Eleven days, three countries, five cities, two small towns, many random beds and an airport floor; planes, trains, buses and cars and innumerable stories and characters all made up our spring break trip to the northern parts of Europe.
The trip started on a cloudy Thursday evening in Malaga when we boarded our first Ryan Air budget flight heading straight for London, what I had long imagined to be the epicenter of Europe. I quickly discovered that it was more like the epicenter of the world. The most striking thing about London, besides the stereotypical movie accents, was all the colors of people that walked up and down the streets speaking many different languages. If I had to describe a typical “Londoner” I wouldn’t say that it was a person that was born in the city. We stayed with a couple in the outskirts of London who were living together and were just starting university in London. Phil was from the Czech Republic and had lived in the Ukraine when he was younger where he had met Alina, who was originally from Germany but had also lived all over the world. We met a few of their friends one night when we went to Phil’s end-of-term departmental party, which took place in the basement of his university. They were from all across the world, to name a few countries – Brazil, the Ukraine, Poland – none of them seemed to be true Londoners. But those are the beautiful paints with which this city was painted. We spent the first day in London walking along the shore of the Themes River, seeing a few of the big sights like Big Ben and St. Paul’s Cathedral. We spent a few hours in the Tate Modern museum and took a walk down Fleet Street. In the courtyard of Somerset Palace an old Sikh man approached me kindly, taking my casual smile as an invitation to get to know each other. He was wearing a classy and formal suit, had a cane-like umbrella in his hand, and looked clean and pristine. His beard was long and his voice deep and soothing with an unmistakable Indian accent. He nearly hypnotized us with his melodic voice and ended up talking to us for at least a half an hour about love, life, marriage, religion and how to find the wisdom within ourselves. He said something about God that stuck with me. He said that God was like a glass of water and that Muslims call it one thing and Christians another, but in the end it’s still a pure and simple glass of water no matter what you call it. I thought it a beautiful way to perceive the world and our differences.
On our second day and last day in London we visited another museum, the British Museum, where we could have spent days wandering the exhibits, but we hit the main things, like the Rosetta Stone and then wandered back out into the cold and rainy street. We took the tube to Camden Town where we walked along the streets peering into vintage and second-hand markets full of old-fashioned dresses and jewelry. After Camden Town we ventured towards Notting Hill to see its beautiful and quintessential houses and the famous Portobello Road market where one could buy anything they set their minds to – from avocadoes to old sewing machines. That evening we prepared a Mexican meal for Phil to thank him for his hospitality and after only an hour of sleep on a mattress on the floor we headed out into the late night of London to catch a bus to the airport where our flight would be leaving from early in the morning. It was an uncomfortable night of barely any sleep but it put us into Berlin early the next morning. The morning was crisp and cloudy and people walked in trench coats and heavy boots.
We were warmly welcomed by our host Giulia at the subway station near her house early that Sunday morning. Giulia, a smiley and warm political science student from Florence, Italy, recently moved to Berlin to do her European exchange semester abroad. She said she’d fallen in love with the city when she was young and always dreamed of living in it. Her hospitality melted me when we entered her beautiful vintage apartment where she’d prepared her bedroom for us, giving us her bed and all of her space. We took a couple of hours to nap before bracing the city for the first time.
Berlin left an incredible impression on me that I think I’m going to continue churning over. I have never been to a city where the history was so evident and ubiquitous as it was in Berlin. It was as though at every corner something was screaming out about the past. It was as though Berlin’s complex and intricate history was still living, still breathing, still walking with me down the street. Many apartment buildings, including Giulia’s, had little gold plaques with the names of the Jews that had lived in those buildings before the Holocaust. An incredible Holocaust Memorial was erected in 2004 near Brandenburg Tor to commemorate the lives of those who died due to the hatred and genocide that plagued the country. I had never been to a Holocaust museum before in my life and the affect this one had on me was staggering. I could barely see as I walked along the corridors of the exhibit due to the tears that were stinging and clouding my eyes as I listened to story after story of Jewish families from all over Germany, all over Europe. I’ve studied the Holocaust in school since I was a child but I had never felt it so strikingly, so livingly. And what haunts me more than anything and what I still can’t seem to understand is how this ever could have happened. What made people so evil and hateful?
The other incredible and ever-present history was that of the Berlin Wall and the stark and current difference between East and West Berlin. Parts of the wall still stand and remind Berliners every single day of a very recent past. We spent a long afternoon weaving in and out of East Berlin along the old borders of the wall admiring the recent political art that has been painted onto the remains of the wall.
