Life in Berlin

 “Berlin is not the place you go to if you are looking for romance. It is not quaint, it is not pretty in the most obvious, touristy ways. What Berlin is, is this: a place where you can see many (if not all) of the 20th century’s worst horrific historical scars; it is a city that seems to take pride in resisting the urge to sweep its dark past under the rug of gentrification; it is where people go to if they are looking for a taste of the past and a vision of the future.”

–Juliana Alvim 

Berlin is a terribly interesting place to be. It feels like a city with a soul–one that has multiple time periods and cultures folding in upon itself. You can see remnants of a divided Germany, of one destroyed by war, one wounded by National Socialism, one powerhouse of Prussia. You also hear so many languages and interact with people from all over the world with varying ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds. 

We live in Gesundbrunnen, which is just north of the city center of Berlin. We’ve enjoyed the area so far with its plethora of Turkish bakeries, dozens of döner shops, several grocery stores, and large park (Humboldthain).

Our apartment is on the second floor of an Altbau (pre-war building) and it has a ton of space. The floors creak when you walk on them. Dallin mentioned it feels a little bit like A Quiet Place as we try to creep around the house without making noise when Teddy is sleeping. Maybe it’s worth marking which ones make noise? Our shower doesn’t have a curtain, which means you have to sit or stand to wash yourself to avoid spraying water outside the tub. I’ve gotten used to it, but it doesn’t keep me from dreaming about a standing shower with better pressure and warmer water.

I usually teach my students about garbage separation (Mülltrennung) with this catchy techno song. I’ve withheld from singing it every day as we separate our garbage into its correct bin based on what it is made from. It’s good to be back.

Every day in the mid-afternoon, I crash and fall asleep while Teddy naps. One day, I needed a nap at 7:30am (Teddy’s been waking up pretty early here). I have probably consumed 30 bars of chocolate and visited the baklava shop around the corner around 9 times. I’ve had some beautiful runs exploring new trails and finding favorite places.

You could say that I am thriving.

We’ve already had a couple visitors. My mom stayed one day with us and she took our obligatory “we’re in Berlin picture” that I posted last week. 

My friend Morgan visited Berlin with some friends and spent a day with us. We went shopping at the Kaufhof (a five-story department store at Alexanderplatz)and I tricked Morgan into buying more chocolate than she had planned to buy (which as far as I know was none). One of my favorite things in Germany is fancy ice cream bowls (including Spaghettieis), so Morgan and I went to a place with just a single review on Google (“sehr lecker” from one year ago) with the intent of adding a second review after we ate ice cream there.

Unfortunately, it was not good. I want to say it was average at best, but as the days have passed my memory has placed it in the “actively bad” category. The vanilla ice cream was not good, the bits of white chocolate were flavorless (was it actually little pieces of paper?!), the raspberry sauce was actually bad jam? 

We chose not to write a review.

Fortunately, Dallin and I had excellent Spaghettieis at a different time and in a different place.

When my mom was here, we also walked around the Holocaust memorial. It’s an interesting memorial because there isn’t really any information embedded in the memorial itself. There is a little museum underground, but for the most part, it’s a bit abstract. In some ways, that makes sense because the Holocaust is so unfathomable. Some scholars have critiqued this memorial for being more of a German space than a Jewish space (who is really being honored or remembered here?). There’s been emerging research as to how visitors react to particular memorials, such as this one. Relational to this is how Holocaust memorials have turned up in digital media. Some have critiqued the pairing of selfies in somber memorials (such as the project Yolocaust) while others have tried to portray a more nuanced developing tourist memory culture and what freedoms people should have in interacting with memorials.

Dallin and I took Teddy to some East Germany sites this week as well. The East Side Gallery is known as the longest outdoor art gallery, but it’s also the longest remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall. There’s been a lot of development in this area, so some have expressed concerns about gentrification of the area at the expense of the wall as a monument (parts have been torn down to make way for new housing). East Side Gallery is set up mostly as an art exhibit, in that it doesn’t include very much information about the Berlin Wall itself aside from the years. Not very many visitors know how many people died trying to cross the wall between 1960 and 1989–but apparently neither does the internet? I had previously read it was 80 people, but I’ve seen numbers like 140, 327 (this one includes the whole East German border and pre-wall years as well), and 80 on different legit websites, which is a bit confusing. The majority of sites agree on a number around 140, so that’s the one I’d go with.

