Monday, December 04, 2006

Christmas in Deutschland

On November 9, 1989, I woke up in my college dorm room to the radio announcement that the Berlin Wall had been opened. Since I was traveling to Berlin the very next month, this was awesome cool news!

On December 3, 1989, a group of college students, including myself and my DH-to-be, arrived in Berlin, with three professors from our college. Here is a Christmas fair near the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtnis Kirche in Berlin. Christmas Fairs in Germany seem to be the equivalent of the little fairs that pop up in many small towns in America over the Fourth of July. I think this one only had food, but there was one in East Berlin that had carnival rides similar to an American Fourth of July fair. I'll post pics of that later.

Here's a picture of Checkpoint Charlie, as we drove past it.

Here's a Mercedes-Benz building lit up for Christmas.

Here's my DH standing by the Berlin Wall, and taking off a few pieces.


It was exciting to be in another country for Christmas, although the weather was mostly gray and gloomy, and oddly enough, no snow in most of the places we visited. I'll continue to share my experiences with you as the month goes on.

6 comments:

~Kathy~ said...

LOL, I loved the part about it being gray and gloomy! Dh used to joke his job was like a vampires, that he couldn't be out in the daylight. He left before sun-up(what little came out)and he came home after the sun went down. He really had problems with SAD (Seasonal Adjustment Disorder). He would work basically a week of day shift, a week of second shift, alternating for three months like that. Then, the fourth month he had to work a month of the 11pm-7am shift. That was horrendous. I tried to keep his schedule as much as possible.

It is also always damp over there. We had a whole closet (schrank is what they are called over there-nothing in the wall, it is all furniture)full of clothes, some of his Class A uniforms, mold. We had no idea. Everything, and I mean everything, bloomed in the spring over there. The buildings even got a green coat on them in the spring.

Did you get to go inside the Checkpoint Charlie Museum while you were there? It was really neat to see. Did you all get to see Charlottenburg Palace or anything else while there in West Berlin?

Marie N. said...

Thanks for sharing these photos and telling about your experiences there.

Barb the Evil Genius said...

Kathy, we saw the Charlottenburg Schloss, several museums and the Berlin Zoo while we were there.

East Berlin was not only damp, it was filthy. :P

~Kathy~ said...

Oh yes, and that was supposed to be the "garden spot" of the Easter Bloc. Lovely, huh?

Oh, I loved the zoo. We went there several times.

Did you get to go to the museum that was in the Grunewald? That was a really interesting one. Did you get to go to Peacock Island, Gleinecke Bridge, Wannsee or any others?

Barb the Evil Genius said...

I don't think so, but we were only in Berlin a few days. We visited the museum of Greek and Roman Antiquities, the Egyptian Museum, and the Pergammon Museum, plus the Dahlem Art Museum, and an enormous greenhouse type building with all kinds of exotic plants inside. We also saw a presentation of Christmas music at the Deutsche Oper one evening, and went shopping at the Ka De We!

skatey katie said...

woo hoo barb
i am looking forward to this>>
my francais fridays are feeling old and tired.... so now we can have
Deutsches Weihnachten

what an exciting time to be in Germany.. Checkpoint Charlie huh?? sounds like a Bond movie.....