The Hizzle of T-Fizzle

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03/31/2007:
After the previous marathon day of tourism and getting up early, we decided to treat ourselves to a chance to sleep in. This was, after all, a vacation! The previous night, we had decided our itinerary. We had read in at least one of our tourbooks (and Maria and Colin corroborated this), that state-run museums (including most of the museums on Museum Island) were free on Sundays, so this seemed like a good day to really burn ourselves out on museums.Mike, Mary and Kate were interested in the Anne Frank Zentrum. X and I were not too keen on going there for a few reasons, one being the cost and another being that it seems a bit odd to have an Anne Frank museum in a city where Anne Frank never actually set foot. Sort of disingenuous. Almost as though, since tourists come to Berlin to see WWII/Nazi/Holocaust history and Anne Frank is probably the most recognizable human face of the Holocaust, someone decided it would be smart (and perhaps profitable) to open an Anne Frank museum in Berlin. Also, after yesterday’s harrowing visit to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, we were in the mood for something less depressing.As it happens, the Museum Otto Weidt Workshop For The Blind is located in the same nondescript alleyway near Hackescher Markt. The guidebook’s description sounded promising and with no admission charge, the price was right. Our morning plan was to check out Hackescher Markt, the nearby Hackesche Höfe, and the respective museums. After lunch we would move on to Museum Island.

After breakfast and a pleasant ride to Hackescher Markt, we first tracked down an ATM. This fancy-pants ATM gave back money in multiple denominations which was nice to not have a fistful of C-notes. We then found our way to Hackesche Höfe; an eclectic and quaint chain of courtyards lined with trendy restaurants and boutiques and some artwork. Unfortunately with it being Sunday we found most of the stores to be closed. In hindsight, this was probably a good thing, as it prevented X from spending oodles of money

Next we tracked down the alley that plays the gatekeeper for both the Anne Frank Zentrum and Museum Otto Weidt, the entrance to which would be pretty much impossible to identify if someone from the Anne Frank museum happened to forget to put out the sign welcoming you to the museum.

The alley has a lot of interesting artwork in it. To wit:

This large metal sculpture.

This planter. I could be wrong, but I *think* this thing is actually an old-timey urinal. Yes, I did a bit of modification to this picture.

There was also oodles of graffiti, but none of it was all that memorable.

From here we split up for our respective destinations.

Museum Otto Weidt is really neat. For one thing, it’s mostly empty. OK there are some workbenches:

But otherwise there’s not much there. Why is this cool? Well because they decided not to collect a lot of interesting but not actually historically germaine artifacts and corral them. They could have packed this little place with all sorts of WWII memorabilia and multimedia. Instead they simply chose to tell the story of a lesser-known Oskar Schindler, and it’s a fascinating story. Like Schindler, Otto Weidt risked his life and freedom to save his employees who were not only Jewish, but blind. These folks were making brooms and brushes. For a long time Weidt helped them escape deportation first by getting this workshop listed as “vital to the war effort,” and then later by bribing and cajoling Nazi inspectors. When one of Weidt’s clerks, Alice Licht was deported to Auschwitz, Weidt went to the concentration camp under false pretenses and with the help of a Polish worker managed to plant a room, money and clothing in town. Alice Licht escaped Auschwitz and survived. Another survivor named Inge Deutschkron wrote a book about her experience called Outcast.

Weidt had kept Licht and her parents hidden in this small room behind a false wall in the workshop. They were caught after a Jewish informant told the Gestapo where they were hidden. Weidt saved Licht but her parents were never heard from again.

This is definitely worth checking out.

X and I finished shortly before the rest of the team and waited in the alley for the others to finish up.

When they came out, they seemed awfully jovial considering where they just had been!

We also saw some of the memorials that can be found throughout the city in front of buildings that were occupied by Jews.

The tiles set in the ground give the names of the occupants, when they were deported and where they were killed. The harrowing reminders can be seen literally all over the city if you are watching for them.

This picture will take you to the Otto Weidt album.

We then stopped for lunch at a little place under the S-Bahn tracks called Rocco’s. It was Italian-ish. Pretty decent for a quick lunchtime snack.

Off we went to Museum Island! Museum Island is an island in the river Spree that, as the name suggests, has a lot of islands on it, along with the Berliner Dom. As noted above, most of the museums are state-run (Stadtmuseen). As also noted above, the Stadtmuseen were said to be free on Sundays.

