Berlin--through fresh eyes

There are many great things about having friends in town but high up on the list is the ability to see your city from a new perspective.

Even though we've only been in Berlin for two months, we were already beginning to grow numb to the beauty, oddity, and excitement that living in a new city brings. That "Pinch me, I'm in Europe" feeling was already growing thin and turning into something more like "Pinch me and wake me up from this horrible German tragedy." Tia and Sean's trip couldn't have come at a better time and it allowed us to step back a bit and recalibrate.

These are some of the things they reminded us of:

1. Biking in Berlin is popular because it's a scenic and visually stimulating city that you can not truly appreciate in a car. Tia and Sean are both avid bikers so I knew that the best way for them to appreciate it was on a bike. We lucked out and got a bit of sun on Wednesday and took a wonderful 6 hour bike tour through Berlin. All three of us learned alot and now I have a list of places I want to go back and explore in greater detail.

2. Beer can be appreciated by people who claim not to like it. Everyone knows that Germany is not known for its food outside of beer and wursts. One of the first questions friends have asked us back home is whether we've enjoyed the beer here. Unfortunately, neither one of us are big beer drinkers so before this week we couldn't comment. But on Thursday we learned that the industrious Berliners have found a way to court even the most finicky drinkers. To call it a beer would be insulting to beer officionatos but Berlin has created a beer cocktail with grenadine in it and it's great. Doesn't taste like beer at all, in fact, which is the point I guess. I never could get them into currywurst though.....

3. Some Germans are nice, others...not so much. Some of our biggest laughs this week has been seeing their reaction to how truly awful people can treat you in this city. Tia and I were scolded for asking in Prague to taste the ice cream before buying, told that although it was possible we would absolutely not be permitted to have blueberries put inside our pancakes, questioned for wanting our eggs freshly scrambled when fake ones had already been cooked, and told in no uncertain terms that the train ticket we used to board the train to Prague was not a valid one. The key to it is learning not to take anything personally, give back as much as you get (auf English, bitte), and to take it in stride. Quite a few laughs were had this week as we relived these absurdities.

4. If for no other reason, living here makes our lives interesting. I won't minimalize the difficulty of starting to adjust to living in a foreign culture. I will say, however, that having the Bennetts visit reminded both of us how rare of an opportunity ours is and how rich our memories and our marriage will be as a result. Even in this short week, we have done so much--none of which would have occured had we not been transferred here. To have friends, like Tia and Sean (and we luckily have many like them), come to visit only enrichs our experience and we hope their visit encourages other friends to follow suit. (Hint. Hint.) Two years will fly by fast so we plan to soak in every ounce of the journey. With any luck, we'll have our pals to share it with.