Goodbye Germany, We'll Always Have Berlin...

Our last week in Greifswald was marked with plenty of wandering and thinking. I spent a lot more time exploring and thinking about life; two conditions that often work well in tandem. I discovered in my ramblings that there was much of Greifswald that I was still unaware of, and that I was nowhere close to being an expert of the place. But, I realized that’s the nature of life, and I didn’t regret it. I spent a bit of time in the several churches around town and I loved it. The great stone buildings that felt cool on the hottest of days and smelled like the decades of people searching for something made me feel oddly at home. I did find myself regretting not spending more time in these churches.
The last Thursday we had in Germany I traveled with Dr. Serembus (the only willing company I had, but good company none-the-less) to Berlin to visit an art museum I had scoped out on a previous occasion, and the renowned Berlin Zoo.
The trip was nearly called off because Dr. Serembus had hurt his back the weekend that Susan and I had been in Dresden, and also because my credit card company cut off my credit card two days before we were slated to go! According to my mom’s emails, which I exchanged frantically with her, they closed off my account because a purchase had been made in Germany! (gasp!) Too bad we had told them months ago that I would be going to Germany, and that I had used my card successfully for nearly two months without trouble! Wednesday all day I waited for the account to be turned back on so I could buy my train ticket and tickets to the zoo and museum. I tried any ATM I came across all day. There was a FIFA game on that Wednesday night as well, Germany versus Ghana, and I was slated to meet Ulrike and several other of her friends that I really grew to like during my time there. I kept slipping away to try my card and paid for my water in nickels and dimes (well, the Euro equivalent of). And finally! During half time, my card worked and I took out fifty glorious Euros that lasted me until the end of my trip. So I contacted Dr. Serembus that night that the trip was still on for the next morning, and we met at the train station early.
We waited for a while and Dr. Serembus lamented that he had to take a slow and dirty regional rail train with me because I was a poor college student and he held in his hand a rail pass that would get him on any first class, speedy, inter-city train that he wanted. Sorry Dr. S, but if you want to be picky, don’t allow a lowly student to befriend you!
Finally our train came and we talked/napped away our three hours to Berlin. Because the park opposite the train station had been closed off due to FIFA public viewing, we had to pick our way around the park and walk probably an extra mile than usual to get to the museum, and Dr. Serembus did NOT let me forget that he was old and that his back was hurting and that those two things are not assuaged by the words: “It’s an adventure!” Finally we made it, and the gallery was rather large and impressive and I got those wonderful tastes of Raphael, Botticelli, and their glorious company. We didn’t even see the whole museum, but we were tired and hungry, and it was after all lunch time, so we made our way to the Sony plaza where we knew there was good food, and we decided on an Australian themed restaurant. We both ordered burgers and were taken aback when they asked if we wanted beef or kangaroo. I was thrown off and sputtered beef, but in retrospect – I should have gone for the kangaroo. That’s a great story to tell: “Oh yeah, I’ve had kangaroo. I had it in Berlin once.”
Our filling and delicious burgers gone, we headed for the zoo. I bought a combination ticket for the aquarium and the zoo, and Dr. Serembus opted for a bench while I marveled at the fish & amphibians. I was worried at first that I would be the oldest non-parent in the place, but I soon realized that I was joined by both a large amount of teenagers, and a large amount of Americans. My aquatic viewing done, Dr. Serembus and I wandered the zoo for quite some time. I would say that I saw lions and tigers and bears oh my! But, sadly, the tigers were in for feeding when we passed by, and so I only saw the lions and tigers, but I could add to that instead, gorillas! Or giraffes! Or birds!
We didn’t get a chance to see the kangaroos that we could have sampled earlier in the day, because Dr. Serembus’ back had been pushed to the breaking point and so we made our way back to the Hauptbanhof. And what would you know, we made our train. Too bad we got there right when the doors sealed themselves, and we had to stand outside those doors desperately trying to get in for a minute, and then watch as the train rolled out. Luckily, there was dinner and a soccer game on two floors up which took up our time until the next train two hours later.