We checked out Check Point Charlie and the Black Box museum on another day. There’s a temporary panorama exhibit there as well, which we didn’t visit, but I think it’s a really interesting idea and experience. The artist (Yadegar Asisi) has tried to recreate a glimpse into the Kreuzberg area during the 1980s. How better to transport your viewers into a historical period than visually? 

And thus we come to the end of May. 

The German-speaking parts

The mass chaos of the first week bled into the second week but we finally are settling down in Berlin and I already have the feeling not lugging 80 lb of stuff from city to city will be a game-changer. 

Our train journey circled from Berlin to Prague to Budapest to Vienna to Innsbruck to Munich and back to Berlin. I’m not sure Teddy even remembers life before we spent half our days on trains. 

Teddy left Budapest with the unofficial title of Hungary’s favorite baby and we arrived in Vienna without any hiccups. My dad currently works part time in Munich, and since he and my mom were already there, we had arranged to meet up in Vienna with them. We also saw our first Ukrainian refugees at the train station there. It initially seemed a bit odd to me we hadn’t noticed any in Budapest (or any help organizations there) since Hungary shares a border with Ukraine, but that may have something to do with politics or the more gradual trickle westward. It’s so hard to process Russia’s continued invasion of Ukraine and the devastating effects on human life. I don’t really know what else to say except that it’s awful people create such horrors for each other.

It was really nice to have some extra hands around with Teddy in Vienna and we also stayed in a large Airbnb, which meant it was our first time not just having one room for sleeping, relaxing, eating, etc. My parents kindly offered to stay home with Teddy while Dallin and I went out to visit Prater–the amusement park in Vienna. It was maybe our first real date since we had Teddy? Not sure. We went on a ferris wheel, a spinny ride that made me scream but in a good way, a little roller coaster that made me scream in a less good way (but I did not cry), and a scary ride where I literally kept my eyes closed the entire time (and probably would have cried had I opened them).

We just had one full day in Vienna and spent it visiting the Schönbrunnen palace and the Belvedere. It somehow felt like a really long day with both those things (so much walking with a baby carrier+worrying about Teddy being comfortable and getting enough sleep) and by the time we hit dinner, I was emotionally, mentally, and physically fried.

We ate at Vapiano’s because I thought it would be fast and Dallin asked me to get silverware for us and all the sudden I started sobbing–it was the fork that broke the camel's back. So there I was, crying while stuffing my face with average but nostalgia-inducing pasta and wanting to hurry home to put Teddy to bed.

 Even though I cried a bunch at the restaurant, on the walk home, and at home, I had a good come-to-Jesus moment with myself in reevaluating what successful parenting looks like. 

At home in Bloomington, I had so much control over Teddy’s schedule. I saw when he was tired and could put him in his crib as soon as I noticed. Here, every day he would get tired when we were 20+ minutes from home and there was nothing I could do for him immediately. I realized I’d been basing a lot of my personal “success” as a parent in getting Teddy enough sleep each day and all of the sudden I was getting none of that superficial success indicator. In Bloomington, he would go to bed at 5pm and wake up around 7am, and while traveling I’d been lucky to get him to bed before 7pm (and he'd been waking up…before 7am). I know sleep is so important, but I also logistically know that being a parent is much more than just giving your child opportunities to rest.

We left Vienna Sunday morning and arrived at the train station plenty early. My mom was heading to Innsbruck with me and Dallin while my dad returned to Munich for work. However, we apparently picked a very popular train and failed to reserve seats. I had paid extra to reserve seats on our previous trains, and then they didn’t have assigned seats anyways so I assumed this would be similar.

I was very wrong. 

