Bobby and Katie got Engaged!

Bobby and Katie were in Turkey and he proposed in the Hagia Sophia on April 9th! They seem very happy and excited.

The four of us in front of the library at Ephesus. We stopped off for a tour on the way from Istanbul to Bodrum.

Germany

Picture of me and Emre in Bremen.

We just got back from a 9 day trip to Germany. We spent 4 days with Emre's sister Eda and her husband Heiko in Bremen, a charming small city of 500,000 people in the north. They were fantastic hosts and introduced us to the morning cocktail "fruhshop" and their favorite game, bluff, which we also got addicted to.

We had 4 1/2 days in Berlin, which was really amazing. Compared to Istanbul, the public transportation is AMAZING (Although people openly drinking beer on the U-bahn was a bit suprising. It was definitely a bit sketchy at night, and there is graffitti EVERYWHERE.)

Bremen Bahnhof

Eda and Emre saying goodbye in Bremen.
We ended up renting a car and driving from Berlin to Bremen because the train was 250 euro. normally it would be 90 euro round trip, but you have to buy it 3 days in advance (a German custom we never could get the hang of!) I had always imagined the "autobahn" to be a scary superhighway, but really it is just two lanes in each direction- like a local road on eastern Long Island. But the Germans DO drive extremely fast- no speed limit. We saw a horrible accident in the other direction, including dead bodies. awful. I will stick to the trains...

Hamburg

Eda and Heiko took us on a daytrip to Hamburg. These are the old wharehouses along the river. It was a lovely, wealthy city.

Berlin

The renovated Budenstag building.

Construction

Berlin is one big construction zone... This was my third visit (before in 1996 and 2001) and each time it has looked completely different! A lot of the ugly 1960s buildings are being knocked down and the olders ones are being renovated. There are also loads of super modern glass structures.

The Wall

A short portion was left for artists, but most of the murals were covered by graffiti. This is a pretty desolate area. The wall surrounded West Berlin, so actually the "lucky" West Berliners were really trapped. 17 years after it was knocked down, the whole city is still a construction zone.

Museum Insel

This is a cool view of the S Bahn passing between the striking neoclassical buildings on museum insel.

Museum Insel

This is us on a bridge to Museum Insel (Island) where there are five impressive museums and the Berlin Cathedral. (Two of them are under construction though.)

We also went to see the Jewish Museum in another part of town, which was designed by Daniel Libeskind. Very moving/depressing/interesting...

Doesn't Emre look like the Cesar? This is at the Pergamon Museum where there are loads of statues and buildings from ancient cities in Turkey.

Brandenburger Tor (an old city gate) is a very impressive ending to Unter der Linden Avenue which has lots of neoclassical buildings. Next to the gate, the new American embassy is being built. There's also a Starbucks across the square (even here!). The gate was in East Berlin and the wall was just past it.

another night in Berlin

Emre's old roomate in the Bronx, Giuseppe, is now working at a glamorous club in Berlin, where we went one night. He took us around a few other areas another evening, which was great.

Giuseppe's parents are Italian, but he was born and raised in Germany. I didn't realize there was such a large community of "gastarbeiters" (guest workers or immigrants) from Italy and Spain, as well as Turkey, Lebanan and other Arab countries in Germany. Germany has a population of 80 million and 2.3 million of them are Turks. Berlin has the highest concentration of immigrants.

Kreuzberg and finally FOOD

Photo of Kreuzberg, which is supposedly the Turkish ghetto. We thought it was the most charming area! There are loads of fantastic restaurants and lively streetlife. Berlin is generally rather economically depressed, but somehow Kreuzberg seemed the liveliest and most interesting area to us. We decided we'd like to live on this street overlooking the river.

And the FOOD!

The street food in Germany is wurst (sausages with mustard, very yummy and nothing like a hot dog!) and pommes frites. "Kaffee und kuchen" is another German custom I really love - afternoon coffee and cake. I love apple struedel, kase kuchen (means cheese cake, but lighter and more lemony) and plum schnite! All the bakeries were really amazing- fantastic bread!

Berlin had fabulous restaurants. One traditional gasthaus we tried was Restauration Gambrinus on the corner of Linienstrasse and Oranienburger strasse. We had jaegar schnitzel (mushroom sauce) and fantastic salads with pickled shredded white cabbage and beets on top of regular mixed salads- excellent! Another good place was Assel on Oranienburger strasse, which was also fantastic. The area around Oranienburger strasse, just north of Alexanderplatz and Hackescher Markt in East Berlin, was very lively with lots of cool spots to check out. Another typical German dish is gulash which I had a great place under the S bahn in Hackescher Markt. Also came with celery cream soup, which was zuper!