This month is the month of travelling for me. I have something planned every weekend. I kicked off the travel extravaganza by heading to Berlin last weekend to visit one of my fellow Imba’s, Jeff. The most amazing thing is that I realized that I have never been to a country where I understood absolutely nothing, except perhaps for the word “toiletten” or something like that, which is probably pretty important. I got in late Friday night, so we basically just had a quick dinner of falafel and some drinks. I had a flaming mai tai, which was both scary and delicious.
Saturday, we basically walked and did touristy things from 9am until 3am. We were going to do a great walking FREE walking tour, but opted out because it was raining and windy. Instead we did the bus tour which was lovely, but you have to take pictures very quickly as you fly by the monuments. This bus tour had the option to get off, so we went by the bombed out church that has not been rebuilt as an homage to the atrocities of war. We also saw some incredible street performers and a chocolate bear that weighed 160 kilos.
At our next stop, we went to the checkpoint Charlie museum. It was hands down the best museum I’ve ever been to. Before I saw that, and the wall, I really had no idea what the conditions were like while the wall was still standing. It came down when I was almost 8, so I don’t think I ever really understood the significance until I was there. Anyways, at the museum, they have all kinds of contraptions that people used to get over the wall. These include, stories of tunnelling, ladder bridges, personal submarines, people hiding in welding machines, speakers, suitcases, etc. There were heartbreaking stories of families being separated and children of subversive east german families being taken away and adopted out to good communist families. Also, apparently there were many children who drowned in the river because anyone who tried to save them would be shot by the guards on the wall. Oh, and there were X rays of a guy who made it over the wall, but was shot with 200 splinters from the automatic firing tower and survived. I could go on and on. The best part besides the museum is that for two euro, you can get your passport stamped with east berlin and west berlin stamps. So, now I feel very cool.
We spent the rest of the day visiting museum island, the holocaust memorial, hitler’s bunker (which is literally a parking lot with an informational sign), the Reichstag and about a billion other places that I am certainly forgetting. Then we had a quick dinner and went on a pub crawl that’s organized through the walking tour people. It was the two of us and an assortment of 80 english, irish, Scottish, Australian, and german people. I had some german beer, but not being much of a beer drinker myself, I tried to switch to some kind of sweeter malt beverage. This was met with many incredulous and slightly disgusted looks and firm, “NO, we don’t have any sweeter beers, why don’t you just drink liquor? (and stupid American, stop bothering me with your silly questions when I’ve got more appreciative people to serve).” It was a great group, we walked all over berlin, until 3am when I was magically nominated the person to get us home even though I don’t speak a lick of german. I got us home alright, but not before I had more disgusted sneers at my pronounciation (re: butchering) of the german subway stop names, at which point I turned to the guy and said, “don’t YOU, make FACES at ME, I don’t speak German!” So, then he took his disgusted german self to the other end of the platform.
Sunday was a lazy day, we just went to the famous flea markets. Other highlights included seeing a guy on a motorcycle get hit by a car (he was fine.) and seeing a lady almost get in a fight with a guy who was twice her size. This is how it went down.
Older chubby lady and stocky wrestler looking guy get on the subway. Older chubby lady suddenly shoves stocky wrestler guy out of the way and sits down.
SWG: what’s your problem?
OCL : you were in my way.
At this point stock wrestling guy starts to walk away, when
Older chubby lady: you’re an *expletive*
SWG: (gets in her face) says something like, I don’t know what you’re problem is, but you are obviously an *expletive*
He walks away
OCL: you stink!
Way to get the last word in older chubby lady! Many thanks to jeff for helping with the translation. So that’s it. Next stop, carcassone, a medieval city in france and one of the 1000 places to see before you die.
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