Berlin!

So the second leg of our trip was to Berlin. We couchsurfed with the very sweet Fidi and Marcell. The were also planning on leaving their home countries for another english speaking country, Australia. We met Marcell in their adorable east german apartment, near a former Nazi airport. The US used this airport during the cold war to bring in supplies to East Berlin. Now the German government wants to tear it down and make it some sort of public place but some Berliners are strongly agains this. It seems like everything is like this in Berlin, some people want to move on and forget the war, and others think it's important to remember it and make sure they never forget their history. Fidi had the weekend off and took us on an amazing two day bike tour of Berlin. He was a fantastic tour guide and we really felt grateful for their hospitality. Because we did so much there's no way I can describe it all so i've listed it, in no particular order:

• visited the Rijksdag
• went out to some cute bars with our couchsurfer's german friend (who speaks english with an australian accent) and her roommate from seattle
• visited cool/interesting jewish and others, holocaust memorials
• ate yummy vietnamese food
• biked around the east side of the berlin wall, including visiting the church of reconciliation
• ate at a cool hipster waffle shop
• visited the Pergamon museum
• ate australian hamburgers with german friends
• went clubbing to a fun club with a rock room (after skipping out on the "best club in europe" when we realized it was a 12 euro cover)
  
• visited the jewish history museum
• walked home at 4am, watching the sunrise over the western (artistic) side of the berlin wall
• biked by a former turkish bath, turned into park
• wandered through the holocaust memorial
• partied with german anesthesiologts at a garden party
  
• stopped in Alexanderplatz the cent of east berlin
• taught our couchsurfers Farkel at the neighborhood bar.
  
• weaved our way through a protest of the airport closing with hundreds of leftists/hipsters/hippys and many scary looking german police

As you can tell we fit in a lot into our 3 1/2 day stay in Berlin and thanks to Fidi and Marcell it was probably my favorite place in our trip. Such a fresh, alive and exciting city! Prague is next, sorry these posts are taking so long but i'll try to get the next two out soon.

Off to Pullman tomorrow to find a job and get all moved in. I'm excited to start a new school year, and hopefully it's a good year and I can finish school in a timely manner (cross you fingers for that one :/)

Gros Bisous,
Steph