On Monday, July 25th, our friends from Arkansas, Josh & Kimber Still, came to visit. This was their first time in Europe, so we had 10 full days of things to do & places to visit ready for them and both Shanna & I were excited about seeing them again. Shanna had to work the day they flew in, so I picked them up from the airport that morning. Anyone who's flown to Europe from the US knows that the only flights going that direction are red-eye flights. Kimber is like me, she can't sleep on the planes, so it was a long flight. The hardest part is the day you land, because your body is telling you to go to bed, but you can't, you have to stay up until that evening to force your body on a schedule. I knew it'd be tough for them to stay awake if we were sitting at home, so once they showered & changed, I took them downtown to show them Stuttgart.
We've been down there enough times over the past year & a half that I could show them all the big spots. We started off at the Schlossplatz, the main area in front of the "New Castle", then we walked up & down Koenigstrasse, where all the shops are. They got to see the Rathaus (Town Hall), and I even took them in to the Market Hall, where vendors from all over Europe have stands selling fruits, vegetables, cuts of meat, cheeses, etc... It's pricey in there, but the quality is fantastic. Shanna & I get food there when we are cooking for special occasions. After we'd walked around the downtown area, we had a little time to kill before picking Shanna up, so I took them up to Stuttgart's TV tower. It was built in 1954 and at the time was the tallest TV tower in the world. When you get to the top to look around, you are 150m (approx. 450ft) high and can see for miles in every direction. Finally it was time to go pick Shanna up.
When we got to her office, Kimber & Josh came inside and got to see where Shanna works. Next up was a trip to a town nearby called Waldenbuch, home of Rittersport Chocolate factory. You could take a tour if you wanted, but the main goal here was the shop inside where you can buy every kind of RitterSport chocolate imaginable. They even have bins of "test batch" chocolate with new concepts they are considering that haven't been approved for mass market production yet. That night Shanna made a fantastic casserole from a recipe we'd found in one of her cookbooks, and then Kimber & Josh finally got to go to bed.
The next morning I got up early to go fill the car up with gas and drop the dogs off at the kennel. By the time I got back, everyone was packed & ready to head to Berlin. The plan was to first stop in Würzburg, a town in Bavaria that we've heard about. It had an old church that we really wanted to see, but it's being renovated and is closed until 2012. We walked around the city for a bit, then stopped in a restaurant for lunch. Kimber & Josh got their first taste of German food in Germany. Kimber ordered the Jaegerschnitzel, and Josh ordered a regular schnitzel. One funny thing of note in the restaurant was in the Men's room. Everyone know's how much the Europeans love soccer, so when I saw the little plastic soccer goal in the urinal, I couldn't stop laughing. Of course I took a picture of it. :)
After lunch we walked around town for a bit, then headed up to the Fortress that overlooked the city. That was really neat, when you get to the top it has a beautiful view of the city, including the river that runs through the city.
After we walked around there, we hit the road to Berlin. The rest of the drive was uneventful, and we pulled into Berlin around 9pm. On the road into the city we noticed large bleacher stands that were right next to the Autobahn, facing it. We later found out that this stretch of road was used as a Grand Prix raceway from the turn of the century until the late 1930's when a driver crashed & was killed. The road was then deemed too dangerous and was no longer used for racing, only for regular driving.
Once checked in we were all beat, so we called it an early night. The next morning we got up and took the Ubahn to a stop where you could join a walking tour of Berlin. It was great, it only cost 12 euros a person, and a guide walked us all around Berlin (mostly East Berlin) for the next 5 hours. Our guide was originally from New Zealand, and studied European History in college. He moved to France to teach there, and while on vacation in The Netherlands he met a girl from the former East Germany, and is now married to her. They moved to Berlin, where she's from, and he works as a tour guide there now. It was interesting hearing some of his stories about his in-laws, both of whom worked for the East German government before reunification. His father-in-law was part of the group of people who put up the first incarnation of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Below is a picture of the medal he was given for it (the tour guide had it and past it around).
We walked all over, seeing the remains of the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, Hitler's Bunker, Berliner Dom, the Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate, and many other major points of Berlin. It was a great "introduction" to Berlin so we could plan for what to see on the following days in more detail. The tour ended at Brandenburg Gate and from there we headed to a bar the tour guide recommended with a great beer selection. It was a huge change from the Stuttgart area, where you can generally only get beer from the Baden-Württemberg state, with maybe a few from Bavaria. I even was able to drink an Anchor Steam! That's a beer from San Francisco that is easy to find in DC, but I've never seen in Germany.
Afterwards we headed back to Checkpoint Charlie where we'd noticed a Stasi (East German Secret Police) exhibition that we wanted to see while on the tour. It was interesting seeing the files they had on Germans that they were spying on. Even though wiretaps without a warrant were illegal, the Stasi did it anyway. Every phone call from East Germany to West Germany were listened in on & recorded. After the museum we walked around the tourist shops in the area. Checkpoint Charlie, for those that don't know, is one of three checkpoints while the Berlin Wall was up that allowed people to pass between East & West Berlin. There are a few places through out Berlin where the wall is still there for viewing, but the majority of the wall is gone. The reminder of the wall, though, is everywhere. They replaced where the wall was with bricks in the ground. Everywhere we went in Berlin you could see the bricks, and it would remind you that a wall used to be there.
