Germany on Instagram

So I'm downtown Frankfurt writing this one! 

I started my grand exploration of Germany in hamburg on the 1st july and stayed there for two nights, 

Then

I caught a bus to Berlin (WHERE ASJA SURPRISED US BOTH AND CAME AND MET ME!!!!!) for two nights

 and then yesterday morning, after one hours sleep, i caught a bus to Frankfurt. 

I will stay here two nights, before I take a flight to Spain tomorrow afternoon. 

Since i dont have a laptop, all my blog photos will all be filtered by Instagram and uploaded straight into my blogging app. This is going to create a heck of a task for me choosing which photos out of phone or camera to print - but most probably a good task for a rainy day when I get home to Perth winter :) 

Or should i say, a Danish summer day in Perth, ha! 

For those who have travelled, I think we all have that place we went to that we didn't find as thrilling or exciting, since it bore the brunt of our contemplative mood or was the site we used to get all our tasks done in (washing, printing, organising essentials).

 Frankfurt isn't exacccctlyyyy like that since I do feel God has blessed with immense peace and joy being here...

 and also this morning I ditched wasting 2 hrs at the laundromat in favour of washing my undies and socks in the bathroom - 

but it is a place I am quickened to remember "that's right, I am travelling by myself. i have left behind a life and the people i loved and I am now to embrace the present and future life ahead of me. lets remember how to do this." 

But alas! 

Lets not get too far into a blog when I haven't started (give me a keyboard and a window to write by and you can't stop me!!) .. We will begin with hamburg! 

I arrived some time in the afternoon, along side two Danes and an Aussie! It was such a blessing - I couldn't have asked for more perfect company.

We explored downtown, hung out and got dinner. I tried fried banana with honey.

Nice? Yes.

Need to have it again? No.

We joined a free tour of hamburg the next day

And I really struggled to take in all the information.

It's something I'm not proud of - but history spoken to me in a class or crowd literally goes in one ear and out the other.

I need to read it for myself.

Suffice to say, I was at the back of the crowd and really needed to use the wifi at Starbucks . 

2 minutes. He'll barely notice I'm gone 

He's been speaking for like 10.

He's still in the 1800's, so there's a while to go.

I dashed to Starbucks for less than 2 minutes.

I came back to the group and everybody knew I'd wandered off and they had waited for me to resume talking about a church. 

Geeze Louise.

I actually also saw a really confronting scene.

A group of Africans were sitting under a banner that read 

"We did not survive the war in Kenya to sleep on the streets of hamburg".

I think that memory has seared itself onto my memory, actually.

This is Eva.

Bright, bubbly, open minded Eva. 

She lived in Copenhagen and was a true, healthy, travel-loving Dane. 

and this is a 500 year old door, which was like, existing before Australia was even settled by the Brittish. 

I found the history of hamburg so interesting.

(Granted, the history around the war up until today captured and fascinated me. It was just the older shipping and economic and infrastructure history which I struggled to listen to!) 

Germany has a seared, awful past.

and i got a real sense that Germany lives with the ever present reality of what happened in that past.

It is good and right and noble to acknowledge the atrocities that happened during the holocaust, to remember the victims and honour their memory.

But it also means that present day Germans live with and walk around with almost a "sorry" banner over their heads. 

They can't truly live free from the past and what their ancestors did.

I got this impression from the story about the plaque above.

This building on which you see the plaque manufactured the gas which was used in the extermination camps.

Now, a chocolate producing factory occupies the building.

The present day owners did not wish for a plaque to be placed on the outside of their workplace, because while they said that the victims needed to be remembered, they didn't want to have to be reminded every day of the past atrocities their ancestors committed. 

The chocolate factory lost the fight against the city counsel, and now this plaque erected reads something along the lines of "we honour and remember the victims from what was manufactured here". 

(Any of my German speaking friends, feel free to translate for me since google translate isn't picking this one up!!) 

It was crazy to see some of the buildings which are still standing, despite the bombings and fires from the war 

And the tour continued on throughout old hamburg.

After the tour and much social interaction I split and found a place by the canal for some down time.

It actually hit me that I was in hamburg, away from my home in both aarhus and perth so I read some psalms, listened to some music and just thanked God for absolutely everything.

I then wandered over to Starbucks,

(Not in France here! Ill order just how i like it!!!)

