The Yeagers’ Experiences

Joe and I had the distinct misfortune of going to Berlin last weekend. We were both really excited about going because we had heard so much about Berlin’s history and cracking nightlife. Unfortunately, we had a crazy amount of mishaps that despite all of Berlin’s charms, the entire trip was ruined. Before I get into all of that, lest you get so bleary eyed that you can’t read any longer, let me tell you about what Berlin could have been to us if we had had better luck:

• Berlin was really interesting because East Berlin, the former Soviet European outpost, was really dreary, in contrast to West Berlin which was very pretty and clean and lively. It truly was a striking difference between the dreary communist, oppressive lives that East Berliners had compared to the modern infrastructure and economy enjoyed by the Wessies.
• We saw remnants of the Berlin Wall and went to a really fascinating museum at Checkpoint Charlie describing what life was like in the communist East, and the ingenious ways people escaped it.
• The nightlife was indeed all it was cracked up to be. We went to several bars and had a really good time meeting people. Granted all the people we met were American, Canadian and English, but the atmosphere was great.
• We ate some kick-ass doner kebab, which is a German-Turkish invention. It’s basically like a Greek pita or Arab shawarma, but with much better bread in my opinion. We also found out that beer in Germany is the same price as soda - just goes to show you where the priority is…

That is where the enjoyment ends sadly. As a caveat, this will sound really exaggerated. I can assure you that it’s not. Everything I am about to tell you is unfortunately completely true. Now I will start at the very beginning of our trip, all the way back in the London airport. Despite being fairly experienced in international travel by now, I managed to forget the single most important thing that everyone must have when crossing international borders - my passport. By the time I realized my mistake it was too late to go all the way back and get it. Joe went off without me because we couldn’t cancel our hotel for the night, and I ended up paying for a new ticket out early the next morning. I got very little sleep that night but made it to my flight ok. The hotel was definitely lacking. We were staying in East Berlin because it was cheap - now we know why! The whole place was ugly and graffiti “decorated” every available surface. Joe and I went out walking the streets of Berlin, and it started to rain. We both managed to forget umbrellas (even though we knew the forecast called for rain), so we spent the entire day cold and miserable. I developed an allergic reaction to some medicine and got a painful rash on my legs and hands. This made walking at a normal rate very hard, so we just mosied along getting soaked. To top it off we didn’t manage to find any of the places we wanted to visit so the day was wasted.

The next day started off much better. We found an OK tour bus, so we got to see some of the city sights and got some nice pictures. At night we signed up to go on a famous organized pub crawl. There were at least 60 people with us, so we had a great time meeting people. Unfortunately, at the second bar we lost the group. No more free shots, no more drinks specials, no more exciting people to meet…and we had paid €10 each! another couple lost the group as well, so we just ate dinner with them and went our separate ways. The next morning I woke up to find that I had torn my boot off its sole, and developed a painful blister on my foot. The blister, combined with the rash, made for a very painful day of walking.

On Sunday, we went to the great museum at Checkpoint Charlie, had some more doner kebab, and got ready to go home. I flew back to London on my own because Joe had some work commitments in Germany. My flight was delayed, so by the time we landed the Underground was closed. I had to wait 40 minutes for a night bus. My reward for my patience was to have an old Crazy Guy sit next to me and ask me if I wanted to stay at his place. Over and over again, the conversation went like this:

• Crazy Guy: “You look very tired. Very sleepy. You go to hotel? You go to friends? I have a room for you at my house. You can have your own room. Free!”
• Me: “No, that’s ok thanks”
• Crazy Guy: “You look very tired. You go to hotel? Come stay with me! I like to help people!”

