Adventures & disasters

the happily out-of-date adventures of Lesley

Saturday, April 07, 2007

Ich bin ein Berliner!!!!

Robbie and I are officially Berliners!

We've settled here in the amazing 'hood of Mitte, the old Jewish quarter and the artsy-farty area with lots of fun cafes and galleries. We've been brushing up on a ton of history from WWI to WW2 and up through the fall of the Berlin wall. All very fascinating and pretty heavy stuff.

Turns out that most German people speak English better than we do, so communicating is not a problem - BONUS!

Here's a lil' photo montage of spots around town. Berlin is a mix of old and new - that fact is very apparent. Check out the photo I included of a small old red building smooshed in the middle of two newer modern structures - that about sums up the feel. Berlin was so devastated by the air bombing raids of WW2 that much of the city lay in rubble. As a result, now there is a whole lotta' room for growth.

In the older buildings, you can still see bullet holes and huge chunks missing from shrapnel during the fighting (check out the pic of the column in the foreground with Alte National Gallery behind it.)

I also learned on a tour of the city, that the "hills" you see in parks and around grassy areas here are actually rubble mounds left over from the war. They simply pushed the rubble into a pile and left it there.

Okay, before I go here's an interesting tidbit on "Berliners":

US President Kennedy made a slightly embarrassing grammatical error in a speech once by saying "Ich bin ein Berliner."

What he thought he said was: "I am a Berliner."

But alas, he was wrong. Kennedy should have said "Ich bin Berliner" to mean: "I am a person from Berlin."

By adding the indefinite article ein, his statement implied he was a non-human Berliner, (a "Berliner" being a common pastry filled with jam) thus he declared to the people of Germany:

"I am a jelly doughnut!!"









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