We thought the Pergamon sounded interesting. It’s full off antiquities and archeological wonders. It has a glass atrium in the front of it. In the April sun, the glass atrium was probably 100 degrees or more. Positively sweltering. We had to dump our coats and bags in lockers (which, BTW, you get your money back when you replace the key!) per museum policy, but we would have died if we hadn’t done so. When we finally get to the desk (I am pouring down sweat by now) we attempt to acquire a ticket only to learn that: NO! Die Museen sind nicht heute frei! The museums are NOT free today! Perhaps this was a fairly recent change, but it seems like now museums are free during the evenings on some weeknight.

We huddled together to decide what to do next. At this point I was so hot that I determined that I didn’t care what we did as long as the next course of action included leaving the sweltering glass atrium AND SCHNELL! The fastest way to accomplish this goal was clearly to go get our stuff out of the lockers and get outdoors. Who knew if the whole museum was like an oven!

Outside, we grouped and decided on our next course of action. Colin and Maria had told us about another museum near the island called the DDR Museum. Our eyes lit up upon hearing about an entire museum devoted to Dance Dance Revolution! Not so much…What we Anglophones call former East Germany, the German Democratic Republic or GDR is in German the Deutsche Demokratische Republik…DDR. The museum is about Communist East Germany. But they still described it as fun and cool. Not free, but obviously we were going to have to pay to go in one of these museums and the DDR Museum seemed more interesting than antiquities or art.

But first, outside the Pergamon we noticed an outdoor market stretching along the riverfront and decided to go check it out. It was evenly split between Flohmarkt type secondhand junk and people selling handcrafts and other new products. There was also some live music. There was not a whole lot to see here, but we did find a woman selling earthenware plates with line-drawings of animals on them that we thought were cute. We bought 3 little plates to adorn the wall of our dining room. The woman running the stand asked where we were from. Cautious of not being the “ugly American” who assumes that everyone knows where Philadelphia is, I first told her we were from the US and did not volunteer Philadelphia until she asked what city. I was tempted to tell her we were from King Of Prussia because I imagine that someone living in the part of Germany formerly known as Prussia might get a kick out of learning that somewhere in the US a city was named after an inn that was named after Old Fritz. But, I was concerned that due to lingustic differences she might not have a clue what I was talking about.

Then we went on our way to the DDR Museum. Maria and Colin had given us a general idea of where it was and getting there involved a pleasant jaunt across Museum Island where we saw:

The Altes Museum

The Berliner Dom

The Fernsehturm

And this lovely fountain. I am quite proud of myself for capturing the rainbow and even prouder of myself for managing to accentuate it in post-production.

Despite seeing all these lovely things (and other things) we had not found the DDR Museum. The hour was getting late. We were running out of time before we were to meet up with the others. We stopped in another museum both to see if we could get in for free (maybe it was just the Pergamon) and also to get directions to the DDR Museum. The person there told us it was near the Dom. After wandering around the Dom, we asked at the box office and got some odd directions about going around the side of the Dom and down some steps. It took some searching, but indeed the DDR Museum is located at the foot of one of the bridges crossing the Spree that is just behind the Dom! At last!

The DDR Museum is cute and somewhat campy. If nothing else it is a pleasant break from looking at art and antiquities and staring bleary-eyed at captions on placards (that might not even be in English). It takes you through aspects of life in the DDR, revealed by opening doors and cabinets. They have mockups of apartments, clothes people wore, diaries and all sorts of other neat things. One of the most fun things is the body of old Trabant. You can actually get in the car and “drive” it as you watch on a screen footage of what the old East Berlin looked like. Might be cooler if they made it actually interactive so that your steering actually had an impact on where the car went. Either way it’s a good photo op.

The DDR Museum was worth the ~10 Euro each that it cost. It’s also one of the few places in Berlin where you can actually use a credit card so it can save you a trip to the ole bankomat.

But now it was time to head out to the rendezvous point. While we go, you can check out the rest of the Museum Island pics here:

After picking up the rest of the group and sitting down for a little while to rest our legs, we boarded a bus in the general direction of where we thought we wanted to eat dinner. But we really didn’t know specifically WHERE we were going to eat. After digging through some of our guidebooks, X presented us with a few choices and we settled on Carib a Caribbean restaurant (but you knew that, right?) in the Schöneberg section of town.
We were greeted in English by a jovial guy who looked a lot like David Bowie. Was it THAT obvious that we were American? I feel like we all kept a fairly low profile but I guess you still stick out. In any case, he was really nice and a lot of fun. He was mixing up Shandies with fresh ginger at the bar (and a lot of other fruity drinks for the girls). When it came time to order, I went with the old standby jerk chicken (mainly because I wanted plantains!) and David Bowie Guy asked me how spicy I wanted it. Remembering Maria and Colin’s note on spicy foods in Germany (”At one restaurant they are given a choice of spiciness from 1 to 5 and people ask for ZERO!”) I said “Very spicy.” As if he could read my mind, Mr. Bowie said “The chef is not German; he is a Jamaican native…” That set me straight. “Medium, please!”

