Our trip to Berlin

Okay, so much for writing in this blog everyday. I'll try better. I thought I'd better get these pictures from Berlin up on the blog before it's ancient history. It was just the girls and Baileyfor the trip this past Monday and Tuesday. For those that don't know, the woman who served as our German tutor while we were in Lexington prior to our move is staying with us for a couple of weeks. She will be studying German at a school in Southern Germany starting in April. We arranged to have her come over with us to help us with our initial settling in issues. She has become a good friend and has really helped me a lot with day to day interactions. So, it was Gabriella, Stephanie, Bailey and I for the trip to Berlin.
Berlin is huge and quite different from any American city I have ever been in. It's one of the cleanest cities I've been in. Since we were there for only two days, there is so much more to see when we go back with Dave.
The two days we were there, the trains were on strike! This made getting around quite difficult. The trains in Germany strike at regular intervals. I don't really understand the mindset of the way they strike. In the U.S., you strike until you get what you want and then it's over, but here, you strike a couple days and then you work a couple days. It's weird. It is usually announced a couple days in advance that the trains will strike. Also, the day we went to Berlin, every other train was striking! Our train happened to be running, so it was quite crowded with people who had tickets on the trains that were striking.
We did get to see the gate (Brandenberg Gate) that divided East and West Berlin when East Berlin was under communist rule. The Berlin wall came down in the 80's, so very little remains of the wall or any other reminder of the old East Berlin. You can find some portions of the old wall that remain around the city. It's an interesting feeling to see a reminent of the wall, it's a feeling that makes you want stand there and contemplate what it must have been like for those under the oppression of the communist regime. One thing that hasn't changed, though, are the cross walks. The cross walk signals are different in East and West Berlin and in this way you can tell when you're in one part of the city or the other.
Our trip was pretty uneventful except for Monday night when we were in a convenience store. The checkout lady accused us of shop lifting at the check out counter!!!! We think she heard us speaking English and got upset. We had shopping bags in the bottom of Gabriella's stroller from previous purchases and she told us we had to show her receipts for our purchases in the bags before we could leave! As a whole line of customers stood behind us in line, we searched for our receipts so the lady would let us leave. It's a good thing Stephanie spoke German because I was getting MAD. Finally, we left the store after I informed everyone what I thought of the whole situation and that I would never come in that store again. Mind you, everything I said was in English.
Here are the pictures! For some reason, blogger does not allow me to put a caption on the pictures. The picture with the tall cement walls of Stephanie walking Bailey through the Jewish Memorial. When you walk into the memorial, you're supposed to feel scared because the walls are tall and you can't tell what's around the corner, as the Jewish people probably felt when they were hiding from the Nazi's. Also, Bailey is probably one of a select few dogs who has lunched in a Cafe on Schnitzel and then gone into a dressing room at H&M while his owner tries on clothes!