This conversation went on for at least 15 minutes just like this when I decided to pretend to fall asleep. The Crazy Guy kept poking me and “waking me up” by saying “You look very tired” Who does that?!? Anyway, I actually did fall asleep and 40 minutes later woke up not knowing where I was. I asked the driver and turns out we had passed my stop 10 minutes ago! I get off at the next stop and see that the next bus isn’t coming for another half hour. I am so pissed at this point that I set off walking, somehow thinking that I can retrace our route even though I was asleep. I was hoping to find a cab while I was walking aimlessly, but since it was 2a.m. there was not a single car on the road. I passed several guys walking on the sidewalk and I stared down each one to make sure no one got any funny ideas… I had worked myself up and was really scared about being alone, with a dead cell phone and lost. I somehow stumbled upon a hospital and called a taxi from there. Thankfully I made it home OK, although it was WAY past my bedtime

The trip had been so hectic that I had not showered in a couple days. When I woke up to go to work (on my 3rd night on 3 hours of sleep), I realized that the pain had not ended yet. I was so tired when I got to the apartment that I forgot to turn on the hot water heater. Thus, I found frigid water spewing out of the shower, and I couldn’t bear to take a cold shower after so much misery. I ended up going to work grimy, tired, and probably smelly.

I am soooooooo happy that this trip is finally over. Never in my life would I think that we could have a trip this miserable. Normally one or two things goes slightly wrong but it’s never enough to ruin a trip. We probably won’t go back to Berlin again, so its really unfortunate that we had such a terrible experience. Berlin had so much potential.

Pictures up: http://www.joeyeager.com/main.php?g2_itemId=52549

As usual, I like to give everyone a brief background on where we traveled… so here goes. Normandy is an area of France to the north that is famous for it’s cheese and apples, but you probably know it best for the all-famous beaches. These would be the same ones the Allies used as a landing ground on D-Day for the invasion that would lead to the end of WWII… But I’ll talk about that in a bit.

We stayed in a little town called Bayeux, which may sound familiar for any that have heard of the Bayeux Tapestry. We, of course, visited this old piece of cloth. While the museum surrounding the tapestry was a bit much and extremely boring, the tapestry was cool. It’s basically a 19cm by 70 m thousand year old piece of embroidered cloth telling the story of the Norman invasion of England. The colors were very vibrant, despites its age.

Stacey and I took an awesome tour of the U.S. Normandy beaches. In total, there are 2 of them, with the most interesting being Utah beach. There was no way the U.S. forces could take Utah beach alone, so a massive parachuting campaign took place. A tiny town called Saint-Mare-Eglise was bombarded with 2000 parachuters in the pitch black of the night, whose sole purpose was to overtake the town, secure the roads, and to hold their ground until the beach was stormed. It was quite a story.

Several other stories came out that day, including one in which heavily trained special forces came upon Point-du-Hoc, climbed up huge cliff faces, and fought for one of the most strategic areas in Normandy. This area had absolutely massive guns and firepower that it could have made D-Day a total failure.

Going to Normandy is quite an experience. Our guide put it best: “Despite everything that is happening now globally in politics and everything that could ever happen, the people of Normandy will NEVER forget what the Allies did for them… never.” The war shares a special place in their hearts; we saw countless memorials constructed by those living in Normandy to simply show their gratitude for what we and our partners did for their country. There is a cemetary for all those that died fighting and wanted to be buried there. The area is actually owned by the U.S. government, and right next to it the people of Normandy are building a museum and culture center to help explain what happened — George Bush will be at the inauguration. I highly recommend that you try sometime in your life to head to Normandy and pay your respects, hear the stories, and see the beaches. We’ll certainly never forget it.

Pictures are already up: http://www.joeyeager.com/main.php?g2_itemId=50708

To cap off February - our month of visiting cold locales - we went skiing in the Swiss Alps. We stayed in Davos, and while it was not the quaint Swiss alpine village I had been hoping for, it did provide us with some world class ski slopes. Davos is also the highest and tallest ski resort in Europe, so the views left us breathless - both from the fantastic scenery and the very thin air!

Many of you know that I have never skied before. I knew it would be hard, but I kept picturing myself picking it up quickly and gracefully cutting through the snow. As it turns out, I was miserable at it. I took a 3 hour lesson from an instructor and I started to feel at ease on the bunny slope. Up on the mountain however, it was a completely different story. The “beginner” slopes were meant for beginners who have had 5 days of lessons, not my puny 3 hours. The slopes were really steep and the snow was icy, so it was very difficult to maintain any sort of control, even for Joe. I ended up alternating between falling every 10 feet and sliding down the mountain in a permanent, 2 mph snowplow position. My lower body has still not forgiven me for this incredible strain on my muscles.

