But anyway. The worst hostess ever. I suppose I am not as bad as that lady who lives in a Gingerbread house, entices young children to visit, locks them in cages and then fattens them up before eating them. I am definitely nowhere near THAT bad. I just get really excited about having guests. Too excited maybe. A little to eager to make sure everything goes perfectly...
It is amazing what I learned about myself and my host country when two friends from Boston came to visit in January.
They were my first visitors, and I should give them a lot of credit for flying to Berlin in the middle of January. Lucky for us all, January in Berlin was incredibly mild. We haven´t had more than flurries basically since the beginning of the year.
Malka and Hannah arrived on a Sunday morning, and I met them at the airport (actually I woke up at 4 in the morning out of excitement). It was pretty incredible to seem them after about 8 months and to get news of Beantown, currently under about 3 feet/1 meter of snow. People from Boston taught me what winter really is, so it is fitting that the girls brought me long underwear and wool socks, even though they had to peel theirs off just about as soon as we reached my apartment (it was about 50 degrees F). They also brought me chocolate chip cookies, baked by Malka´s mom. YUM. And, 3 boxes of matzah ball soup mix. I have whined about my need for matzah ball soup for weeks now, and the call was finally heard. Malka offered to bring me matzah meal so I could make my own, but I refused. What I miss is the mix since that is what my grandma uses (she also puts the matzah balls in wantan soup broth . uhh just like in the old country...) The cookies were rationed out by the three of us over the course of the week - the matzah ball mix I am saving (just having the boxes in my room on my table is a weird little snippet of home).
What we did:
Well, they got the Rachel style tour of Berlin, which means I walked too fast for way too long until they exhaustedly reminded me about things like, uh, food (I can´t help if I was raised to believe that eating lunch is a sign of personal weakness). We looked at lots of buildings (Hannah is an architect), and I didn´t really know what most of them were, but I guessed anyway. We stared at the canal a lot (I like water). I gave them my first official tour of the Centrum Judaicum, and took them to the Berlin Wall memorial. We sat in cafes and walked through farmers and crafts markets. I introduced them to the Döner kebab (Turkish immigrants´fast food contribution to German cuisine... some kind of processed meat roasted on a spit, stuffed into flat bread with salad - it´s more popular in Germany than sausage!). We visited the city of Potsdam, former capital of the Prussian empire, toured palaces and learned that gardens suck in the winter - no flowers and all the statues get covered with wooden boxes, visited one of the Russian BUKAS who lives in Potsdam who overfed us with all of the "german" food and beverage she had in her fridge (a very jet-lagged Malka fell asleep on her kitchen table). We went to the city of Dessau to visit the Bauhaus - an important early 20th century achitectural school.
We got a private tour (the benefit of being a tourist in Germany), and I attempted to translate the very very enthusiastic guide who talked for two hours with us (they were good sports) and then we stopped in Wittenberg where they saw the home and famous church where Luther posted his 95 Theses (ok, I sort of stole some of the tourism ideas from the Humboldt foundation study trip). And while I worked they toured about a million museums (many of which I have not even visited yet) and due to a lack of cell phone, we had to be pretty old-fashioned and actually plan places and times to meet up. Ok, I was sort of bossy, over enthusiastic about something, under enthusiastic about... others... but all in all, it was a great trip.
Observations we made together about Germany:
Every commercial property is either a bakery, a döner stand, or a shoe store. Even non-German cuisine manages to incorporate cabbage in a shocking way. Public transportation here is amazing (I told you I am sort of obsessed with public transportation). They actually tell you when the next train is coming... and then it comes on time. Americans smile a lot more at strangers (oh I have so much to say about this - I think the further east you travel in Europe the less socially acceptable it is to smile at strangers... apparently in Russia it means you are basically an idiot).
They learned some German words: I was really critical of pronunciation, despite the fact that my own is atrocious. Some favorite words were "entschuldigung" which means "pardon", and is truly just fun to say, and "tschüss" which is "bye" and sounds like a combination of the word "juice" and "Jews"! It can also be said in a sing song voice, "Choooooooooss" or made cutesy "Choooseeeee".
Then Hannah had to head back to Boston, and Malka stayed for a few more days. At Malka´s suggestion we spent the day in a small town near Berlin, called Werder, relaxing, wandering around, enjoying the Sunday coffee and cake (kaffee und kuchen) culture in a small cafe in rural Germany. Then we took two days and visited Dresden, a city I had not yet seen.
Malka had her first experience in a hostel (now that is a truly German travel experience), I learned about Malka´s obsession with cheese... she really likes it a lot... attended Malka´s first Opera (!!) - Carmen- at the famous SemperOper:
saw the famously restored Frauenkirche, a church that was totally destroyed in WW2 bombing (literally there was a bit of a wall remaining: (the dark area is the only part from the original building)
and now the church is brand spanking new - not an uncommon occurrence in German post war, and post reunification "restoration" if you could even call complete rebuilding that.) We also visited the new synagogue in Dresden
a giant cube shaped building meant to allude to the ancient temple, but which looks more like an Egyptian tomb. Inside it is quite beautiful,
All in all it was great to have Malka and Hannah visit. I hope they enjoyed their first experience in Germany.
(Pictures of the first part of the trip will be added later. Hannah has a fancy camera and was our personal photographer!)
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