Heather and I went to Potsdam today to meet Elizabeth, who was just finishing up her "Luther tour." We are so not tourists here anymore. The tasks involved with going about daily life now definitively trump all of our tourist instincts. A glance into our daytrip itinerary confirms this: after we arrived in Berlin and met up with Elizabeth, we decided that the purported reason for making the trip-- to see the relatively famous San-Souci Palace-- did not really actually interest any of us, and that we'd rather just walk around the city, listen to an ad hoc jazz trio (of which only the trombonist was really spectacular), browse a book sale, watch the antics of small children at the fountain and snack on fresh cherries from Heather's friend's tree.
Then we took the train back to Berlin, where we indulged in our big-city fantasies: e-mail at EasyEverything (because my own internet connection is frustratingly unreliable lately), McDonald's cheeseburgers (please don't judge me, I have been living in a very small town for a very long time and I had a craving!) and the cheap phone cards which are not even available within a 50-km radius of my town. When you say Berlin, some people think glamorous palaces and majestic cathedrals and fantastic museums and throbbing nightlife and Prussian architecture and Checkpoint Charlie-- whereas I know ten places to buy Go Bananas calling cards. Man, real life is utilitarian.
Speaking of those phone cards: it is so fun to talk to you people, in real life, with actual voices! Ohmigosh, why don't I do that more? I mean, I guess I know why: you have jobs and napping babies and social lives and most of you live seven time zones away... and we have fallen into the e-mail/blog/IM pattern, which is nice enough, but man, is it cool to hear a voice. I realize I live an intimidatingly long strand of digits away, but I really have no excuse for my own misbehavior. :-) At the very least I can leave a chipper message on your voice mail.
Sunday, July 03, 2005
Real life
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6 comments:
Ah, the magic of the telephone. Imagine what it must have been like 200 years ago when overseas communication required buying a parrot, teaching it the particular message you wished to impart, and sending it on a five-month overseas ship voyage so it could talk to the intended messagee.
Someone help me convince Jess that O'Hare to EWALU (Strawberry Point, Iowa) isn't anything near eight hours, please.
Hi Paul... are you one of the Pauls I know or one of the ones I didn't know (until now)? Anyway, I will definitely post aboout East and West eventually, since it is pretty fascinating. (BTW, what is up with capitalizing GERMANY like that? It's giving me the heebie-jeebies. :-) Anyway, thanks for dropping by, and y'all come back now, you hear?
Charlie, yeah, I thought about parrots or carrier pigeons... but really, the phone is the way to go. Much faster. :-) Also, I know it's not 8 hours. Mapquest says 5 (you know, plus traffic).
I love being not a tourist. I mean, I love traveling, and often that means being a tourist, but being not a tourist in a foreign place is pretty cool. ;)
I totally agree. Traveling for me is best when it's stationary, when I settle down somewhere for a while and learn--slowly--to see the world through new eyes. Tourism's fun too, but an entirely different kind of fun. :-)
I could never remember how to dial out of the country either, until Jess moved to Germany for three years. Necessity gave birth to invention (with the help of my favorite midwife, the informational section in the front of my telephone book), and then I figured it out! For those of you who don't have a telephone book handy--you dial 011 to get out of the United States, then the country code (which for Germany is 49), then Jess' phone number. So--happy calling!!!!
Oops, I didn't mean to be "anonymous". It's me, ELIZABETH!!!
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