Amsterdam Train Station & Berlin

I made it back to Paragould safely on Friday evening. It was so good to walk through the terminal and see my best friend Bliss and my parents smiling at me. Mom, of course, walks up with her camera and says, "Ashton! Smile!" After a long flight filled with a chatterbox seat partner and a crying baby, I still managed to awkwardly grin as I walked through. Since then, I have just been enjoying the luxuries of home. A free bathroom, a comfortable bed with no strangers in the same room and food that doesn't resemble peanut butter and crackers in the least. I got a fresh, new haircut and highlight-- a physical symbol of the new freedom I have gained from being overseas. Haha. My feet, after months of walking around in Chacos, looked like they were going to rot off. I went to "Pretty Nails" to see if there was any way they could correct the damage I had done. The lady spoke Vietnamese, but it wasn't hard to figure out that she was griping about me to the man next to her. After she sawed away at my foot, she finally looked up sternly and choppily said, "You come every 2 weeks. 2 weeks!" I tried to explain to her that this isn't a normal state for me, but to no avail.

I will try, to the best of my ability, to summarize two of the craziest weeks of my life. They were filled with laughter, tears, cool places and memories to last a lifetime-- and four of the coolest girls around!

I was very proud of my first free travel purchase: peanut butter. From what I had heard, it was a must for every backpacker-- it was cheap, fit in your bag and would keep you from starving. In all my peanut butter excitement, I forgot to put it in my checked luggage. We get to the airport first thing and this mean security man goes, "Who has a jar?" After a minute, I confess that I have in fact smuggled peanut butter. He inspects it like it is a bomb and I tell him that it still has the seal and has never been opened. "This is not allowed!" he firmly states. "That is my only food supply," I manage to muster. "THIS IS NOT ALLOWED!" he repeats, this time dramatically pulling over a garbage can and tossing it in. With that one kerplunk, my food was gone.

We sat in the airport for a while, visiting with everyone that left the same day as us. Tony made Alana laugh really hard and she rears back in laughter and headbutts this man behind her who is listening to his iPod. She turns around to apologize, but showing mercy isn't really his strongpoint. He was not amused.

When we arrived in the Amsterdam train station, it was quite a while before our trains left for Berlin so many of us sat on the ground like a bunch of hobos. (Our group + Ben, Nic, Carrol, Ashley and John). We looked for benches or other types of seating, but found none-- so we camped out. Ashley set out her blanket, we had our scraps of food and we were enjoying the hustle and bustle of the train station. That's when the fun began. For those of you who have visited Amsterdam, you know that it has a magic all its own. First, this old man comes up, leans over and proceeds to yell at us in an unfamiliar dialect. I am pretty good at picking out languages, but I'm almost certain his was original--a result of large amounts of marijuana. Shortly thereafter, another man came up, gave us an evil look and grumbled, "City trash!" Never having been referred to as filthy street rats before, we began to look around and re-evaluate our situation.

A younger man with tattered clothes and a turban approached us next. He spoke pretty good English and in my early naive state my first thought was that he just wanted to talk to us-- try out his English on Americans. Without warning, he lays down this plastic bag beside us and begins to wander off, never out of complete sight. Carrol, closest to the bag, was nominated as the one to see what was in it. Not surprisingly at this point, it was in fact DRUGS. The guy is obviously taken back that we have no interest in it, so Carrol finally ends up pushing the bag away, sliding it a foot or so away from us. The guy angrily picks it up and stomps off. When we thought this train station experience couldn't get any more bizarre, this man who was clearly crazy marches in with a newspaper, shouting things while pointing to an article. He was speaking another language, but it seemed that he was attempting to make some type of political statement-- either that or he couldn't figure out the day's crossword puzzle. He began tearing his shirt in distress.

After all these events, relief certainly washed over us when we finally boarded our train to Berlin. A sweet German girl sat by me and Alana on the way. She reminded me a lot of my Aunt Chiara. After talking to her about her life and sharing with her what we were doing, she attempted to teach me some German. She was reading a German romance novel and sat patiently as I attempted to read from it. It was quite comical, especially when I struggled through this long word and asked her, "What in the world does this mean in English?" She smiled and replied, "about."

We didn't have problems finding our hostel in Berlin. Called St. Christopher's, it was a hip place with music blaring, modern furniture and fellow young travelers. As corny as this sounds, when we walked in I couldn't help but feel like I was a part of something. These hippy, Bohemian college students, many with eclectic clothing and dreadlocks fascinated me. Here we were, 5 happy-go-lucky girls on our own for the first time (ponytails instead of dreadlocks, t-shirts and jeans instead of mismatched skirts and beanies)-- yet we were a part of this adventure too.

