Ok, so it has been ten days, I know, but I just felt that there hasn’t been much to report lately. We went to the beach in Greifswald for the first time. The water was actually surprisingly warm, and you can walk out very far because it stays shallow for so long. We also went to Potsdam for the day, which was just an extremely long and hot day. That city is not at all tourist friendly. Do not try to just walk around as Susan and I did, because you will spend almost the entire time walking, and not much time seeing anything. We did see one palace from the inside and another one from the outside. Both were quite nice. The last week was rainy again, and foiled our plans to visit the Berlin Zoo.
The three of us puttered around Greifswald all those other days. Some days were nice, others were not. We spent time with Ulrike and Jenny and their friends. We watched the season finale of Germany’s Next Top Model, which is a big live event here, much like the finale of American Idol with performers and an audience in a stadium in Cologne.
Professor Lutz, of the English Institute was planning a BBQ for the Saturday which just happened. First it was on Saturday, then it was pushed to Friday for fear of rain, and then it was cancelled on Friday morning due to hail and finally, it happened on Saturday afternoon as planned. It was a potluck, and so we each brought something. I made chocolate covered strawberries which were quite easy and fun to make actually. I made a double-boiler out of two pots that fit nicely into one another and melted down some chocolate bars. I got some very delicious and fresh strawberries from a stand that was painted like a strawberry (of which there are several here in town, quite adorable).
Mareen came up from Berlin for the occasion, and she drove us to Professor Lutz’s house, which was a few towns away. The town was very small, and his address is just House #23 – no street name required. His house was a farm-house and barn that his wife nearly single-handedly turned into the most gorgeous house I think I’ve ever seen. It was in no way kitschy, as country homes can sometimes be, but very classic and comfortable, and slightly unusual because of its former uses (our tour was given in terms of where the horses were kept, the cows, the pigs, and the chickens). I hope my house can be as amazing some day. We cooked outside while the wind blew and the rain threatened, but it never really came. I talked for a long time with Professor Kulchyski, the visiting professor from the University of Manitoba in Canada, and an expert in aboriginal plights, both ancient and modern, in Canada. He is the nicest guy, and he has traveled all over North and South America helping aboriginal cultures maintain their rights, and he will proudly tell of all those times he’s been arrested in support of their legal rights. He also happens to teach my Introducing Canada class.
Eventually we moved inside for coffee and dessert, and my strawberries were a hit. A visiting professor from Romania was in raptures over my strawberries and was fascinated that I’d come up with such a thing. She kept questioning me about whether my great-grandmother had come up with the recipe, and I had to explain to her that it was a widespread and commonly practiced thing in America, of which she didn’t seem fully convinced. I did, however, direct her to the internet and told her that if she looked it up, she could find the directions.
The USA was playing England in the FIFA tournament that night, so we settled into the Lutz’s comfy living room and cheered on the USA (except for Dr. Serembus who kept determinedly professing that the US was going to lose by a score of 4-0). The whole night was a lot of fun, and Susan and I determined that we wanted to visit Wittenberg (of 95 Theses fame) the next morning, so after the game, Mareen drove us home and we went to bed early.
The next morning we got up at 5 to catch the 6:34 train into Berlin where we would make a change-over to Wittenberg. We attempted to buy a ticket from Greifswald to Wittenberg at the ticket machine at the train station (118 euros!), but it would just not accept my credit card, so we decided that we might just save money by buying a ticket to Berlin and then another ticket to Wittenberg on the individual trains. So, we purchased our usual weekend ticket for 37 euros on the train to Berlin and reached Berlin around 9:30. We figured out while we were at the Berlin Main station that we could just use our weekend ticket for the ride from Berlin to Wittenberg if we took the much slower train in an hour and a half instead of the faster train in 20 minutes that we had been planning on using. So in that hour and a half, we found the art museum that Professor Kulchyski had been telling me about, so that I could hopefully come back to visit it in the time left before we leave. Then we boarded the train and we arrived in Wittenberg at around 12:30. We knew that the train we wanted to take from Berlin to Griefswald left at 6:34, so that we needed to leave Wittenberg on a train by 5 p.m. Unfortunately, Wittenberg is a very small town, and, I get the feeling, often overlooked by tourists. Therefore, the only train leaving from there that would get us there in time was leaving at 3:30. Not a lot of time to explore, but hey, it was that or spend another 50 euros to get on a later train that would bring us back to Greifswald. So, we started walking.
There was one rather inadequate map posted at the train station, and nothing helpful beyond that, so we walked for about 5 minutes before finally asking a couple walking by which way to go to get to the old town. Naturally it was in the opposite direction we had been walking. So they allowed us to follow them there, and when we got there, the town was amazing! It was the anniversary of the wedding of Martin Luther and Katharina von Bora, and there was a big festival in town. It reminded us much of a Renaissance Faire back home with so many people dressed in period costume and all the food stands decked out like a throw-back market. The food was delicious, and the sights were great. We went into Luther’s church and saw the 95 Theses door that was cast for the church out of bronze in the 19th century and contains all of the theses in the door. There were parades too, all over town, some with dressed up children throwing herbs and flowers, some with a wedding procession of “Luther and von Bora” and there was one that was pulling several babies in wooden carriages….which was kind of odd.
But, just as Professor Lutz had warned us, there was really only two main streets to the old town, and we exhausted them in 2 and a half hours.
Luckily we headed back to the train station early because we got a bit lost again going back, but we figured it out and got there fairly early again. Our ride back was marked by people wearing German flags as capes, and crazy hats and shirts and facepaint! How could we have forgotten that Germany was playing Australia that night at 8:30! I was so set on seeing the game and very nearly sprung for the 55 euro train ticket that would get us back in Greifswald on time. But, we found a nice place in the food court to sit and watch the earlier game that had started at 4 and eat dinner. There we stayed to the end of the game, and a bit after, finally catching the 6:34 train back to Greifswald. I finished the book that Ian had lent me (Gang Leader for a Day – highly recommended) and watched the bucolic scenery as the sun set. It was a nice ride, and we managed to get back to the apartment right around the end of half time. We watched Germany win with Dr. Serembus’ predicted score for the USA/England game of the night before, and listened as drunken singing and honking and stomping were heard all night. Today was rather uneventful, I watched two movies and cleaned a bit. I shall continue watching soccer tonight, and plan on trips that I would love to take. I’m still hoping that the white cliffs of Rugen, the Berlin Zoo, and the New National Gallery will be spotted by my eye before I leave in two weeks, and I’m looking for things that I’d like to see while in Prague over the weekend!
And with those hopes, I will leave you for now. And because my time here is coming near to an end, I shall also attempt to post more frequently.
For now, Gute Nacht!
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