The train was wayyy oversold and there were not enough seats for everyone to sit, so if you hadn’t reserved a ticket (which was listed as optional), you simply had to stand like sardines with the other people who didn’t realize paying 2 euros to reserve a seat was a required option. A kind lady took pity on me as I once again started crying while holding Teddy smashed against other people and gave me her seat. However that seat was also next to an angry middle-age man who refused to give up his seat for the young Muslim woman who had paid to 2 euros to reserve it. While I was trying to nurse Teddy to sleep on the aisle seat, about 20 other passengers got involved and a yelling match ensued. They told him he needed to give up his seat and he yelled sexist slurs back at all of the women, insisting a bunch of ***** couldn’t make him move. A train attendant finally showed up and as soon as he saw she was also a woman, he started calling her dirty names too. Meanwhile, here I am, right there, slumped over an almost sleeping Teddy probably with a breast stick hanging out somewhere, desperately trying to hum some lullabies while–you guessed it–once again weeping a little bit. The man was finally escorted away, and the high stress point of the trip ended for me.

My mom and Dallin didn’t end up getting to sit for most of the train ride, which was a bummer because it was 4 hours of beautiful Austrian countryside and Alps. But we all made it just the same.

Innsbruck is definitely the prettiest place we’ve visited. I’ve been to Vienna and Salzburg 3x each, but nowhere else in Austria, so it was nice to visit another town–one right next to the Alps.

Innsbruck brought us some great running views, a beautiful old town, amazing strudel, overpriced Sachertorte, and cute baby clothes. We climbed up a tower to get an overlook of the city and spent most of our full day there walking around and eating. We ended up eating at the same restaurant two days in a row because we liked it so much the first day. Teddy also had his first experience chewing on bread and it’s one of his new favorite things.

After Innsbruck, we took a relatively short train up to Munich. We honestly just kind of crashed and burned there. I don’t think I have been this tired even with a newborn. I was also having a bit of dejavu to the newborn time because my breasts got leaky all the time again (does that happen with time change adjustment? Or maybe it was related to the frequent mastitis feedings I encouraged Teddy to take?) and I also was getting engorged pretty much every day and I was sore everywhere (but that’s from all the walking/running/bag and baby carrying and not a C-section). 

Besides spending a lot of time lying down in Munich, we got some really excellent food. That feat was made much easier with my parents since they’ve been there so often and had such great recommendations. We also spent some time at Marienplatz and Dallin and I borrowed their bikes to ride over to the English Garden one day while my mom watched Teddy. I felt a little bad that Dallin didn’t get to do very many fun things in Munich because we mostly used it as a resting place, but hopefully we’ll be back in less exhausting circumstances.

Our final train brought us back to Berlin, where we are settling into our apartment and staying the rest of the summer–maybe forever. I’m not sure I can bring myself to pack everything up again. Or really almost everything. I’ve lost two charging cords, a tube of lipstick, and a tiny drinking glass for Teddy, so clearly not everything has made its way back to me when I packed up in each place. My mom came up to Berlin with us to help us get situated (another big help). One of the first things we did was buy a stroller here. My dad had a colleague that let us borrow a stroller in Munich and it was a godsend for some very hot days that did not require us to strap Teddy to our bodies. We’ve made some good purchases, but this stroller sure is high on the list.

I sure do love Teddy. After doing some processing in Vienna, I feel like I’ve been able to enjoy traveling with Teddy more and appreciate what a unique experience this is for us. In Bloomington, he’d met maybe a couple dozen people. Now, everyday he sees hundreds of faces and gets to have all sorts of conversations through smiles and squeals with people on the subway, in stores, and on the street. No more hermit life for him. I still stress out about trying to get him enough sleep (we’re playing catch up from the last couple weeks despite our attempts to provide nap times), but now that we’re in our home base I’m hoping it’ll get easier for things to feel routine. 

The last couple of weeks definitely broke me but have also been really beautiful. I’ve loved experiencing them with Dallin, who has carried all the heaviest literal luggage pieces as well as shared in carrying the emotional baggage I’ve insisted on bringing. It also feels so right to be in Europe together. For two people studying European cultures and languages, it seems like it took forever for us to make it here (thank you pandemic). So even if it’s a hot mess, I’m grateful to be here with Dallin and Teddy. 

