I did think a lot about friluftsliv while in Berlin. I explored as many 'green places' as time allowed.
The experience of Berlin was much more powerful than I thought it would be.
(Photo from the Jewish Museum.)
I was expecting to be impressed by this city, but I was actually amazed by the architecture. I am not a student of architecture, but living with one has helped me to appreciate design structure in deeper ways.
All I could think of while viewing one amazing building after another was how much Kerry would enjoy this city, and how much I could learn about Berlin if he were here to remind me of details of the Bauhaus, Mies van der Rohe, etc.
This last picture is of the Chancellor's office and residence (currently, Angela Merkel).
These buildings, like so much of Berlin, seem to be a celebration of the creative spirit; there does not seem to be an effort to mesh styles…I guess any possibility of a uniform style to this city was lost in wars, walls and rebuilding. The city celebrates a creative mix of style.
(Bauhaus, right Kerry?)
Landscape architecture is ever present in this city as well. One of the more notable designs is the Jewish Holocaust memorial…a series of blocks in an undulating basin create a labyrinth like setting. While beautiful and very capable of evoking the solemnity of consideration of the deaths of millions in the holocaust, the sculpture fails on one level—it invites play. I watched a game of tag, watched the police chasing kids, and observed other general signs of active engagement with the structure, thus I found the ability of the place to pull people in to be outstanding. The reason for this particular structure, however, makes the playful urge seem inappropriate. I have not yet reconciled my feeling on this disconnect yet.
A very prideful American moment for me came during this week in Berlin. At the welcoming ceremony, the US Ambassador Phillip D. Murphy addressed the Fulbright crowd. His obvious pride over the passing of Health care legislation in Washington poured out and swept me up. Being in Sweden, I can admit to losing track of the details and compromises…but my gut feeling was that all we needed was a starting point. Finally, we now have that start toward more equitable health care. It is a little odd that while some of us Americans over here feel the pride in our country’s progress, our Swedish, German, etc. counterparts simply wonder why it has taken so long, and how social access to health care can be so divisive.
Here’s a great idea presented this week and attributed to Senator Fulbright—the idea of criticism as an act of patriotism. The view from Sweden makes me highly critical of the US at times, and this idea reminds me the power in that critique.
From the swanky high rise hotel in this picture, I made my way back to my old town student room in Göteborg, inspired and exhausted by the all too short experience (it may actually have been the late night dancing; luckily, no pictures).
(Not a current photo--more litter, ice and gravel needed to update it...)
Soon after my ski across Dalarna, Kerry arrived and we headed out on our long planned ski adventure. It was the kind of trip where nothing went as planned. And not only, ‘not as planned’ but sometimes quite frustratingly very wrong. It started with Kerry’s skis…or the lack of skis. They never arrived. Kerry had trained deliberately at Spirit Mt. with his skis, climbing skins and new boots and really had a ‘system’ down…only to end up spending out entire trip piecing together poorly fitting rental equipment for a very demanding ski route. The worst of this was not Kerry’s efforts to adjust, but dealing with the airlines. We felt like we lost 24 hours…calling, waiting, and unfortunately focusing on the hope of getting the equipment. Delta handled this poorly.
I’m not going to detail every problem, let’s just say that when you are in a downward spiral it is hard to pull out of it…
First stop on the trip was the Winter Festival in Östersund. Our goal was to rent ice skates (långfärdskridskor) and skate the 20 km of plowed track on the lake (Storsjön)…after surviving a very cold morning, we stepped off the train at 7 AM into below zero temps and wandered the town until we found a warm kondititori (bakery) where we waited for the day to warm. Eventually, we made it to the celebration...the festival was indeed festive, hundreds of people down on the ice, sunbathing (yes, lawn-chairs), skiing, skating, eating korv...note the City in the distance from this skating picture.
The next step was into the backcountry, which proved to be much more of a challenge that we had imagined. We caught a train to a small town (Enafors) and then hoped to catch a bus to a mt. station at the end of the road, the problem was the road was closed due to days of high winds and heavy snow…no getting in. We were steered toward a small hotel owned by a biological study unit associated with the Swedish University System and waited out the storm one night, sharing the facilities with a small group of Doc students who were there for an intensive seminar on small mammal genetics…sounds odd, middle of ‘nowhere’ and we find a farm like hotel and full of scientists. It was a bit odd, but friendly and the fact that we had access to a bed and great food was all that really mattered.
We did make it up the ‘closed’ road the next day and into the blizzard…The wind never stopped, the snow never stopped. It is the longest sustained storm I have ever been in (the nine days we were in the mts. and it seemed to be continuing as we caught the bus out to the train...warning, you will see a few pictures below that look like ‘sunshine’ these were taken on one day during the only cloud breaks we saw. Sadly, we never got a full view of the mts.
Lunch in a whiteout is a pretty fun event too—you must eat your sandwich before it gets drifted over in your hand. Ha! Note the obligatory thermos...you don't go into the mts. without one.
The wind was shocking, steady and sustained much of the time (the wind was regularly 40-50 mph), but gusts on passes and mt. tops that could almost blow one over.
