Mückenstiche und Blasen

Yes, I am covered in mosquito bites and blisters, but otherwise I am in a great mood. The weather is a lovely 90 degrees, and I am sitting here in my backyard, which could be prettier, but what matters is that I am not stuck inside on a gorgeous day.

The weekend before last I went to Dresden, Goerlitz, and Leipzig with American friends living in Berlin: Anna, who I know from Harvard; Briana and Alia, who are fellow English assistants and coincidentally both Ginger Kids; and Susana, who I met randomly and have mentioned before (she just joined us in Leipzig though). After gorging myself on brownies at Anna's place on Friday evening, I got to bed early, because we woke up at the crack of dawn (ok, slightly later) to travel the 3.5 hours to Dresden. A fast, direct train wouldn't take so long, but we were traveling on a Schoenes Wochenende ticket, which means you pay 35 Euro and up to five people can use it all day long on the regional trains, no fast trains though. It's a good deal if you're not traveling too far. Anyway, we arrived in Dresden and after wandering around a bit found our hostel, then set off for the Altstadt. Brought back a lot of memories! I saw a lot of things that reminded me of people and adventures from last summer. If only some of those people could have been there to relive the experiences with me! But it was good to have other friends there anyway. I actually was able to do something I never did last summer, and that was climbing up the Watchman's Tower for pretty good pictures of the city. I've never spent that much time at the top of a tower though, as we tried to take all these pictures of the four of us to no avail. Early in the afternoon we decided we'd seen most of what Dresden has to offer. Well, actually, if I'd never been to Dresden before I probably would have wanted to stay longer, but we came up with a spur-of-the-moment plan to head to Goerlitz, and I've wanted to go there since last year, so I jumped at the opportunity. So we hopped on a train and rode an hour or so to the city, which is right on the border with Poland. The city was literally divided in half when the Polish border was formed, and the Polish side of the city is called Zgorzelec. Well, technically they are no longer the same city. Anyway, we got to walk across the border, so now I can say I walked to Poland! I don't believe I've ever walked across a country border before, so I can add that to my list. And after spending a few hours in Goerlitz, we headed back to Dresden, only to find that our hostel was locked up and we had not even been assigned our room yet! After some rounds of oh s*** we finally were able to get someone to give us our room, so we threw down our stuff and headed off to the bar area of Neustadt and had a drink. Just one though, because we were all pretty exhausted and by that point it was probably around 1 something. And when we got back we discovered that our roommate would be an old man. Oh well, just one night, I figured. Well, this guy must have had TB or something, the way he coughed all night. He also snored worse than my dad does, which is saying a lot, trust me. I finally fell asleep, and when I woke up in the morning the man, who ended up being Bulgarian, pestered me and enjoyed telling me all about how great the U.S. and California in particular are and why we should not vote for that negro/mulatto (I kid you not; instead, we should vote for that woman or the war hero). He went on and on about how countries like France have forgotten how much the U.S. helped them after WWII and why the Iraq War was the right war and how much Bulgarians appreciate the U.S. I was glad we were only there for one night and that I wasn't alone with him. Although he did confirm what I've heard about Eastern Europeans liking the U.S. more than other groups of people. That's a long paragraph . . .

So I'll start a new one. We headed to Leipzig in the morning, where we met up with Susana and then did our own self-guided walking tour of the city, seeing the church where Bach is buried and Auerbachs Keller, which was featured in Goethe's Faust. Eventually we made an extremely looooong trek out to the biggest war monument in Europe, which was truly massive. We climbed to the top and got some amazing views of Leipzig. Thankfully the weather was quite gorgeous all weekend. I was exhausted by the time we got home, but it was nice to visit some more cities and to travel with friends (particularly after spending ten days alone the previous week).


On top of the Watchman's Tower in Dresden. That's the Elbe River behind me.
















Anna in Goerlitz. She was obsessed with eating ice cream that day. She had ice cream five times, most of the time eating two scoops. By her fifth time, I was ready to throw up on her behalf. A little too much ice cream for one day.















Briana, Alia, and me on the bridge between Germany and Poland. Germany is behind us.

