Now to settle in for a long summer’s nap.

Summer 2022 Week 1

Like running a marathon, traveling with an infant overseas is definitely a one-time thing (guess we’ll have to stay in Europe forever—it’s too much work to go back at this point). 

I have a fellowship from the Freie Universität to spend the summer working on my dissertation in Berlin and thought I would share some travel highlights for friends and family wanting to follow along. 

Our first few days were, perhaps unsurprisingly, pretty rough. Teddy did great for the flights here, sleeping almost the entire way from Newark to Berlin in the airplane bassinet (what a gift that was). We landed around 8am and headed toward our hotel. We are renting an apartment in Gesundbrunnen for the summer, but can’t move in until May 20th, so we thought we would get adjusted to the time zone and take a little trip in Europe before coming back to Berlin.

The first difficulty was getting from the airport to our hotel, in that I accidentally had us get off a stop too soon. Which meant we got to walk through a park (Tierpark). It would have been fine, except that we had three suitcases, three backpacks, a duffle bag, and a baby to drag through that damn park. 

We showed up at our hotel and it took a while to check in and then we tried to give our very droopy baby time to nap, but he was so disoriented and tired that he just cried for three hours instead. I took him for a little swim at our hotel, after which he managed to fall asleep for a bit. We met up with the people we’re renting our apartment from later in the afternoon and had dinner with them (+met their dachshunds we’ll be taking care of!), which was nice but we were all POOPED. 

We got back to our hotel around 7:30pm and by the time I’d nursed Teddy and put him to bed (he fell asleep immediately), Dallin had also fallen asleep. I didn’t want to miss out on all the sleeping fun, so I also went to bed. I got up around 5am and went running in the Tierpark (much nicer without suitcases), while Teddy slept until 9:30am. We visited church (where I randomly ran into one of my BYU professors there with a study abroad group) and then we came home for more naps for all of us. The rest of the day was resting and recovering–sleeping, swimming, breathing the like. 

It was a much needed rest day because Monday wrecked me. 

On Sunday night, my right breast started aching. When I examined it, I found a clogged milk duct. Or rather, ANOTHER clogged milk duct because I was already on antibiotics from a clogged milk duct in my left breast from the previous week (my THIRD time getting mastitis since breastfeeding). Clearly the breast milk goddesses are angry with me. I panicked a bit about that but didn’t know exactly what to do and had a hard time sleeping with the pain. 

Monday morning came along and we packed up our stuff to take a train to Prague. Except on our way to the train station I suddenly couldn't find my phone. We had magnificently overpacked for our trip (I dropped two of the suitcases off at our Berlin apartment but kept everything else for some reason+added a few extra bags). My arms were aching from the heavy suitcase+two backpacks and two bags I’m navigating–all of which I’ve looked through twice because I literally JUST had my phone. 

I tried really hard not to panic except that EVERYTHING IS ON MY PHONE. 

Our train tickets. 

9000 pictures of Teddy. 

Etc.

I ran up and down the street a few times frantically looking for my phone knowing that our train departure time is getting closer and closer. Finally we decided to lug all our stuff back to the hotel so I could do a “find my iPhone” search from my laptop. I checked with the hotel staff first to see if anyone had found a phone in the last 20 minutes and PRAISE THE LORD someone spotted it outside and brought it in. 

I grabbed it and ran while screaming my gratitude because our train was supposed to leave in 18 minutes and we were 16 minutes away according to Google maps. We went as fast as pack mules can, but my arms were threatening to snap off (what do I even lift weights for if they don’t help me in these situations?!) and I was also generally having trouble breathing. 

We finally made it to the station and had to run up a staircase except that I was broken and did not have the strength to carry my suitcase. Some kind passerby noticed and immediately carried my suitcase up for me and threw it on the L-train with us. 

There I sat. 

Soaked with sweat. 

Visibility shaking arms and legs. 

Aching breast. 

Unable to take in any breaths.

