There will be no continuity in this blog post. Let your mind skip about from topic to topic...and just breathe. We got back from Berlin at 1:30 am and I am tired tired.
Let's see. BERLIN ROCKS. I could totally live in Berlin in a heartbeat. Just do yourself a favor and go. Between the nice (really friendly!) people, the awesome transportation, the amazing food (ich liebe Deutsches essen) and the shopping, it's as close to nirvana as it gets for this girl.
This trip can be characterized by three things for me: Beer. Shoes. Mushrooms.
1.
Beer. Lots of it and all good.
2.
Shoes. Some girls buy Manolos, I buy
Trippens. I bought some sandals made out of elk leather. Have you ever felt elk leather? Like butta. And then I got this other pair of shoes as well. Seriously, if Brad Pitt or some other hottie walked up to me and offered me my every explicit sexual fantasty while I was shopping at Trippen, I would basically spend the whole proposition looking past him at the shoes and then say, "What? Did you say something?"
3.
Pfifferling. It was Pfifferling Zeit. Everywhere we went, Pfifferlings* were on the menu. Sauteed, made into soup. Roasted. With cream. It was AWESOME. I loves me the Pfifferlings. Especially with a nice wienerschitzel and some pommes frites, and a large dunkelweisse. heaven.
We did some other stuff, of course. I mean, it wasn't ONLY shoes, beer and shrooms. I bought a kick ass purse as well.
Ok I'm being facetious. We also saw some palaces and did a boat tour and a bus tour and spent the day at
Sanssoucci. Sanssouci takes more than a day to see, so we missed alot, and it was raining like crazy, but it was still an incredible day out. We ended up walking more than 10 miles a day.
I did ok speaking German. Whenever I try to speak Norwegian one of two things happens: The person I am trying to speak to looks pained at my attempts and so starts speaking English to me, or I forget the Norwegian and use a German word instead. In Germany this word transference was not a problem, obviously, and my German accent is actually good enough that people think I am more fluent in it than I am, which is good for my learning but bad when they get past me in speaking to me and I end up saying "huh?". But I learned alot and I think if I had a few months I could be well on the way to fluency.
Now I am back here in Norway and I keep trying to speak German and I am getting really confused.
Today I started my belly dancing class. Det ar pa Norske, men jeg forstar bra. I mean, honestly, how hard is it to understand "move your hips this way and your shoulders like this"? Even I can understand what a "rumpe" is. It's a very fun class, the folks are all nice, and we can just be women, no matter our background, shaking it and laughing at ourselves. I will tell you, it's a big benefit to have some junk in the trunk and some lady lumps up front, those skinny girls just didn't look right shaking it like us more meaty ones.......
I've got pictures of shoes, palaces and beer, give me a few days to get organized and caught up and I'll post.
Oh! I also meant to leave you with the link to
this interesting article about traveling through Heathrow in the recent travel horrors. I still can't fathom not having a book on a plane....and then this article points out that even though you were stuck in Heathrow, a veritable mall, for like, HOURS, you still couldn't shop because they won't let you bring it on the plane? Ugh. That has got to be my version of purgatory....nothing to read, bookstores and shops everywhere and I can
buy anything, but I just can't take it with me.
*Pfifferling = chanterelle mushrooms. I had to look it up.
Me on a pedestal at Schloss Charlottenburg in Berlin. That is my favorite skirt currently, but it's too cold for me to wear it now.
A view of the rooftops around Trafalgar Square, London. Taken from the fabulous restaurant at the top of the National Portrait Gallery. It's a tad expensive, but the food is great and the views of London are unique.
My eyeballs.
On a boat ride on the river Spree, I managed to catch a shot of this guy climbing on top of the Reichstag building dome. I don't know why he was up there. But it was cool to catch a glimpse of him doing it.
I spent a few lovely hours wandering about Kaufhaus Des Westens (KaDeWe) and they have a floor of the building dedicated to food. I think it's better than Harrod's. I had a pause for a lovely Krusovice dark. Yes I know it's Czech beer but I adore dark Czech beers and drink them wherever I find them. People in the litte bar smiled and nodded at me while I took this picture. They obviously understood my eagerness to preserve this beautiful sight.
This is a shot of my riesling and Rich's pilsner at a fun bar in the Savigny Platz area. They had a fat cat that wandered around and an eclectic clientelle. Cool place.
More alcohol, this time in Potsdam. We had a lovely pfifferlinger laden lunch there, at a very traditional style Austrian-German restaurant. They ran out of dessert before I could have my sacher torte, though. Damn.
The sign says "wait here for further instructions". That tickled me.
Two pairs of Trippens and a pair of yellow slingbacks to balance the earthy shoes.
The purse I bought that I later found the shoes that matched exactly. Isn't that wierd? And it's a much more greeny yellow than it shows here, it's a wierd color. Not your average yellow. So, now I have my feet and my accessory needs covered for my high school reunion in November. I only need to find something to cover the rest of me...literally.
