Ich hatte schon längst keine Hoffnung mehr Doch jemand hat dich geschickt, von irgendwo her Du hast mich gefunden, in der letzten Sekunde.
Ich wusste nicht mehr genau was zählt Nur: es geht nicht mehr weiter, wenn die Liebe fehlt Du hast mich gefunden, in der letzten Sekunde.
Refrain:
Du bist das Pflaster für meine Seele Wenn ich mich nachts im Dunkeln quäle Es tobt der Hass, da vor meinem Fenster Du bist der Kompass wenn ich mich verlier, du legst dich zu mir wann immer ich frier Im tiefen Tal wenn ich dich rufe, bist du längst da.
Ich hatte schon längst den Faden verloren, es fühlte sich an wie umsonst geboren, ich hab dich gefunden, in der letzten Sekunde.
Und jetzt die Gewissheit, die mir keiner nimmt, wir waren von Anfang an füreinander bestimmt, wir haben uns gefunden, in der letzten Sekunde.
Refrain:
Du bist das Pflaster für meine Seele Wenn ich mich nachts im Dunkeln quäle Es tobt der Hass, da vor meinem Fenster Du bist der Kompass wenn ich mich verlier, du legst dich zu mir wann immer ich frier Im tiefen Tal wenn ich dich rufe, bist du längst da.
Bevor du kamst war ich ein Zombie, gefangen in der Dunkelheit, du holtest mich aus meinem Käfig, dein heißes Herz hat mich befreit.
The German had gotten us tickets in Munich when Ich und Ich announced their concert at IFA in Berlin and we snapped those up and sold the Munich ones through kijiji--- they were sold quickly and we were able to see the concert here, rather than needing to go 6 hours south to Munich and find babysitters for the kids then come back- a huge relief.
The concert was held in the Sommergarten at the Messe: during IFA is the only time the garden is opened to concerts and it was a great venue, with a beautiful view of the Fernsehturm and the moon shining on a warm and lovely night. Everyone was mellow and happy, we spent the time dancing (I even managed to get the German to move most of the way to the front), we got a free Coke Zero on the way out and the tickets included free admission to IFA for a day: what more could I have wanted as a belated Hanukah/birthday gift?
On Sunday morning we moved from the Holiday Inn to the Sheraton Park Lane (another freebie with points). What a difference. Right on the park, only a few blocks down from the tube station, gorgeous view. ( We could see both the London Eye and Buckingham Palace from our windows.)
It was also warm and had a real King size bed (rather than a pretend one, which is when hotel staff says the bed is king size but one knows it is not and wonders why they are lying.)
They let us check in super early (9:30 am) which was great as I hate leaving my bags at the desk and we needed to run off and meet a friend at the National Gallery.
I particularly liked this piece of art that was outside the Gallery- I hadn't noticed that it changes but since this ship in a bottle wasn't here a few months ago, it must be a rotating gallery.
When we had made plans for the visit to London, the only thing that I really wanted to do (besides my usual wandering around and looking at things and having food without pig in it) was to visit the National Gallery. It seems that every time I go to London I go to the British Museum and although I could continue to do so for the rest of my life and not see everything (and although the design is fabulous) I wanted to see something more intimate and more focused. Because i fell in love with Venice last year when we visited (it really feels as if one is walking through a painting), this exhibit seemed particularly appropriate.
And did I really not talk about that either? Our anniversary trip last year in October, from Venice (as the acqua alta began) to Naples to Pompeii and then back to Rome, with the entire day lost wandering through the Vatican Museum and the final achievement (so many years after my four years of Latin) of spending the entire foot weary day wandering through Pompeii. I love Italy.
Since C works with museums, she put up with the amount of time it took me to wend through the exhibit: ever since we used the audioguides at the Vatican Museum and then at the Alte Pinakotkek in München, I have decided that they are really great and worth the time and expense (as opposed to many years ago when I first tried them and they were no more than the same words I would read on the displays) and this "guided tour" was very interesting.
Afterward we ate lunch at a pub and the cider that I had (in bottle) was over 20 oz- or 2.5 servings for a woman when looking at the guide printed on it. I had to give half to the German and I can see why Britain has an issue with over consumption of alcohol— the cider was cheaper (and larger) than the soda water he was drinking. Then we said good bye at the station and wended our ways in the falling snow: a very pleasant visit. In the evening we went to see the new Harry Potter and were amazed at how expensive movies are, but enjoyed the evening out then had a quick meal at the cafe in our hotel. Monday we walked around the city a bit and in the evening we were off to the O2, again by public transport and again, although warned of problems, we had none. The O2 in London is amazing: a mall, a movie theater, an ice rink, a huge arena and much more. Also very pretty. We had a bit of an issue at the pick up window (the clerk couldn't find our tickets), which was stressful, but at least this time we had a contact number which someone actually answered and they dispatched someone to clear up the issue, so the discomfort was the attitude that perhaps we were fibbing? A woman rushed up and asked the folks behind us if she could drop some tickets- she said she "played the violin" and the man asked, in his adorable British accent, if he would see her in the show. She said yes, which was an understatement: she had some amazing solos and was wonderful but my goodness- what a difference costume and make up made! I think the tour bus must have been very late, which also explained why the concert started after 9:20. I had gotten the tickets to Shakira simply because they were free and we would be in London when she was playing, but I liked her act very much. What a difference between her and Lady Gaga! Her voice and range were amazing, her dancing was fantastic, and her dress was modest and her moves athletic and exciting. Gaga had a good voice and fun songs, but Shakira both surpassed her and was not profane or hypersexual: we enjoyed the concert very much. This was, I think, her last gig of the tour and we were surprised that the sold out venue started emptying out before her encores, perhaps because she started late. We stayed and enjoyed two wonderful songs and had no problems getting back on the Tube.