We walked down the street for our first German supper. We had what is called schawarma, which is chicken inside a closed pita. We also had fries. Craving large amounts of salt, I reach over and grab the salt and shake it all over my fries-- only to find that it was sugar. Though at first I was disappointed, I found that it was DELICIOUS! I ate every bite-- it tasted like a funnel cake from the fair.

For the rest of the evening, we wandered around and eventually found a Starbucks-- that shielded us from the cold.

On Day 2, we met up with Abbey, Bobby and Jake for the Berlin Free Tour. I found out the hard way that even though I should cherish every new sight and experience, I should also take time to look down every now and then. I was so busy looking at the amazing sights of Berlin, that I missed a sidewalk restaurant sign and totally took it out with my shin. I had to limp all the way to the bus! Haha.

We met up with our tour guide, Jared-- who was an American who studied for 4 years in the area that would qualify him for this tour. He was very passionate about different types of governments. We saw the Brandenburg Gate (built in 1791), which everything else in Berlin is compared to-- nothing is allowed to overshadow the gate in size or style. The American embassy is actually under reconstruction because it was originally going to be bigger than the gate. We saw the most famous hotel in Berlin (the Adlon), where movie stars and other important figures stay. For those of us who pride ourselves in pop culture knowledge, this is the hotel where Michael Jackson stuck his baby over the ledge, which caused mass amounts of controversy. If you want to stay here, be ready to cough up 12,500 euro a night! :-)

Jared was very knowledgable about both of the World Wars, which was very helpful in clearing up things for me. When the war started in 1914, they all thought it would be a short war but it ended up lasting until 1918. The Treaty of Versailles practically blamed the war on Germany and held them responsible for taking care of most of the damage. With the Great Depression in 1929, American bankers started taking their money out of Germany, which makes their situation worse. Hindenburg selects Hitler as Chancellor, WWII breaks out in 1939 and the events with which we are more familiar begin to happen in the years following. Taking notes on free travel probably qualifies you as a complete nerd, but I did so. I could probably fill this whole entry with information Jared taught me about German history, but I will spare you! :-)

We visited the Holocaust memorial that was designed by New Yorker Pete Isenman, who is now constructing the World Trade Center memorial. Large pillars of stone, all different shapes and sizes, are placed all over this plot of land, forming a maze for you to walk through. The designer wanted to avoid the "museum experience," where you walk through and immediately forget everything you saw-- so he built something that can draw different interpretations. I never asked the girls what their interpretation was, but I saw each stone representing a person's life, cut short at different points. Some were older and had lived mostly full lives that were cut short at the end, others (represented by the shorter pillars) weren't even given the opportunity to find who they would be. See? That could have been the farthest thing from Isenman's mind-- but I'm sure he would think his creation had fulfilled its purpose-- because it made someone stop and think.

Jared took us next to "the most interesting parking lot in Berlin." When we first arrived, I didn't notice anything interesting about this normal parking lot. It was then that he told us this was above Hitler's bunkers. This is where he went underground, with his longtime girlfriend and doctor, to avoid the bombing. This is where he would eventually be driven mad and commit suicide.

We saw what is left of the Berlin Wall-- learning about this structure made me realize that it is so much more than a grafitti-covered physical structure-- it represented barriers between peoples, between families, between freedom. We saw Checkpoint Charlie and the buildings where the CIA got its start. He told us interesting stories about how people made it past the strict guidelines of Checkpoint Charlie, one involving two boys who dressed like cows. We saw the memorial to the Jewish book burning, which was located by the university and the faculty building-- Jared said that students and faculty members made up the majority of those who burned the books. Weren't these people supposed to be supporters of education and literature? It's hard to believe where hate can lead us. The architect of the memorial stated that sometimes an absence speaks louder than a structure. He simply placed empty shelves that would have housed 20,000 books, the number of books on the "black list." We saw the massive Berlinodome, which has been named the "ugliest building in town." It was created in Neo-Baroque style which didn't really catch on. I thought it was pretty cool though!

We learned about the misunderstanding that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, a cool story which Jared made into this theatrical production. We ended our tour by visiting the Pergamum museum, which houses the Altar of Zeus that we studied about in Greece. It is one of the ancient wonders of the world and boy was it a wonder! We went to the Egyptian part of the museum to see the bust of Nefertiti, which we had also had a slide test about. She was so beautiful!

Luckily, we got to the train station early because our train left an hour early! We boarded it and soon were on our way to Munich. It wasn't long into the train ride that I discovered a rather large hole in my jeans. Apparently, they had seen their share of Europe and decided they couldn't survive any longer. Already being short on clothes, I mourned the loss of another pair of pants. I thought maybe I would keep them, but a bending over incident later in Rome did them in. Because of this, I was ordained with the nickname, "Breezy." Thanks, girls. Ben met us at the train station and walked us to our hostel, which was a nice private suite that we had to ourselves.