Delayed
This is just a quick update. I am writing from a hotel in Chicago. An unscheduled 5 hour delay in Munich meant that I just missed my Wichita transfer from here in Chicago. So instead of getting home at 9:45 tonight, I will get home at 4:45 tomorrow afternoon. At this point I don't even care. I have been up for 25 hours today, sleeping for 2 or 3 hours on the plane. That wouldn't be so bad, but last night I only got 30 minutes of sleep. While I think that I have been wired so that I can "easily" move to a new place and develop solid relationships, I don't think that I was wired to leave places. I get too attached to people and that causes me to stay up all night the night before I leave...but that's really a story by itself. And I'm too tired.
Peace and blessings,
JZ.
Update
Yes, I realize that I haven't updated in a while and that my last update was about the weekend over 2 weeks ago. My explanation? I have 3, really.
1. It's stinking hot and humid! Germans think that they are so smart but they haven't figured out building ventilation and definitely don't know the benefits of air conditioning. They say that it usually doesn't get hot enough for A/C, so it would be a waste of money. That is the biggest cop out. With the lack of productivity because of this heat, I guarantee that a place like RR would pay for it's air conditioning yearly amortization in a matter of a week when you look at productivity. After lunch each day it is so hot that we basically do 2 minutes of work, 45 minutes of trying not to pass out sleeping, and 13 minutes of getting water/walking by fans/doing whatever to cool down. Great way to "save" money with a bunch of people making minumum $25 an hour (just my estimate, likely they make more...they aren't me).
2. It's my last week here so I don't feel like sitting infront of the laptop in my hotel room. I would rather be out going to dinners in areas of the town that I haven't been to. In the 5 weeks that I have been here now, I have eaten at the hotel restaurant 5 or 6 times, one Italian restaurant twice, and a different restaurant every other day. It's cool, but I still cannot wait to get back to Wichita where I can get a meal that I know what it will look like when it is served to me and where I can get a large softdrink with refills for less than the price of a beer. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy a nice local brau with my dinner, but with the heat it would be nice to have to option of a lemonade that was bigger than 8oz.
3. I have some other issues on my mind. As great as it will be to go back home to my friends there, it will still be tough to leave some people here. I know that I will be back in a few months, but this time is a little bit prophetic of how things will feel when I leave next time, for good. So I have to find a good way to leave things with people here.
So those are my excuses. Just another quick update though; This weekend I went to Potsdam and saw Sans Souci Park and the Neues Palais that was there
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanssouci. I wasn't allowed to take pictures in the palace, but I got several from the park. Except for the immense amount of walking which was exhausting, and the complete lack of water to drink or even buy, I think that my mother and grandmother would have loved it there. The gardens were very diverse and well kept. I will post the pictures shortly and perhaps write a short blog about my day there and in Potsdam. I have a busy few days though. Tomorrow I am playing volleyball with some co-workers again, Wednesday I have dinner plans with the leader of the homegroup that I've been attending, Thursday I need to pack, Friday I have to give my replacement a quick tour and then I think that I am going to hang out with my friend Yinghong one last time before I leave on Saturday morning....So, it will be busy.
Peace and blessings,
JZ.
UPDATE 07/25/06: Pictures can be found here -
http://s68.photobucket.com/albums/i6/jeff_zekveld/July%2022%20Sans%20Souci%20Potsdam/
Sunday
And now, finally I will update about Sunday. As I was thinking about what happened on Sunday I realized that while I was busy all day long, I didn't do very many things that would make a long blog. So this one (to the pleasure of a few of my reader, ahem KMP) should not be so long.
On Sunday morning I went to church at BIC again, only this time I took the train to get there rather than drive. I found that it took the same amount of time, and I didn't have to find parking or worry about what to do with my car in the afternoon. That was nice. The worship this time wasn't as elaborate, only having the lead singer with his acoustic guitar and a couple of backup singers. It was still good though. I again sat in the middle, in a row that was empty when I first got there. A couple of very friendly men from Namibia came and sat next to me, and can I say that I love that accent! The pastor was away this day, so the speaker was a missionary who had worked for several years with women who were prostitutes in Thailand and was now working in Berlin with women who were trafficked here. Her message was really touching, about the thankfulness that these women expressed when they found forgiveness in Christ and how they were so touched by His grace that they would often start weeping uncontrollably when they would give their testimonies. I found it really hard at the end of the service to express how I was feeling. It was like that feeling that you get after watching a really powerful movie, like Schindlers' List or something like that.
