Busy day in Berlin

We started with a city tour. Well. No. We started with day 2 of the best hotel breakfast buffet. I enjoyed the chocolate course to begin, then discovered Tomato Paprika cream cheese and focused the rest of my meal on that. Oh my good! Then we went on a city tour. We walked through the Brandenburg gate, then to the Holocaust memorial. We visited Check Point Charlie and walked several sections of the wall – one part that had been covered in graffiti originally and then the artists were invited back to re-do their art.

Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtnis Kirche was the venue for today’s concert. It was bombed in 1943 and the church was almost entirely destroyed. A stable section of it was left standing as a place of remembrance and reflection, while the majority of the building was razed. The part that is left is lovely inside. A new church was built – in a VERY different style – in 1959-61. I was talking to one of the band members about the old church and how lovely it is, and she said too bad those jerks bombed it. I reminded her that we were the jerks that bombed it. Blink blink. Oh yeah! It is hard to imagine the place we are was the center for the bad guys in WWII and we were the ones bombing this city. We also saw the landing area for the Berlin Airlift in 1948, when we were saving the people of Berlin. Different times.

The concert was well attended and the audience was very appreciative. We asked for donations to the organ fund in lieu of tickets. I saw people donating – and at the end, one man stood up and shouted for more. Our conduction said (smilingly) donation to the fund and the man invited him to walk to the donation bucket to watch him donate (again). The best best best part of the concert was the our conductor invited our tour leader, Joaquin, to translate for him. For his introduction, Joachin translated extremely accurately. After that, he started getting funnier and looser and it was by far the best part for me. I realize that I listened to the words in English first, so I knew what was coming, but as things really started to vary, I was really proud of myself for being able to follow everything. I was sitting with a friend and I would laugh at Joaquin, then I would tell her what he’d said, and she would laugh. It was a bit like comedic telephone. Keith took a lot of DayQuil today and so he felt much better. (He slept on the bus through most of the morning tour.)

Our friends’ pastor has friends who live in Berlin and those friends came to our concert. I was proud to help a bit with translating and we all sat together for the concert. One of the Berliners told us that he keeps bees at the BMW headquarters where BMW motorcycles are made (100% made in Berlin. He is very proud of that). I told him my brother rides a BMW and he was very excited about that. He went home while we went to our group dinner tonight, and when we returned there was a jar of his honey from the BMW grounds for my brother. (spoilers, David! You are getting a present.) Isn’t that just so much fun?

As we walked from the concert back to the hotel, we passed a Fancy Donuts store. We have been riding past them for the past two days, and our friend, Jenny, decided she is a fancy donut. A fancy donut with sprinkles. We had to go in and buy the fanciest donut we could find. I sprang for the extra $.25 for the awesome box. We put it on her seat on the bus for a surprise on the way to dinner. She knew right away that it was us – go figure – and enjoyed her donut as an appetizer on the way to dinner (turned out to be a reallllly good idea because it took 90 minutes to get our food. I wouldn’t have minded having a donut while waiting).

We had dinner in a biergarten. It was extremely curious how incredibly hard it was for them to take our drink orders – even with Joaquin translating – Pils, white wine, still water, coke, Pils, still water. Eventually we got a pork chop and sauerkraut (which was actually very tasty), potatoes, mushrooms, gravy, and a cheesecake selection for dessert. There was a lot of laughing and that is what matters. It was cool today – low 60s and breezy – and quite cool sitting outside until nightfall for dinner. Somebody forgot to tell Germany that it is July.