The Reformation Tour starts tomorrow but I thought I’d write up some of the highlights for me of our trip so  far!

• Trying to work  out local vs. Australian time with Arthur. I have no spatial skills and he can’t read analog time so it’s like the blind leading the blind!
• Our British tour guide around Berlin  (his name was  Barnaby – Arthur has a new man crush!) sighing with relief when he found out we weren’t Melburnians. He said they all talk like Melbourne is the only place in the world to  live and when we suggested that this was Melbourne arrogance said he thought it was insecurity – like they thought they had something to prove!
• Walking 2.5 hours from the Brandenburg Gate back to our hotel on the first day.
• Getting enough sun on that day to make up for the entire Melbourne winter, so much so that we got a little burnt – silly Aussies thinking we were safe in the Northern hemisphere because it doesn’t have an ozone hole!
• Seeing Arthur spread jam on his bread for dinner with his finger because he didn’t have a knife.
• The DDR Museum – about  what life was like in East Germany with displays you could touch, sit in, put on, etc. Call it childish but I’m a tactile learner!
• Being hailed by Arthur to have a photo with the Gates of Babylon after I’d casually strolled through them without any notice. Sites and monuments don’t do a lot for me unless they’re connected to stories (so it was a very long afternoon for me at the Pergamon Museum!). Dated to the time of the exile I imagined the horror these gates, adorned with symbols of the Babylonian god Marduk, would have elicited in the defeated Israelites as they were marched through them.

Categories: Tanzanian culture Uncategorized Written by Tamie

Tagged as: Berlin DDR Museum Gates of Babylon Germany History Reformation Tour travel

Tamie Davis

Tamie Davis is an Aussie living in Tanzania, writing at meetjesusatuni.com.