Thursday night we arrived in Berlin and had reservations at the Unsicht-bar Restaurant. In German Unsichtbar means unseeable. You order your food from a set menu, you have the option of choosing beef, chicken, pork, vegetarian, or surprise menues, and then you are taken back into the dining room where it is totally dark. I mean, can't see you hand in fron of your face no matter how long you hold it there dark. You then eat your entire meal, three or four courses, in the dark. It was a lot of fun and a cool experience. Of course in the cover of darkness I had a great time moving things around the table to confuse the other people that I was with. They didn't think it was so funny but I had a great time.
After dinner Ian, Katherine, and I met up with my friend Erin who had been in my Deutsche Kompakt class with me and we all went out to a beer garden and just chilled for a couple of hourse. It was great.
The next day we woke up and had breakfast at the hostel. Then Katherine, Christiane, and I went to the Goverment Quarter of the city and climbed up into the large glass dome of the Reichstag. It was a pretty spectacular view. Then we went and looked at the Jewish Memorial. It was amazing how disrespectful people were being. There are kids running around climbing on the blocks. Trash is everywhere. People just don't understand what it represents, to them it is just a big playground.
That afternoon we met up with Ian and went on a four hour bike tour of Kreuzberg. I got to be the rider at the back which means that I got to wear a sassy neon orange reflective vest. It was pretty cool. The tour was very well done and I really liked riding bikes.
That night we went and saw The Producers. It is the first time that this musical has been released in Germany. It is also a pretty big deal that it has been released here because the play that the producers produce is called "Springtime for Hitler".
The next day we got a slower start. Once we finally got on the road we went to the Ziegesaule and the Tiergarten Park. We made our way to Ka(ufhaus) De(s) We(stens). This is a massive department store that is in West Berlin that is a major symbol of consumer culture that was just not a part of the DDR. The Gedaechtnis Kirche, a church that had been almost entirely destroyed during WWII but has been rebuilt is right around there too.
After killing some time after lunch we went to a cabaret show. It was not like what I would expect a cabaret to be. It was more like practiced improv. It was very difficult to understand though because they were speaking very fast German and I don't have a good enough understanding of the language to be able to pick up the clever puns. And it was very much a social commentary and I didn't have a good enough knowledge of German politics, laws and everyday knowledge to be able to get the point of a lot of the sketches. But it was very good listening practice.
That night we went to this place called the Winery where you pay one euro for a glass and there are bottles of wine sitting out that you can pick and choose how much and what you would like to drink. Then at the end of the night you pay what you think is reasonable. After spending a bit of time there we went out and took some pictures of Berlin by night.
The next day we woke up and Katherine, Christiane, and I went to Checkpoint Charlie. Personally, I thought it was very interesting and very well done. There are informational boards lining the entire intersection so we spent at least an hour outside just making our way around to all of the boards. Then we went into the museum. We only had about half an hour there but that was enough for me to learn about some of the escape methods that people came up with. It was unbelievable. Some of the feats of engineering are incredible.
We then joined up with Ian and Daria again and went to a cupcakery in some area of Berlin. After a cupcake I went on a tour of an underground bunker with Christiane and Daria. It was a very good tour, but my knees were bothering me quite a lot so I didn't pay as much attention as I should have. Ooops.
After the tour I went to the TV tower with Christiane and we chilled there for a while. We did a bit of juggling which was a lot of fun. The other WashU students met us there and we all went to the hotel where another group from WashU had just arrived. We went out and had dinner with the Professors that were accompanying that group.
After dinner Ian, Katherine, and I went around and just walked around Berlin a little bit. We found the red light district. Ian was very happy about that. In his words, "You know you are in a city when there is a red light district." Ian in from Washington D.C. and St. Louis is the smallest city he has ever lived in up until living in Tuebingen so he was happy to be in a real city again.
The next day we woke up and came back to Tuebingen and jumped right back into classes and being students again. This trip has begun a month of traveling on the weekeds for me though. Next weekend Cologne to see Wolfgang again.
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