Food was great. We had a few more drinks. Kate convinced David Bowie to take a picture of us. This may be the only picture of the entire group. Maybe they took a pic with Mike’s camera, too. Either way, it’s not in my gallery (yet). I’ll add it when I get it.

It really wasn’t very late, but we were bushed. And a little bit buzzed. We made it a fairly early night. We had fairly big plans for the next day and we would need the rest.

To see all of the pics from the trip, head on over to the Gallery!

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03/30/2007:
After a busy day 1 and a fairly late night, we had no trouble sleeping and were able to get up fairly early in order to make breakfast and meet Maria and Colin to see a flohmarkt and taste some German street food. Buoyed by a tasty breakfast and some of strong coffee, we took the U-Bahn down to Maria and Colin’s apartment.

After relaxing for a few minutes, off we went to Rathaus Schöneberg for the flohmarkt. Flohmarkt is literally a flea market, and these are a big part of life in Berlin. All the refrigerators I saw in Berlin (of course I only saw 2 or 3) were quite small. I imagine most Berliners don’t keep much food in stock; they just get things fresh at the flohmarkt 2 or 3 days each week. The square was full of tables and stalls selling flowers, meats, strong cheeses, clothes, jewelry and pretty much anything else you could imagine. We wandered around awhile picking up some gifts for the homefront. X got a necklace in keeping with her tradition of buying unique jewelry whenever she travels. I would later learn that Rathaus Schöneberg was also the site of John F. Kennedy’s famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech.

As the day wore on and we got hungry, we decided to get some food. I love sausage so I got some sausage mit brotchen. Brotchen being a little roll (literal translation: small bread) that basically serves as a handle to hold the sausage that is probably a foot long. Most of us got the same thing, but Kate (being of Alsatian heritage) could not resist tasting the Flammkuchen, a very tasty treat that is akin to pizza. We also had some orange juice. On the plane I observed that SGG and his entourage were dropping OJ faster than an LA cop. At the flohmarkt we noticed a huge preponderance of folks squeezing fresh OJ. OJ is apparently VERY popular here. It smells heavenly being squeezed. Colin warned us that it was different from the OJ back home and it certainly is. It’s not nearly as sweet, but it is quite tasty.

After lunch we parted ways. Maria and Colin, who were not actually on vacation, had to actually go be real people for awhile. Colin showed us the way to the station and we then embarked on a long day of hardcore tourism in the heart of Berlin’s Unter Den Linden section.

First stop: The Reichstag. The Reichstag is the home of the German parliament and a turbulent history. You can read the history over at the Wikipedia so there’s no need to recount them here. As a tourist stop, the Reichstag sits on the end of a huge open space. After East and West Germany reunited, the building was renovated and capped with a huge modern glass dome. Tourists may go to the roof of the building and walk a ramp to the top of the dome. At certain times it is also possible to observe parliamentary proceedings. There was a line waiting to get in…it didn’t take long, although X lobbied to skip entering the building and just “check it off.” There were some buskers to entertain us while we waited.

X bought a bottle of water and was dismayed to find it was carbonated. In many parts of Europe, bottled water is carbonated by default. I guess after a long history of water that was not safe to drink, it still isn’t very popular. If you are a water drinker and are ever travelling in Germany, here is your mantra: Stilleswasser. This will score you normal water (or at least prevent you from getting fizzy water). In a restaurant you can also order Leitungswasser which is tap water (literally pipe-water). You may get funny looks. We stuck with Stilleswasser mainly because it’s a pretty much a cognate and so it’s easier to remember than Leitungswasser.

In any case, the line did not take long and it was well worth the wait.

The Reichstag Building

The dome

The dome presents both some beautiful views (and it was a nice day!) and the opportunity for some interesting abstract shots.

Here is a picture of the spectacular central rail station, Berlin Hauptbahnhof

And an abstraction from part of the dome.

This pic will take you to the Reichstag album.

At the base of the dome there is also a history of the Reichstag building and the German parliament (Bundestag).

