Real quick:

1. I have my work computer back after almost two full days! That means I’m really busy.
2. We are leaving later this afternoon for Turkey, which means I’m really busy.
3. We are HOPING to leave later this afternoon. It’s snowing like crazy here right now.
4. The name of the bird from yesterday is (translated) red throat. I asked “Red throat what? Finch?” And I was told, “In German, we don’t call it anymore than that.” So, there you have it.

Have a good weekend!

My computer at work has a nasty virus so I’m at home trying to be productive without most of the tools I need. Hopefully I’ll have my computer back tomorrow.

In the meantime, enjoy this picture that Travis took from the office window of a little visitor…

Yesterday, one of the Germans came up to me and said, “I got an e-mail from Megan, and she said she was running late because her son is under the weather.” I nodded, not sure if I was supposed to be sympathetic to this Megan woman’s kid, or what the right response was.

“So,” he continued, “you know what that means? That’s a common phrase, that ‘under the weather?’”

“Yes,” I replied. “It means he’s sick.”

“Sick? Like sick, serious?”

“No, like sick, not feeling well.”

Thanking me, he wandered back off shaking his head at the weird Americans and their weird sayings. But it got me thinking how often we throw that phrase around and how funny it must sound to someone who understands the literal words but not the phrase.

Some of the words they have make sense “translated,” even if I don’t fully understand why. For example, goose bumps is equal to goose skin in German (even though I’ve never seen a goose get bumpy skin when it’s cold). The funny bone on your elbow is the music bone to them (not funny OR musical when it is hit). A lot of our sayings, like “cross your fingers” are also used in German, even though I have no idea where the saying comes from.

Apparently they have been missing out on “under the weather” all this time. I guess I have three months to fix that.

(Let me apologize in advance for the poor pictures. I didn’t want to use my flash and embarass myself or blind the performers.)

We walked in to the auditorium and everything was set up “under the big top.”

Luckily, I had prepped myself with some caramel popcorn. I settled in for the show.

The first act was a hula hoop master, who not only could hula hoop 10 at a time, she could also light them on fire. Now, that’s just showing off.

Then, “for the American guests,” they brought out line dancers. These were employees from the company that got signed up to perform. I was embarrassed for them AND for my country, that this is what we’re known for.

After the line dancing, a clown/mime came out and did his crazy clown thing.

Followed by a half-naked guy doing stunts. (He could have been reading a book for all I know. I was distracted by the lack of shirt.)

A “football” player came out and did some tricks with a ball, including taking off a sweatshirt, a t-shirt, and a pair of pants, and walking into the audience, all while bouncing the ball.

Then the clown came back and got some people from the audience to sit on chairs, lay back on each other, and then he took their chairs away leaving them shaking.

After all that excitement, there was a short break for dinner - pizza, sausages, and other “circus” fare, along with circus games.

To start the second half of the program, they suspended a woman from the ceiling and let her swing from cloth:

Then more of the clown, shown here spinning EIGHT plates at once.

A ventriloquist was next up, and he was HILARIOUS. Even with my limited German skills.

Then came what I will from here on call the crazy lady, who swallowed fire sticks:

put a giant spider on her chest - you may need to check out the large view of this one:

laid on broken glass and had someone stand on her belly:

brought out not one but TWO crocodiles, and kissed them:

And if that’s not enough, she wore three giant snakes around her neck.

A hard act to follow, but three more employees came out and sang a really funny song next:

Then a comedian came on for FORTY-FIVE MINUTES. I really didn’t like this guy. It didn’t help that he was in German, but he also went on for-ever.

At the end, Jenni presented the retiree with a gift:

And then everyone in the crowd sang “You are our champion” to the tune of “We are the champions.” And also waved glow sticks. It was kind of as cheesy as it sounds.

What a night! Six LONG hours later, it was over and I broke free. They’d never pull anything like that off in the U.S. for a retirement, that’s for sure!

We had a great weekend. Friday night there was a retirement party for the president of the German office, who’s retiring after 20 years here. It was a circus - literally! I took a lot of pictures because otherwise I knew no one would believe it, so I will write about that tomorrow.

