Berlin day two

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On Friday afternoon we took the U-Bahn from St Pauli Backpackers, the hostel where we´d stayed, to the Hauptbahnhof, and caught a train for Berlin. On the train we ran into some eighteen year old backpackers from Florida. The Americans we do run into come uniformly from the southern states, for some reason. We chatted with them for the ride (they told us about how they´d liked Sweden), though I was tempted again and again back to my book. The Book of Lost Things, it´s called, kind of a twisted Alice in Wonderland thing. It may be set aside though; I recently purchased Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep by Philip K Dick and I´m really looking forward to it. I read A Scanner Darkly in like two days, a few days ago. Couldn´t put it down.

So we arrived in Berlin around five, this time successfully checking in to our hostel. We ended up staying at the same one and it´s actually a pretty cool place. There´s usually cool music on the stereo in the common room/bar and it´s central-ish...a ten minute metro ride gets you to Alexanderplatz, wherefrom you can catch U-Bahn and S-Bahn (different "subway" lines) to wherever you please. I mean the Calgary rail system looks like a big bent-up letter "Y", but its Berlin counterpart looks like a much, much bigger spiderweb. It´s pretty awesome, though somewhat expensive - a daypass will run you six euros, and it pays for itself in only three rides.

So after checking in I took a shower and put on some cleaner clothes. Staying in our room were two Irish guys about 21 y/o. They talk fast, they skip along their words putting sounds in different places than we do. Kind of like Newfies, but also...not. One thing, they say "somewheres" or "everywheres", and Canadian maritimers do the same thing. Interesting. Then we went out for dinner, after making vague plans to go out. We´d planned on going to this place for roast chicken but we ended up at this Indian place in a neighbourhood called Friedrichsain a short walk from our hostel. It was good grub (we were starving), and eating it conquered the queasiness which had dwelt in my belly since scarfing a plate of syrupy Chinese food at the Hamburg station. Ugh. It was a nice spot, with people walking by every which way, dressed for their Friday night out. We paid and left for the hostel again. We had some beers, running into the Irish guys again.

We ended up playing drinking games with them and a bunch of Swedes. The Swedes went out to a club, but we stayed with the Irish guys, believing that they were planning on going out too. The night wore on and we stayed there. One of them was on the phone to his girlfriend in Milan. It became evident that we´d made a mistake. So we went out for a doner kebab and hit the sack. Why hadn´t we gone out with the Swedes?! Damn!

So we woke late the next day. We made an aborted attempt at an ampitious sightseeing expedition and ended up exploring a little shop-ridden corner of Mitte. Kathleena bought some dresses. Due to the late start we´d gotten, every time I heard the time it was about three hours later than I thought it´d be. Weird. So we came back and there was this guy Dave from Tenessee staying in our room. We went out for pizza with him and his friend Andrew. They were taking a short German course here but it didn´t sound like too much work. The pizza was good but it took about an hour and a half after we ordered to arrive, so we devoured it when it did come. But it was good pizza. Thin crispy crust and nice moist toppings, not greasy. Italian-style pizza.

Wanting to get an earlier start on today, we didn´t go out last night. We got up around eight thirty and went to the Berlin Zoo, which was really cool though the weather sucked. The coolest part were the grizzly bears and arctic wolves, which shared a habitat. It was cool to watch them interact. The bears would sit and occasionally lumber about, and the wolves would avoid them, slinking off in submissive postures. They were beautiful though, those wolves, lanky and pure white. We saw Knut, the famed polar bear; he paced and paced at the edge of the water at his exhibit, always staring out at the crowd.

What I will always remember was the panda bear. Sitting and munching bamboo, sitting and chewing bamboo. It has to eat pretty much all day just to stay awake. Why eat bamboo? It was round all over, its limbs, its huge head, even its paws. Its eyes were small and beady.

After that we went to this place for lunch. Kathleena wanted to stick around and chill for a bit, but I get restless and agitated in those situations, I just want to get back out in the city I'm in. So we had a bit of a disagreement about it, but it's all good now. We did our laundry after that and now we're here. Tomorrow is Monday and we've got a big day planned. We're going to get up early and see a whole bunch of stuff.

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