KREUZBERG

We live in Kreuzberg – the East Village of Berlin.  I never lived in the East Village in NYC, never really wanted to, but I’m enjoying the goth/alt/graffiti/smokey vibe here for a few weeks.  All I knew previously dates back to the late 70s, when David Bowie smuggled Iggy Pop out of a NYC mental institution, and they left the country to live in Kreuzburg.  That escapade brought us Heroes, Logger, and Scary Monsters.  The ur-albums of 80’s techno-pop.

But I have not seen Bowie or Iggy, since I arrived.  They left a long time ago.  And the Wall came down.  So now it’s trendy graffiti grunge instead of industrial squatter chic.  Connan said, “if it wears black, doesn’t bathe, and smokes a pack a day, then it’s in Kreuzberg.”  It’s as if the entire student bodies of Wesleyan and Hampshire hopped a chartered jet and plopped down with their trust funds to slum it here for a few years before getting their corporate jobs.  But the food is cheap and the beer is excellent – so who’s complaining.

I’ve begun rehearsing SUMMER AND SMOKE, and the cast is on target.  Connan is doing the good work of home schooling, sightseeing, and helping the family adjust to its ever-changing cirumstances.

Tonight, after dinner and a visit to the indoor swimming pool across the street, we put Cal to bed and enlisted Declan to work as a babysitter for the first time.  Cal was asleep.  We went to the café across the street (visible from the apartment window) to have some adult time.  And Declan stayed in the apartment with one of our phones.  He texted us five times in one hour, and he did great!  This bodes well for the future.

- Blake

Moments from the past few days

 On one of our last days in Paris Declan did something very brave.  He went to the corner bakery and bought 2 baguettes and 2 pain au choc's all by himself. Very little French needed, just a pointy finger, a strong smile and a friendly baker.

 

 

Cal trying to lance the silver rings on the carousel at the Jardin du Luxenbourg.  He got three!!!

The line at the worst bathroom in Paris.  It took us 30 minutes even though there were only 7 people in front of us.  The bathroom cleans itself after every patron with disinfectant spray.  And it closes the door and you better not be in there when it does!

Berlin

So so angry

We’ve unpacked.  We’ve fired up the eco wood pellet oven in our rented digs.  We’ve politely moved aside our landlady’s dresser drawers full of wristwatches and silk swatches from Korea and piled in our socks and underwear.  We’ve explored the neighborhood and located the closest grocery stores and laundromat with named washers and dryers (names as in Fritz the washer and Hanna the dryer).   We’ve found the best falafel shop in the neighborhood.  We’ve sampled the ANGRY CHICKEN. (so so angry) . We’ve located someone’s unlocked internet connection.  We’re good. It’s a bit of a shock after 47 Park in London ( complete luxury) and Paris but we’re adjusting.

Furious Chicken!

We’re in the Kreuzberg section of Berlin.  It’s kind of like the east village in NYC.  With a lot more graffiti.  And t-shirt shops.   It’s funky.  And relatively cheap.  We had a full meal for the 4 of us that was 12.50 Euros. 

Yesterday we took a long walk around the neighborhood with our friend Veronika.  She’s the one responsible for Blake’s directing gig at The English Theatre of Berlin.  She’s got quite a life story.  Actress, director, film instructor, she escaped East Berlin in the trunk of a car.  And that was after she had been caught once before and was imprisoned.  Not something she shares off the bat but it shows the scope of her life.  She led us across a canal and showed us the East Side Gallery.  This is a long stretch of the wall that has been left standing w/ the ubiquitous graffiti and murals on one side.  It was a great afternoon.

Veronika

Dec in front of the wall

Today we had a bit of school and then we took a subway ride to the Potsdamer Platz and the Brandenburg Gate.  On the way we followed the footprint of the wall and encountered the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.  A controversial project, this is an entire city block filled with grey concrete slabs that are various heights and placed at different angles.  The path though them is uneven as well, and we found it quite moving.  Cal and Dec could experience it from a purely emotional level as a monument and a testament to the past. I’m sure we will encounter more as we move through the city.

