Wir sind Berliners

(THS) The trip yesterday never seemed to get boring. Owen was excited and exclaiming about everything. “This is the best plane trip of my life!”, “this seems like make believe!” For a kid who is often unsettled by change he was amazing. And from the start our family has tightened up in a very supportive fashion. As if to say he is turning the switch off (or on, depending upon your perspective), Owen told Lily in front of us all, “I am going to be nice to your for the entire trip…the entire year.” We all gave each other that raised eye brow look. Hmmm. We were all taken by the service on the Lufthansa flight across the Atlantic. Our flight attendant spoke 6 languages and that blew Lily away. The two of them switched from English into Spanish and both were equally impressed…him by her facile and pronunciation and Lily by his ease of slipping in and out of German, English and Spanish…none of which were his mother tongue. He was born in Tunisia to a Tunisian father and a Turkish mother. He was handsome, genteel, and very engaging…and had us all admiring him.

As we pulled up to the IBZ, the place where we will be living beginning August 1, the front office administrator, Suzanne, came out to greet us. “You must be the Shellhammers…welcome.” We performed the repack of all 12 bags in the patio so that we had just what we needed for the London and Paris parts of this trip, and then Suzanne and I went down to the cellar, somewhat more like the dungeon, to stow our bags. At dinner, Lily asked how come I knew Suzanne and where we had met before. I told her that we had never met and explained about our email conversation we had been having over the past two months…sort of like the pen pal relationships from way back. But the relationship had been established and it was evident to Lily…interesting observation.

At dinner we could not stop chuckling…I could not stay awake. Gina, Lily and Owen would watch me falling asleep midsentence or listening to one of the others at the table. I would jerk awake to see the three of them cackling. I found it funny too, but then I would nod off. We crashed at 5:30 and managed to sleep through most of the night…I woke at 4:30, the girls at 5:30 and Owen at 6:30.

Our first day in Berlin was as tourists. We started it with a very elegant continental breakfast at our pension. Owen and Lily were intrigued that we were eating cheese and meat for breakfast, but breaking from the safe-foods-only tradition, Owen tried everything. Is this trip the beginning of a transformation for him? We wandered the city partly on foot and partly via a open-air tour bus. As Owen moves about the airports and city on his heelies, he turns heads. The wheeled shoes must be foreign to Germany and with them he has a cool factor that I don’t think he realizes is as big as it is. The highlight for the day for Owen was the giant lollipop we picked up at the KaDeWe department store – entire 6^th floor is high end gourmet food shopping and dining. It is a must see when you come. For Lily, one of the highlights was walking through the remains of the former basement of the former site of the SS, Gestapo, SD and RSHA main offices – now a plein aire museum called the Topographie des Terrors. The museum was just down the street from Checkpoint Charlie and along the way you pass by part of the remaining part of die Mauer – The Wall. The highlight for Gina and I is simply being here together as a family. I think we are both still amazed.

Tomorrow it’s London Calling.