Berlin

Berlin has been so lovely to us. I wish I had more time to write, but I want to get a small nap in before our train at 4:30, so I will be leaving oh...in two hours or so. AHH!

Well Paris was so amazing.
Nuit Blanche was everything I thought it would be and so much more. I just love that city.
James and I were the only ones of the group we went with that made it through the night. We're so insane sometimes!

The metro not working wasn't even an issue for us because by the time we got on the metro ride home it was 7:00am.
My favorite thing I saw at Nuit Blanche was this huge disco ball suspended by crane over the Luxembourg gardens. The artist wanted to bring stars to the city of light so the ball reflected stars everywhere. It was so beautiful.

We finally went to bed at 8am and got up at 2. We got out the house by 4pm and were able to go to the Louvre for about an hour (FOR FREE!) which, ya know, is INCREDIBLE.
We then went back, got our things and took the metro to our train. We took the overnight train to Berlin.

Two years ago one of the students involved in the high school ministry I worked with, Student Venture, hosted a German foreign exchange student who was also a Christian and is amazing. I contacted him a few weeks ago about staying with him when we were in Germany. Well we were actually able to meet up here in Berlin! It was the sweetest thing ever and so awesome to see him after two years. We stayed with two of his friends from church, a recently married couple who are our exact ages, Frank and Janette, and they were such AMAZING BLESSINGS to us. Frank and Janette are vegans and they made us the most amazing vegan dinner last night and then Frank had school off today and toured us all around Berlin. In addition, Thomas gave us a tour yesterday.

Today we saw it all, the Reichstag, the Jewish Memorial, Checkpoint Charlie, Postdamer Platz (we saw a movie in the sony center tonight!) the Berlin Wall, the art/graffiti district in East Germany, we got amazing doner kababs, an awesome german pastry that I can't pronounce lol, we saw the old kaiser church that had a bomb dropped in it, walked and used the oldest UBahn station in Berlin, walked through the most expensive mall in Berlin...wow...amazing day and night.
Yesterday we saw Bradenburger Tor and walked through Tiergarten for a bit. Then we went to Alexander Platz and saw the TV Tower (Frank and Janette live 5 min walk from it) and then walked to the Berlin Dome and the fountain of Neptune and the surrounding areas.
It was such and incredible night. Frank is so awesome and lived in Minnesota for a summer, so was able to communicate with us flawlessly. He also loves history and his city and politics and was really a wonderful tour guide.
I just feel so incredibly blessed and loved and taken care of.

Tomorrow (today, in an hour) I board a train to Frankfurt, where I will stop for a bit, put my luggage in a locker, and then take another train to Darmstadt, where my mother used to live.
I think tomorrow is going to be a really hard day for me, so please pray.
Also, tomorrow I am going alone. James needs another day on his railpass so he's going to drop me off in Frankfurt and then his train continues to Rome. It will be a very long (16hr) train ride for him and he will arrive in Rome at midnite. So pray for his travels as well.
I will play in Darmstadt for a bit and then continue to Rome on an overnight train that will put me in Rome by 9am Friday morning.

Oy I am so tired I can hardly see straight, but I love and miss you all. Please pray for me, I'm scared about the things I will encounter but can sense that God really wanted me to encounter them alone without James. I know the power of meeting alone, intimately with God, but pray that I would crave and really be able to do that tomorrow.
Pray.

Love you.