Our last day was Friday, and Ulrike promised to spend it with us. We went out to lunch with the wonderful friends we had made during our time there and witnessed one of the strangest wedding parties I’d ever seen at the restaurant we had chosen. Apparently, it is not custom in Germany to have your wedding party coordinated. So everyone was in a different color and a different outfit (this wouldn’t have been so bad if the best dress there didn’t happen to be a rather ugly and scaly turquoise color). I finally finished packing (this only took several hours and about a dozen un-packings and re-packings) and we met Ulrike at her apartment for dinner and a movie. We decided upon Smiley’s pizza, which had become a favorite for we three Americans (they had some crazy pizzas, and most were named after American cities or states – check it out for yourself if you don’t believe me: http://www.smileys.de/smileys/44/index.htm). And while we ate our pizzas, we watched the BBC’s newest version of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, which happened to be a favorite of mine and Ulrike’s! And then, we exposed Susan to Animal House for the first time. I really do love Ulrike’s taste in movies!
We left pretty late, and we had a tearful goodbye with Ulrike, who had been such an amazing friend to us, and she had even gotten us gifts! Little Universitäte Greifswald key chains! I miss her, and I hope that that wasn’t the last time I’ll ever see her.
Susan and I were up early the next morning and decided to haul our stuff to the Greifswald Süd Bahnhof, because it was closer to our apartment and we didn’t have to lug our luggage all the way through town. The only thing lacking at the Greifswald South train station was a ticket machine, but luckily, we had figured out that you can in fact, buy tickets from the conductor on the train. So we watched the sun rise on another beautiful morning and rode that train for the last time to Berlin. Mareen met us at the Hauptbanhof in Berlin because our attempts to see her one last time over the past two weeks had been all foiled. We shared breakfast and a gorgeous morning together for the last time and then left her at the station to head to the airport.
Our trip home was uneventful. Sure, we waited in an exhaustingly long and hot line at the Berlin airport to check in and happened to be wedged in the middle of a group of teenage girls that were apparently going to New York City (judging by their repeated use of those words and the guidebooks in their hands), and sure, we waited for like, 3 hours in Heathrow (surprisingly strange and hard to get used to everyone speaking English around you again!), but, like I said, normal and uneventful. On our flight across the pond, I watched Invictus, and Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, and some girl from Philadelphia nag her poor boyfriend to death in the aisle across from me.
And, faithful reader, you may have guessed, I have been home for exactly a month today. And, unsurprisingly, I am once again completely sick of my hometown and ready to go somewhere else again! Well, at least I’ve got school again in another month! Which is, believe it or not, an exciting thought.
I just want to thank from the depths of my heart, the professors that I had the greatest pleasure of coming to know in Germany. Dr. Serembus of course, thank you for listening to me rant and for ranting at us (despite the fact that I disagree with you on several points), and thank you for coming with me to Berlin when my own peers were (and I quote) “sick of Berlin”. Dr. Brauer, thank you for the wonderful Women’s Studies class, your dedicated coordination of everything, my extra stipend (!) and the wonderful Universitäte Greifswald mug (I do love mugs!). Thank you to Professor Lutz for your absolute kindness and willingness to open your house and your life to my curious mind. And thank you, so much, Dr. Peter Kulchyski, the visiting professor from the University of Manitoba, for showing me the stories of the aboriginal people of North America and how amazing and interesting they can be when I’d never given them much thought. Your insight, your intellect, and your arrest record truly impressed me and I hope we meet again! And of course, thank you Dr. Buck, for allowing me to go on this trip, and here’s hoping it’s only the first of many.
So, sadly, I finish my entries for my German Adventures in the summer of 2010. Maybe I’ve put off finishing this blog for so long because I didn’t want it to be over. Well, I suppose it’s not yet, because I still have to come back and upload the last of the pictures when my laptop gets fixed!
But anyway, Germany was amazing, and I learned so much more than I would have sitting at home this summer watching TV and lazing by the town pool; and the important thing is that I not only learned more about a people and a place, but I learned a heck of a lot more about myself. So, for the last time,
Gute Nacht.