On the verge of tears. 

I didn’t quite manage to calm myself down before we needed to get off at the main train station and once again race like the pack mules we were to get to the correct platform.

We made it with about one minute to spare. 

It was all I could do to not collapse on the dirty train floor and weep in relief. 

Instead, I remained standing and started crying, willing myself to breathe. 

I cannot explain how terrible this morning made me feel. It exposed my weakness of always losing my phone and somehow mentally escalated to the end of the world and me ruining Teddy’s life if we missed the train and had to wait around for several more hours. Teddy was, however, very chill about the whole situation, and seemed to enjoy our 4 hour train ride. Dallin was also remarkably cool-headed about the whole thing and a stabilizing force in my universe.

We made it to Prague and walked around and got food and then tried to put Teddy to bed. However, Teddy was disoriented and tired and not fond of trying to sleep in a new place so he cried for several hours, which broke my poor little mama heart because at home he has been an awesome sleeper and usually falls to sleep without making much of a fuss. 

And then during/after the baby screaming, I examined my right breast again and noticed the area with the clogged duct had grown more angry and red throughout the day. I had stopped by a pharmacy while still in Germany to ask about what to do about a second plugged duct while already on medication for mastitis and they recommended rubbing quark on it (the equivalent recommendation of cabbage in the US I suppose?). I called my US doctor that night and she said if the clog didn’t improve within 24 hours it might be an abscess and I should take medical attention to get it drained. 

I know, everyone wants an unexpected medical procedure in another country.

I was up until 2am reading about abscesses and trying to massage the duct away, also debating if I should return to Germany for medical care there or keep going on our trip as planned.

I fed Teddy as often as he stirred during the night and by the morning, I thought the clog felt a little smaller so we could press forward with the original plan. 

We lugged our belongings back to the Prague train station in the morning to catch our 9:12am train to Budapest. Except when we arrived at 8:52am, we saw there was no 9:12am train to Budapest–only one at 8:56am. Our printed tickets didn’t have a time on them, so we weren’t sure where the myth of the 9:12am train came from–turns out they had changed the time a few days before. Fortunately for us the 8:56am train was delayed 10 minutes so we did make it after all–needing to only panic for about 10 minutes total. 

The train from Prague to Budapest was about 7.5 hours and it was a pretty good time. Teddy napped just fine (he hadn’t fallen asleep in our arms/on us since about 3 months, so I was delighted he adapted to sleeping on trains so well). He also met some train-grandparents–an older American couple was in our car and kept making eyes at him. We ended up sitting with them for most of the trip and they loved holding and playing with Teddy, which was a big help to us. 

Dallin kept insisting as soon as we made it to Budapest, everything would be fine. Turns out he was right. 

Clogged duct? Almost gone, meaning it’s not an abscess and I don’t need to get it medically drained. 

We’ve also just generally had a great couple days taking Teddy around Budapest. He is also the most popular baby in the city by far–it seems like every demographic has wanted to make faces at him, hold his hand, etc. Old women, old men, men in their 20s and 30s, teenage girls–everyone is obsessed. We have been left wondering if Teddy is exceptionally cute (which of course we think he is) or if people just don’t get to see that many babies these days. 

A little part of me hopes that the same women who yelled at me for wearing flip flops in March 2019 are the ones going wild for Teddy. 

A museum curator wished Teddy that he will meet many kind people in the world, because there are so few kind people anymore. Another woman told us how happy and inquisitive he was, another that he had an angelic face, another that he had smiley eyes, and an old man congratulated me on my baby. #Teddyforbudapestpromking

Back to the nonexistent state of American peasanthood

15 museums, 29 European cities, 13 countries, 100 hours in various trains, buses, and planes, and 6 weeks later, I'm back in America.


A normal American peasant. Except that America never had real peasants so I probably can't even claim that lowly title. I'll try to forget that fact by recounting my last few days, which actually weren't super exciting except for the fact that I was still in Europe.

I took a really long bus ride through Poland to Berlin on Sunday and decided it was okay that my bus days were over. I had a nostalgic 23 minutes at the Berlin Südkreuz station and then took a train to Wittenberg.