Upon leaving the Reichstag, we scratched our heads at some nearby memorials before making off for one of Berlin’s most well-known icons, the Brandenburg Gate. It is a very cool and imposing structure, although it was thronged with tourists.

There is the gate. Note the crowd.

You also get a nice view of the Funkturm from here. The former East Berlin side is under massive construction and revitalization.

This pic will take you to the Brandenberg Gate album.

Our next stop was the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

As you approach the memorial, the stone stelae do not appear to go more than about 6 feet high or stretch very far. What you do not realize is that pathways actually descend and the farthest stone you can see here is pretty much the midway point - the Memorial basically occupies a city block. If you view the satellite map of the area, you can get a feel for the magnitude of its size.

As you approach the center, the stelae quickly grow over your head. 303 of the stelae are over 4m high with the tallest being 4.7m. There are 2711 stelae. Despite what I’m sure you are wondering (and what I also wondered) there is no significance to the number. It was simply the number of .95m x 2.38m stelae they could fit in the space! In an interesting twist there was a controversy because the anti-graffiti paint used to treat the stelae was developed by a company that had participated in the holocaust. One of the company’s subsidiaries even produced Zyklon B.

After wandering the labyrinth of stelae to get yourself in the appropriately somber and contemplative mood, you will eventually find your way into the underground museum where there are artifacts, exhibits, and a reading of the names of all known victims. It is harrowing and fascinating.

This pic will take you to the rest of the album.

After finishing at the museum we stopped for a snack at the nearby Terrace Cafe. We next ventured to Bebelplatz, the site of a Nazi bookburning. There exists now a window in the ground that looks into a basement library, painted stark white, devoid of any books. It serves as a memorial to the unfortunate event. It was now beginning to get dark…we were getting tired but we still had one more stop in our itinerary, Checkpoint Charlie.

My honest opinion of the Checkpoint and the accompanying museum: Do a walkby. It’s a bit out of the way, the museum is a bit expensive, and the “checkpoint” building that stands there today is not even original (nor are the faux Soviet artifacts being peddled nearby, I’m sure). The museum does have some fascinating stories about the evolving technology of the wall and the ever more ingenious methods devised to get to the other side. The museum and the man behind it have a fascinating story, but the unfortunate part is that he was by no means a professional curator, and it shows - the museum is packed with artifacts and exhibits that seem to have no logical flow and are even duplicated in multiple places. It’s long and hard to follow. Perhaps it was hunger and fatigue that tainted my judgment a bit, but I don’t think so.

You’ve all seen the booth and the big sign; no point taking a pic of that, and no photography allowed inside the museum itself.

Upon leaving Checkpoint Charlie, we sought a place to eat somewhere not too far from there. We decided to check out the spectacular Sony Centre. We actually had a hard time finding our way into it (suprising because it’s huge). Once we did, we looked around at our choices and settled on the Hofbrauhaus which is sort of chain of breweries. The food is standard German food…schnitzels and the like. We were able to get beer in litre quantities which was fun. I had a dish with some very doughy dumplings and pork. It was good, although it was probably one of the least memorable meals of the trip. We also got cool pins for drinking mass quantities of beer.

At this point we were dead tired. We slogged to the U-Bahn station and finally made our way back to the apartment for a well-deserved rest. But not without incident - when we got into the station, we realized there was a train right at the platform! What good luck! We ran in and sat down on the train. The doors closed. The train did not move. After a few seconds someone noticed that we were the only people actually ON the train - everyone else was on the platform. But we were trapped on the train - pushing the “exit” button on the doors did nothing! The girls were beginning to panic, but Mike and I felt that we were perfectly safe - we were on a train in a well-lit station that was full of people. Sure, we could not leave the train, but aside from looking like complete idiots and providing the a good laugh for the folks on the platform, there did not seem to be any immediate danger. Eventually a conductor came by and let us out. Turns out the train was being taken out of service, so he locked all the cars down so that he could go through and empty them one-by-one to make sure no one stowed away to wherever the U-Bahn trains go when they are taken out of service.

THEN we finally made our way back to the apartment for that well-deserved rest.

To see all of the pics from the trip, head on over to the Gallery!

This map is interactive! Click an icon to get more information or click here to view it in greater detail.

