Road Trip

I just spent the last few weeks with Cody and it was great to have a visitor. I finally did some sight seeing around Berlin, and we rented a car and drove to Amsterdam as well. The first week he was here I was working, which was perfect- he was able to get over jet lag in his own time, and see a lot of things around Berlin that I have already seen. Cody is a big museum goer- he can spend hours and hours in one- I just don’t have the patience and everything starts to look the same after a while. We went on a really cool tour of an underground bunker, though- there are lots in this city- this one is used for educational purposes and they even have theater productions in there. We spent a day in Potsdam,  too, looking at the Sanssouci castle- my favorite part of the day was the snow. It has been cold here, but even colder when we went to Amsterdam.

On our mini road trip we stayed our first night in Utrecht, a cute city just south of Amsterdam. Then we drove up to the city, parked at the park and ride, and took a train to the center. My first impression of the city wasn’t so great. We stayed in the Red Light District (in an incredibly expensive city, the only place where there was a reasonably priced room so last minute), and it just doesn’t really have a very nice feel. Our hostel was also a popular bar and “coffee shop”, so all day long people (including those working there) were lounging around drinking beer and smoking joints. The streets in that area (especially at night) were full of packs of male tourists roaming around. As much as I didn’t like it, though, the whole scene was really fascinating to me- I have never seen anything like it anywhere else!

The rest of the city is incredibly beautiful and I think we would have had a totally different impression of the place had we stayed even a few streets over. The buildings are old and beautiful, canals go all throughout the city, and everyone rides a bike- there are so many it’s sometimes hard to find bike parking! We visited the Anne Frank house, which was the highlight of the trip for both of us. It was amazing to be in the exact house where she lived the last years of her life- the pictures that she put up were still on the walls, we could look up into the attic where she liked to have her alone time.

We also visited the Rijks museum and saw a lot of Rembrant’s paintings, amongst many other important Dutch things. On the second day we were there we visited the Dutch Resistance museum. Mostly it was just fun walking around the city, looking at the architecture, enjoying the weather. It was pretty cold but beautiful- one minute it was snowing and the next it was blue sky and sunshine.

On our way back to Berlin we went to Luebeck, an old Hanseatic town near the Baltic. The buildings there were really amazing. We stopped by the sea, so I could get a small fix (not quite the same as the ocean, though!), then we drove back to Berlin.

One night we did the Berlin thing and went out dancing ‘till 5 a.m. but it’s really hard to do that!! The discos are totally dead until 1 or 2- most don’t even open their doors until midnight, so if you want to go dance you have to wait until after midnight to go out. One day were doing some sightseeing and we walked by a place where we were able to see in the windows and people were still totally partying from the night before. It was 1 p.m.

After 2 weeks off I went back to work this week. Cody left on Tuesday, and it was very hard to see him go. It has been really great to have someone so close to me here- it felt really good and now it just kind of feels lonely again, my apartment feels too big.

Luckily Mike from Santa Cruz comes to visit next week and we have a weekend trip to Estonia planned. Hopefully by the time we get back the weather will have improved here- it has been really terrible (just cold and wet) and I am sick of it!! I loved the little bit of snow we had but this grey really brings me down. At least there is light- the sun doesn’t set until 7.45 now!!