Blogs from Berlin, Berlin, Germany, Europe - page 134

just want to report that a couple of hours of lying in my apartment doing nothing, a piece of strawberry cake and a cup of coffee, and a lecture on the weimar republic have done much to restore my spirits. perhaps broadcasting my frustrations to the world on this blog helped as well--i feel as though perhaps the slump i've been in the last few days is lifting...... read more

What's up guys. Yesterday we had a full day in Berlin. Old east Berlin to be exact. It was pretty much like the pictures of the old Soviet days - lots of grafitti, broken buildings, etc. although the western world has made huge inroads as of late. The hostel we stayed in was lame - they took our money then told us our room we reserved wasn't available. We'd still have to pay the full price though, and stay in a way crappier room. Oh, did I mention the hostel was home to EVERY CHILD 12-14 years old in the world? It was like living in a middle school, and I swear I wanted to slap every one of them. If anyone is wondering the name of this hostel its The All In Hostel, in Berlin. ... read more

Deutsche Bahn, the German railway, had served us pretty well for the previous 2 weeks or so - clean, fast trains speeding us across the country in relative luxury. Until the final big journey to Berlin... The train from Goslar to Braunschweig was fine enough - a slightly grotty local train, but only an hour's journey. Then the heavens opened on the platform in Braunschweig just as we learned that our train would be a little late. When the train arrived, it wasn't the cool ICE train we'd become accustomed to, but a somewhat shabbier IC train - a replacement due to a problem earlier along the line with the one we were supposed to get. Anyway, on we got. 30mins or so later, the train slowed suddenly and began to crawl, then stop. We sat ... read more

So Munich turned out to be really awesome. We went on a tour to dachaun which was a concentration camp in WWII. It was really difficult to see, but I felt like I should do it. Then, we were walking in the street and a group of guys came by with a cart that had a sound system and a keg and we decided to follow them. Germany was playing for third place in the world cup and we figured they were going somewhere fun to watch the game. Turns out, they had a projector and set everything up in the park. We met a couple from London (even though the girl said she was from mexico) and hung out with them during the game. They were really fun. Then we met some people from Munich ... read more

Sunday afternoon, in friedrichshain (the neighborhood i'm living in) at an internet cafe with Whitney and Danielle, a friend who's here visiting from the states. We just ate at a great big brunch buffet--fruit and sausage, whole grain bread, nutella, various forms of eggs and a wide variety of vegetable dishes. Quite tasty. then we walked around this awesome flea market and combed through stand after stand of vinyl, interspersed with stands of old books and other old crap, alongside hand-made hipster skirts and punk rock miniskirts and belts, stands selling anti-bush banners and other anti-establishment paraphernelia and artists. There was one stand that had a ton of vinyl from the Soviet Union and east europe, but i didn't even know where to begin in recognizing any of it. I bought Duran Duran _Seven and the ... read more