Welcome

Welcome to the blog of Sue Anne and Bruce’s 2019 trip to Berlin. We are trying to revitalize our tradition of blogging on our major outings, an undertaking that we had neglectfully abandoned in the age of Facebook. Posting pictures and brief commentary there is fun, and we’ll still do a bit of that for this trip, but after a day or two they just descend into oblivion. But our blogs (as listed over in the sidebar to the right) are forever. We (and perhaps some of our readers) do indeed enjoy going back to them and reliving our memories.

OK, on to Berlin. It has long been a special place to both of us. After graduating from MIT, Bruce spent 3 years of Active Duty with the Army, mostly in Germany. He was never stationed in Berlin and only got to go there once, but it was indeed a major focus of why we all were in Germany at the time. He did chip off a tiny piece of The Wall and mail it back to his then fiancée Sue Anne.

After the Army came grad school, and then Bruce’s 29 year civilian career with the Department of Defense. His first assignment there involved leading a team that was developing software for a set of equipment destined for an Air Force site in Berlin. After two years in development, he headed over that way to install and test it, and turn it over to the Air Force for operation. Sue Anne joined Bruce there, and we spent the summer of 1972 living in a hotel just off of the fabled Kurfürstendamm (“Ku-Damm”), the vibrant Main Street of what was then West Berlin. Sue Anne’s junior year in France experience stood her in good stead for living in a European city and for undertaking a number of independent adventures prior to Bruce’s arrival. The memories are still with us.

Our next Berlin adventure came in in 1981, in a 2-week Army Reserve tour while we were living in England on a job assignment. We drove to the Channel, took a ferry to Belgium, and then drove to the East-West border at Helmstedt, finally boarding the guarded daily Military Duty Train for the trip across a piece of East Germany (otherwise off limits) till we got to West Berlin. That’s how it was back then. By post-war agreement, each of the four Occupying Powers (US, UK, France, and USSR) was entitled to operate its own official daily train through the occupied territory of the others. The whole trip was indeed a first time experience for our young daughters Karin and Sarah.

Next came a few years of a dream assignment for Bruce in his civilian job, leading the development of a number of electronic systems destined for use in Berlin and elsewhere. This led to many trips over there, and a boast that he could pack for two weeks in Berlin in just one evening.

Then came the Fall of the Wall on November 9, 1989. (The 30^th anniversary is soon approaching. Yes, Berlin is gearing up for it. It will be big!) This event brought together the entire purpose of Bruce’s two parallel and interlocked careers, Civilian and Military. The memory of the happiness on all those faces will be with us forever. Bruce still replays pieces of Leonard Bernstein’s memorable Freedom Concert on YouTube and marvels at how Bernstein pulled it all together in just a month and a half. Before the days when everybody had email! He sure must have had quite a Rolodex.

Life got kind of busy for us after that, and it was 2000 before we had the next opportunity for any major international outings. The first one was back to to Germany, our first after the Fall of the Wall. The word blog hadn’t yet been invented, but the Internet and the Web had arrived, along with sufficiently portable electronics. So we wrote our online ‘diary’ and published it at Internet cafés along the way on an early service called Tripod, which appears to still be with us. (Yes, we have saved a copy, just in case.) You can find a link to the diary in the sidebar on the right of this page. The trip started in Frankfurt, ran up along the former East-West border to the Baltic coast at Lubeck, and then headed east to Berlin. Crossing the border for the first time was a very emotional experience, as was walking through the Brandenburg Gate once we had arrived in Berlin. The trip concluded with a drive through parts of the former East including the delightful city of Meißen (“My' sn”), and ultimately back to Frankfurt for the flight home.

The confusing Eszett symbol ß is the final leftover from old German script. It is pronounced as “ss”. So Straße is pronounced “Schtrass' uh”. German doesn’t like the silent E! Or the silent K. Or anything silent. If it’s there, pronounce it! The Eszett was just recently abolished from official legal usage, but it still persists and probably will forever, out of tradition. It gained notoriety in the National Lampoon’s European Vacation movie of 1985, where Chevy Chase pronounces Straße as “Strabe” in the scene where they arrive at the wrong house.

It was 13 years and a number of other foreign trips later (China, Italy, UK) that we got back to Germany, this time with Sue Anne’s sister Aimée and her husband Steve. Sue Anne and Bruce were the ones with Germany experience, and Aimée and Steve led the way when we got to Poland and the Czech Republic. We did indeed blog on each of those trips, and you can find the links over to the right side of this blog.

We have enjoyed looking back on the records of both of our post-Wall Berlin adventures for compare/contrast with what we expect to experience on this one.

OK, that’s it for history. On with the show. Our trip to Berlin begins in the early morning of the next post on the blog. But first let’s get in the mood. Join a crowd of happy Berliners at the closing of a concert at the Waldbühne outdoor amphitheater, featuring the beloved musical treat, Berliner Luft by Paul Lincke, joyfully conducted by James Levine. A five minute adventure.

Click the picture to attend the concert.