i found a $1.29 store yesterday, they sell cheap food-household items. i got a large canvas tote there with the store's logo on it, looks pretty camp. i love it. its my food bag now, and i carry food in it. been mostly surviving off of sandwhiches i steal from breakfast, and small packets of nutella. so far the only german food i've eaten are these amaying hazelnut-chocolate wafers and a hot dog. the rest has been sandwhiches and asian food. i love the bacon bits on the side and am going to buy a large can before i go. no huge culture shock here yet. a lot of the pop culture here is american, and most people speak english. the only disappointment is that there are so few historical buildings left, and when you think you've found one, there's some plaque that tells you it was rebuilt in the '50s. although its seriously amazing how fast they rebuilt things here i guess. will upload photos in a couple of days. tomorrow we leave for Nuremberg and i'm really sad to see Berlin go. i had just gotten used to navigating around it.
Well um, here I am, still in Berlin. I think I’ve finally figured this city out. It’s not one I’d like to tour so much as I’d like to live in. Does that make any sense? I think so.
I love how it’s flat here and bicycles have their own lane on the sidewalk, and that everybody rides them. There are so many trees and pockets of greenery here, it doesn’t feel like an over-urbanized city. Also, the public transportation is just amazing and clean. And the subways are painfully simple.
However, the city is an empty one. For being so big, there is a decided lack of energy, especially anywhere outside the main touristed areas. My prof called it a city of ghosts, and I’d have to agree. The few old buildings left are usually scarred by bullet holes and stray shrapenal.
So far we’ve toured only old stuff. Today we finally made it past the ancients and looked at medieval and northern paintings up until the 17th century. Eh. I was hungry and my feet hurt through most of it. Although the Rubens collection was nice.
Go to my flickr account to see the photos, there are way too many to post here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24279148@N05/2557094724/
Well here I am, my first day in Berlin nearly drawing to a close. The flights were okay, as I slept through most of them. In fact, I don’t remember the first one, but I suppose it happened because I did end up in the New Jersey airport one way or another. I even managed to sleep through most of that flight too. After dinner and watching “Horton Hears a Who”, I slept until about 30 minutes before we landed in Berlin. Not bad considering it was an 8 hour flight. That medicine you take for motion sickness makes you drowsy, by and by, and so that might have accounted for some of it.
I’m thinking Berlin is an interesting enough city, although I haven’t made up my mind on it one way or another. It’s more contemporary in landscape than I would have thought. But they have interesting bicycles.
Wi-fi here is 7 euros per thirty minutes, about $14 in US dollars, so I’ll probably be updating every other day until I can find something cheaper.
We took a bus tour, for which I was mostly sick and drowsy on and so I only took a couple of photos. Now is some down time before dinner.
And dinner took way too long, assuring that I would have nothing to do afterwards, everything being closed. The food was uneventful, and I was bored for 3 hours.
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