Churches

On our last day in Germany (yes, we are finally at the end of our trip!), it poured. And poured. It didn't start out that way. In fact, it looked like an OK day when we we decided to sit under umbrellas and have Italian food for lunch. In the middle of our dinner, the rain started. At first we were OK but then it splashed up to hit my skirt. And then the rain got heavier and we started getting wet. I used my umbrella to stay dry while we finished our lunch and left the restaurant. There was a church nearby that looked interesting so we ducked into it.

Anyway, back to the story. We spent the day going in and out of churches before having dinner with John's host family. All in all, a good last day of our trip (even though we didn't make it to Checkpoint Charlie).

AHa - Alles Handarbeit

As I mentioned in a previous post, we went to Alt Koepenick based on a recommendation of a fellow knitter. When we got to the area, we looked around, found the yarn shop on Rosenstrasse (which was closed for lunch) and went and had lunch in the Rathskeller and then went back. It was a lovely little shop with a decent selection of yarn. I got some fun yarn to make socks striped in the colors of the German flag. They also had what I is my favorite yarn from the trip. I really wish that I had bought more of the tangerine colored silk/merino blend because it is such a beautiful color and I don't even like orange. I got enough to make a scarf for a friend but when I mentioned it to my mom, she oohed over it so now I think I am going to try to find another yarn to go with it so that I can make two scarves, one for my friend, one for my mom. Or maybe I'll just be a good daughter...

Ka De We

Ka De We is Germany's largest department store. Since we had been to Harrods in London, I wanted to see how Ka De We compared. Well, that and the guidebook said that it had everything from yarn to washing machines. Yep, that means I wanted to see the yarn. :) So, we hopped off the bus tour to stop at the store and walked in. Wow! It is massive.

We found a store directory (really useful and needed) and found that the yarn was located at -1. We assumed that meant it was downstairs. So, we walked through the sock department looking for an escalator or lift (elevator) trying to find our way down. However, the elevators stopped at the ground floor. So, we looked through the sock department some more (it was the biggest sock department I have ever seen since it was the size of a small shop in Ireland). Nope, still no way to get below ground level. Then we looked at the store directory again. -1 wasn't in the main building. There was another building to the store across the street!

When we stepped outside, I noticed that there was also a pharmacy building. The craft building was labeled in a funky way (which I quite liked). We went inside and to look at yet more yarn. John found some sock yarn that he wants me to make socks for him (I will learn how to make socks later this month) and I found sock yarns to make for some friends and maybe a pair for myself as well. The yarn that John chose for himself is Opal sock yarn based on the colors in a Hundertwasser painting. I also found a wonderful lilac baby alpaca which I am hoping to make into a hat (and by I found, I mean John found). I was very happy to find when we got home and I showed off my finds to the girls at This is Knit that other than the alpaca, I got good prices. :)

Oh, we didn't have time to wander the rest of the store (aka the main building)...

Boat Tour

After the bus tour we hopped onto a boat tour on the Spree river. That is the same river that we canoed on in the Spreewald. In Berlin all of the little byways have formed back together though and it's back to being a proper river again. It was such a nice sunny day there were lots of people out relaxing on the river banks in the many "beach" bars. It's really too bad Dublin doesn't have something similar. We've never been on the Liffey Voyage tour but it's hard to believe it'll match up. The Berlin tour is a nice tour where the serve beer and desserts on the boat. We both brought our own ice creams on board but I stole John's. :)

Gedächtniskirche

The next day we opted to take one of those ubiquitous Hop-On/Hop-Off bus tours that you see in every city that gets even the smallest number of tourists. We made the choice since we only had a very limited time in Berlin and thought it'd be a good way to at least see the outsides of a few places while getting between the main sites. One of the things John really wanted to show me was the
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche (Memorial Church). It's a church that was built at the end of the 19th century but was bombed in 1943. Instead of demolishing it or restoring it to its former glory it's been left as a memorial to victims of war. A new modern church has been built on a portion of the site but the real draw is the remnants of the original. It's interesting to see them together and nice to see something that hasn't been restored to look artificially old.

A couple Berlin sites

One evening, we wandered around the eastern part of Berlin. On our wanderings, we saw the Brandenburg Tor which was built in the late 1700s to represent peace. After Napoleon concurred Berlin, he took the top of the gate with him as war spoils. When the Nazis were in power, they used the gate to symbolize their power. When the Berlin wall was built, the gate was closed.

After seeing the gate, we then wandered towards our hotel and happened upon the Holocaust Memorial and Jewish museum. Unfortunately, the visitor centre was closed so we couldn't see it. The memorial is quite striking, especially at dusk. The ground is uneven and the pillars are as well so there is this surreal wavy characteristic to it. As you get further into the memorial, the pillars also get taller. It is well worth a visit.

Schloss Koepenick

Upon a recommendation of a fellow knitter, we made a trip down to Alt Koepenick to check out a yarn shop. Alt Koepenick is on the southern part of Eastern Berlin and is a lovely little village. Since we like castles, we went to check out the schloss and I was pleasantly surprised. Instead of being a "typical" palace, it is actually a palace museum. It had pieces from palaces around Europe and also had some rooms decorated the way different classes would have it so we were able to see the styles of the middle class as well as the aristocracy.

One of the main things that I enjoyed about the palace was the amount of woodwork. Because my dad worked with wood, I am interested in the different techniques. The museum had information about two different techniques to create designed wood: marquetry and inlay. We also learned that bier steins are not just a tourist thing, people did actually use them and they were decorated in the past.

Spreewald

On our way from Cottbus back to Berlin, we decided to stop and see a couple sites. One of them was my favorite of the trip: the Spreewald. It is a Unesco biosphere reserve site and is a series of slow flowing rivers. The only way to reach most of the area is by boat. The residents get their mail by boat and the residents are of Sorb descent. The Sorbs are of Slavic descent and are a small minority living in the area.

We rented a canoe and paddled around the area for a couple hours. It was a warm, sunny day and the perfect way to spend it. I used John's camera to take the pictures because if it got wet/wrecked it wouldn't be as expensive to replace as mine. :)