03/29/2007:
At last the day had come to depart on our next adventure. We all piled in Mike’s car to head off to Berlin, Germany with a side trip to Prague, Czech Republic. The trip to Newark was uneventful. We got the airport and checked in and then went to get some food. Our outbound flight was delayed by a couple of hours which was probably a blessing in disguise - our original flight plan would have got us in to Berlin fairly early in the morning and also would have us in the air earlier in the evening. The delay meant we would not arrive in Berlin until after 10AM and we would hopefully be a little more tired and able to sleep during the flight.

While we waited for the flight, we discussed some of the places we wanted to see and began working out a rough itinerary.

Kate, having slacked off on her German-language studies, tried to pick up a crash course in the language.

Mike and Mary chilling at the gate.

Kate and X by the gate.

We boarded the plane and found our seats. I had an encounter with “Scary German Guy.” SGG might have been in a rock band. He was travelling with 4 or 5 other people. His head was completely shaved except for a 2-3 foot braided pony tail coming out of the back of his head. His beard was similarly braided and of a similar length. When I went to put my bag in the overhead compartment, I found 2 of the packets the airline leaves in every seat containing blankets, headphones, etc. These were presumably extras and were in the way, so I took them down to put them in the next bin over which had a small space that was perfect for them. Apparently they were actually claimed by SGG and Mrs. SGG. Why they didn’t keep them in their seats with them like everyone else is beyond me. SGG stood up, yoinked the bags right out of my hand, and threw them back up in the compartment. Because he didn’t say a single word, I assumed he did not speak English, so I decided that now was as good a time as any to start fumbling through German. With a combination of elementary German and hand signals, I managed to convince SGG that I was not trying to steal his blankets (Why would I? I had one of my own already!) and, again without saying a single word, he took them down and put them in his seat pocket. I put my bag up. Mrs. SGG smiled at me. A smile that said “I know he’s a jerk, but you handled him admirably.”

Later on, all of us recalled thinking “I hope this isn’t the way most Germans are!” Fortunately they are not.

The rest of the flight was fairly uneventful. I stayed up for awhile watching the movies and then tried to get some sleep. I put on an album that is approximately 70 minutes long and tried to get through it as many times as possible. I found myself falling asleep for about the middle 50 minutes and waking up for 15-20 minutes at either end. In this way, I got a fairly decent amount of sleep. I also observed during the flight that SGG and his party were all fairly good at English. Certainly better at English than I am at German. SGG’s silence was simply because SGG is…well…SGG.

I was also mildly nervous about our arrival in Berlin. This was really my first time travelling in a region where it was entirely likely that communicating in English would not be possible, and my command of the native language was not that great (I’m not fluent in Spanish, but I can at least get by…and I’ve never been in part of a Spanish-speaking country where no one speaks English). To add to the concern, we had booked an apartment for the week. We had seen pictures of this apartment online, but let’s face it - pictures are easy to fake. The place could really be a total dive, and the owner could be a total flake. I really felt bad for Mike since he had read about booking apartments for European trips and would no doubt be the bad guy if it turned out to be a disaster. I took comfort knowing that we had only paid a deposit, so if the place was a total dump we could turn tail and find a hotel.

We landed in Berlin sometime around 9 or 10AM, claimed our luggage and went through customs. Thus did we encounter our first challenge - getting a taxi to our apartment. The taxi stand was easy enough to find and did not appear to function any differently than it would in the US, however we needed to find a van large enough to carry the 5 of us and our luggage. As luck would have it, after a few minutes, just such a vehicle dropped some people off and Mary ran over to see if he could take us. Of course the driver was happy to be able to jump the line at the taxi stand (I hope he didn’t get in trouble for that) and there were no other large vans in sight, so this worked well for all of us.

It did not take long to get to the apartment building, which was in a very nice-looking area right along the river Spree, adjacent to Schloss Charlottenburg. This was encouraging - the building was at least not in a slum! We buzzed the penthouse apartment and were soon greeted by Patrick, the very warm and friendly landlord. A French expat, jazz afficionado and former restaurateur, Patrick speaks at least Engish, French and German and knows all about hospitality. All fears of a sketchy of apartment and sketchy landlord were allayed when we walked in the door. The apartment was beautiful and spacious. Patrick spent a long time showing us around and giving us advice on operating all of the appliances and fixtures, some of which are quite different from those found in the US. He lives in the penthouse with his wife and assured us that one of them would always be around if we needed help. He also gave us some tips about how to get around.

This is the main living room (and Kate’s bedroom). Clicking on it will take you to the album containing all of the pics of the apartment and the views from the balcony.

If you are interested in staying here, please let me know - we can get you in touch with Patrick. When we booked, we believed the weather would be too cold to enjoy the balcony, but it was very warm all week!

