Ex-pat Newlyweds

I! Love! London!

My previous experiences with London were brief (in hindsight) and miserable. The first was a 24-hour sleepover in Heathrow Airport. I finally left the airport with a rash covering a quarter of my body and starving. The second was a journey from Stanstead Airport to Heathrow with a brief park pause in between. No rash, but not exciting.

Well, London, I’m happy to report you changed my mind about you.

I actually found all the CCTV “security” really disturbing. It actually bothered me. This is at Victoria Station.

Despite a very early flight, we packed a full day in on our first day in London. We met Dom for a fish&chips lunch after dropping off our bags at his house. Walked from Oxford Circus to Piccadilly Circus, through Trafalgar Square, past a gate protecting No. 10 Downing Street and past Big Ben Tower and the parliaments and finally through the halls of Westminster Abbey.

The parliaments and Big Ben Tower (Big Ben himself is really the bell inside the tower)

Westminster Abbey, where we visited the graves and memorials for a lot of historically important people, including scientists Darwin and Newton.

Josh snapping pictures with the Soviet camera in front of Buckingham Palace.

Squirrels in the park in front of the palace.

Second day, we visited the Queen (her house at least) and walked through the park to the British Museums. We easily spent our afternoon there and could have taken even more time. It’s a fascinating collection of antiquities from around the world all housed in a beautifully maintained and renovated building. The museum itself has been open to the public since 1759, allowing it to amass quite the collection. Highlights included the Rosetta Stone (the tablet that allowed archeologists to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics) and a collection of mummies. Yup. An entire collection of mummies. It was grotesquely fascinating.

The stunning interior of the British Museum.

Sightseeing is exhausting. But not as exhausting as London shopping. I got a head start on Josh and he went to the pub with Dom while I shopped — not doing anywhere near the damage on the bank account that I thought I would. Not a bad thing at all.

The Devinses pretend to be hobbitses while at the Shire.

Host Dom reliving years of teenaged rebellion over the towns he grew up in/around.

Friday was a very exciting day for me. Fact: I’ve read all the Harry Potter books. I’ve seen all the movies. While I was excited to meet Dom’s parents, along the way, we made a stop at the Gloucester Cathedral, where they film some scenes of the movie, including some of the dining hall scenes. I pranced where Harry Potter pranced. Ok, I pranced, he strode along determinedly to get He-Who-Shall-Not-be-Named.

Harry Potter halls! Eeeeeeeee!

During the 1700s, the Gloucester Cathedral (built around 1000 a.d.) was used as a boy’s school. During that time, many of the tombs, including this one of King Edward II, were graffitied by the cathedral’s resident students. Yes, that is 300-year old graffiti.

Josh enjoyed a “manly day” of dirt bike riding while I met with friends and explored London’s south bank with colleagues from Vancouver who are now in London. I repeated the day again on Sunday, but with a trip to the Tate Modern museum instead of a drink at the former OXO factory (as in the soup stock brand).

The view from the Tate Modern cafe.

Millennium Bridge — Dom tells us that when it first opened, there was an engineering mistake and it shook easily. It was closed down and fixed. Also, Harry Potter fact: This bridge gets destroyed by the bad guys in the opening scenes of the latest Harry Potter film.

London is big. And hectic. It has a frenetic pace that Josh and I could barely keep up with. It was also really disorienting to see signs in English everywhere. English food did not agree with me though I enjoyed fish and chips with malt vinegar — just like the stereotypes! We loved that the museums were free (with the exception of special exhibitions) and people watching in that city is great.

Tower Bridge — often confused with London Bridge, which is down the Thames River and actually really boring.

Cheesy tourist in London shot!

Apologies for the hurried recap. With all the madness over the laptop, I’m rushing to finish this before I face one of the most daunting packing challenges to date: What to put in my suitcase for Paris!?!?

Josh and I are off again, but this time to celebrate our first anniversary in the City of Lights. I can’t believe it’s been a year since we had our wedding, but at the same time, SO MUCH has happened between now and that day that it feels like a really long time ago. Our lives are unrecognizable compared to a year ago.

Now: to sort out what to wear in the world’s most fashionable city….