Saturday, our friend (and cat sitter while we were gone at Christmas) came over and we baked cookies. Mindi from Berlin was also in town because her orchestra students were performing in Frankfurt. We decided to go visit her, not really realizing that “in town” doesn’t necessarily mean Frankfurt. We took the subway all the way to the end of the line, which took one hour and 40 minutes just to get there. After chatting with her for a bit, we took the train back - which took another two hours! Quite a journey. I feel like we could have gone all the way to Berlin with less effort than that!

Yesterday we hung around the house watching movies and football (even though football didn’t start until 9:00 at night - ouch!). And this morning we woke up to about 3 or 4 inches of fresh powder, which makes everything just a little more crazy than it should be.

Have a good week, everyone!

Last week, I mentioned the Bistro that Travis and I ate at when he came to visit me at work. Now, here are the pictures.

First, you trek to the far end of the parking lot - admittedly, not a huge distance. But then some safety equipment is necessary because next up is the slide down a steep, muddy, icy, and did I mention STEEP? hill I didn’t take a picture of this for two reasons: 1) there was a crowd of people going to the Bistro and I didn’t want to hold them up on the single-file trail, and 2) the picture would NEVER do it justice.

Then at the bottom of the hill, in the middle of a field, there’s this sign that proves you’re going in the right direction. Keep in mind this is in the middle of a field. So for those people just wandering around out in the field, this is the right direction.

What, you can’t read that? It says the Bistro is that way, across this field and down more of a hill.

Lost yet?

Then across a few paving stones that have been put in the field, but are so spread out even they were even pointless with Travis’ long stride, and down a seriously treacherous set of stairs.

Once down the stairs, you’ve made it. Note, this is a picture of the actual interior. Notice the steep steps in the background, and the lack of windows in the door. You’d never know this was a restaurant.

Once again, I’m thankful I’m not in a wheelchair trying to get around this country! And the worst of all this is that the restaurant is not even that great. But it sure as an adventure to get to!

On Sunday snow was forecast, so we decided we’d do indoor things. We wanted to see Checkpoint Charlie and the Jewish Museum, figuring the time was best spent in a warm museum instead of outside on the cold street.

Checkpoint Charlie had a really cool museum that had great exhibits from the East. We saw how all kinds of escape methods, like modified cars, a personal submarine rocket, and hot air balloons were used over the years to escape to the west. One lady even stuck herself into two suitcases, joined together, and was carried out - all 154 pounds of her!

We killed a couple of hours in the museum, a bit longer than we intended to, and discovered we didn’t have as much time as we wanted for the Jewish Museum. So instead we walked a little distance to where the only real portion of the wall still stands.

It is surrounded by fencing so that no one can go up and take out chunks for their collection at home, but I took this picture of our hosts to give a perspective as to how tall the wall is.

I’d heard somewhere that Berlin was known for Mexican restaurants, and by this time we were getting a little hungry, so I looked on my phone and there was one less than a mile away. We started off walking that direction - so much for the idea of being inside on this cold, snowy day - and when we got there we discovered my source must have been out of date, because there was no restaurant nearby.

Not to be deterred, I looked up a second one and I made sure it had good reviews before heading that direction. Two subway lines later, we walked up to this:

Yeah, that sign that says “Open?” Not so much.

By this time it was almost 2:00 and our train left around 4:00, so we decided to go back to a Mexican place near Shaun and Mindi’s house. It turned out to be very delicious and we had no complaints. Then we grabbed our bags and headed to the train station.

Shaun had been telling us all weekend about this big bear exhibit at the train station and kept saying we had to get there early so we could see it. The bear is the symbol of Berlin and is everywhere in the town crest. Every country of the world had a bear painted and on display in one large room. It was kind of creepy and yet kind of cool at the same time. Here’s Travis’ picture of the Bolivia bear.

We got on our train with minor problems, that being that the train was a “replacement” and not the train we had expected, which meant it was completely oversold and there were people laying in the aisles and sitting in the bathrooms. Every space inch of space was jam-packed. We weren’t even able to get up to our first class seats! But we did find seats, so it worked out ok, and afterward we complained at the ticket counter and they say they’re going to refund our money for that portion. Since we got such a good deal on first class (it was actually CHEAPER than second class) I’m not sure what will happen, but Travis thinks they’ll charge us The situation turned out ok - it could have been much worse!