One of the appliances was a fancy Solis Super-Automatic espresso machine. Patrick clearly felt this to be one of the apartment’s greatest features. It is a great thing - beans go in one side, water goes in the other side. You select how much water you want added to the espresso, push a button, and 30 seconds later a hot cup of coffee squirts out! The coffee was very good, but Mike and I were both intrigued at the idea of a machine that squirts out a single cup of coffee in a short time. I made a note to research these things when I got home.

You may be wondering about this picture. This is the “shelf toilet.” It seems to be a German tradition. There are a lot of apocryphal stories about just WHY this is a common commode in Germany from it being a way to force men to pee sitting down (sitzspinkel) or perhaps so that you can inspect your own work to help you look out for diseases. I had read about these but didn’t really believe it was true. It is. And it’s VERY unpleasant.

And here’s a view from our balcony looking west towards Schloss Charlottenburg. The view was amazing.

This is the view back east towards central Berlin.

Again, to see the rest of the pics, click the pic of the living room or check out the album in the gallery.
After getting settled in the apartment, we went out to the grocery store, ReWe. Getting there involved a nice walk in a park along the river. I noticed a lot of graffiti around and this made me a little nervous that the neighborhood was not as safe as I thought. As the trip wore on, I realized that there was graffiti EVERYWHERE in Berlin. Grocery shopping is a great and free thing you can do as a tourist to really see how people in other countries live and eat. They don’t have any shopping bags in these grocery stores - you are supposed to bring your own. They do sell canvas totes for a couple of Euro. They make a nice cheap souvenir. Some other things we noticed are that eggs are sold un-refrigerated and they eat a lot of “paprika” potato chips, which are actually red pepper flavor and quite tasty.

Our plan was to save money by cooking breakfast every morning. We picked up eggs, bacon, bread, strawberry jam, juice and other items. We joked with Mike (who had picked up the jam) that we would never finish it, but over the course of the week I think we pretty much knocked it out!

We dropped off our groceries and decided to set out and get to work. We decided to do some “light” tourism since it was our first day and we were tired from the flight. We hopped on a bus and took this towards the Ku’Damm to visit the Hard Rock Cafe. Yes, corny, but all of us have gotten into the habit of picking up glasses, pins and whatnot at the various HRCs around the world. We also grabbed lunch there to help ease us into the particulars of the region’s food. Not that there was much German about the food in the HRC. We explored the area around the HRC a bit and then went back to the apartment to freshen up before meeting up with Maria and Colin for dinner.

We left the apartment and took the U-Bahn to Eisenacherstrasse near Maria and Colin’s apartment where Colin met us and brought us back to their place. They showed us around and we hung around catching up for a little while prior to heading out for dinner at Massai, an African restaurant. This was a great opportunity to get some fairly adventurous food. I had an assortment of meats in a sort of curry sauce. They also had some fruit-flavored beer. I had the banana flavored one and it was great. Eating in Berlin is typical Europe - it’s a relaxed pace and no one minds if you hang around in a restaurant for awhile after your meal. If you want to order something else or pay your bill, you just call them over…otherwise you will be left alone after your meal is served. Maria and Colin gave us some good tips on German culture (spicy food is not common, for instance), tourism (free state museum entry on Sunday!) and getting around (the 100 bus basically goes by all of the major tourist attractions). They also felt that Germans in general were very closed-off. Not necessarily mean like SGG, but just that they keep to themselves. I think I big part of this is simply part of urban life - New Yorkers don’t really seem all that friendly to an outside either. Another part of it is surely that they are on the rebound from a very bizarre and oppressive half-century of life.

After dinner we headed back to Schöneberg where we got some ice cream. X and I chose a flavor call Butterkeks which had all sorts of good stuff in it wafer cookies, butterscotch, etc. Very tasty. We then spent the evening walking around the Schöneberg neighborhood looking at the signs there that are part of the Bavarian Quarter Memorial. This memorial is comprised of 80 signs that are on lamp posts and illustrate the laws that were put into effect as Hitler rose to power and began oppressing Jews, homosexuals and other minorities with increasingly restrictive policies. The link will take you to a site that has pictures of all the signs and English translations of all the captions. While were there, Colin translated for us. It was an interesting experience and one that I imagine a lot of tourists do not realize exists.

