from west to east. I guess I just figured it was a typo or a forecast error, or something. It wasn't until the next day when I had heard word from Gesine that this little storm had flattened forests, tore up towns and killed 90 people that I actually realized how serious it was! Talk about pre-millennium end-of-the-world disaster scenarios! It was kind of freaky actually! Nevertheless, Gesine and I had a date that night, threw on our clothes and ran out the door to meet up with Joerg and Martin at a big dance club in Berlin called GMF. On our way to the dance club Gesine and I met up with a girl named Sonja who was also a student at EF International language school in 1997-1998. After sitting and shooting the breeze in a café for an hour or so, which had a broken heating system, Gesine and I moseyed on over to the club and we did the typical dance club thing - danced, chit chatted, threw back a couple of drinks and socialized with the natives. Interestingly enough, there was a very non-native Japanese guy we ran into who was living and working in Berlin despite the fact he didn't speak a lick of German. And of course he was surprised to find out that I live in Tokushima, Japan (which is like saying, as a foreigner, "I live in Podunksville, Oklahoma") and he was also impressed that Gesine had been in Japan just 3 months prior. We ended up staying out until 4 a.m. and took a taxi back to Pankow.
Gesine and I walked around the new Potsdam commercial development zone, which is located right in the middle of what was just 11 years ago a communist controlled "No Man's Land" complete with land mines, barbed wire, booby traps, killer dogs, trigger happy watch tower guards and the Berlin Wall. Today the entire area has been bulldozed down (as per the Fall of the Wall in 1989) and apparently bought by DaimlerChrysler and is now a brand spanking new commercial zone with subway stops, shopping centers and skyscrapers. After that, we took a little walk over to the Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate) and I walked around in awe at how much the entire area has changed in the last 12 months alone! I went twice in 1994/1995 when parts of the Berlin Wall were still standing and the Brandenburger Tor was a solo standing building in the middle of No Man's Land. I returned in 1997 with my friends Tiffany and Nils and was blown away by the changes undertaken in just three years, and have been subsequently shocked during the following two times I have returned to Berlin, December 1998 and December 1999. Ever since the German government decided to return the capital of German to Berlin by 1999, the city has been undergoing a revolutionary make over, to return large parts of it to its pre-WWII splendor and to create entirely new districts where no renovations can be made. The Brandenburg Gate area has been recreated according to models of pre-WWII and is no longer a freestanding structure in the middle of nothing, but rather, a vibrant centerpiece of the newly reconstructed hotel and government district. The whole region is still a massive construction site with museums, government buildings, new trainstations, tunnels, subways and parks springing up like wild mushrooms all around the main centerpiece of the district - the newly renovated Reichstag Federal Government Building. The Reichstag had been bombed into oblivion at the conclusion of WWII and sat for 50 years as a bullet riddled concrete corpse to commemorate the destruction of war. With the transfer of the capital city to Berlin, new life was breathed into the Reichstag and after a 5 year renovation project, the building has finally been completely renovated and is an absolute marvel! The exterior was rebuilt and renovated in its original form whereas the entire internal structure was completely gutted and turned into a massive, open air legislative chamber newly crowned by a majestic, vaulted glass dome suspending a gigantic mirror clad spiral spike hanging down over the legislators themselves! Visitors to the Reichstag can ride an elevator to the upper level of the building and walk along a spiral walkway to the top of the giant refracting spike and peer down into the new German government. The entire theme of the building is transparency and visibility in government and this is definitely apparent in the new design! At the very top of the walkway, visitors have a magnificent view Berlin in all directions and can also see a small refractive chamber atop the spike, which at night is illuminated by a focused beam of light sourced on the other side of downtown and aimed straight at the dome! On Tuesday, the 28th, I bid my farewell to Mrs. Wernecke, thanked her for making me feel so welcomed in her home and then grabbed my things and Gesine and I were off to the Berlin trainstation to drop my belongings off in a locker and then ran off to a café to meet up with three of her university friends Antje (pr. Antyah), Wiebke (pr. Veepkah), and Oliver. They were a nice group of people and we had a fun time chit chatting over breakfast, although I probably seemed a bit too quiet since I didn't say a whole lot, mostly because I was a bit afraid to jump into the middle of their conversations with my rustic and Japanese-bashed German. But it was a good time nevertheless and afterwards we went out to KaDeWe (pr. Kah Day Vay, Kaufhaus des Westens - Mall of the West, built during the Cold War Era) and I finally managed to find myself a nice, ritzy brown jacket! It's a waxed Barbour Beaufort from England and I absolutely love it, although Gesine was crinkling her nose the whole time at its new, waxy aroma! Before we knew it, it was time for me catch my overnight train to Paris so Gesine and I said our good-byes but were not sad since we were going to see each other again on January 4th in Munich with my sister, providing that the Y2K Bug didn't destroy the world on January 1st, 2000, so it would just be a one-week absence. We hugged, parted ways, I walked back to the Berlin "Zoo" Train Station and jumped on my train to France. |
After
several hours of riding the train and reading a book I bought in
Germany titled "Weisser Mars" (White Mars) I arrived at the
Berlin Zoological Gardens Trainstation and was greeted by Gesine and
her beaming, happy smile! It's always great to see Gesine because she
always gets so excited to see me and it makes me feel so good! :-)
Anyways,
introductions and social customs aside, we spent that evening
celebrating Christmas by exchanging gifts and eating a great meal
prepared by the ladies of the house. We had goose, red cabbage,
dumplings and gravy, which was ABSOLUTELY delicious!!! YUMMY!!! And
of course, I feasted. As per!
In
any case, we walked around town looking at everything, me asking
questions and Gesine telling stories, and then returned home by 3
p.m. and took the train into downtown to go to Theater des Westens
(Theater of the West) to see a performance of the musical
"Chicago" in German, since Gesine had given both her mother
and me tickets as Christmas presents. At the theater we met up with
Gesine's friend Joerg (pr. Yerg) and his "friend" Martin.
The musical turned out to be a good time. After the show, we walked
through a heavy, beautiful snow storm to Café Arc and sipped
coffee and nibbled on a light dinner. After sundown Gesine and I
returned to Pankow for a brief nap and then got all gussied up for a
wild night out on the town!
Monday
the 27th was a relatively lazy day. Gesine and I both woke up late
after our midnight excursion and spent the majority of the day being
total sloths. Not that I'm complaining - I was on vacation after all!
Eventually we got dressed, watched a bit of news on the weather
disaster in France and southern Germany, and went back into Berlin to
do a little window shopping since I was still on the hunt for a
jacket (a brown one this time, since the Schefflers had given me a
nice full length black coat while I was in Rinteln!), but it was to
no avail. It seemed I could find nothing I liked.