Anyways, after a certain period of time for reflection, people started to talk and some of the people from the homegroup that I attended invited me out to lunch with them. So I went, and I invited Yinghong along (not that it was exclusive to the homegroup at all, other people came out too). We went to a Mexican restaurant, and even though I don't like Mexican food when I am at home, it was comforting ordering something that I knew what it was before it arrived on the table! Lunch took about 2 hours or more, in which time I spoke with a guy who I really think is gifted in prophecy as far as being led to communicate things that he feels God telling him to say. It was neat. He told me some things that I have been thinking for quite some time now, in relation to some of my passions and some of the opportunities before me, and it was clear that there is nothing that he could have known about me to say those things. Of course, I took what he said in stride and made sure to meditate on them later to be sure that I felt that the things really were of God, but I think that they were.
Anyways, after this, Yinghong asked if I wanted to go down to the fanmile and beat the crowd into the area and then spend the afternoon in the park that is beside the street there. So we took the U-Bahn and saw an area of the city that I hadn't seen yet with some really exclusive and expensive stores, and then we took the S-Bahn from there to the city center. We got off at the Sony Center at Potsdamer Platz and walked the half mile or so to where the entrance was. Along the way we saw a memorial to the Jews who were killed in the prisoner camps. It was row after row of concrete blocks, each a different height and the ground was undulated. I have no idea of the significance to the design. There is a museum or something there too, underground, but we didn't go to see that.
When we got into the Fanmile area, were were about 3 or 4 hours early for the game, but it was already starting to fill up. We got in and then walked through the park for a little while and found a quiet area with a bench to just rest before fighting through all of the people that would be there to watch the game.
At about 7 we started to make our way to where we wanted to watch the game. It was fun worming our way through the hundreds of thousands of fans, and we were able to get way up near the front of the crowd. She was surprisingly good at getting through people, even for such a small girl. I have also found that when there are two people together, people around you give you a little more room. The times when I watched the games down there myself I found that people were all crowded around me and cramping my personal bubble. But with her there it seemed that there was a little bit of a gap around us. It was much more comfortable.
So it was from that place, at the front of a crowd of nearly a million people, most of them screaming French, Italian, and Germans, that we watched Italy defeat France in a dramatic penatly shootout. It was an amazing scene. The ground would literally shake when something good would happen. Security was surprisingly good too. There were probably thousands of police (who look much scarier than in N.A) spread all throughout the crowd, wearing riot gear. They also were in scaffolding towers looking down on the crowd and had camera's recording if anyone did anything that would stir trouble. So there were no incidents at all that I saw.
But that pretty much ended my weekend. Of course, there are many details of things between the lines, but it would be impossible to describe them in written form, and I am sure that you have better things to do than read them.
Peace and blessings,
JZ.
Weekend: Friday and Saturday
I will write this blog in chronological order, from Friday through Sunday. The title "Finale", of course has to do with the World Cup final, which was on Sunday night. But I'll get to that when the time comes. (Actually, I only made it through Saturday. I'll get to Sunday tomorrow night). For now, I backtrack to Friday...
As any diligent employee does, I'm sure, I was counting down the minutes to the weekend. I knew that it was going to be jam packed with excitement, but little did I know how much!
On Friday, my plan was to get off of work and head directly to a homegroup that is organized through the Berlin International Church, which I have decided to call my church home while in Berlin. The homegoup started at 6:45 and I didn't get off of work until around 5:30, so with the commute on the S and U-Bahn (The subway system) I did not have a lot of time. In fact, I wasn't even able to stop for dinner, but that turned out to be okay. When I got out of the U-bahn station at my stop, it started to pour rain and I wasn't prepared for it. I was wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and sandals. But I wandered around a little bit, and with the help of my Tom-tom (portable GPS navigation system) I was able to find the address of where I was going before I was completely drenched.