Finally around 10 or 11PM, we headed back to our apartment. We had managed to make it through the entire day without falling asleep, which is a good step in battling jetlag - exhausted from our travels, none of us had any trouble sleeping through the night. I was feeling a lot better about our trip - everything that was concerning me had worked out. We even found the language barrier to be very minor - many Berliners speak good English and between the 5 of us, we could get by OK in German.

It was shaping up to be a great trip!

To see all of the pics from the trip, head on over to the Gallery!

I found a fancy-pants TomTom add-on called Tripmaster which is developed by a French enthusiast, along with a couple of other useful add-ons.  Tripmaster adds some functionality that probably should have come out of the box, including the ability to track total travel time, moving travel time, overall average speed and moving average speed.

I thought it would be interesting to record my commute times.  I would like to make this a regular feature, but it’s a bit of a process to get these charts online - I have to e-mail them from my MDA to a real computer, then I have to tweak the charts, then - since Excel does not seem to have a way to output the charts to jpg - I have to take screen shots of the charts, upload the charts to the Gallery, and then link to them in the post.  Yikes.

The charts became pretty unintelligible when i added the date labels, so I just left them out. 

Nonetheless, I found some pretty interesting information.  These charts actually go from 27 April to 31 May.  The time is recorded from the moment I leave my driveway to the moment I pull into a parking space at work.  Naturally there is no data for weekends.

Average 43 minutes.  Of the 7 above-average trips, 1 was rainy, 1 included a pit stop for gas, and 2 included an attempt to avoid heavy traffic.  I forgot or was otherwise unable to collect data on 3 days.

Average 36 Minutes.  For whatever reason, the drive home is shorter and also more consistent.  It lacks the random unexplainable traffic fluctuations of the commute to work.  I don’t have any notes.  I forgot or was unable to collect data on 4 days.

My latest batch of bread. I’m not sure if it was the way I had the towel draped over them during the second rising or what, but these loaves are wider and flatter than the others I’ve made. Since I have been able to make edible bread a few times, I felt ready to do a little experimenting. I had read in a few sources about using high heat and steam to help make a crust, so I did these at 475 for 15 min, spraying water into the oven at 5 min intervals. The result is indeed a dark brown crust. Perhaps a bit too dark? I also put sesame seeds on one loaf at X’s request. Unfortunately, the dough seemed to take a long time to rise so I didn’t pull the bread out of the oven until after 11PM. I was concerned that the brown crust would be rock hard, but as the article I read suggested, the crust indeed became soft just like “real” bread.

On the TomTom front, I had heard that the traffic service is actually currently free in the US because it isn’t really complete yet. I tried to feel TT out without trying to sound like a freeloader, and got a response that they were launching a new version of the traffic service in mid-april. I waited until then and tried to connect and still got an expiration notice.

Last week I saw someone with the same error code who said they simply had to contact TT and get their Plus account reset. They said they were told that traffic is free in the US until the end of June. So I sent TT a message and by the next day, I was getting traffic reports. The “new” service is much improved. It now reports the type of incident and the estimated delay It also shows a graphical representation on the traffic bar of how much of your remaining trip is subject to the delay. When you get to the actual traffic jam, the road itself is has a special pattern on it to illustrate the jam. The accuracy is probably about the same, that is, I found some spots where the traffic was at a dead stop and TT said nothing, while a reported 10min delay was clear in real life. That’s just a limitation of the system. They really should have some sort of user-reported traffic function. The TT can talk to the internet, so surely it can phone home and say “Hey I’m going 5 MPH on I95″ and if a statistically significant number of devices make similar reports, that information can then be relayed to other devices in the area.

For the time being, you have to think of paying for the traffic service as paying for the INTEGRATION with your device. You can get better info for free, but you currently can’t get that information shot directly to your HUD I’d have to call Traffic.com or switch to the radio. It can only be justified as a convenience cost, but it’s only about $6/month. Now that the information is useful, I probably will actually pay for it.

Of course after a couple of days, I am now getting a different message that TT Traffic is disabled, so I’m waiting on TT customer service for a fix. Speaking of their customer service, I have heard complaints that they are slow to respond and aren’t helpful. I have gotten responses to all of my questions within 24 hours. This morning I posted a follow up to my issue and got a response from the CSR within 15 minutes. They seem to be very responsive, so take heart.

Otherwise, a nice weekend. Saturday we watched Jer play rugby (pics later) and had dinner with X’s family before going to Brownies for her joint bday party with Kira. Sunday we spent the day at my parents’ new house. While their moving back west means no more beach house, it does mean that it’s faster and easier for all of us to get there. We were there pretty much all day, eating, playing games, etc. We haven’t been able to do that in awhile, and I think we’ll be able to do it more. Yay!