This isn't the best quality sound, but gives a really good view of her dancing.
A few people still sleeping in the Heathrow terminal- we ourselves had no issues going out (an hour late), but they were triaging folks, not allowing them into the terminals without a ticket which was showing for an uncanceled flight, so it was a bit SFnal seeing the hordes standing outside the doors being kept back by security.Then security moved us to the head of the amazingly long luggage drop line because we were in two hours of departure. After that, everything went very smoothly and we got back to Berlin to discover lots of snow but no issues with transportation. It was good to be home.
After last year, I had planned on never attempting to visit the UK or travel within Europe by plane during the months of December or January.
(Wow- looking back I can see that I never blogged about being abandoned in London, having RyanAir leave me sleeping on the floor without even a blanket, having ValueJet cancel a booked flight even before the booking, while I made my way to Luton to find only contracted workers telling everyone nothing, while in mud to our ankles, and finally getting out on BerlinAir, to the wrong city and then traveling to Düsseldorf and onward by DBahn! Suffice it to say that it was plenty horrible. Including the cancellation of trains from Brighton and being left standing outside for 3 hours while waiting for laid on buses to a functional train to get me to London in the first place— all due to perhaps 5 inches of snow! RyanAir still hasn't repaid my flight, let alone the two days in hotel or multiple rides to the airport while they messed with me.)
Unfortunately, we had been looking forward to seeing Jeff Wayne's 3oth Anniversary War of the Worldstour right here in Berlin at the O2, when we received an e-mail, telling us that the show had been rescheduled for 2012. When I went to the tours site to discover why, I found out that the German promoter had decided to pull the tour and have it redone in German, which was why it would take an extra year until it was ready. I was not enthusiastic. The character of the narrator, Richard Burton's voice, is integral. And I love the original and don't really have the desire to hear it translated/dubbed into German. The production company offered those of us the option of buying tickets for any of the remaining venues in the tour and the day that made the most sense (if I were to go with the German) was the last: Saturday December 18th at Wembley Arena. The date gave me a certain amount of stress, considering what had happened last year. Before booking, we got agreement from the (unbelievably great) in-laws that they could come and take care of the children for an extended weekend, as school would be in session, and we were able to add another concert on Monday the 20th— tickets to Shakira at the O2 in London were available for hotel points and we thought— "Why Not?". So we booked a flight out Friday morning the 19th, assuming that would give us some time to deal with weather emergencies and I was grateful: England had two inches of snow and the beginning of what would be a serious weather emergency did impact us. On our side, Berlin had snow, T2 was ill, and the in-laws came in a bit earlier than they had expected to make certain they would be in place. We were two hours late taking off, but no biggie, and it was interesting to see the de-icing operation. When we got into London, we had some coffee, grabbed our bags, and bought Oyster cards, which are the only way to economically get around on the London transit system. We planned this trip to be economical and were in no hurray, so we took the regular Tube into Central London rather than the Heathrow Express. We stayed the first two nights at Leicester Square Holiday Inn through points, so it was free, but the location was not perfect. Although close to Leicester Square, it was a bit of a drag getting our luggage through the snow, ice and slush to the quiet hotel several streets back. In addition, although we were under the roof in a decent looking room with an adequate view, it was cold!
I spent the rest of the day being ill (as the German was the following day) and we think it was a manifestation of what T2 had, although thankfully without the projectile vomiting. We kept the heat cranked up and used extra blankets but it was cold and snowing and the windows in the bathroom were, we think the source of the cold due to inadequate insulation.
We wandered the area in the snow after a nap and stepped into a wonderful Thai place, the best I've eaten in since Munich, and the spices definitely helped my headache:). It was a lot of fun window shopping in the center of the London shopping district and looking at the lights, although we actually didn't wind up buying anything in the city at all. London always feels much more like home to me than Berlin does: it's not just the language, but the design and energy are so much closer to NY than Berlin.
On Saturday we wandered a bit more through a deserted London— there were outages throughout the public transportation system although examining them, it was clear that the real issues were on the lines that had above ground areas due to signal failures. The damage to the shopping season must have been great because entire streets were empty of walkers in what should be a dense shopping area and there were almost no vehicles moving. I think they had had 4 inches in total.