The next day was a typical German day...cloudy, cold, & raining. We started off heading to Museum Island where we got a Museum Day pass that got us entrance to all the museums on the island. One thing you can see all over Berlin are bullet holes from the final battle in Europe of WWII. The museums were especially pock-marked with bullet holes.
The first museum we went to was the Pergamon Museum. It focused on Greek & Middle Eastern history. Inside the main hall was a recreated entrance to a temple in Greece as well as pieces of walls that previously existed around the temple with sculptures of the Greek Gods. Some of the rooms had Mosaics from Greek temples and the houses of wealthy Romans. One of the neatest things they had was the entrance gate to the ancient city of Babylon. It was built around an actual door between two rooms, so to walk from one room to another, you walked through the gate that used to allow people into Babylon.
Close to the museum was the famed Berliner Dom, or Berlin Cathedral. It was heavily damaged during WWII, and left in ruins for years. The East Germans tolerated religion, but didn't do anything to promote it, so they had no interest in fixing the Cathedral. In the 1960's they built a large glass building that was to be used as a government building. The problem with building a glass building right next to the Cathedral ruins was it reflected the Cathedral...so instead of having one ugly ruin, thanks to the reflection, it now looked like you had two. That's when they decided it was time to rebuild the Cathedral. These days it's a beautiful building.
Inside the Cathedral were intricate ceiling paintings, sculptures, and the Crypt, which contains the final remains of German Royalty from hundreds of years ago. One of the neat things was the ability to go up a set of stairs (LOTS of stairs) to get all the way to the top of the dome. You could then walk around and get a good view of the city. The picture below of us was taken at the top of the Cathedral with the Berlin TV tower in the background.
We headed from there to a smaller museum, but it was nothing special, and we didn't take any pictures of it. From there we headed to the Deutsch History Museum. This museum was fascinating. They had it broken down in two sections, from the beginning of civilization in Germany up to 1918, then another section with 1919 to present day. It was neat seeing all the Roman artifacts found in Germany. They also had a German Natural History book written in the 15th century on display.
It was getting late in the afternoon at that point, but we had one more place we wanted to visit. Near Brandenburg gate was the Jewish Holocaust Memorial. The Memorial had two levels. There was the marble blocks on the surface, and the historical exhibit with stories of people who died in the Concentration Camps, and those that survived, under ground.
We ate dinner after that, and while leaving the restaurant, we noticed a taxi pull up to a building and a lady all dressed up get out. As soon as she did, two cars came flying up next to her and these guys with cameras got out and started snapping pictures. Once she was in the building the guys were standing around talking, and Shanna wanted to know who the lady was and what was going on. She headed over to chat with the guys.
Turns out the lady was a German singer (we never got her name) and there was a party going on at the hotel there. We found out later when trying to figure out who she was that while we were outside, Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis were also at the party inside.
We were all full from dinner, so we headed over to Tier Garten nearby to walk around. It was amazing how quiet it was inside. You're in the middle of a Capital city, and all you can hear are the sounds of nature inside. Once you left the garden area, it went back to looking & sounding like a major city. At this point it was getting late, so we decided to head back to the hotel and call it a night.
The next day was even more rainy. There were only two more places we really wanted to see. The first was Olympic Stadium, where Jesse Owens famously won several gold medals. That in itself is impressive, but it takes on more historical significance because of Hitler's desire to show off "Aryan Superiority" at the games, only to have a black man win medal after medal.
There were two parts to the stadium. There's the original stadium outside that was built around the turn of the century and was originally selected for the 1916 Summer Olympics. Those Olympic games were cancelled due to World War I. The bigger stadium, where we are pictured above, was built for the 1936 Olympic games. One neat thing we saw when we got there was a British film being shot. I tried doing some research to figure out what movie it was, but didn't have any luck.
The final place we wanted to see in Berlin was the East Side Gallery. It's a long stretch of the Berlin Wall that's been left in place, where artists were invited to spray paint artwork on it. Some of it was really impressive.
Once finished there, we'd had enough of the rain & cold. I looked at the weather report and it was supposed to continue raining in Berlin that day, as well as all day Saturday, when we were originally scheduled to leave. The weather was supposed to be nice all weekend in Stuttgart. Since the hotel room was so cheap, we decided to take the loss and head home that day. That way we could spend Saturday traveling to towns outside of Stuttgart. The drive home was long because of the heavy rain, but we eventually got home that evening.
That's it for this post. Since we did so much over the ten day period I've decided to break up the posts. The first post is about Josh & Kimber's arrival, and our trips to Würzburg and Berlin, the next post will be about the day trip to Tübingen & Lichtenstein on Saturday and our day trip to Zürich, Switzerland, on Sunday. The final post will be about our trip down to Austria and Münich.
The pictures above can be clicked on to see higher res versions. Once I have all our pictures sorted & uploaded, I'll make a separate post for it.
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