When I got there I found out that the group was having a special going-away party for one of the members who had been working here in Berlin for a few years as a missionary with AOG and who was returning to the US for a 6 month furlough. Included in this party was a great dinner that had a wide variety of international dishes, so I got dinner afterall, and it was delicious. The apartment where we met was also very nice. I don't know how old the building was that it was in, but it definitely wasn't new and like the typical shoebox style apartments in the US and Canada. The ceilings were at least 12 feet, if not even higher, and instead of having wooden moulding around the top of the walls, there was intricate plasterwork. It was beautiful. I am sure that it took a long time to do, but it was sure a nice change from what I am used to.
The homegroup was a different situation than I am used to as well. The group ranges in age from about 20 to probably mid 50's and it is co-ed. So it was very different from the all male 20-something year old group that I am in back home. It is neat to experience that sort of a group, but I don't think that I would like it long term. There is a lack of intimacy and real accountability in a group like that. But it will be neat for the next couple of week and then again in the fall to see this dynamic.
So I met a few new people at that. I don't know that it will result in there being any opportunities for socialization outside of church functions or not, but we'll see. The one guy that is about my age is pretty overwhelmed with work and other things going on, so I don't think he does much else right now. But it is alright. At least my Friday's are now accounted for. That's about the most important night. With dinner being a 3 hour event every night, my weeknights are pretty much packed up. So it's the weekends that are the most important.
The small group ended at around 10:30 and then I found my way back home to my hotel and got here around midnight. Then I chatted with Yinghong on the phone for a little while and we arranged what we were going to do on Saturday...
On Saturday the plan was to go to the "Museum Island" in downtown Berlin. I had no idea where it was, but it turns out that in my meandering around downtown on my own I had been within a few blocks of it already on several occasions. But this time I had Yinghong with me, and she was a great tourguide. I should mention at this point that I took a lot of pictures on this day of everything that I'll be talking about. I don't think they are in any particular order, but the picture titles should be enough for you to follow what each is. The link is at the bottom of this blog.
We began by walking down Unter Den Linden Strasse to the east from the Brandenberg Tor. The first thing that we came to was the National Library, so I had a picture taken on the fountain in the courtyard of it. We didn't go in though. Next we walked by a big statue of Napoleon that is in the middle of the street, so I took a picture of that. After that we came to Humboldt University, where Einstein (and many others
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldt_University_of_Berlin) studied. I took a picture of the stairway in the entrance. The rest of the university looked pretty dull though. The halls were dark and plain...really not very impressive.
Next we saw an outdoor display of bears which had been painted, one for each country, that was in an open square. Berlin's symbol is the bear, and the bears were there to symbolize that Berlin was welcoming the world for the World Cup. I got 4 pictures here. Two of Yinghong, one by the Bahrain bear which we agreed was the best painted one, and one by the China bear. We got one picture of me by the Canada bear, and I took one of the US bear for all of my American readers. There were some other really cool designed ones as well, but I didn't feel like taking pictures of a whole much of painted bears.
Infront of the bears was a monument of books that was indicating the place where Hitler had his famous book buring. It shows famous German scientists and philosophers. So I took a picture of that.
The next thing that we saw was a monument to people who have suffered and died due to war and tyranny. It is called the new guardhouse. It is a great big empty stone room with a statue of a woman clutching her dead child. It is quite the ominous feeling to go in there, and very few people did. Many would go up to the door and look in, but wouldn't enter. I went in though and took two pictures, as well as one of the plaque on the front that described the monument. I encourage you to read it, as it is really interesting.
After this, we went into the National Museum. The downstairs had the German history from 1919 to the present. What we didn't know was the that upstairs had all of the history from as far back as they know until 1918. Unfortunately, on Saturday they were closing at 2pm because I think there was some special event happening there for the World Cup. But we took what time we had and looked through the history of Germany from the 20th century. It was neat to see that history from a German perspective. I was almost expecting to see it skewed to downplay the attrocities of the nazi era, but I was surprised to see that there wasn't. I took several pictures here.