There were also scheduled outages and a scheduled work stoppage (that is, a planned strike) on the Tuble lines. We were concerned that it might be an issue getting to Wembley and asked a cab driver what a cab there would cost. When he told us "it would depend on traffic" and we could see almost no cars on the road, we knew that it would be a total rip off. We looked at the different means of public transport and decided to leave earlier and see how far we could get.
When we got to the Leicester Square station, we asked what "serious delays" meant and one of the many workers (wow, how nice to have workers!) told us a 10 minute delay. I laughed and felt a lot of reassurance:). So we got to Wembley early and stopped outside the station at Subway. Why does Subway in Germany have meatball subs on the menu when none of the restaurants in Berlin actually serve them? I really enjoyed having all beef meatballs with jalapenos. Then on to Wembley, which is a charming arena. We had wonderful seats (all the seats had been freed by the promoter and press) in the 14th row and Wembley is set up really well— buying refreshments is made as easy as possible due to multiple kiosks. I had a cider and found it very amusing that the bottle was actually made of plastic! (Of course it makes sense, but why not serve it in plastic cups rather than producing non-standard plastic bottles?)
There were significant gaps in the further reaches of the Arena, which were probably due to the travel difficulties— at a guess they were bus loads of people that were not able to get in to London. A whole large family filed in past us a few minutes after the music started, with the apology of the dad that it had taken them 8 hours to get there.
I really enjoyed the musical. I didn't take any movies myself because I bought the DVD:). During intermission we chatted with the people around us and after the show we had backstage passes (part of the apology) which was also tremendous fun, although I'm too shy to really benefit from that. I did get an autograph and a picture with Jeff Wayne and got to watch all sorts of famous people interact while snacking and having a soda, though. We chatted with some folks from Zurich who were there for the same reason as us, but who had believed the "serious delays" and taken a cab. At 50 GBP, I'm glad we didn't! They joined us on the train back to London and we wished them luck on their flight back to Zurich the next day (which I am certain that they did not make, considering the chaos that was unfolding at Heathrow).
Actually, I've done a few other things in that time as well. I'll try to get those posted as well.
We went to Amsterdam for the weekend because, after I procrastinated for so long, the cost of driving to Amsterdam was cheaper than me buying a train ticket, even with a 50% discount on DB. Since we were driving, we brought the children along. Luckily, the German had some points that brought us into free nights at the Hotel Pulitzer in Amsterdam. This was just as charming and quirky as one might expect from the description: multiple 18th century townhouses merged into a charming hotel. We had a room looking into the garden (no canal view:() but directly facing on a play set. This was important because we later discovered that Amsterdam has a sad paucity of playgrounds: the major one in Vondel Park, the largest park in Amsterdam, couldn't hold a candle to any of my 5 local playgrounds here in Berlin. They still enjoyed playing there, though. T1 kept asking to be in T2's stroller and we were a bit intolerant (she's heavy!) considering how much walking around we did and that she wound up being sick the following week, but we still enjoyed ourselves. We spent the whole weekend walking around enjoying the blue sky and the wonderful weather and looking at things (with an tram ride and 1 boat trip). I love Amsterdam and I love the architecture there. We had rijstaafl one evening which was lost on the girls— we wound up buying them a bowl of rice each to make up for all the items they didn't like.
The actual reason for me going to Amsterdam was to meet up with a friend who was there after doing an Art residency so deep in Ireland that I couldn't meet her there: 12+ hours travel time to reach a village in Ireland just wasn't manageable (and that would be plane to train to bus to walking or taxi the last thirty miles!). I had the chance to grab some tickets to A-ha's final tour the weekend she would be in Amsterdam and I thought it would be amusing to do that.
As it turned out, J was ill the evening we were to go and the German and I wound up getting a babysitter through the hotel (he had expected to watch the kids that evening). The sitter was lovely, fully multilingual and the cost was the same as a babysitter in Berlin, so we were very happy.
The tickets were supposed to be special, and after a bit of confusion at the Heinekin Arena box-office, we discovered why: we were directed to the VIP entrance. There we were given colored arm bands, offered a free check for our packs and coats, and shown to box seats where there was a free bar. If we'd known that was what "special" meant, we would have shown up earlier!
The concert was fun, even though I really didn't remember very many A-ha songs beside the most famous iconic MTV videos. But there was a lot of energy and a lot of dancing and it was nice to be out with the spouse.
This was the encore and we really enjoyed it: (it's not my video, our view would have been from the upper right when facing the stage)
wenn ich mich verlier,
The German had gotten us tickets in Munich when Ich und Ich announced their concert at IFA in Berlin and we snapped those up and sold the Munich ones through kijiji--- they were sold quickly and we were able to see the concert here, rather than needing to go 6 hours south to Munich and find babysitters for the kids then come back- a huge relief.
