A Long Post about Berlin.

Here is my brief (well I attempted to make it brief!) summary of my trip to Berlin.

At 10:30am I got on the train at Nürnberg. At the start of the train trip people known - 1, at the end of the six hour train trip people known - 32.

On arrival in Berlin we went straight to sorting out rooms, Shannon and my group failed to notice this happening around us and so the four of us were immediately separated. No problem, I just met more people and we all talked non-stop till at least 1am each night, getting up at 7am ALWAYS hurt! We then waddled our way across town, checking out the Reichstag which you can't enter because of those selfish terrorists and taking stupid amounts of pictures in front of the Brandenburg Gate. That was also the night I found the Berlin Bears....statues of bears painted differently hiding in every corner of Berlin....I took a photo of every bear I saw.

The next day we checked out an exhibition on Berlin's history...from the start till now. After this the boys (Alex and Zak) decided they wanted Döners, they continued this ritual every day of spending up to two hours in search of Döners which are basically an extra dirty souvlaki. It seemed I was the only one to appreciate the exhibition and so after that the girls (Shannon, Kimberly, Amy and I) went to visit the Berlin Dom, the TV tower and the Ampelmännchen shop. This trot around town also gave us many opportunities to shut Gypsies down "DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?" *Look confused* I later heard many a story about people saying they spoke swedish or russian and watching the gypsies seamlessly change languages....never doubt a gypsie's mad skillz.

We had a tour with a bristish tour guide around Berlin. He was great-he studied history, spoke fluent german, I think I was in love...Then he told me it took him four years to get fluent....Shot down! I guess I saw it coming but then I also asked a russian girl I met and she said three years and the american we saw was 11 months in and could only grocery shop with good grammar....that's depressing. On the tour we saw the Jewish memorial, lots of Berlin Bears and the Berlin wall. The girls wanted maccas for Lunch which gave Shannon a great opportunity to tip her drink (water) over me after I made a mean joke about...something, there's been so many it's hard to keep up! Anyways, that night we saw an Improv group, wasn't feeling it so much but it was good to go out and laugh at an english speaking joke!

Wednesday was concentration camp day. It was odd, felt more like a museum than a place where thousands of people died. I guess there wasn't a lot left, most was destroyed after the war so it made it hard to form an atmosphere. At least our tour guide was great. Can't say much for the other group's though (we were split in two.) He seemed to deem it appropriate to smile to the point of giggling whilst discussing the murders, medical experiments and forced labour that went on within Sachsenhausen....The group complained afterwards. Later we went to KaDeWe and I bought Reese's peanut butter cups....Life is good. Never seen such a big shop and of course, we took lots of photos of ourselves! The boys were yet again depserate for Döners so I walked with them and we lost the girls....the boys also failed to get Döners after deciding the guy selling them looked too shifty-They all look shifty, Döners are dirty things!

Wednesday nigth needs it's own place. I had already seen the blue man group and it was really expensive and I don't like iceskating much. We only had three options for the night's entertainment so that left the Modern Dance show....Bad decision. We went in and it was like an old warehouse you'd expect to see in "Fight club." We watched a "Special performance" which was flat out mental, modern dancing is actually moving like a spastic in jolty disjointed movements and occasionally jumping up and down for good measure. Then the real performance came on-it went for 35 minutes and I felt every second. He came out in a turban, red underwear and high heels. He proceeded to move back and forth in front of us (it was all silent....awkward) and then get on a matress and re-enact some erotic scene with himself, which ended in him smacking his head over and over again on the floor. I was not-so-secretly hoping he'd miss the mattress and knock himslef out on the concrete floor...he didn't. The he put on random outfits, moved a bit like a fish out of water and then got semi-naked again. Then he pretended to drown himself in a bucket, then he took his underwear off and danced around in a jock strap for ten minutes whilst I helplessly stared at his ass, and to finish off he put on a wedding dress, white powder, red lipstick and stood in front of a fan for a few minutes. If you're confused so was I. So many questions...Why did I come here? Why can I see his ass? Can I get my money back? The entire group was damaged...hope our travel insurance covers the burning my retinas suffered after seeing that!

Thursday was Potsdam. A place where there is a giant Castle with an even bigger garden. We had to wear slippers (house shoes for germans) over our own shoes and proceeded to slide like cross country skiiers across the Palace, much to the disgust of our tour guide. Unfortunately I didn't listen to a thing our tour guide said. I may have heard something about a king or two but mostly I just stared at the shiny things and tried to push Alex over so he'd get in trouble for touching the ground uncovered by the slippers. The gardens were massive and unfortunately not so beautiful in winter, but we did see one of the boys test whether the ice was frozen or not in the river....it wasn't, he lost his foot to the ice cold water! That night I saw the Buddy Holly show with everyone, it was in German-well not the songs but the play so I translated for those who have spent the last eight weeks speaking only english. It was pretty awesome and totally made up for the modern dancing....

On friday we all felt a bit depressed. We were going home the next day and everyone just wanted to get on a plane back to Australia. I didn't. I wanted to see as many museums as possible-I managed two. The New museum with the Bust of Neferititi and AMAZING historical artifacts. I wanted to move in there and just stare at the history all day long, but instead I waited for my group in the foyer of the New art gallery for half an hour. We'd split up because they didn't want to see the new museum, they were supposed to meet me at 12 but didn't show up, I didn't have a phone so went and found a security guard to help out. I didn't have a ticket to get back into the new museum so was stuck outside but the security guard helped me-"What's your group leader's phone number?" (I didn't know) "ok, what's her name?" (I didn't know.) Luckily she came along at some point and called the group leader in the gallery-they didn't pick up. So after a long talk my new security guard friends took me into the new gallery, talked to some of their friends and I got in free! I saw the thinker, Manet and heaps of other famous paintings and at some point I found my group, gave them death stare and then decided they got me in for free so they did well.

Later we saw the east side gallery, after leaving Zak and Alex far behind when their need for Döners was far greater than their touristy needs, then went shopping and had our goodbye dinner where Zak and I tried to be as inappropriate in German as possible. I maintain that I won...he quit whilst he was ahead...cheater!

Anyways then we stayed up most of the night, caught the train home in the morning and I crashed when I got home....It was a great week in Berlin!

Hope all is well.