Day 20 – July 16: The LONG way to Berlin

Early this morning I packed up and headed to the girls’ hotel.  As my mom had left before the hotel breakfast, I served as the third for their room and enjoyed a full, free breakfast.  After we checked out around 11, we still had two hours before our train was leaving so we went and sat on the grass in the Museumplein.  Rachel wrote a postcard to Mr. Navarro, her previous year’s history teacher, who is a huge fan of the art in Amsterdam. And, of all the delicacies offered in the city, we still hadn’t tried the straight up waffle with strawberries and whipped cream. Check!  We also bought lunch to eat on the train, and started off with some French fries, but again with ketchup.  Eaten that way they don’t really count as Dutch.  We’ll have to try one more time so they can have the mayonnaise. 

After trying to put my arm around Julia and realizing the only free spot I could find and grab was her butt

I thought I would have very little to blog about today because we spent most of the day packing up and traveling to our last city of the trip, Berlin.  The train ride itself would take up 6 hours…we got three seats with a table between us so I pictured an easy six hours of playing cards, talking, and reading. About an hour into our trip a woman came and sat in our fourth seat but it was reserved for someone else.  She wasn’t supposed to be on our train but a man had jumped in front of the train she was on (killing himself), so they had to return to the station and she was rerouted onto our train.  At the same stop the man who had the seat reserved came so the woman had to stand, but stayed by our seats and we spent the next 30 minutes chatting about her life in the Netherlands and a great 6-month solo trip she took through India, Nepal, and Thailand when she was 22.  After she got off the train, we didn’t move for quite a while and the intercom voice finally came on to tell us that our engine wasn’t working (“der motor ist kaput”). It was very unclear what the solution to this problem was going to be.  We were in a very small town heading towards Germany.  Our German seatmate let us know that an engine would be coming from Amsterdam and would arrive 1.5 hours later.  Meanwhile we sat on the track just waiting… Interestingly we had just talked to Freya about keeping perspective rather than getting annoyed when things happen to change your plans.  I just focused on the good things: I wasn’t traveling with a baby and they eventually turned the air conditioning back on! 

Almost two hours later, moments after the German seatmate and the girls stepped off the train to get some food, the whistle blew and the three ran out of the store (before purchasing anything) and hopped back on the train just before we started going again, a little earlier than expected.  The intercom voice announced that she hoped that the people they left behind were clever enough to get on the next train.  At this point we got to know our German seatmate better as he was translating the situation for us, explaining that we just had to make it to Germany (not so much further down the tracks) and they would have to attach a German engine to our train anyway because the German and Dutch systems aren’t able to run with the same engines.  But, we just needed to get there.  Turns out that we had decided not to wait to for the engine from Amsterdam but were assured by mechanics that we could make it….we couldn’t.  We hobbled slowly into the next station where we sat waiting (while that next train to Berlin passed us by) for that Amsterdam engine to get to us.  We learned that we were actually sitting with a philosophy professor from Utrecht University who is researching/writing about human rights issues.  We had an interesting conversation about Chinese culture, Confucianism, western influence, and the basic question of if you believe in basic human rights for all what the implications are for future generations who also have those same human rights.  (When I googled him later, I found that Marcus is chair of Philosophical Ethics and Director of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies).  He was super interesting to talk to and a great intro for Julia to the sorts of discussions she’ll be having in a couple month’s time.

The engine finally arrived and we were on our way to Germany. We hit the German border 3 hours later than we should have…and the Netherlands is a very small country.  We still had to get through most of Germany to make it to Berlin. We went back to our reading/Sudoku/writing research papers activities. The girls eventually headed to the dining car to drink tea and hang out there, but when Marcus went back to get some food they had sold out of everything.  I offered him some of our many, many snacks Rachel had been collecting in Amsterdam (cheese, crackers, biscoff) and we started up another super interesting conversation.  This time I was really able to ask all of my questions about what it has been like to be German since the war…how the generations interact with each other about what happened…how people make sense of what they did now that they know they were fighting for the wrong thing…who better to talk to about this than a philosophy professor who was born in Germany!?! He gave us a great history lesson about Germany (a relatively young country).  And, even better – as he was describing to us what life was like just after the wall came down, and talking about the difficulties of bringing east and west Berliners together (and giving us the example of the easterners driving slowly in their old cars on roads that the westerners were speeding on in their fancy new cars) the older couple (who at some point sat down opposite us) leaned over and said to him in German: We were those East Berliners!  I couldn’t believe this opportunity we had!!  Marcus translated for us and we got to hear so many stories about what it was like living in the GDR (in some ways simpler), what it was like when the wall came down (never thought they would experience it in their lifetimes – overwhelming), the first things you want to do (travel – took all day to go 40km since that is what everyone wanted to do).  This couple (born in 1946) shared their stories with us.  They had children who were 10 and 15 at the time the wall came down who are now living in Berlin doing things they couldn’t have done. I think we learned more about Berlin on that train ride than we will the rest of the week in total. Even Marcus was grateful for the opportunity to talk to people who had really lived in the GDR and hear firsthand the experience. (And I’m sure asking more than he would have otherwise as my translator.)  In the end, the woman (who hadn’t said much but listened closely) sat silently crying at the mention of her family now in the Ukraine. It was a reminder of how real it all was, and is.

Marcus headed us in the direction of the buses when we said our goodbyes and we had to figure out this big new city at 11:00 pm.  It wasn’t easy but we got to our funky little Airbnb just before midnight and it is just as funky as it looked in the pictures.  It is essentially a practice space with a huge grand piano in the middle and some couch/beds scattered throughout.  It will be an interesting spot to explore Berlin from.