At 2 o'clock we left and headed towards the Pergamon museum which has a lot of exhibits from Assyria, Greece, and Rome from about 1000BC to 750AD. By the time we got there, I was feeling pretty tired already from walking around so much all day, so I didn't take in much of the history of what I was looking at. Yinghong had been there several times too, so I didn't take the time to listen to the headset that I had. But I took several pictures of some of the more interesting exhibits, including the Ishtar Gate of Babylon, which was huge! It was quite amazing to see.
It was 5pm by the time that we left this museum, but we weren't nearly done yet. Next we continued down the street to the Berliner Dom, which is a massive church. I took a whole bunch of picturs because I cannot even begin to describe how ornate and beautiful it was. The pictures didn't turn out quite like I wanted to, but there were so many people in there taking pictures that I couldn't stand just anywhere and take my time. But they are alright.
After this, we walked around a little, grabbed some ice cream, and then sat in a park to rest for a while. At around 8, it started to rain though, so we hurried over to the Nikolai area to find a place to have dinner. We found this amazing Italian restaurant and since the Germany consolation final was being played at the same time, we were the only ones in the restaurant. I think that the staff thought that we were dating though because they lit the candle on our table and then turned the restaurant lights down. Yinghong and I laughed at that. But we had a great dinner. Which reminds me, I had some great steak with tomato and chevre cheese on it. Dad, you would like that, I think. I don't know exactly how they did it, but I imagine that you just grill your steak how you like it, then put a slice of tomato on the top and then cover it with about 1/8" of chevre and put it back over the heat for a few minutes until the cheese is melted and the tomato is softened. It was really good.
When we left, the Germany game was just ending, and Germany won, so the city was insane. We were just down from the fan mile, so we walked past hundreds of thousands of screaming and celebrating fans and then found a place to sit and just people watched and yelled out "Deutschland!!!" for a while before we finally decided that we should head home.
Now, I realize that I still have Sunday to talk about, but that will take a while too and I am tired now. So I'll post that later. I don't have any pictures from Sunday anyways.
Here is the link for my pictures:
http://s68.photobucket.com/albums/i6/jeff_zekveld/July%208%20Berlin%20Museums/?start=allPeace and blessings,
Such a Busy Weekend
I did so much stuff this weekend! It's going to take me a day or two to get everything written and all of the pictures uploaded. So you'll have to wait...Sorry!
Peace and blessings,
JZ
Allez Les Bleu!!
Things in Berlin are getting busy, so I am sorry for not updating since Sunday. The main problem is that I don’t have internet or e-mail at work, so I have to do a lot of work from my hotel room in the evenings. This is a slow process and has been taking a lot of my time in the last couple of days. So that’s my excuse, but I’ll give a full update now on everything that has been happening.
Both Monday and Tuesday were days that should have been a holiday for me in the US, but since I am in Germany, I didn’t get to take them as holidays. That is fine though, since it means that I make more that double time for those days. That will help me a lot when I go to Zimbabwe in August because I will be missing 16 days of work and will only have about 11 days worth of vacation time. The other 5 days will be unpaid leave. So to basically make up 2 of those days now will really help me then.
As I said in my last blog, I was in desperate need of doing laundry on Monday. Fortunately, one of my co-workers knew of a laundromat that was only a couple of minutes from my hotel, so that was convenient. What wasn’t so convenient though was that the owner only spoke German, so it was a little difficult to figure out how to use his machines (which are quite different from washing machines that I have used), but I was able to figure it out. I didn’t get out of there until 7pm though, and then I still had to eat dinner, so I just ate at the hotel restaurant and then spent the remainder of the evening watching what little English TV I get (I found a German channel that plays a lot of American TV shows and has German captions), and doing some work from the hotel.
On Tuesday, my DVD trouble continued. I don’t think I mentioned this, but last week I felt like watching some DVD’s. I don’t have any DVD’s with me, but I thought that I would buy some and then watch them on my laptop, since it is equipped with a DVD drive. I bought 3 DVD’s at a store nearby which is much like Walmart (but it isn’t Walmart, so no lectures N.L.!). Then I took them back to my hotel only to find out that this laptop does have a DVD drive, but it doesn’t have any DVD software. At home, this wouldn’t stop me for long, but on a company laptop I am wary about loading external software. So I left it at that and didn’t watch my DVD’s.
