CroCRAYtia

How do you write about one of the most amazing trips of your life?  Some might call it magical even.  It's 5 of your favorite people in the whole world from 5 different locations, with ridiculous connections and flights, who dreamed about and planned this trip for well over a year, and got along the entire time because we're all funny and laughed at every other word and because everything went well and worked out better than we could ever have imagined.

I don't mean this stuff in a bragging way, but in a factual way.  It's rare to have experiences like this - you know the type of trip/situation I'm talking about, right?

I have over 1,000 pictures from the trip, along with everyone else's, so I'm not really sure how to pick what to post or how to divvy this up.  But I'll try my damndest.

The four pals we met in Croatia landed in Dubrovnik on Friday and went straight to the island of Korcula.  We're sad we missed this "quaint fisherman's island, home to a specific wine, grk; two of the actual sandy beaches in Croatia; a cuty patooty farmer's market with fresh fish, produce, and lavender; amazing waterfront dining, and the birthplace of Marco Polo!" (This is all from Meredith's description.)  You can evidently stroll the entire town in less than an hour, and they all definitely meant to do this and check out the vineyards but accidentally imbibed on the beach instead.

Beach time!

We, however, flew into Dubrovnik on Saturday afternoon/evening and had a night to ourselves before we met them on the island of Hvar on Sunday afternoon!

Dubrovnik all lit up.

Octopus salad!  Yummm.

Shrimp, grilled squid, and fresh fish!

Finally made it to Hvar after a death-defying bus ride over mountainous cliffs without railings and a driver who texted the whole time.  Cool.
Beautiful scenery!

Friends together at last!

Drew's sporting a new deep-V for the trip.

I have a lot more picture sorting to do and I almost threw my computer out the window this evening in the process, so bear with me on these sporadic posts!  Plenty more beautiful water pics and stories to come.  Now I shall go take deep breaths and calm down :)  Goodnight!

Auf Wiedersehen, Berlin!

Our last few days were a blur - meaning I can't remember a lot of what we did, besides hang out in biergartens and soak up Annie time and eat even more delicious food.  Oh!  And Meredith had a layover in Berlin and she came and toured the city with us for a few hours!  That was awesome.

We first went to the Reichstag, where Parliament currently resides, which was also the location of a very famous fire started by Hitler in the 1930s, which was also boarded up for a long time during communist bullshit.  But it's a beautiful building, and see that glass dome at the top?  We climbed it!

Best friends!

Before the climb.

There's an audio tour as you wind your way up the dome, giving you facts about Berlin, the Dome, the skyline you're looking at, etc.  Very interesting.

Spotted!  A cute nugget at the top of the dome.

We also wandered over to the Brandenberg Gate, which is a big time Berlin landmark.  After the wall went up, the gate was isolated and inaccessible and it got lots of media coverage when the wall opened in 1989.  It's basically just been a site for major historical events and "is today considered a symbol of the tumultuous history of Europe and Germany, but also of European unity and peace."  Thanks, Wikipedia.

The six of us.

Next up was the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, built in 2003-2004, which...as you can see, is a huge concrete "field" of big concrete slabs arranged in a grid pattern.  It's been said that the memorial resembles a cemetery and is supposed to produce "an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the sculpture aims to represent an ordered system that has lost touch with human reason."  Which I get.  As you can see from the following pictures, it looks neat, clean, orderly from the outside.  Not so bad.  But you start walking in between the columns/slabs, the ground starts sloping, the slabs get taller, you get confused, and you can't really see your way out.  Kind of like the whole Nazi movement to begin with!  Symbolism, people!  It's powerful stuff.

Another big controversy was that a German company was making a special anti-graffiti chemical substance for the slabs.  Turns out this same company helped make the Zyklon-B gas used in the concentration camps.  NOT GOOD.  Some people think it's a sick irony and some people say it's this company's way of giving back and apologizing.  You decide.

Mere may or may not be too short to be seen from behind this slab but she's giving me bunny ears.

I smiled but Meredith felt better looking somber.

Oh look, a spot of sunshine in a sad memorial!

She's playing with Mere's bracelets and looking pretty good too.

See, look!  I'm stylin.  Cause I'm the cutest.

Annie's two gay dads.

I don't have any other pictures of us with Meredith, dangit.  But we ate a delicious German lunch with the ooiest gooiest cheesiest spaetzle you ever had (besides the stuff Lauren made for us on Monday night), and then she had to catch her plane to Dubrovnik, by way of Helsinki.  She's a trooper.

Drew and I wandered around Prenzlauer Berg, a super cute area of Berlin with shops and restaurants and pretty apartment buildings.  Lovely.

We both napped on a quaint little park bench for a little while.

And had koffee und kuchen at AnnaBlume.

Strawberry Rhubarb heaven!

Then met Lauren and Annie and John for beers at Pratergarten, where Annie only sat still long enough to take this pic! She's a woman on the move, that one.

Friday and Saturday were silly days of dancing in the apartment and lounging around.

And wearing sunglasses in her high chair.