Where I checked viber and read, just causally, that's Asja was coming to visit me in Berlin!! 

I say casually, because she said it so simply that I initially read over it. No thousand exclamation marks, no capital letters ... Just "I'm coming to Berlin! Where are you staying?" Before she continued on in conversation.

I should be used to it : I found Danes typically to use less words, less hype and to be more integral to the friendship and their word than other nationalities, but she still took me by complete shock! I almost jumped up and down in Starbucks! 

I felt like skipping back to my hostel.

The perfect gift at the perfect time.

So i caught my early bus to Berlin the next morning,

And met up with Asja! 

Hallo aus Berlin!! Ich bin kate and Asja! 

My primary school German teacher would have been so proud of me.

We saw the old Berlin Wall,

Touched the Berlin Wall

Checkpoint Charlie

And saw the memorial monument for the prisoners in the concentration camps. 

(Only now do I realise that posing on them is a little strange!)

It is meant to be a maze, a symbol of the uncertainty around each corner that the prisoners faced; they never knew what was coming next,

It was really powerful, actually. 

And the next day, we actually went into the memorial underneath this which gave you a simple, easy to read timeline of the Second World War and payed tribute to individual lives and familial stories. 

Sometimes in berlin (actually, in hamburg and here in frankfurt too) I felt like I was walking around in the middle of history.

We the. found a really nice restaurant and ordered meals so big that you initially think "there's no way I could eat all that".

But, in true Asja style, over an hour and a half of good conversation and small forkfuls, we both finished our gigantic pizzas.

Afterward, we went for a walk in the pleasantly cool evening. 

Outside a large lit up white tent, we saw a gathering of good looking people milling around and hopping into black Mercedes benzes.

We wandered over, to where we found ourselves outside the Berlin spring fashion show! 

Suddenly aware of how greasy and grungy we looked after a day of travel - we joked about how good we looked too.

We were then approached by two door guards offering us free entry tickets! 

We were like 

We totally brought the greasy grunge back in ;) 

The next day, we continued our exploration of Berlin 

This time on bikes! 

You can take the girl out of Denmark, but you can't take Denmark out of the girl.

I got a typical German breakfast 

- well - actually in my german class in primary school, we had to sing and dance around to a song sung in a video by young people to help us learn the language ... And they in Berlin ate pretzels, so I just assumed this was a German breakfast. (there I go again, joining dots together to make theories that aren't necessarily true!) 

This was alsop perhaps the best coffee I have had since I can remember.

You don't realise you've been drinking average coffees until you have an amazing one. 

Perfectly creamy, not too bitter, milky or strong.

We went to the Berlin Dom church

This church was also blackened by the bombs and fires from the Second World War.

It's a miracle this church remained standing.

And we partly attended a German service and lit a candle.

We then continued riding around the city,

Until later in the afternoon, we went to somewhere which really touched me.

It was the memorial to all the victims oppressed by the nazis in concentration camps.

It was a small pond with this triangle in the middle, surrounded by stones with the names of concentration camps engraved into some.

Around the outside rim of the pond, there were phrases written such as

"Dead eyes"

"Silence"

"Broken heart"

"Without words"

It was so powerful.

You really got the sense that Germany was so deeply sorry for the atrocities committed by hitler.

In mental preparation to come to germany, i have been reading corrie ten boom's reflections which have been compiled by zondervan publishers into books. Having already read her biography "the hiding place", I just finished "amazing love" before I arrived into Berlin and now I'm currently reading "I stand at the door and knock". 

Corrie was a christian who hid orchastrated the hiding of hundreds of Jews and hid many in her own household until she was found out by the gespato (the German secret police) and her whole family was sent to a concentration camp as punishment.

During her time in the concentration camp, corrie and her sister were so comforted with Gods love that they were able to love and forgive the guards for the atrocities that were committed against them and their fellow prisoners. Corrie and her sister brought the gospel of Jesus Christ into the camp by miraculously smuggling a bible in with them, and brought the hope, love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ to many of the prisoners and even some of the guards. 

Sadly, Corrie's sister and her father died in the camp, but corrie was released by clerical error two weeks before all the women her age were sent to the gas chambers.

Forgiveness is the key to unhappiness, bitterness and many other illnesses and Corrie knew only too well how impossible it was to forgive the nazis in her own strength. Instead, she relied on Jesus to fill her with love and forgiveness for her persecutors, and extended grace and the gospel toward them. 