We had a great weekend in Berlin and I’m glad we finally got to see the city before we leave.

Ok, enough excuses, here it is!

We left Friday night on the 6 p.m. “Sprinter” train and enjoyed first class, which meant some kind of cold pasta dish with a weird piece of meat and a cup of pudding.

When we got to Berlin, Shaun was waiting for us and we hopped on the train to his place where we met up with Mindi. Berlin is so huge that it took us an hour to get from the train station to their house. We were all pretty exhausted from the week and hit the hay early.

In the morning, we got on the city bus which took us all around the “sights” of Berlin. A lot of people call it the tourist bus, so I guess that was perfect for us.

The first thing we saw was the bombed church from WWII. It was left standing as a reminder of the destruction. Both of these pictures are from the dirty bus window, so I apologize for the quality.

We drove on past the Brandenburg Gate and didn’t hop off until somewhere in East Berlin, when the bus stopped and we were told to exit. East Berlin was different from the west in a few ways, but mostly I noticed all of the construction. Twenty years since the fall of the wall and it’s finally being revitalized.

We walked a few blocks and stopped in some shops (Mindi needed gloves, I needed a hat) and eventually worked our way over to Museum Island. We were starting to get a little cold, so it was perfect timing for us to duck into the Dom. It was beautiful!

Once inside, we found some stairs to walk up

and then some more stairs

and before you knew it, we were at the cupola, looking out at the snow-covered city.

We walked around and took it all in, and then visited the crypts in the basement which were cool but very hard to photograph, and then ate a really great pizza lunch.

A friend in Frankfurt had recommended we visit Tacheles, an artist community in East Berlin. What a strange, interesting place that was. Everything was covered in graffiti and at first we wondered what kind of place we were getting ourselves into.

A good question was raised:

And I found some art that I liked.

Mindi and Shaun even purchased some prints to get framed.

After whittling away our afternoon admiring the art and reading everything in the hallways, we stopped for a coffee before leaving.

Now that it was getting dark, we thought it would be a good time to see the Brandenburger Tor, or Brandenberg Gate.

The gate was on the East side of Germany when the wall was up, and is now a symbol of the reunited country.

We walked through the Jewish Memorial across the street, which was really cool. It made you feel lost and overwhelmed when you walked through the display.

All of the stones were of varying heights and it had a really cool effect. It also protected us a little from the cold and wind.

In all this time, I still hadn’t seen any of the wall. I knew that it was for the most part down, but there were a few pieces of it scattered around. But in the ground, somewhere under all that snow, they’d laid two rows of bricks to mark where it had been. We just hadn’t been able to find it yet! As we waited at the bus stop, we looked down and there it was.

We toured a little more of the city, and then went to the “best Turkish in Berlin” (according to our guidebook, anyway) for dinner. And it was delicious! We also saw a little bit of the wall on display.

Back at their house, we had a rockin’ few games of cribbage before bed. We were all pretty pooped from 14+ hours wandering around in the snow and cold.

Last night we went out for a team dinner right after work with some visiting co-workers from Denver. The restaurant was packed and noisy and VERY German, and in a really cute little old section of town. Someone said they’d been there once, twenty years ago, and nothing at all had changed. Not even the waiter.

I had a delicious schnitzel and sauerkraut soup (YUM! I want to make this!) and Travis had the deep-fried pork knuckle thing that he loves. It was all very delicious and very filling. And very long.

German dinners out are never fast. If you make a reservation, that table is yours for the entire evening. They will not speed you along to get the next set of bodies in, will not drop the bill at your table and say “I don’t want to rush you, but pay me when you’re ready,” (which is totally rushing, if you think about it). Dinner took FOUR LONG HOURS. And it was lovely to chitchat and enjoy ourselves, but I had work to do at home AND a blog entry to write about Berlin.

As you can tell, only one of those two things got done.

So, Berlin entry coming soon… hang in there.

Back from Berlin.

It was cold. Brrr.

Will have a real update and pictures tonight!