On Tuesday, I thought that I would buy a cheap DVD player, bring it back to my hotel, and watch my DVD’s that way. But I forgot to check my hotel TV to see what it was like. I bought the cheapest DVD player that I could find, brought it back to my hotel, and went to plug it into the TV. What do I find? This dilapidated old TV only has coax input! I couldn’t believe it. Coax hasn’t been the standard input format in a long time. The DVD player came with RCA cables, like all electronics seem to come with now. It doesn’t even have a coax output. So, I was stuck again. Now I have another DVD player (I have 2 at home, plus my computer) and this one has a European electrical plug! I will try to take it back tonight…not looking forward to explaining that one to the German customer service desk. I might look first to see if there is an RCA to coax adapter, but I doubt that there is, and if there is then I doubt that it’s cheap.
Anyways, that tale will continue, I’m sure. I really feel like watching a movie. The rest of that night I just stayed in and watched Germany lose in the semi-finals of the World Cup. I just did not feel like battling a million fans downtown by that point.
Wednesday night, I finally did something actually exciting with my week though. I had been talking to Ying-hong through the week and we decided to go to watch the France-Portugal match down on the Fan Mile. I didn’t really know who we would be cheering for, and I didn’t really care. Football is frustrating to me. I just don’t understand how the best players in the world can always seem to be so out of position and so inaccurate with their shooting. I think of the strategy to be very similar to hockey, but the net is huge and the players can’t hit it. It reminds me of watching Bantam hockey players. They always fall down, they have no sense of where their team-mates are around them, and they only hit the net about 15% of the time…but that’s just my take. If I were to state though out loud here in Europe then I would likely be lynched.
But Ying-hong and I went to watch the match and she showed up with France flags painted on her cheeks, so I thought that we would cheer for France, and we did, until they scored. The majority of the crowd was cheering for France too, so we got to yell with all of them some of their chants. They are all pretty simple. Their three favourites are “Allez Les Bleu!” (literally “Go the blue”), “Aller, Aller, Aller, Aller, Aller!!!” (Go, go, go, go, go”, and “Zizou, Zizou!” (France’s captain is Zidane, so this is his nickname. I don’t think it is an actual French word…some of my francophone friends might verify that). Creative, no? But at least the chants are easy to pick up and then you feel like you fit in, even if 75% of what they’re saying in French I can’t understand. After France scored, we changed allegiance and started to cheer for Portugal. Portugal has never made it to the final, so it would have been nice to see them win. They also have a player named Christiano Ronaldo who Ying-hong (and all women, apparently) like. So she didn’t want to see him cry after they lost. It was fun though, to be in the heart of that atmosphere and to have someone else to cheer alongside.
It was really hot in the crowd though. The temperature was in the 30s (Celsius) when the match started, and with all of the people it was much warmer than that in the crowd. One guy who was near us (and had been smoking up) passed out in the second half and had to be carried off. So after the match we walked down Under Der Linden Strasse and stopped for a drink at some fancy restaurant where we continued to sit and talk for about another 2 hours, until they closed up at 1AM. It was a good night.
So, that has been my last couple of days. I don’t have much going on tonight. I’m not sure if I’ll head out to do anything exciting or if I’ll just stay in. Tomorrow night I have a community group from the church that I went to on Sunday, so I’ll see about going to that and meeting some more people. Then on Saturday, Ying-hong and I are going to go to the Museum Island and she is going to show me around. So I am starting to fill my calendar. That by itself is making me feel more normal. As most people know, I rarely have a spare hour when I’m home.
I will continue to update though. Thanks to everyone who is reading and commenting!
Peace and blessings,
JZ.
Finally! A Friend!
Praise God...It took 12 days, but I finally have a friend.
Today, I went to the new English speaking church. It was the Berlin International Church. I found out about it online. It was on the 4th floor of what looked like an office building, so it took me a little while to find it. Even with the address, it didn't stand out that it was there, so I actually walked by it the first time. I am so glad that I found it though.