You may wonder why I chose to go to Wittenberg. Unless you are educated in both the life of Martin Luther and my own historical fancies. One of my history professors is working on a book on Martin Luther for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation and I get to help him do some of the research (meaning he sent me home with 15 hefty German books in German to read and find useful information), so I decided it would be a good idea to visit the city where he taught, preached, and lived.

I found a hotel online and knew nothing about it except that it was really cheap, which usually does not bode well for quality but I was very pleasantly surprised because it turned out to be a cute little old lady's house where she rented out three of the upstairs bedrooms to people. Which meant it was like staying with your German grandma. The only weird thing was that the shower was in the middle of the hall. No doors or anything--just the shower. But it had a curtain so I shouldn't complain. Aforementioned grandmother figure even made an adorable breakfast well decorated and tasty to boot.

Now that I've bored you with hotel descriptions, I will also mention that the rest of the visit was also great. I went on a tour of the city and learned a lot about Luther, spending a fair amount of time in the museum made from his house (which only survived the Soviets because Peter the Great had visited the house and signed his name on one of the doors--sweet, yeah?!). Wittenberg is one of those little cities that is really great to visit because it's not too big and very picturesque. I was quite satisfied.

After my day there, I took a train to Leipzig, where I was nostalgic for only 4 minutes before taking another train to Frankfurt and then to Altenstadt, where I was reunited with my beloved Sister Meisenfelder (who just goes by Janine these days). I got to go to the temple with her and her kind father took me to a Celtic museum in a neighboring dorf and showed me the beauty of the German countryside while Janine was at work.
Oh and I bought a boat load of chocolate.
Okay, not a literal boat. Not even a suitcase full actually.
But more chocolate than I could safely consume in a week period.

So I don't know if that makes me an American peasant with a dowry. Except that I don't think the chocolate will last until I get married (though if I'm still single in decade, I shall have to return with a bigger, more sustainable chocolate dowry) and I think we already established that I can't be an American peasant since they don't exist.

So yeah. America.
Hm.
Anyone want to go to Germany for Christmas?

The middle.

Endings are always strange things. But things actually keep going. Those little endings are really just parts of a great middle. So the end of my study abroad is not really an end, just a bright spot in the middle of things, a bright spot that hopefully will continue to lighten more middle in my life.

We went through four counties in two days at the end of this middle. Which means we spent a lot of hours in our lovely bus. We drove from Vienna into Slovakia and spent a couple of hours wandering around Bratislava, which was not only a needed break from driving, but also an interesting glance at central/Eastern Europe. I was back to being clueless about the language again, but I suppose I had my glory days already. 

A couple more hours in the bus brought us to some caves in the Czech Republic. We got a cool tour of them, wandering into a mountain and getting to take a cool but mildly creepy boat ride through the caves as well. Sadly, that was our only taste of Czech because our bus moved quickly (though actually kind of slowly) into Poland after our expedition.

We arrived in Kraków pretty late at night and then spent the last full day of our program at Auschwitz. I know, we just waited until the end to do all the fun stuff. I'd been to two other concentration camps before, so I knew what kind of feelings and images to expect, but they were still difficult. The holocaust is one of those heavy things that is hard to think about but important as well. Weighty thoughts and feelings are kind of painful and uncomfortable, but so valuable. I tried to stomach those emotions and try to feel it all, but I don't think it's possible to take it all in. The suffering is too big, the story too great, my understanding of the world too small. No matter how many camps I visit, how many history books I read, how many primary sources I review, I will never be able to comprehend the magnitude of this tragedy and the intensity of individual suffering. All I can do is remember and honor those who perished and those who survived and commit myself to opposing evil in any size. 

Our farewell dinner after Auschwitz was appropriately a little more somber than most of the other group meals we've had together, but it was still nice. I am surprised by the many good friendships and associations I have made and feel very blessed to have been surrounded by honest, intelligent, and adventurous traveling companions for the past five weeks. 