After her release from the camp, corrie travelled the world, bringing the hope of Jesus to all those affected by the war. It was only through love and forgiveness that one could move on with their lives and truly heal and she herself was a living testimony.

Corrie and her sister always said "there is no evil to which the love of God cannot surpass".

It reminds me of a line in a song I always listen to that we sang at church in Aarhus "our shame was deeper than the sea, your grace is deeper still."

 

It's always good to read of people who ran their race and died well.

Corrie is an amazing woman with a simple yet bold faith, who ran her race and completed it well

... somebody from whom I draw such inspiration from. 

I hope that one day I can bring Gods love and message to the world with similar clarity and boldness.

But her reflections have helped put Germany into a context that while yes, evil prevails for a season (regardless of how long that season is), Jesus is coming again and one day, all things will be made new and whole. In Jesus there is healing, hope and restoration - no matter how awful the pain, sin or scars are. 

 time on this earth is so short nd temporary compared to eternity; one day all things, including ourselves will be made new.

But anyway! 

We continued our bike riding 

Until asja and i found a very "hygge" place to have our last meal together.

As per usual, we lost track of time from 8pm talking deep of faith, family and friendships! 

(Poor asja had to listen to all my pre-blog thoughts and rants!!!!) until almost midnight and we once again embraced over a farewell in the stare well of the hostel.

I had an hours sleep, before I arose to catch my bus to the station to take another bus to Frankfurt.

I actually fell asleep on my arm and still, 36 hours later, have pins and needles in my left hand. 

My nurse sister says I may have crushed a vein! How does a vein even crush.

But i settled into my hostel and met a girl from south korea who is sleeping in the bed across from me.

In limited english, we exchanged our stories, and I told her I had been studying social work  in Denmark.  since she had no idea what social work was, i tried to explain to her in keywords:  "red cross, united nations, foreign aid, helping people internationally" ... And i saw a little light bulb flicked on and she smiled and nodded rapidly. 

I just thought "Ok I think that's what I do."

then I explored the area around my hostel! 

Frankfurts a funny one.

There are many ancient looking sites and monuments located right next to very modern buildings and infrastructure.

Since I was walking around on an hours sleep, I went to bed last night at 9.30pm and woke up at 9.30am this morning.

I had actually really wanted to visit to a concentration camp while in Germany, but I guess I didn't plan it too well because the closest one to Frankfurt is 2 hours away.

Frankfurt was the cheapest city to fly out of into Spain, so that's sort of why I chose to come here.

But it worked out well, anyway.

I got a pretty heavy impression of the holocaust in Berlin, so Frankfurt has been nice to just wander around with my iPod, sit under trees by the riverbank and read, and sip iced lattes while blogging. 

After about 3 hours in the coffee shop writing this blog, I left it partially done and stopped by lidl, the grocery store I grew to love in Aarhus.

Ah :) 

I picked up some fruit to accompany my limited diet.

For the past 5 meals now, I have eaten cheese and ham on crackers, or rye bread.

Oh, alongside a coffee or iced latte.

These things tend to happen when I'm by myself and am not required to eat anything extravagant.

But tomorrow, I fly out of Frankfurt and arrive in barcelona, Spain, where I will begin my tour!!! 

I imagine that with my new friends, ill be eating loads of new and delicious meals.

I'm nervously excited - in one week you can have many amazing experiences with people that bring you together tremendously - and ill be having that beginning tomorrow in Spain with people I don't even know yet!! 

Ok kate stop tripping out. 

But ja! That's my week and that's my plan. 

God willing, I arrive into barcelona on Sunday evening, July 7, 5.15pm or 11pm Perth time, and will meet my tour group at the hotel.

We then will spend the week travelling the northern part of Spain and view the Running of the Bulls!! (In researching a tour for Spain, I actually only used the keywords "running of the bulls tour" haha) .

So I guess will can see snippets of my trip on Facebook, and then ill write a proper blog after I finish the tour or when I arrive into Switzerland. 

Until then!!

I conclude with a note inspired by C.S.Lewis which I wrote after contemplating leaving while on a bikeride back in Aarhus that i found again last night: 

"If I find myself within a state of heaven and unable to stay, I can only conclude that it is all meant to point me to the glorious life which is to come."

Well that's it for now,

Auf Wiedersehen!!