Week 1: Germany

Week 1 almost done:

I’m in London at Catherine Murphy’s REALLY LARGE apartment in west Hempstead waiting for my laundry to finish up. It has been a great week with my brother and parents and easing the transition into what is coming up on Thursday: flying to Beijing. Many thanks to KBritt and Wade for driving me to Dulles where I started my trip. I flew from Dulles to Berlin through Dublin, which was a very cold airport where I was drinking hot coffee to stay warm while surrounded by 5 or 6 retirees or retiree-aged people downing pints of Guinness and Harp at 10:30 in the morning. Landed in Berlin and successfully navigated the S and U Bahn (above and underground metro system) despite having to reroute twice due to track work being done. Friday we went to Potsdam, where the Hohenzollern Family who ruled Prussia lived. The area is now a park, similar to Tsarskoye Selo outside of St. Petersburg where the Romanovs lived and Versailles outside of Paris where all of the Louis kings lived. Berlin is a very interesting city of contrasts given the architectural and cultural influences of the Prussian empire/monarcy, the architecture of Speer and the Third Reich, the architecture of the Soviet Union, and the contemporary infill that has been done since reunification. Some areas are walking history lessons of the last 100 years with periods of history side by side with others, while some streets are perfectly preserved in their entirety to the various periods they were built in.

Sunday we were able to make a visit to Hamburg to see the family that lived with 11 summers ago during a high school exchange program. It was great to visit with them, and I got to see howHamburg has changed over some time. Elisabeth, my german mum took us up and down the Elbe River (think Mississippi, not Potomac in size) and to a new area where buildngs are being infilled in an old warehouse district, similar, but smaller in scale than Canary Wharf in London.

Sunday was also election day in Germany and it took me awhile to get a handle on how their parliamentary system is different from what we have in the US. The votes were for the representatives, not chancellor who will be selected by the elected representative body. The results secured Angela Merkel’s spot as chancellor as she is from the conservative party and they secured their spot. There are 5 or 6 parties elected in their Parliament, forcing parties to form coalitions with one another in order to have a majority to pass legislation. It makes me wonder what our system would be like if we weren’t so rigid in our 2 party format. What is also very interesting is that their conservatives are probably more on par with our moderate democrats and their liberals are really really far left. State provided health care, regulation of business/industry, social welfare, and very strict (if even a total ban) gun laws are a given and not issues of controversy. The issues being debated are about the amount of regulation, the size/coverage of social welfare coverage, and amount of regulation to business. It’s amazing how different the perspective is. It also helps that they don’t have cable like we do, and news is still reported as news and is less opinion based. Thanks to Brian for explaning all of this to me!

It was great to visit Germany and try and speak the language (which I’m pretty rusty on), and in many instances get responses back in German, not English as seems typical when they discover your accent isn’t quite on spot. Woke up at 4:30 this morning to get to the airport to fly to London where I said goodbye to my parents at Heathrow as they made their way to see friends in Exeter. Looking forward to drinking Ribena, the blackcurrant juice that is not imported in to the US just yet. Best part about London is the exchange rate has dropped significantly since I last came here 2 years ago!!

That’s all for now, I hope to get one of these up next week while in Beijing—not sure if they’ve been in the news over there at all. Thursday is the 60^th Anniversary of their version of independence day and the celebrations are said to be bigger than those of the opening ceremony for the Olympics!

Photos: (still trying to figure out this thing, so the order is a little out of whack)

Mural at the East Side Gallery: a section of the Berlin Wall that wasn't torn down and has murals on it from people all over the world who came to paint them in 1990. this was one of my favorites, playing off of the Checkpoint Charlie sign that is hanging at my desk (for those of you at SG!)

Me and my German Parents! Unfortunately I don't have any of the pictures with my actual parents or brother, my mom took all of those

Die Kanzlerin: Angela Merkel's poltical party campaign poster

Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin, another residence of the Hohenzollern clan

Sans Souci (rufus wainwright song) the summer palace of Frederick the Great at Potsdam: he liked rococo a lot.