Germany!

Hello all! We made contact with Kris O'Donnell and boarded the train from Berlin to Hamburg. Here's what that looked like:

Also like this...

I tried to get Kris and WM to collaborate on a Berlin Blog Post but here's the response I got:

Berlin

We spent a very fun and quick two days in Berlin with the O'Donnells' German family friends Philip, Isa, and their three lovely kids, Gustav, Friedrich and Edda. (We gave Edda a duck.)

They were fantastic and amazing hosts! We saw a lot of Berlin in a short time. The Wall, the old airport, the Chapel of Reconciliation, lots of World Cup games--sadly Germany lost so we all need to pick a new team to root for. Feel free to send us your thoughts. (Kris earned her Jones Name -- if you want to learn about the subtleties of international football scoring, just ask Scoreboard Jones, she'll lay it all out for ya.)

We also met up with the Chicago Danzigs for some wild yeast-driven contemporary installation art and quite delicious vegan Indonesian food. They are currently traveling as Goat-Ears Jones and her brother and parents.

That afternoon we went to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which deserves its own post.

After realizing that we were almost out of phone juice and had no charger, and that we were cold AND hot, we had a good ol' full-family fight on Pottsdammer Platz.

The tension was eventually resolved with the help of a quick, cheap fashion shopping spree which let WM and I turn from this:

...into this:

Then we had dinner with Philipp and his band at a lovely outdoor restaurant which has been a dancehall since the days of the Weimar Republic where Willa Marie had a taste of the German 'kid beer' Kraft Maltz. "Interesting":

We hope Philip and his family will someday come to Chicago so we can return the favor.

We've just arrived in Hamburg and are hanging out with our friend Stefanie and her family and doing the rounds to see the many friends the O'Donnells have in town.

- Jessica

️