Berlin, Friday (Day 1)

We left early Friday morning for the train, which was roughly a 5 hour ride to Berlin. Once we arrived at the train station, I was asked to help translate for Fernando, the LAR student's professor, to buy train tickets. I was pretty positive that they'd all speak English, but he was just as certain that the ticketmasters did NOT speak any English at all. Guess who was right? Once they heard me speak English to him, they started doing it too. His face had a look of slight disbelief all around. We got our tickets just fine, though. The hostel was pretty nice although the showers not so much. Also, I had the bed next to the inside wall, which meant that everyone walking down the hallway sounded like they were stomping.

After we dropped our stuff off, we headed out to this cool park that used to be the end station of a railroad. During the Soviet occupation, they didn't use it and just let trees grow up through all the rails. It was incredibly cool and fun to walk around in, until we got to a section of the path that was all steel grates, like the ones on the sidewalks in Raleigh! I couldn't walk on them, so I walked on the side of the path until we got to this bridge that was all grate - no solid part at all. John ended up offering to piggyback ride me over the bridge. On the other side, though, we saw these guys that were just hanging out playing basketball, and one of them had a little husky for a puppy dog. It was so cute with the white fur and bright blue eyes!!

We went to the Sony Center at Potsdamer Platz, where we ate dinner at the food court of a huge mall. I had weinerschnitzel, which was really good. Then we got ice cream and wandered around some more. There is lots of random sculptures in Berlin. Wherever you look, there is something there. Even in the Lego store, they had a massive version of Einstein's head, and then also a Lego giraffe. But it didn't have a tail!

We finished up the day going to a cool squatters' studio space. To get there, we walked down a huge long street that had lots of prostitutes on it. More than I'd ever seen in my life. It was a crazy wild building, like a huge house party complete with kegs of beer, combined with the gallery spaces of a First Friday. Every floor, top to bottom, had something different going on, and every floor was interesting and full of people. Eleanor and I were buying postcards on the fourth floor when everyone decided to leave and we got left behind. So we just took our time and found our own way home. Even stopped for a beer on the way back.