One of my favorite moments in Berlin was a walk we took through a beautiful old cemetery with a native Berliner and his wife and baby who were showing us around their neighborhood in West Berlin. The cemetery was like out of a fairytale with big beautiful tombstones and tall old trees. Young and colorful flowers were growing out of many of the graves and there bushes of beautiful roses and daffodils and yellow, purple, red and blue flowers. I’d never before seen burial houses, but this cemetery had these big houses with the names of different families on them so that everyone in the family could be buried together in one place. The thing that struck me most about this pleasant walk through this old cemetery was how rare it was to find oneself enjoying a graveyard in the United States. I think of so many cemeteries near home and I cringe at the thought of walking through them because they’re far from beautiful. Cemeteries should be places where we crave to take an afternoon stroll, where we enjoy the sunshine on our faces and where we want to keep going back to whether to pay our respects to our dead or to just soak in the depth and heaviness of what it means to be alive.
Another afternoon we spent at a big Turkish market in an area of Berlin with a high population of Turks. It was a warm and sunny afternoon and after walking through the extensive market we sat down on a stone platform next to a river and basked in the sun with other Berliners. On my favorite night in Berlin we cooked a big meal at Giulia’s apartment for her and her friends and roommates to show our appreciation for their warmth and hospitality. We made a splendid meal for ten of Spanish tortilla de patata, bruschetta, salad, avocado dip and red wine that we ate by candlelight in an empty wooden room. The table was full of people from all over Europe – Italians, a Turkish girl, Germans, a Hungarian girl, and the three of us. Cultural lines were blurred and languages compromised to share a meal speaking English in Deutschland.
The next leg of our trip was rapid and seems like a hazy dream of train rides and canal strolls. We woke up in Berlin at 5 in the morning and were in Amsterdam by about 1 that afternoon. We spent the afternoon walking endlessly along Amsterdam’s canals and narrow streets. Being back in this city that I had loved so much a few years before, reminded me of the time that I’d spent there with my sister. It’s amazing how inseparable our associations with people and places are. After a long day of walking in Amsterdam we took a short train to Haarlem where we’d be staying the night at a squatter house. I’d never been to such a place before in my life. I’d read about and heard of these “abandoned” or “unoccupied” houses before but I never thought that I’d spend a night in one. It was an old and pretty destroyed and broken three-story building in this small town that before hadn’t had running water or electricity. However this group of young people occupied it illegally and constructed everything themselves. It’s pretty incredible how they figured out how to tap into the city’s water and electricity and to install internet and hot water without the help of any kind of societal infrastructure. But the place was most certainly a dump. We made a big pot of pasta when we arrived and offered it around to the squatters. There were some very interesting characters, once again from all over Europe; a Latvian drunk who was aggressively certain that Americans ask too many questions, a rebellious Austrian who claimed that she hated people and called everyone a bitch, a vegan blonde Dutch guy with long dreadlocks and a pot of delicious vegan shwarma, and that’s only to name a few.
We slept in a room upstairs that was divided from the others by hanging blankets on an old mattress on the floor. Next to my head there was a glass of milk with hair in it that had been there for God knows how long. I had nightmares about it, but it’s all for good stories. Needless to say I was excited to be leaving the story-filled squat the next day and to be heading to Dusseldorf. The scenery changed a complete 180 degrees. In Dusseldorf we stayed in a million-dollar house, owned by two German opera singers who had been John’s host parents when he lived in Germany a few years ago. We had a warm shower and slept in clean sheets and in the morning awoke to a wonderful breakfast of delicious German bread, cheese, Nutella and coffee. His host mom even gave each of us a big chocolate bunny to commemorate Easter.
After a long and lazy morning at the opera singers’ house in Dusseldorf, we headed to Cologne where we’d be spending the last couple of days of our trip. The most stunning Gothic cathedral towered over us as we got off the train and stepped into the main square of Cologne. We were welcomed by Andrew’s German friends who’d been foreign exchange students in Fairview a few years back – the brothers Kamman: Johannes and Benno. They were wonderful hosts and took us in like their own. The first night they took us out on the town to see Cologne by night and then the next day, Easter Sunday, we went with them to their mom’s house in the German countryside, in a little town called Siegburg. Her home was beautiful and so warm inside, intricately decorated and with a wonderful garden in the back. While she prepared a lovely home cooked Easter meal, we explored the little town. We climbed a big hill where we visited an old monastery with beautiful gardens and towers. We walked in on the Easter service in the church and heard a lovely monk chant and song, with pleasant incense burning in the church. The view from the monastery of the countryside down below was incredible, and the capriciously rainy day set the most perfect setting for this Sunday afternoon story to unfold.
The meal was delicious and the company great and after a few long hours of eating we headed back to Cologne to rest our tired minds – our last night in Germany. The following morning we woke up early to see Cologne by day before our flight back to Spain. We walked along the Rhine River and visited the quaint historic center of the city and then climbed 533 stairs to the top of one of the towers of the beautiful cathedral. We came down just in time to catch our train to the airport.
It was a trip of endlessly warm hospitality, cultural exchange, intense travel, and endless stories to tell for the rest of my life. I can’t believe how lucky I am.
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