It seems like Spring might be finally among us. The weather is warming up and throughout Berlin all of the stores are stocked with Easter goodies.

On Monday Chad and Logan took a trip to Saturn, the largest electronics store in Germany. Funny enough, when Chad was in film production he worked on a Saturn TV commercial. From there, the boys went in search of a haircutter for Logan since his locks have gotten out of control. This is no small task since the only other person to cut his hair lives halfway around the world and did such a good job that Logan still asked for her specifically - shout out to Kasey, Logan misses you.

On Tuesday we heard a loud bang in the kitchen. Chad was making dinner in the oven. When he went over to investigate he discovered that the glass in the new oven had burst. Dinner plans had to change and we needed to get the mess cleaned up quickly and throughly so that the dogs and Logan didn’t get cut on any fragments the next day. There are a lot of advantages to living in a new building but being the ginny pig for all the appliances isn’t one of them.

Wednesday brought a lot of adventures with the delivery of our long awaited purchased furniture from Hoeffner and a visit from Alex. It’s worth noting that in Germany places almost never come with lighting or closets. You need to furnish these items yourself. We were luckily that our place had a kitchen installed. A lot of places require you to bring your own kitchen. That’s right, a part of German moving experience is to transport an entire kitchen from one flat to another. It’s expensive, time consuming and kinda crazy to think about. Regardless, since our place had a kitchen we felt pretty lucky that we only needed to provide closets and lights.

The guys from Hoeffner were great. They arrived on time and assembled the complicated closet in under an hour. Chad, Doreen and Logan took to assembling the new dining table and chairs. Unfortunately we had to leave our dining table at home since we knew it wouldn’t fit in a Berlin sized apartment.

Just as things were getting wrapped up with Hoeffner, Alex arrived. She was in town for the International Tourism Convention and stayed with us. Alex could take the train form the Rosa-Luxembourg station to the convention centre and back easily. This allowed for some wonderful quality time. 

We also found some time to take advantage of the fact that Alex brought her new company car to Berlin. As previously mentioned, not having a car in Berlin has made for some creative ways to get things from the stores to our flat. However, the shelves we needed to organise our cellar space were not a U-Ban moving option. We needed 3 sets and each one weigh about 60KG [132lbs] and were about as unruly as a box of metal and wood can get. Thanks to Alex and her new car, we were back from the Baumarkt with three sets of shelves in about an hour (it takes 45min to get there by train) and the shelves were up by mid afternoon.

On Saturday Chad and Logan continued their weekly tradition of getting breakfast together. Logan has really taken to the French coffee shop down stairs. They have wonderful French toast, a great cup of coffee for Chad and a black and white house cat that Logan loves petting.

This week Saturday was our day to do something cultural/ learning/ or otherwise informative. Alex expressed a want to visit Brandenburg Gate. On the way to the gate from the U-Ban was a series of descriptions lining the streets. Keep in mind that just 20 years ago this area of Berlin was known as the Death Strip. This was the no-mans land area between the East and West sides of the wall. Crossing without permission meant you got shot. When the wall came down this area was undeveloped so all of the buildings and businesses are fairly new. When Doreen and Alex came here in Jr. High this entire area was under construction. 

Just before the gate is “The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.” Built in 2003-2005, this monument is 19k meters square [4.7 acres] and covered with 2,711 concrete square slabs organised in rows - 54 going North-South and 87 East-West. The entire memorial is built on a concave sloping piece of land with an information centre underground housing over 3 million names of Jewish Holocaust victims. The memorial was designed by architect Peter Ironman and engineer Buro Happold.

According to the design text; the the monument is meant to produce and uneasy and confusing atmosphere like a prison that is unescapable and yet has a strange sense of order to it. Observers have noted that the memorial looks like headstones or coffins from a distance and that the grey flat stones call up a recognition of the dismal times during the Holocaust and a loss of identity during the reign of the Third Reich.

From there we headed around the corner to the Brandenburg Gate. The gate is an 18th century monument built on the orders of King Fredrick William II. The gate marks the entry to the renowned Unter den Linden Boulevard  which is lined with tress and led directly to the place of the Prussian monarchs. 

The gated has a complicated history and is worth looking up. Post WWII the gate was a symbol of East and West coming together as they worked together to restore it from the damage sustained during battle. During the time the wall was up it was a marker between East and West; just down the way from Checkpoint Charlie. When the wall came down it was a symbol of freedom and free speech. Today it is a place for reflection, free speech parades and gatherings and generally a beautiful monument marking a complicated German history. You might remember the gate from Barack Obama’s first international speech that he gave back in 2008.

As Sunday rolled around the weather finally started to act like spring at a balmy 16 celsius [60 Fahrenheit] so a walk around the Keitz was in order. This was also the one Sunday a month where the stores are open so we took a stroll to Hackescher Market for lunch and then the train to the shopping district at Friedrichstrasse and then walked back through museum row.