After making one harrowing, 30 minute trip down the shortest and easiest course in Davos I decided to call it a day and accept the fact that the Alps are not the best place to learn how to ski. I hung out in the restaurant while Joe did some solo skiing. Oh yeah, I forgot… it took me about 20 minutes to get up to the restaurant because the only way of entering was either:

1. Ski down a harder course and take the lift back up, or
2. Climb up a very steep, very icy approach slope to get to the top of the lift.

I chose #2 since I was incredibly frightened at the prospect of having to ski for one more moment. So I bucked up and made the grueling climb lugging all of my gear. I do take pride in the fact that another woman was doing the same thing and I made it to the top in half the time it took her! Go thunder thighs!!!

On our last day the real fun - and pain - began. We went to a different mountain to go sledding. When I say sledding don’t think about going in a straight line down a gently sloping hill. On the contrary, the sledding course was more like a bobsled run without the banked corners. We got some great video of Joe busting it every turn he came to. He has a nasty bruise to show for his efforts, but we both agree that this was by far the highlight of the trip. On our third attempt we decided to go for broke. I ended up going over a bump way too fast, flying through the air and landing and sliding awkwardly on the snow until my head brought me to a stop. In another incident, Joe flipped over while I was right behind him, so I had to bail out and take the fall to keep from running over him. I somehow ran over my own foot with my sled, Joe fell and watched as his sled kept going down the mountain without him, and we both almost took out two innocent children. Joe broke his sled at the very end, and we both agree that it was the perfect end to our trip!

The next day neither of us could bend our backs, but the pain seems to be subsiding so it was all worth it!

As an aside, a horse tried to eat my ski. I tell ya, some animals just don’t get that fiberglass isn’t edible

Pictures from skiing and from Helsinki/Tallinn are now up on the pictures site. Also check out our map, it now looks pretty well filled in. Next up is a much needed weekend at home. We have three weeks of laundry to catch up on…

So sorry for taking awhile to write this entry (we went two weeks ago) but I went straight from Helsinki to Copenhagen, home for 2 days, then out to Switzerland for our skiing trip!

Stacey and I would probably not have gone to Helsinki on our own except I had to travel there for work anyways, so my portion was covered. Planning the trip, we realized that Tallinn (the capital of Estonia) was only a 3-hour ferry away… so that was a definite must.

Since I am sure many of you don’t know a whole lot about either of these countries (because I didn’t!) I’ll do my best to fill you in. Helsinki is the capital of Finland which is in the EU and on the Euro. Everything is extremely expensive compared to many other places we’ve been; part of the reason is the taxes are very high, and the other is that the city is fairly secluded. Tallinn though, by contrast, is not on the Euro (it’s on the Estonian kroon), but is in the EU. The exchange rate for kroon->pounds is 20:1, so it was very nice for us :). Stacey and I had a huge lunch and it cost less than 8 pounds :). Finnish people speak English, Swedish, and (of course) Finnish… which is actually very close to Hungarian.

Helsinki is very close to Russia (and has been fighting them throughout the centuries) and you can definitely see the influence in the architecture and buildings. The highlight of our trip is actually eating at an authentic Russian restaurant where we had two GIANT platters of food. Other than that, there wasn’t much to see or do in Helsinki.

The ferry ride from Helsinki to Tallinn was… interesting. Apparently they treat these 3-hour rides as “booze cruises” where everyone gets wasted on the cheap liquor. Well, we slept the entire ride over there (we had to get up at 6am), but everyone else was throwing drinks back the second we got on the boat at 8am. No thank you. We held off for the ride back ;). The entire harbour of Helsinki freezes over (yes, I was shocked too to find out that the salt-filled ocean can freeze!) so the ship has to break through the ice. On the trip back it was especially frozen and so the boat took about an entire hour to go 15 feet…

Tallinn was awesome though. The city was real gorgeous, and very old! It’s actually the ‘best preserved medieval city’ according to Stacey, the best travel guide in the world. It had an “old town” that consists of very colorful buildings and lots of Russian-looking cathedrals. We had a great time just wandering the streets. It definitely made the entire trip worthwhile.

Photos already up: Helsinki and Tallinn