Congrats, Eric and Ken for being named “Rookies Of The Year.” This is Eric wearing the hat at the membership meeting/banquet this weekend. Ken wasn’t able to come, so he was spared the risk of having his pic splashed here for all the world to see….if they only knew I was here writing.

If you thought I threw a lot of stones this winter, these guys easily threw twice as many, and they’ve got the skills to prove it. And they’re all around fun guys. We all had the pleasure of learning the ropes together and they make part of a core group of newbies that all had a lot of fun together.

The hat is part of a goofy club tradition. It consists of a cheap blue hard hat and each recipient adds a trinket to it. Word on the street is they are supposed to wear it when they play. Who gets to wear it when they both play at the same time? Only time will tell.

It was great to see everyone, but it made me realize how much I miss playing already!

Other weekend highlights were Spiderman 3 and the CCCB concert. To date, flames have still not come from Lee’s tuba, but we remain ever hopeful.

One thing that always kept me from switching to linux over the years was the unavoidable fact that some things just plain don’t work in linux.  You could dual-boot with Windows, but I tried that back in my college days and find that I quickly got tired of rebooting all the time and just stopped using the linux setup. 

Now we’ve got access to free virtualization products.  We’ve been using VMWare a lot at work and it’s really handy.  It seems like a pretty robust program and therefore it ought to be REALLY hard to install, right?

Wrong.  Here is a pretty well-developed program.  Installation was this simple:  Download the RPM.  Install the RPM (I even used the GUI RPM installer).  Run a script that prompts you for various configuration options.  Start the program.

And it worked!  I didn’t have to dicker around with anything!  I just started it up, provisioned a virtual machine and kicked off the XP install.  It works like a champ.  I could probably put the XP virtual machine into full-screen mode and X would never even realize she was using a VM.  I can also give it direct raw access to my old NTFS drive.  Very convenient.

So now I have a sensible fallback.  If I find something that simply will not work under linux, I now have the option to just switch to the XP VM and do it from there - no muss, no fuss.

Another note, I set my printer up last night.  That wasn’t primetime, but it’s at least 6 o’clock news.  I had to track down a driver.  Canon isn’t too linux-friendly.  They do have some linux drivers, but they aren’t too forthcoming about drivers that work for multiple printers.  I have an IP1600 which has no linux driver, but I read reports that the IP2200 linux driver will work.  I installed the driver RPMs and this caused the printer config wizard to segfault.  The pre-populated list of drivers vanished!  Removing the IP2200 driver caused them to return.  I’m not sure what that’s about.  But once I tracked down where the .ppd file hides, I was able to choose that in the wizard and the printer worked right away.

Things are much better than they used to be, but there’s still a ways to go.

Last weekend my computer was acting a little flaky…kept crashing.  The crashes got more and more frequent.  On Sunday I went downstairs after using the computer.  A few hours later, I came upstairs and it was turned off.  After switching it on, it would just shut back down after a few seconds.  Maybe the motherboard went…maybe the power supply.  Who wants to mess with that stuff anymore?

I decided it’s time to get back into multiprocessors.  I have a 2×800MHz box that I got from work awhile back.  Already has linux on it.  I don’t really want to blow it away because I need some of the stuff on it.  But I don’t want to put my Windows drive in completely different hardware and risk losing all my data if I have to format.

The obvious solution seems to be to put my Windows drive in the linux box and start using linux at home.  These days I use mostly open source stuff anyway.  Linux is getting easier, and I’m getting better at it.
It took me 4 hours of head-pounding before I found this wonderful step-by-step on how to get my Wifi card working!  I kept finding various leads, and as usual one bit or another just doesn’t quite work right.  I think at some point I crossed this tutorial but decided to pass over it before finally coming back to it in a last-ditch effort to make it work.

Fortunately getting access to my NTFS drive was much easier.

Sorry, linux.  I’ve got a BS in Computer Science and a lot of experience and it *still* took me 4 hours to do something that should take 5 minutes.  Still not ready for prime time.  Maybe next year?

We made it back from our adventure in one piece.  I am pleased to return to a nation that uses civilized toilets.

Erstwhile updates shall hereby commence during the next few days.

Played my last game of the curling season last night.  There will be more recap later, but we won our last game, and my last stone was a very satisfying double takeout.

Throwing that last stone was about as bad as riding the last wave of the Summer in.