Alia, Anna, and me with Poland behind us. Notice the difference between Poland and Germany?












Arriving back in Germany! Notice the signs for Freistaat Sachsen (Free State Saxony) and the city of Goerlitz in the background.
















Susana, Briana, Anna, and me in front of a church in Leipzig. Which one, I don't remember.

















The group without me in front of the huge war memorial in Leipzig.

















Fast forward to this past weekend. I went camping with an assortment of 30 or so people, a majority of whom were from my church here. This is the reason for me being covered in mosquito bites and blisters. We headed to the Liepnitzsee, a lake just outside of Berlin. I was told that the walk was an easy 20 minutes from the train station--biggest lie ever! We started walking in one direction and there were told it was 8 km away, which was not happening for those of us carrying heavy stuff (read: all of us). Thankfully, due to some divine providence, we made it to our campsite in one piece. I have done a lot of camping in my day thanks to having a brother in Indian Guides and Boy Scouts, and let me tell you, this was luxurious. We were on grass, which although prickly was much better than dirt, and the bathrooms had granite countertops and were spanking clean. The mosquitoes and bugs were miserable, but that's to be expected when camping. Anyway, on Friday night we started a campfire after setting up our tents and I showed the Germans how to make s'mores. My mom had visited the previous day and brought me authentic marshmallows, graham crackers, and Hershey's bars. The s'mores were absolutely delicious!

Some people became quite drunk, making falling asleep a challenge, and the sun started shining around 4 AM, so we were all quite tired in the morning, but we had an early start and trekked all the way to a ferry that took us to an island with a beach. We had to walk across the entire island to reach the beach, and when we finally made it, we had a nice sight: a beach full of FKK enthusiasts! I believe I have written about FKK before. Basically, East Germans are a bunch of nudists. They love to be naked. As we arrived early at the beach, there weren't too many, but as the day went on, there were scores of them. Men, women, and children. I did my best to avert my eyes, but it was quite hard to do. I really do not understand FKK for children though. I find this really disturbing. No child under the age of 10 or so was wearing a swimsuit at the beach. Not one. I wonder if they even make those cute little swimsuits for infants that I find so adorable. Who knows what kind of creeps come hang out at the beach to look at naked children. This is just one part of German culture that I cannot get used to. (Is it not also unsanitary?) Also, my (Australian/British) pastor's daughter, who is 7 years old, wears swimming trunks and nothing else at the beach and even around their house. Sorry for thinking that's bad. My father taught me from a very young age that I should behave like a lady and be aware of how I sit and everything along those lines. By the way, there is a woman sitting out here with her grandson and she took off his diaper, so he is just lying there with a t-shirt on. That doesn't make sense to me! Is it just me?

Anyway, the beach was fun, and although I didn't have a swimsuit I enjoyed a swim in the absolutely freezing water with my clothes on. They dried fast, as the weather was _hot_! We were there for a long time, and shortly after arriving back at the camp I scrambled to gather all my stuff up to head home earlier than the majority of the group because I had to get a lot done. But I really enjoyed hanging out with people from my church. It was quite an assortment of people--majority German, but also a Brazilian, a Canadian, a fellow American, an Italian, an Indonesian and my pastor and his wife and kids (at one point someone asked if I was the pastor's wife, which prompted his children to run around screaming, "Dad wants to date that American thing!," which is how rumors get started).

Christian and Yunce arriving at our campsite. Our bags were heavy, and they improvised with a large branch.











Christin eating her first s'more ever. Needless to say, she loved it.

















Our campsite. I like this photo because of the bug in the foreground.












The first ones to brave the freezing water.













An FKK family.










The "beach." Lakes will never be the same as the ocean, unfortunately. If you really want to, you can zoom in and probably see all the FKK enthusiasts.














On Sunday morning we had church at my pastor's place, which I really enjoyed. It's always great to see everyone gathered together. I really wish I could be around for the first public service next year. Makes me want to stick around in Berlin for another year, but I'm just too excited to be going back to the U.S. to commit to another year here.

Well, I'm off for a picnic in the Tiergarten (huge park in the middle of Berlin), so I gotta run. Until soon!