It’s a big day in Germany today. It’s Election day and I just voted in my first German election.

Even though I’ve had the benefit of a German passport, I haven’t been a very good German citizen. I’ve never paid taxes to the state, I didn’t go to school here and I never did any social services (even though its only men who have to do that). Finally, I’ve never voted and wasn’t able to until now.

I’ll confess: I skipped casting a municipal ballot in June (we were in Italy) and I didn’t bother voting in a referendum about religious education reforms in Berlin public schools. But today is the federal election! Today the whole country votes!

This year isn’t what the Germans call a ‘turning point’ election (Richtungswahl). Most here are ready to stay the course until the crisis moves out of the country. Germany’s economy, based on a luxury export market, has been hit hard by the markets, harder than expected (this is the world’s second-largest export market). Angela Merkel is expected to retain her lead of the country, taking it ‘cleverly out of the crisis’, as her campaign posters promise.

What she is hoping to change is the coalition she’s governing with. Currently, she’s partnered her conservative Christian Democrats with the left-leaning Social Democrats (everyone’s a democrat here…). She’s hoping to gain seats so that she can join forces with the business-friendly Free Democrats (like I said…).

Technically, I got to vote twice. Here, you get two voices: first you vote for your preferred MP in a vote for proportional representation, and then you choose the party that you want to represent your state in the state parliament. Complicated stuff, but this is Germany where we like to make our bureaucracy the antithesis to German efficiency.

Late this morning, Josh and I headed to the school around the corner. I went to the very last door for voters in distrcit 114. Gave the man my voting notification and my (German) ID while his colleague gave me my ballot.

Behind the plastic curtain I went, made the appropriate Xes. I emerged, folding my paper in half, dropping it into the slot, a better German citizen.

Technical note: London was lovely. The night we came back, we drowned our laptop (accidentally, of course), and have therefore been without. I will be able to post all about our London adventure on Thursday, when the new laptop will be accompanying Josh back from his business trip to Boston.

I’m making up for the lack of posts in August — I know Opa will appreciate it.

It’s amazing how the change of the month brings the change of the season. It was very abrupt here, with September 1 being the official last hot day. It’s chilled considerably already, with nights dipping down to 12 degrees.

Besides our little trip up a creek with a paddle, we’ve been really busy and sorry to say, didn’t share any of it with you… until now.

June/July were full of visitors. We had six sleepovers in six weeks! With all the visitors streaming through, it’s made me grateful that I don’t have to deal with roommates anymore. Don’t get me wrong — I loved our guests coming through. A few were acquaintances that became friends and to be honest, you have to expect that people will call you up out of the blue when you’re living in a destination city. I’ve been lucky enough to have relatives that lived here all my life, giving me a “homebase” for all of my European adventures. I’m paying it forward.

I hope our guests do too.

While it was exhausting doing “the tour”, all of our visitors wanted to do different things. Amanda was ok going her own, a little overwhelmed by Christopher Street Day celebrations (Gay Pride) and appreciative of the kindness she got from us, near-strangers when she arrived. Cousin Elsie came from Zürich just to hang out with us and spend some family time with us, eating and drinking and shopping. Joel wanted to relive his glory days of being a 20 year old in Berlin, while Aunt Reva and Uncle Steve swung by en route to England from Switzerland for a 24 hour site-seeing expedition filled with German food and beer. Scott was a last-minute booking with tickets to shows, a party all night and while proving that it is just me when it comes to making my guitar sound good. Finally, Julie and her cousin Dave made a stop in Berlin on their way to a Norwegian family reunion. While Dave got his fill of Second World War to Cold War history, Julie and I got a good fill of girl time while window-shopping and trying on silly hats in the department stores.

We thought we were in the clear for August, but another last-minute booking came through via our friend Dom and Alex was with us for a few days too. More bike tours, another all-night party (with an interlude for Mel and Andrew’s engagement celebration over Skype) and lots of wine consumed.

