Dresden, Germany (formerly East Germany)

Note: Traveling without a keyboard till now was seriously limiting my blogging and email. But the bright side? I was never less wordy! (I most missed the hyphen key, the apostrophe, and the arrow keys.)

Three and a half days in Berlin were a whirlwind of walking, trams and busses, and museums. I ate several authentic meals, tracking down recommended restaurants at great length in neighborhoods that opened up new parts of the city. Orgentelle was a culinary experience, with a salad with duck (NOT like chicken) and a tasty entree of squab or pheasant, maybe. A few nights later, I trekked to a restaurant that served traditional German dishes like rabbit stew and wild boar, which the waiter suggested. Gamey and tough, but the flavor is so different from beef or pork. 

Transportation-wise, I had a three-day pass unlimited, so got on the 100 bus to the Zoo Gardens just to see the city at night, ordered from Wok and Walk, and then returned on the same bus. Anytime you walk about a kilometer or so you run into another S Bahn (tram) or U Bahn (underground subway?). So I walked and walked and walked, knowing that in every neighborhood I could catch a tram back to the city center or to Alexanderplatz near my budget hotel. This led to long wanderings around the city, increasing the scope of my walks and my familiarity with new parts of town. It also led to seven and ten hour days on the go away from the hotel. I could have gone back to rest, but didn't trust myself not to turn on German television, nap, and not go out again. No self trust led to making myself walk all day. Is this a vacation or not? Do I treat myself like a German footsoldier? But all for the ambition of travelling, never to punish. Still, Puritan guilt about resting and Puritan work ethic during vacations make for a grueling day. 

The last night in Berlin, there was a terrible lightening storm (by L.A. standards, any lightening storm is dreadful). Rose early, walked to Alexanderplatz, tram to Hauptbahnhof, then breakfasted and took a fast train to Dresden, which seems more walkable a town, like Hannover or even Dublin. I contemplated dashing to Czechoslovakia, but think I might stay in Dresden longer instead. It has an old, quaint part of town that reminds me of Bruges or Salzburg, and seems less hectic than a big, big city, like Berlin or Prague. That just might suit me at this stage of my travels, having been gone from L.A. 13 days now, with six to go. Last summer's sojourn to China and Nepal was longer, but I was on a mission: to see my old village where I had served in the Peace Corps and to visit as many schools as I could in Nepal (finally, four schools). This time I've yet to define my mission here. But if I had to say, first joining my wife in Ireland and Dublin for most a a week and then, what? Well, visiting my sister in Germany, where she's lived with her family several times over the years, even when the Wall was still up. This was my first chance to see where and how she lives, and it was worth the journey.

I was in Germany twice before, after my sophomore year of college and again after the Peace Corps, travelling with my sister and staying for a month in Munich with my aunt and (late) uncle at the Max Plank Institute for Physics.  If I had to say what I'm back again for? To see how the years have changed my travel patterns, to see if I can still travel the way I used to. Some aspects are quite different. I'm paying for hotels instead of pensiones and occasionally eating meals in fine restaurants, insted of buying pounds of bananas and loaves of bread to travel cheaply. In some ways, I missed out on the cuisine the first time and I'm making up for it. But I was travelling both alone and with others then. In an earlier blog, I extol the virtues of traveling solo. The logic is that people will come up to one person but a pair seems self-contained. But this time around I'm discovering something about myself: with a partner, I can be quite gregarious, along I can become reserved, which has the opposite effect from the desired one, to meet locals and other world travellers, as I did in Kathmandu a year ago and in villages in the hills above Pokhara. Ironically, I might be more extroverted and connected in another's company.

I'm taking steps to address this, however. Instead of staying in a budget hotel, tonight I'll be staying in a youth hostel with other world travellers. At first the website described 300 beds in a dormitory, which almost made me change my mind, but it seems I will have a private room but shared bathrooms. 

In the end, world travel, even without the language, is magnifying, meaning I don't stay in my commuter bubble in Los Angeles, but experience other cultures and other lands. Sounds cliche, don't it? But it is expanding of one's self and one's point of reference. The German word is WeltAnschaung, meaning world perspective or point of view. Without it, Hollywood (substitute where YOU live) may seem the center of the universe. With world perspective, you come to see other cultures as self-logical and rational as well. Your own culture becomes normalized, variations become aberrant. I could have written that before I left, so let me give you some examples of what specifically has affected me here from a cultural perspective. In later posts. For now, I've got to explore Dresden, the immigrant Outer Neustadt, which they say is vital. (I'm typing this from a Turkish restaurant now.) Auf Wiedersehen!  

 A little while later in a park where everyone is picnicking on the grass. Such a lovely city with a less frantic vibe than Berlin or even Hannover. Just sitting on thhe grass for an hour napping then people watching. Lots of young children with young parents with tattoos. Young couples and a very rare elderly person. Temperature just right, though the forecast was for 31 degree  centigrade.