Berlin

There really isn't anything all that interesting to say about my trip to Berlin. I showed up, started walking, and after three days all I have to show for it is a lot of pictures. I think the most adventurous thing that happened during my trip is that it took about half an hour to get the change to pay for my train ticket when it started raining on Saturday afternoon. But what that means is that I didn't get mugged even though I spent all of my time walking alone (including at night) and I didn't get run over by a bike (even though I did my best) and I didn't get fined for not having a ticket on the U-bahn or the S-bahn (even though I did get checked). So I thought it was pretty awesome, but I don't know there's a lot to write about.

Total mileage over the three days is somewhere in the marathon range, probably on the high side. I did utilize the S-bahn the first day and the second day I caved after about 9 miles (estimating another 3-4 miles in the evening once I got off the training), but the only time I set foot in a train station yesterday was to scout out my platform for this morning, since my train left at 0600 and I wanted to make sure I know where I was going before my morning coffee kicked in. (My suspicions were confirmed when I got on the elevator this morning to head down to the lobby and pushed the number for the floor I was on...) I walked through a lot of neighborhoods over the past few days, and I probably could have seen some more cool things about the city if I'd rented a bike or better planned my trip, but I saw everything I wanted to see.

It became exceedingly clear to me that I am very much a history nerd, as the highlight of my visit was probably Saturday afternoon. My first stop of the afternoon was Checkpoint Charlie, the primary transit point between the American sector of West Berlin and Soviet sector of East Berlin during the cold war, including a visit to the Mauermuseum. The museum overlooks one of the original checkpoint guard huts, and has a lot of stories about how people escaped into West Berlin. After walking through the museum I visited the Tempelhofer Freiheit, or the airport where all of the flights flew in and out of during the Berlin airlift. Today it's Berlin's largest open park, and both runways are open for the public to walk/jog/bike/unicycle (yes, I saw some!)/rollerblade/paraglide/dog walk/whatever. I was slightly disappointed that I couldn't really see any aircraft wheel marks on the south runway, but I guess they paved it over to make it smoother for all the paragliders.

My most common experience was ordering food/drinks at restaurants. Typically, I'll walk up to a counter and order something in German--it's really not that difficult to say "ein kaffee, bitte." The nice person behind the counter then rattles off something in German, like, "schwartz oder mit milsch," and I would stare blankly at them. (The other common variation of this is asking for a scoop of ice cream and having them ask, cup or cone.) The person then usually changes into English that is more or less pretty good but always good enough for me to understand them. ("Black or with milk?") The lady on the train this morning told me I was sweet for trying and repeated things in English and German for me. Anyway, the end result is I'd like to thank the good people of Berlin for knowing enough English for me to get by.

Sorry to be boring, but everything else interesting about my visit is best told through all the pictures I took. So I think it's time to end this post and work on those. :-)