Last days in Paris

Bonjour tristesse.  We leave Paris on Saturday. Off to Berlin!  It will be nice to sit down for 6 weeks and really get to know a city but I am already missing the monument to individualism that is Paris.  I adore walking around and looking inside all the shops and admiring what each shopkeeper chooses to put center stage in their window.  No matter what it is - a chair, a wedding dress, a chocolate, a shoe - it is unique and perfectly crafted.  It seems that all here appreciate the unique, the unusual, the slightly different.  Maybe that's why they become so frustrated with us Americans who are always trying to find the common thread.

We spent today fighting the crowds at Versailles. A monument to vanity and excess.  Marie Antointte's house was charming however and we took a lovely rowboat ride on the grand canals.  But for the most part the boys were NOT interested.  They have no context for it and it is a bit much to make lunch, get them out there, provide a detailed history lesson that is age appropriate, eat lunch, stroll around the gardens, get the exercise, keep them away from the tourist junk and then get them home in one piece.  It was a warm day and it was great to be outside and the rowboat helped.  They powered through though.  Tom'w = no art museums, no fancy houses, no churches.  Boys get to choose.

Nutella crepes by Jardin du Luxenbourg. Yummy!

Next to the Seine.  Like cats sitting in the sun.

The 21 Euro chocolate fish!  Yummy!

Visiting the Lizard King in Pere Lachaise!

Paris or bust

So yesterday was a bust.  Hilarious.  After a lovely morning of shopping and going to Poilane Bakery where I with my fractured french actually was a translator for several Americans, now THAT's funny, we set out for the Picasso Museum.  One of the only museums open in Paris on Monday.

There is no rhyme or reason to when shops are open here and it's the most anti-American thing in the universe.  When we were in Bayeux we tried to go out to dinner on a Wed night and could not find a decent place open. I mean, its Wed night?!  Don't you want to feed people and make money?  The restaurants, when they are open, are only accepting customers from 7 to 9 anyways.  And they turn over the tables only once per night.  How do they make any money? 

So in the AM, we cram some education into Declan's unwilling brain and then we all head out for some shopping before we got to the Picasso Musee.  Cal gets some Adias shoes, very cute, tres cher.  Declan decides to spend some of his spending money on some artisanal chocolate fish that he saw in a window.  21 euros makes for one fabulous chocolate fish.  This shop is one of 21 artisanal chocolate shops in the area near our apartment.  Their display windows are amazing.  ( More pictures anon - we don't have any wifi currently and it's hard to upload pics).  We come back and consume 1/2 the fish.

We head out to see some Picasso.  We take the Metro. We get off and walk for a while.  Blake is the leader.  He did live here for a year. We stop.  The boys run around us as we look at the map.  I yell.  They sulk.  We walk some more.  Then we stop to look at the map again.  The pattern repeats. 30 minutes later.  One tired slap happy 5 year old later.  We find the museum. Its's closed.  Not just closed for the day. ( I thank my stars that I read the guide book correctly)  Its closed until 2012!!!  That's a long wait.  Meantime, about 8 - 10 other Americans gather around the closed sign and pout along with us.  The boys razz us.  We laugh and adjust our plans.  I think they were mainly glad that they didn't have to look at any art.  And now we have something to talk about.

Paris

Paris wins.   Sorry London.  You are fabulous and I can understand you better, but Paris wins.  I mean, it's Paris.  Paris! We are staying in St. Germain des Pres and this morning there was a organic street market right outside our door.  I bought the most expensive melon in the world but it was fabulous and worth every euro. We had a perfect Parisian Sunday today. Run in Luxenbourg Gardens.  Buy 2 baguettes s.v.p. Lunch with an old friend of Blake's from his AFS days.  Lovely Noelle and her mother Edith.  Had the perfect melon. Noelle said, "Are melons in season?" "Non!"  I cried!  "But look at the color!"  They ate.  They appreciated.  Fantastic.  Then to the Luxenbourg again for the park.  They boys climbed around.  Cal rode the carousel and got 3 rings off the side, lancing them using a stick.  He was so pleased with himself it was if you had given him a $100.  Then fresh crepes filled to the brim with Nutella.  Then a short metro ride to the Eiffel Tower.  Then a long wait in line for the ONLY bathroom within walking distance of the tower.  With 9 million visitors a year you'd think they'd put in more. Up to the second floor.  Nice view with the sun setting behind us.  Then home with a very opinionated Algerian taxi driver.  He no likey our current policy in Libya.