A few people flew out Saturday morning but most of us went to visit the Jewish ghetto in Kraków--the weight of the previous day still upon us but more understandable. We saw Schindler's factory and looked at a synagogue and then awkwardly went our separate ways in the city, not knowing exactly if people would look or act differently in America when we run into each other again. A few of my friends and I needed something light-hearted so we watched Frozen, contemplated the sunset from our porch and tried to make sense of the adventures we've had. It was one of those perfect moments. 

Those perfect moments that I realize keep coming. In the middle of it all. I think I've expressed this before, but even though I can't hold onto each perfect moment, I find comfort in knowing those moments will continue to come. At every beginning. At every end. And most of all in the middle. 

Call it Culture

In my head, Vienna is one of the cultural capitals of the world. Appropriately so, I feel more cultured than yogurt alter a few days there.

Before we get to Vienna though, I should probably say some words about my third trip to Salzburg. Because the first two times weren't great enough apparently. But on this visit, I found out what was missing from my previous trips to Salzburg--going to a marionette show! And not just any marionette show, but the Magic Flute! Admittedly, I had my doubts about going to a puppet show and could initially only think of Mr. Ratburn from Arthur when I thought about puppets. BUT I was very pleasantly surprised and impressed and I enjoyed the performance greatly. The marionettes looked just like real people on the stage and I forgot how much I love the music from the Magic Flute so it was a happy evening.

We went to church in Salzburg and it was so fun to be back in a German-speaking ward. I got to talk to an investigator who is getting baptized next week and I was du-zing other young adults up the wazoo now that's it's legal and making small talk with everyone (which is not my forte in English but...I just wanted to speak German!).

We visited the sound of music garden and also went up the castle that I've gone up every other time I've been there but hey, it's tradition!
Then we had a very Austrian meal at a restaurant and ate delicious goloush with knodel. We started with a sauerkraut soup, which was also yummy. Except that soup is usually better when eaten and not worn. One of the waitresses accidentally dumped a bowl of hot soup down my back. Which was unfortunate for many reasons. A.) soup is to be eaten, not worn. B.) clothes should smell like fruit or soup, not like sauerkraut. C.) skin should stay away from hot liquids. Oh, and did I mention the smelling like sauerkraut part? Yeah, that was lovely.

And you probably think that things don't get lovelier than that, but then you probably forgot that we went to Vienna the next morning and yes, it was even more lovely than soup on my back. On the way there, we stopped by The Eagle's Nest back in Germany. You know, the gift of a mountain house that Hitler got and was used as a Nazi meeting point. It was really foggy though so the view that Hitler and his party friends would have enjoyed was denied to us, but that's okay.

I had a hearty meal of 1000 grams of quark with strawberries for lunch and then we visited a salt mine. Which might sound kind of lame. EXCEPT IT WAS SO FUN!!!!
They gave us professional looking mining jumpsuits and we got to take a little train-type thing that was probably used as the model for Gringots in Harry Potter. We went down some really tall slides into the depths of the earth after the train-cart and then we sailed across the lake of the undead, probably used as the model for the lake Harry and Dumbledore crossed in the sixth Harry Potter. Basically what I'm saying is that Harry Potter was actually a romanticized story of a salt mine. Gah it was so great.

We had to leave Harry Potter world so we could go be cultured in Vienna though, where we visited the Belvedere and Kunsthistorisches museums, walked around the Schönenbrunn palace, and attended the opera Don Giovanni. I liked the opera, but I got kind of figdety at the end and just wanted people to stop singing about how sad they were and just resolve their grief through Giovanni's death, which came a little late.

After feeling more enlightened and educated (and by that I mean every time we visit somewhere new I realize how ignorant I really am), we did something just regularly fun.
Meaning going to an amusement park! Europe's oldest that is. Prater amusement park. We went for a spin on the really old Ferris wheel and we thought about Orson wells speech in The Third Man. Then everyone ran all over the park trying to figure out what to do.