And hugging her tight before she went down for a nap and we had to leave.  :(

We left for Croatia Saturday afternoon, and while I thankfully didn't cry telling her or John or Lauren goodbye, I definitely did on the plane.  And later that night in our hotel.  And just a little the next day.  Leaving her is so hard!!  I hate it!  Oh gosh, I could cry right now just thinking about it.  Help!!

Anyways, Berlin was an amazing and informative adventure with John and Lauren, and they were the ultimate hosts.  Having someone literally live in your living room and share a bathroom with you for 8 days isn't easy for anyone, family or not, and they were such graceful champs about it.  They planned everything we did, which is also annoying as a host (especially when they'd ask "What are you guys in the mood for for dinner?" and we'd respond "Uhh...we don't care.  What do you suggest?"), but they never complained once and had a million ideas and itineraries in their back pockets.  So thank you, Lauren and John, for a really incredible week!!  We'll never forget it and hope we can do it again next year.

An Evening in Dresden

On Tuesday during our stay in Berlin, we decided to take a little overnight trip to Dresden.  It's a quick 2-hour train ride, and we wanted to see the sights and give Lauren and John a break from having two people sleeping in their living room.

Dresden is a beautiful little town whose entire face was changed after a pretty humongous and controversial WWII bombing in February of 1945.  It killed 25,000 civilians (including refugees from other places in Europe hoping to find safety) and destroyed a bunch of the gorgeous buildings from it's Saxon past.  

[Reasons for it's controversy: Americans and British justified the bombing cause it was a "military and industrial target" where rail transport and communication were important, but they actually didn't even bomb any of the rail transport systems or "communication centers".  It sounds like they just bombed them to be jerks and lower their moral.  Another one of those eye-opening American moments where you're like "Who us!?  Surely not."  And of course the Germans did stuff like this too in England and ruined lives but...I don't know.  It just wasn't the best picture of us.  And then they ended up being in the Iron Curtain for 40+ years, so that sucked too!  Poor Dresden.]

Moving on!

We love reading Rick Steves' books (even though he's not a nice person in real life, per Anna and Nell), and he always provides great walking tours of all of the cities he writes about.  So we took one.  I am now without the book so I don't know what half these buildings are, but I'm posting a few pics of them anyway.

Semperoper - the gorgeous opera house.

The Kreuzkirche, an Evangelical church, and the largest church in Saxony!

The inner courtyard of the Zwinger, a palace built by Augustus the Strong as an orangery, exhibition gallery, and festival arena for the Court.

The Zwinger glockenspiel, which also houses a porcelain museum.  The bell rings every hour with bells made of...what else?  Porcelain!

A Soviet building with Socialist Realist murals on the side.  Typical.

The Furstenzug, a large painted mural from 1870 which depicts the line of Saxon rulers throughout history. 

This is the Frauenkirche - a Lutheran church built in the 18th century, then destroyed in the bombing.  They left it's ruins as a war memorial, and then it was rebuilt when Germany reunited.  They completed the rebuilding and renovation in 2005.  Crazy!

And there's ol' Martin Luther out there, with this theses and opinions.

Part of the town square near the Frauenkirche, lined with tons of pretty restaurants and places to sit outside in the shadow of the church.  

The River Elbe, where we sat up top on a balcony and had an evening drink.

One of the pretty hilarious parts of the trip was our evening meal.  We carefully surveyed menus at all of the outdoor restaurants and finally decided on a generic but delicious-looking German place that served typical Saxon dishes.  I noticed something called Leberkase, which was hailed as being an "authentic German pork dish" with potatoes and sweet mustard.  Priding myself on my willingness to try just about anything and adapt the "When in Rome!" attitude, I asked the waitress a little more about this mystery dish.  In her broken English she said "It's...pork.  But don't ask me anything else about it cause I can't describe it.  But it's good."  I enthusiastically told her I'd have it - why not?  And it came with a fried egg on top!  Yum!

What came out was this.  The table over had their food delivered and the man had received something with a fried egg on top of what looked like a loaf of spam.  "Um...did you get something with a fried egg on top?" he cautiously asked.  I glanced over and knew that that's what I'd ordered.  Damnit.

And this is what came out.  Spam.  I just looked up the definition of Leberkase in German and it literally means "liver cheese".  Oh Lord.  It's actually pork, bacon, and onions all ground together and formed into a loaf and baked, resembling bologna, but...still.  Come on.  This isn't what I signed up for. I ate about half of it and politely told the waitress I just wasn't hungry anymore and devoured Drew's beef, potato, dumping and onion dish when he wasn't looking.  Ah well.  It's all about trying new things and new experiences, right?  Dangit.

We also made an appointment to visit the treasury the next day, the Grunes Gewolbe, which houses tons of amazing stuff from Augustus the Strong's time.  Really cool.

Dresden was a LOVELY city and we'd highly recommend it to anyone.  You don't need more than a night there but it's charming and beautiful, and has a very rich history.  But we were anxious to get back to our little angel bebe so...we did.  More on the final days in Berlin tomorrow!