State of Mine

I'm going to admit to my American self-centeredness here and say that, until we started thinking about a move to Germany a year ago, I really had no idea that Germany had "states" like "we" (Americans) have states. 

Yeah. 

There are 16 of 'em. 

Sometimes I'll meet someone new here and they'll ask where I'm from and I used to say things like, "Colorado" and then they'd go, "Is that in the U.K.?" and I'd be all thinking, "Huh.  Ignorant ol' me thinking "everyone" knows the U.S. of A."  But even if I said I was "American" they'd often be all, "Like, North American?" and it's like..."Oh yes, North America, South America....I guess 'America' isn't that complete of an answer either."  So now I'll be like, "U. S. A. (oooooo essssss ahhhhhh).  Colorado.  Rocky Mountains.  A little to the left of the middle of the country." and often the light will go on.

Have you ever seen this?  When they ask Brits to label the States?  And, sure it's funny.  But even after a year of knowing I'd live / living in Germany, I can only label a handful of the 16 states.  I can't even label every country in the E.U.  And gosh, I'm not sure I could get more than a couple in Africa.  Sad, really.  I've got a college degree and it was only a couple months ago that I figured out that Istanbul is the same as Constantinople.  Seriously.  It's because of homeschooling that I even learned that (we still read our homeschool history book at bedtime).  Pathetic. 

Anyway. 

We live in Berlin, right?  Berlin is a City and a State.  A city-state.  If you wrote my address you might write, Berlin, Berlin, Deutschland (but just one Berlin is necessary).  Like, Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.  Silly me.  I had no idea till a year ago.  We even have a flag:



Now, Berlin is a state that's sort of a little "island" inside another state: Brandenburg. 



We have been out of Berlin into Brandenburg a few times.  Most notably on our calamity filled adventure to the strawberry farm and also when we visited Tropical Islands, the former airplane hanger turned indoor water park.

And just last weekend we visited yet another state: Saxony.  Auf Deutsch it would be Sachsen.  Don't ask me to pronounce it.  We visited the city of Dresden in Saxony/Sachsen and a native German didn't understand where I was going from the lame American way I said "Dresden".  I've got a lot of work to do. :)



Saxony is south of Brandenburg and Brandenburg is the state all around the 'island' of Berlin.  If you were to keep going south, you'd run into the Czech Republic.  Jason's knocked off a trip to Bavaria (Bayern auf Deutsch) on a work trip to Munich / München and who knows where all he went on his honeymoon with his ex.  There's still so much to see around here, we've barely scratched the surface!