When I first went in the front door there was a young woman there to greet me and we spoke for a couple of minutes. She was very nice and inviting, which was a good sign first off. I then went up the elevator and immediately heard the worship team as they were warming up. It was a good team. The leader led with an acoustic guitar, which I really like to have. They had 2 girls as back-up singers, an electric piano, an electric guitar, an electric drum kit, and even a bass(an actual bass, not a bass guitar, which he plucked instead of bowed. I love that sound.).
Anyways, I talked to another guy at the entrance to the room and he mentioned that there were a couple of other guys at the church who worked at RR and he introduced me to one guy. This guy is about 30 and said that they sometimes eat lunch together at the cafeteria. So I am to e-mail him and get into contact with all of them so that I can start to get hooked up with them.
Then I found a seat, near the center, in an empty row (which had 4 seats) and quieted myself waiting for the service to begin. A few people approached me and said hello, and I said hello back, but not too much conversation during that time, with is fine.
Right as the service was about to start and I was still sitting alone, a young Chinese woman (who is about my age, but I never did find out her age. Somewhere between 25 and 30) came and sat in the seat next to me. I don't really know why she decided to sit next to me, but that was fine with me. She realized that I was new to the church, so at a couple of points before the message started she leaned over and told me who some of the people were, which was appreciated.
The service went as a church service normally would. The worship was fairly lively, but it wasn't crazy, so it was nice. The church is made up of people from all over the world, so it's really neat. The pastor mentioned that there are over 30 nations represented there. The message wasn't anything special, but for such a sort time, that is alright by me. There was nothing that I would say was doctinally unsound or anything, it was just very basic, and that's fine for a church like this. The message included a gospel presentation and I think that the message was probably impacting to anyone who might not have been saved. So it is a good church in that respect.
After the service, the girl who sat next to me didn't just get up and mingle with other friends, instead she stayed there and we talked for about 30 minutes or more. Her name is Ying-Hong Jin, or Jean is also okay. She is an economics student here in Berlin, but is originally from China. She lived in Shanghai for a year before moving to Berlin and has been here for 3 years. So she is fluent in Mandarin, German, and English, and she is also studying French.
She then asked what I was doing in the afternoon and I told her that I had no plans other than to have lunch, so I asked her if she wanted to go out for lunch and she agreed. We walked a couple of blocks away to where she knew of some nice restaurants and we picked a little French bistro with a patio. She suggested that I try a crepe with ham and cheese on it, and it came with a big salad. She got an omellette that also came with a big salad. The food was really good. I was glad that she suggested it. I wouldn't have known what to expect with it at all so I probably wouldn't have ordered it. After I finished my crepe and still had a big portion of the salad left, and she had finished her salad and had a big portion of her omellette left, she asked if I wanted to switch plates. I was fine with that, so I got to try her omellette, and that was really good too. The conversation was really good too. We talked about a lot of different things, from differences between Canada, America, China, and Germany and any combination of the 4, to discussions about economics or engineering, to talking about our testimonies, to life in general. She also taught me a few German phrases that I think will help a lot.
It was really nice. We ended up sitting there for about 5 hours when all was said and done. It couldn't have been nicer out either. The temperature was probably in the high 80s today, but we were under a big umbrella and there was a gorgeous wind blowing. So it was a great afternoon. Now, we have each other's contact information so we will probably be able to hang out during the week, although I understand that she is a student and may be busy, so at the very least I will see her again next Sunday. We'll see what happens. But it was sure nice to have a good lunch and great conversation with someone who was my age and spoke my language, rather than just me with a book. It was great!
But that's about it for today. I'm happy about all of that. Tomorrow I have the challenge of finding a laundromat. I thought that they would do the laundry here at the hotel for me, but then I saw how much they charged and I don't want to spend a hundred dollars on laundry....even if the company would be paying. So I'll try to find someplace on my own tomorrow night. But I really did let it go too long. If I don't get it done tomorrow then I'll be in trouble soon!
That's it for now.
Peace and Blessings,
JZ.
