OK, we have to face reality now...it's been a month of traveling through Austria, Poland, and Germany, and the taxi is coming today at 9:00 to drive us to Tegel airport for our flight home leaving at 13:00. WE'RE SAD!
I guess being in another culture, totally immersed, is what we love. From having lived overseas for so long, this sensibility has been embedded forever in our psyches, in our blood, in our DNA (DO NOT ASSUME we will be coming home soon).
But we have to admit something: On these long sojourns that we have been taking in the last few years, like France for two months last year and Sicily and Portugal before that each for a month, somewhere into about the third week we both get a little tired of all the info overload, although that's what we love about travel...we think we've had enough and want to go home. But that twinge only lasts for a fleeting few moments, and then we realize how fortunate we are to be able to have these experiences, and we get back on track for more excitement about seeing and learning new things. That's when we enter the realm of no return! So now when it's actually time to leave, we DO NOT WANT TO GO! Just wrap us up and let us stay...
(We've been dying to use this photo!)
So today we force ourselves to make it official by going down to Reception to give our final Danke to Lisa for all her help and the arrangements she made for us. Everyone at the Gorki could not have been nicer. At two different times in our stay they gave us a bottle of very nice wine to make our visit special... how nice is that!
What a great gal!
We have a lot of news to catch up on since we've been away. This headline caught our eye...amazing how life has so many twists and turns, and sometimes things reverse and come around again.
I'll miss being known as Fräulein Korbinian, which is how our apartment on the 2nd floor is indicated on the 'residents' list.
We're packed and ready to go.
We go downstairs to meet the taxi, and see the inviting cafes right outside our front door. People were hanging out there until the wee hours of the morning, but now it's very quiet here, waiting for another day to wake up in sweet Berlin.
We face reality though and decide to take our final happy selfie before we board the plane.
Voila! Touchdown on American terra firma. What a fabulous trip this was!!
Having experienced the cultures and uniquness of three "new" countries on this trip we have realized what a wonderful decision we made. We moved away from our comfort zone, France and Italy, to experience something new and different, and we were not disappointed. We met many incredible people with whom we hope to stay connected for the long term. We always talk to locals wherever we travel and try to learn the culture from the inside. We don't carry our culture with us to foreign lands and always attempt to eat and sleep local, that means asking locals where they eat and staying in apartments whenever possible while avoiding hotels, especially American types. Our travel philosophy is that we want to hang out and "inhale" the culture of our host country, not check off popular tourist sights, or do organized tours per se.
When you visit Germany and Poland you know you are in for some rough going because of their histories with the the World Wars, the Holocaust and Communism.
The brutality of Nazi Germany is legendary and while it is so utterly heart wrenching to witness the tools and the results of genocide at internment camps like Auchwitz and Birkinau just on the outskirts of Krakow, Poland, your spirits can be lifted by the huge numbers of visitors they attract who want to know the truth... people of every race, religion and nationality who don't want this to ever happen again. You learn that it is mandatory for every Polish school student to visit the death camps so they will never forget what brutality human beings have done and are capable of doing to one another.
In Berlin you find brass plaques on the sidewalks in front of apartment buildings naming those who once lived there but were murdered by the Nazis. They are all over the city. Germany and particularly Berlin seem to be permanently obsessed with the Holocaust and the Berlin Wall. And the Communist era lasting 28 years in East Germany and Poland have left a legacy of heartbreak, decay and despair as well from which these people are only now recovering.
We are so glad that we decided to make this journey. Thanks to Heidi and Frank Harling for suggesting it and for hosting our first week in Germany... they made us feel sooo very gemütlich (cheerful, cozy, comfortable...Heidi taught us that word a long time ago). Here we are at Heidi's table... isn't this how we serve breakfast every day at home? They really do this, and savor the moments... so civilized!
And a special thanks also goes to our dear friend Norma who made some very generous and fabulous introductions to friends of hers in some of these places that we visited. And of course big hugs and kisses to her dear friends who hosted us so graciously and generously... Jolanta in Krakow, and Marianne in Berlin. It's all so hard to express in words how intimate we all became in such a short fleeting moment in time. We feel that now we can consider them our dear friends as well.
We hope we made the most of our experiences and maybe a return visit will be in order soon...there's so much more to see and do and experience and learn.
And none of this would have been possible or nearly as flawlessly planned without the superlative and tireless research, planning and long distance negotiating by my beautiful wife and traveling companion, Jill. She has made it an effortless and memorable journey. Can we return all the travel books now?
Lastly, thank you all, our family and friends, for encouraging us to create this Blog, allowing you to travel right along with us through dialogue and pictures. All the images have been taken with our iPhones, thereby saving us tons of money in film like the old days, since Jill (Zznappa Tutta) has shot just under one million images on this trip alone!
A bientot... until the next voyage...
Love,
Jill and Marty
P.S.
Eating Establishments and Accommodations Lists to follow...
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