First Day In Berlin

This is the view from Tomas’ guest apartment. That needle looking thing is known as the TV tower. It’s a 2 bedroom apartment and is very nice. There’s also a deck in back with overlooks the Alte Judischer Freidhof which is the oldest Jewish Cemetary in Berlin. I was going to go in and visit, but it wasn’t open the two times I tried. In the part I could see from the apartment, it looked like the graves were completely overgrown with ivy. It just struck me as a little strange.

Sunday at 1 Tomas, myself and the 3 guys who were staying in the apartment with me went out to Breakfast. They don’t even go through the formality of calling it Brunch in Germany, or maybe the just don’t have that word. It wouldn’t really work, Lunch is Mittagsessen which is literally mid-day meal, and breakfast is Fruhstuck or early-piece. (You might be thinking, but breakfast is also compound word. Yeah, I don’t have answers for everything, I just like to pretend that I do). Anyway, we got these 2 huge platters with lots of fun stuff to eat. Everyone else got coffie or some sort of brownish cafenated drink, I don’t know nearly enough about what they ordered to have been able to decipher it if they were speaking English. We stayed there for 2 hours. Apparently that’s what they do.

This is just an example of the strange uses of English that I found. I find them funny, so I take pictures and here you are.

This is the inside of a casino that’s inside the base of the Fernseherzentrum (The TV tower). It wasn’t so much a casino as a bunch of slot machines. They didn’t have any table games and they had a 1E entrence fee. The entrence fee seems like not the best busness stragtegy, but they got me to pay it (even though that was mostly in deference to what Romulo would have wanted me to do).

This is “The Clock of the World” at Alexanderplatz. It’s nice, and I’d seen pictures of it. However, it’s considerably smaller than I thought it would be. I figured it was huge, but it’s just sort of normal size. The other interesting thing was all the German Emo kids hanging out underneath it. The main differences between them and the American Emo kids are that they seem angrier, and drink in public.

I found a Dunkin’ Donuts. I was excited, so I took a picture. However, all of the stuff is decently more expensive than it is in the US. (No word if the Griffeys own it)

This is a scale model of Berlin. You can see the Fernseherzentrum in the foreground. This model was in the Nikolausviertel Kriche. (look up name). It’s the oldest surviving church in Berlin. It was built in the 1200s. It’s been turned into a museum and it has a lot of pieces from other Churches that were destroyed in WWII.

This is a Taufstein (baptism thingy) from the 14^th century. What gets me about stuff like this is when I take a step back and realizes that not only is this really old, people used to use it. Some guy in 1429 got his kid baptized in this thing. Thinking about things like this that way just makes it so much more real and more interesting to me.

This is a Sacrament cabinet from the 15^th century.

This is a molding on one of the buildings in what was East Berlin. The text reads “ES LEBE DIE SOZALE REVOLUTION ES LEBE DER FRIEDEN DER VÖLKER” (It lives, the social revolution. It lives, The Freedom of the People)

This is the Berlin Döm. It was a protestant church built by Kaiser Wilhelm II.

This is the inside of the church, which was incredibly opulent, with gold everywhere.

This is a close-up of the pulpit. It’s like 15’ in the air. It’s just one part of this very over the top church.

This guy just had an over the top mullet. Mullets are surprisingly common here. They aren’t as crazy as this guy’s, usually they’re understated but they are common. Kids have them too. It’s just mean thing to do to your child.

October 3^rd is the day that the DDR and the BDR (East and West Germany) unified. So they were having the “Party for the day of German unity” in the center of the city.

This picture speaks for itself.

I was minding my own business, riding my bike along when all of a sudden, a sign pops up, saying I’m heading for “Wedding”. I only found this slightly disconcerting.

I was riding back home when I saw a group of people gathered outside a hotel. I heard whispers about it being a charity event and Kevin Costner being there. I think he was in Berlin, but when I left he had not shown up.

The Brandemburger Tur at night, with a ferris wheel in the background.

I have pictures from my other days in Berlin that I will get up when I get a chance. I just got back from visiting Eric Read (my dad's cousin) in Switzerland, and classes are finally starting this monday so I will most likely continue to be behind on posts, but they'll be up there eventually.