Except this poor sheltered girl had only been to two amusement parks and thus was at a loss for  how the system works. I told myself I'd go on at least two rides, so I was coaxed into going up a really tall swing, which I immediately regretted because oh yeah, I don't actually like heights unless I get to climb them myself. But I survived that one in order to go on a crazy psychedelic spinning machine that made want to die and laugh hysterically at the same time. You know, that weird feeling adrenaline gives you.

I'm feeling a little sad that this wonderful adventure is almost over--it had been everything and more than I dreamed it would be. Hot soup and all. Call it culture.

German Love

Be still my heart.

I've been excited this whole trip to go to German speaking lands. However, I did not realize how much my heart would patter the first time I heard German once we reached Switzerland. Oh, it is pure love.

We drove from Paris to Lausanne, stopping by the Fontenay Abbey to break up the long day in the bus, which added a needed amount of peace away from the bustle of the city. I once again contemplated becoming a nun so I could forever live in such a serene place but the whole being a Mormon thing kind of throws that plan out. Lausanne was lovely, though I liked the German speaking parts of Switzerland better (remember that I'm biased). We popped in out pretty quickly, though I was able to get in a beasty hill run with my runner partner Jess--those Swiss know how to do their hills. 

We drove through Switzerland, stopping at an old-fashioned traditional cheese factory where we got to gush over cute goats and cows with their precious bells as we ate delicious cheese they had undoubtedly helped produce. 

Though the cheese was nice, it fell second to the wonders that the Cailler chocolate factory held in store for us. Picture Willy Wonka. Then picture Switzerland. Then picture me in a Willy Wonka chocolate factory in Switzerland. If we count this visit as a museum trip, it goes right up there with the Uffizi for me. They had this really cool automated tour with all sorts of dramatic voices and moving parts of the rooms to tell the history of chocolate and explain how it is made. 
And let's not forget the many free samples.
And the many bars of chocolate purchased by infatuated Americans. 

With the taste of chocolate still in our mouths and the weight of it in our stomachs, we stopped by the LDS temple in Bern and talked a little bit about Mormon history in Europe. It looked bigger than how I remember the Freiberg temple, but it had a similar peaceful feel to it. I enjoyed walking around it, admiring the flowers, and being grateful for temples. 
Plus, Bern was out first German-speaking stop :)

I found a couple of other girls who love vegetables as much as I do and we made a super classy salad in Bern for dinner. 
And by a classy salad, I mean we bought lettuce, tomatoes, and dressing, put these ingredients in a plastic bag, shook them, and then used our fingers to eat it. 
#peasantsalad

Our salad gave us the needed energy for the next day though--we left Bern at 6:30am to drive up the alps where we spent the day. We took a series of trains to get up to the top of the Jungfrau, which was way cool. We got caught in the middle of a cloud at the top so everything was all white, which was strange and semi-disappointing but also cool. We hiked down some of the mountain and had some other beautiful trail adventures where I took approximately 767 photos and agonized over picking which ones should go on Facebook. It's been one of my favorite days so far. We stayed in Zug for the night, but we were all too tired to go out when we got there.

We had another long bus day following our mountain adventures, stopping by Neuschwanstein on our way to Munich. I thought that I was happy in German-speaking Switzerland, but once we got to Munich, I couldn't stop dancing around the streets and singing to myself and to the world because it just doesn't get a lot better than being back in Germany. 

Basically I spent my time in Germany drooling over all things German and bashing America (I know, I'm a terrible patriot) as well as trying to think of schemes which would help me live in Germany. We visited the BMW museum and I sat in powerful-feeling cars and we also had a super traditional German dinner at a Biergarten, which was so fun. I just had all those perfect moments that I wanted to hold onto forever. 

On Saturday I got to meet up with my exchange family from when I went to Germany as an egocentric sixteen-year-old. Fortunately, they still liked me and we've been able to stay in contact throughout the years. I had another friend come visit Munich at the same time so I felt very surrounded by German-love (aka Germans who are wonderful and people who love Germany like I do). 

So I have been stricken by a bad case of German-love. Which makes me not want to go home but rather learn how to play the accordion and make a living by playing music on the magical cobblestone walking streets. #ivegotadream