August was nice to be at home. We spent a weekend in Cologne visiting with the Omas. Marlene and Sandi (”the aunts”) were visiting, so we took some time to visit them too. We had a very competitive game of minigolf — par for the course (har har) when doing anything with Marlene and Sandi. We took the train — my favourite. For our way home, the Oma Schatz (a nickname that means Oma Darling she was Christianed with because she called all of us grandkiddies Schatz all the time) packed us pieces of pork schnitzel in tin foil, Haribo gummis and a box of Duplo (they are much cheaper here).

The weather was beautiful, with hot days leading to epic thunderstorms — the kind of which I haven’t seen since living in Saskatchewan.

While Josh has spent the summer settling into his new position of Architect at Nokia (his second promotion since he started there in December! I brag for him), I had my last day of my internship at The Local. While I didn’t need the clippings most interns go for, I needed the German news experience. Before this summer, I couldn’t tell you who Frank-Walter Steinmeier was (head of the SPD), or what Ulla Schmidt does (Health minister) or even how to spell Baden-Württemburg (ouch, I know). I can say that all that has changed, as well making massive strides in improving my German. You can read my last hurrah by clicking here.

We have lots of adventures planned for Fall. We’ll be in London in two weeks, with a couple of visitors before that and finally, the big first anniversary trip in October to…

PARIS!

(*squeeeeeeeeeeeeeellllll!*)

I’ve found that there are always a few journeys that will always be close to my heart.

One is the gravel road that took me to the farm. You turn right and it’s straight through, my favourite part coming through the tiny little valley where my brother Andreas once fell out of the truck and we used to run down to catch the tadpoles in the pond. Up and down and you’re home.

I haven’t had that drive in years.

My other favourite little drive is the road between the little train station in Wahn to my Oma’s house in Zündorf on Wahner Strasse. It hasn’t changed in my 26 years of driving down it, at least not in my mind. It always meant the end of a long journey, to a second homecoming guaranteed to be met by a happy Oma with potato salad and würst. It’s tree lined with corn fields and bike paths. Whether it was a ride in my Opa’s old Audi with the sheep skin seat covers, or one of my uncle’s dangerous contraptions, I love the slight back-and-forth curving of the road, and what it does to my heart.

I have a new one. This is a Berlin one and it is not for cars. It’s the bike ride home from the movie theatre, and its incredible. It’s full of history and culture and stories.

The route.

I start at Potsdamer Platz — once the city centre, which made it an obvious target for the bombers and they blasted it flat into the ground. It then became part of no man’s land, with the wall running right through it, even underground on the rails. Trains that once travelled from one side to the other stopped and turned around to stay where they were.

Up the street, we go by a lit-up and eerie looking Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe; a solemn enough place by day, certainly haunted at night but it’s beautiful. I take a right at the Brandenburg Gates, making a point to go straight up the middle, once an entry way that was reserved strictly for nobility while the common folk had to go through the sides. I laugh at the lingering tourits, but its only so that I keep myself from yelling: “ISN’T MY CITY BEAUTIFUL! THIS IS JUST A PIECE OF IT! YOU HAVE NO IDEA!”

I peddle up Unter den Linden, with its tree-lined boulevard in place since the 1700s. I take a left just after Babelplatz, where the Nazi book burnings happened in 1933. Behind the palaces built for the crown princes of Prussia and past a wall riddled with Soviet bullets, between museums holding 3,000 years of human history to the foot bridge leading back to the mainland.

I don’t even know why I bother with a photo. Just come visit and see for yourself.

It’s here I like to stop and look at the gilded dome of the Berlin Cathedral in the night sky. Of course, a photo could never do it justice.

I go under the train tracks onto the promenade in front of the Hackeschermarkt, filled with restaurant tables, tourists drinking beer and people with — errrmmm — “special talents” looking for their next job.

Finally, I hit the uphill that takes me home, past the Zionskirche and finally rolling up to our front door.

It is the most surreal experience to come out of an everyday thing like the movie theatre, and transport yourself through so many years of history in this city to get home. If you live here, you should try it sometime. You’ll fall in love all over again, but then again, I don’t really know how you can fall out of love with this place.

I’ve turned the adventure into a travel story, which you can now find at The Local.

Click HERE to read all about it.

And if you can’t get enough of me, you can also click here!, here! and, oh, here! too.