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Europe » Germany » Berlin » Berlin
May 8th 2007
Published: May 8th 2007
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wow, today has sure been interesting!
Can i just say last night was the worst night 'sleep' i have ever had. We being blackriders and cheepies bought seats ont he night train, for €10 each instead of €30 for cuchettes. We know now there was a reason it was so cheap, excpet i still think i would make the same decision to save money for 'comfortability'. 4 of us crammed into a 6 seat car. sleep? where? how? not possible. somehow i managed to fall unconious for a couple minutes, and strangely enough my muscles are not paying for it today, but boy am i exhausted after our day!
We arrived at our hostel a little too early to check into our room, 32 bed room, and shower. so we sat on the couch for a couple minutes trying to decide what to do.
meanwhile i was on the phone trying to get ahold of my bank who had red flagged my account. word has not been sent to all neccesary parties informing them of my travels throughout europe. so by this time i had no more cash in hand and was not able to withdrawl any more. After i got hung up on twice seconds before our conversaation ended i gave up and joined the group. We decided to take a free walking tour through berlin.
Our tour guide was amazing, courtney and i decided she had to have at least a 4 shot espresso before she arrived to 'work' and thats on the conservative side of guessing. I think this was probably the best find we ran into all trip. It was so informative, and interresting. we never would have known any of the history and importnance of some of these building if we had tried to walk around on our own. The walk was around 4 hours long, very brisk walking, lots of stopping for our guide to monologue the entire berlin history, "800 years in 8 minutes, time me!" 20 mintutes later, whoa, i thought she had only been talking/yelling/acting out history for 5 minutes....
anyways, funny thing happened right after we crossed over the west Berlin wall. I looked over in the street, down at the gutter, and saw something in the water. i walked over and picked up a €50 bill! whoa! what a huge blessing, in my state of frustration with the bank, God dropped this gift at my feet.
The weather here is worse than Seattle. It pours rain for 10 minutes, then the sun comes out for 20, then it pours rain for 20 minutes and the sun come out for 5. sun glasses, rain coat, sun glasses rain coat....tan, soggy feet, tan soggy feet.
I have learned so much history today, and i can finally appreciate, seeing some of it first hand i can visualize what happened. I find it interesting that you can tell which building are original, still standing after the bombimgs, by all the filled in bullet holes. We had a converasation after the tour about our thoughts on our education system and how most of this information slipped through, or didnt mean anything at the time. I wonder if history would become more real, culture wouldnt be something to fear, and life choices would change if early on our history lessons were taken to the field. i think it would have made a huge difference for me...or maybe i say that now becuase i can appreciate more fully what im looking at, and understand...things like how the berlin wall came down, a totall accident, but the best thing this country needed.
anyways....
Tomorrow we will be taking the other free guided tour to one of the concentration camps. this should be interesting.
more thoughts later.
hopefully, despite the other 32 people i will be sharring a room with, i will get some rest. tomorrow prooves to be another fascinating experience.
alls well that ends well,
Kinsey

i forgot to mention. the stiches came out 2/3 days ago in Amsterdam, much cleaner hospital than Cinque Terra. They didnt numb me or even use tweezers, she just snippend them and spend 5 minutes trying to grab them with her gloved fingers, ouch! this is why, im pretty sure, i still have a black eye. Blessed it isnt infected, just gross looking with the addition of 4 more holes. Hopefully i wont look like the walking dead when i come back home, but, that could prove to be an interesting story, and maybe get me out of going to work the next day...time to adjust to the time zone, right?

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9th May 2007

It's the only way to learn history.....
You are right; travelling is the only way to really appreciate the context and impact of history. I am very relieved to hear that your "wound" is not infected. That's because I'm a grandmother, and I feel like you are all my grandchildren. I hope you're catching up on your sleep.

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