Posts by Melissa

Biking in Berlin

Posted on August 25, 2014

This city was made for biking. In addition to riding my bike to class each day, Thomas & I tour all around Berlin to discover each of its different quarters. The city is pretty spread out, so some days we find ourselves on our bikes for hours. Our favorite spots are our neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg, Kreuzberg, Mitte and of course the beloved Tiergarten with its wooded trails, English gardens and scenic lakes. Biking has certainly been a highlight over the course of our 2 1/2 months here!

Categories: Berlin, Germany

Tagged: , , , ,

Friends in Berlin

Posted on August 9, 2014

We’ve been lucky to have quite a few friends & family members come visit, which is wonderful because we love sharing our new (temporary) home with others. Frank & Louis came to Berlin from Cologne and we met up with them at a lovely Friday night picnic. It was another beautiful Berlin weekend, so we met up at the Tiergarten and strolled through a flohmarkt, the park and discovered one of the cutest biergartens in all of Berlin.

We’ve seen Raimond a handful of times, and were able to spend the weekend with him & Stefan brunching, shopping & sightseeing. My friend Taleah came from New York, and we used her visit as a good reason to be a tourist in our own town too, going to museums, parks and restaurants we hadn’t discovered yet.

Thomas’s sister Susanne came from Essen so we biked all over town, showing her our favorite flohmärkte and parks. And of course, we have Alexandra, Ben & Christian who we see nearly every week. We’ve loved spending Saturday nights at their See House, grilling and enjoying the beautiful Berlin summer weather.

Categories: Berlin, Germany

Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,

Berlin’s stumbling stones

Posted on July 24, 2014

 

Outside our apartment at Hufelandstraße 31, there is a small brass brick built into the cobblestone entranceway. Our friend Christian told us about the Stolperstein – stumbling stones – across Berlin. They’ve all been lovingly placed to commemorate the millions of victims of the Nazi regime.

Artist Gunter Demnig started the project in the late ‘90s with 50 brass blocks installed throughout Berlin. Since then, it has mushroomed and there are over 30,000 stumbling blocks installed in front of homes & apartment buildings throughout Germany. Each Stolperstein is engraved with the name and details of the person who was killed by the Nazi regime. Demnig relies on local residents, schools, religious & secular organizations to research the victims, and the blocks are all privately funded.

It’s one thing for us to visit memorials to remember those who were killed, but these experiences feel abstract to us. It’s another to stumble upon these blocks and remember day in & day out that these were people who lived amongst us. It’s become a really beautiful way to pay tribute to the victims as we walk the cobblestone streets of this Berlin we’ve come to love.

For more reading about Berlin’s Stolperstein, visit: NPR and Stolpersteine in Berlin.

Categories: Berlin, Germany

Tagged: , ,

Ich bin eine Studentin

Posted on July 17, 2014


Berlin, Germany: Each morning I ride my bike from our apartment to Alexanderplatz for German language classes. I love being a student, and I love learning this language. It’s become a lot more enjoyable now that I’m in Berlin (which I’m loving much more than I imagined) and immersed in all things German. While I was enrolled at NYU last year, learning German seemed like work – all the cases, all the genders, all the declinations – scheiße!! But now it doesn’t seem like work at all. Each day I pass a new milestone in my comprehension, and I’m anxious to come home and practice with Thomas for hours. So…ich bin gerade ein Berliner!

Categories: Berlin, Germany

Tagged: , , ,

‘Schland

Posted on July 4, 2014

We’ve combined discovering new areas of Berlin with public viewings of the World Cup. Fortunately, ‘schland has advanced to the quarter-finals so we’ve had a few games to watch. Today’s party was downstairs in our apartment building, spilling out onto the cobblestone streets and filled with friendly neighbors. Our friends Christian, Alexandra & Ben came over to watch, and the game wrapped up with celebration, fireworks and even more excitement for the next game on the 8th.

 

Categories: Berlin, Germany

Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,

Chobe National Park

Posted on May 24, 2014

Kasane, Botswana:  After crossing the border from Namibia, we set up camp in Kasane on the edge of Chobe National Park. We drove through the park two days and took a boat tour another, which was the perfect combination of ways to see the most wildlife in this spectacular park.

What makes Chobe stunning is its water, rich riverbanks and marshes. There was no shortage of elephants, giraffe, hippos, warthogs, crocodiles, buffalo, lizards and monkeys to see.

A few of our favorite moments…

Giraffes ‘tenting’ their legs since they are too tall to reach the grass standing

Warthogs kneeling down to eat

Hippos popping up and down with their big eyeballs to see what we were all about, and then yawning with disinterest when they realized we were just humans

Teenage elephants playing, splashing and spraying each other in the river

Categories: Africa, Botswana

Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,

Elephants & kissing rhinos

Posted on May 13, 2014
Etosha National Park: The next day, we were awake, tent up and in our truck looking for more wildlife before the sun was up. We saw tons more zebras, springbok, gemsbok, ostriches and kudu but the really exotic guys alluded us. We drove even further into the park, set up camp and decided to call it a day.

We’d heard the watering hole at this campsite was even better than the one the night before, so we headed there at sundown. Five elephants were gathered around, and again, we were awestruck by what was right in front of us. These gentle giants were quiet, calm and unfazed by the humans staring at them.

On our third day in the park, we headed back to the watering hole at sundown. The rhinos came out to play and this time, their entrance was a bit more dramatic. A male and a female engaged in a very flirtatious courting ritual and after the female shunned this poor guy, another male came out from hiding to spar with the first male. The female came back into the picture and all three played & bathed together in the water. And at one point, in a very sweet moment, two of the rhinos appeared to kiss. It was really unexpected to see, and showed the gentler side of these imposing giants.

Categories: Africa, Namibia

Tagged: , , ,

My African birthday

Posted on May 8, 2014

Khorixas, Namibia: On my birthday, I had hoped to see a giraffe, zebra or elephant. Instead, I was paid a visit from the birthday bananasaurus, a special singing banana that Thomas debuted in 2013. This little guy traveled all the way from Turks & Caicos where he made his last appearance to the Damaraland, Namibia. After a tune and birthday breakfast, we decided to take a one-night break from camping to celebrate in a lodge.

The cute bungalow where we stayed between Khorixas and Outjo, Namibia, served kudu steaks & a nice South African wine for dinner. We watched the sundown, sat by the fire and were serenaded by the native Damara employees who closed out the night with lively song & dance.

Categories: Africa, Namibia

Tagged: , , ,