This is after a Bateaux Mouches ride along the Seine last night with a funny tour guide.  Paris wins.

BUT... we did have a wonderful time in Chartres.  We had a wonderful fully French meal in a small restaurant called La Tripot.  The food was unbelievable.  I had dorade, fish w/ clam sauce.  Declan had monkfish in a lobster sauce, Blake had steak, Cal tried beef cheeks.  It was so good and there was so much food but the best thing about it was that it was so French.  Small place, huge menu, loooooong meal. So typical.  I don't know how he fed us so much food on what we paid but it was fantastic.  Oh the Cathedral was nice too.

- Connan

Its been 26 years since I lived here as an AFS student, and I've returned from time to time - but never in as comfortable a dwelling. We're in a lovely apartment in the 6th arrondissment that we rented form Donna Evers, a  real estate friend in Bethesda.  After several nights of, shall we say, family sleeping in Bayeux and Chartres, it's nice to have a full apartment where everyone can spread out.  We had lunch in a cafe, did some basic grocery shopping, and then we took Declan and Callum for a ride down the Seine on the famous Bateaux Mouches.  They were thrilled to see the Eiffel Tower all lit up.  Now, we sit and drink Bordeaux and plan the rest of the week.  Other than the normal kid-friendly monuments, our agenda includes the Catacombs, Versailles, Oysters and Sancerre at a cafe, Les Puces (flea markets), the new Pina Bausch movie by Wim Wenders, Lee Bruer's controversial STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE at the Comedie Francaise, and plenty of gourmet chocolate ( Declan in particular, plans to use his 40 euros of spending money to buy a big chocolate fish that we saw in a high end boutique off of Rue de Rennes).

-Blake

D Day or Declan Day!

Nous sommes arrives en France.  Took the Eurostar – fast and easy from St Pancras to Paris, rented a car and headed North to Bayeux.  Couldn’t have been easier. We have settled into a lovely hotel, full of Americans and Brits on their way to explore Normandy.  It has the best Wifi so far, fast and free!!  That’s the way we like it.  This AM after being fortified with chocolat chaud and croissants we headed for Omaha beach.  It was foggy and cool all day, good exploring weather.  Declan has been pumped to go here for months.

Being out on that beach is awesome in the true sense of the word.  You know the stories, you’ve seen the movies but walking on that beach today, as foggy and windy as it was, it gave one a palpible sense of what it must have been like as a 18 year old, after months of training, heading towards that beach and praying that the Germans wouldn’t pick you off, or you wouldn’t drown or you’d make it through the next 24 hours.  That water looked cold and those hills were high.

We drove to the American cemetery where over 9000 are buried. Fantastic visitors center with an honor roll call, specific stories about a few of the guys who are buried there, and an interactive site where you can find a specific grave.   There were 3 Robisons and 1 Morrissey buried there.

The a lunch of omlettes and fresh mussels et frites for lunch and then back to the coast where we saw Pointe du Hoc where 200 Army Rangers climbed up a 200 ft cliff, took out a German gun fortification and hung on for two days while they waited for reinforcements.  There are tons of craters and bunkers and stuff to climb over and metal rebar sticking out of the ground to snag your ankle on. Tetanus city! It was fantastic.

Then off to see some more fortifications.  Then home for dinner and WiFi.  Cal had a good afternoon chasing Declan and insisting that he see, climb, and do everything exactly the same way.  Same D-Day experience, same pizza for dinner, same crepe for dessert.  But he slept in the car for a while and missed this HUGE gun fortification near Juno Beach...

At dinner we talked about why WWII still has such a hold over us even now. Blake says that it was the last war of consensus which everyone understood as good vs. evil.  I think that it was because we were willing to sacrifice so much for something bigger than ourselves: freedom and liberty.  They seemed more tangible because they were threatened. Declan thinks it was because of the cost, in life, property and money.  What do you think?

Demain, Mont St. Michel.