How to anticipate the unexpected

This morning I stood on the field of Olympic Stadium in Germany. This is the stadium where I saw Hertha and Schalke play on Saturday. It's also the stadium that hosted six games for the 2006 World Cup and the final between Italy and France.

My time in Berlin is unreal, it seems.

I haven't updated the past couple of days, so here we go. I'll start from Monday:

Lara and I woke up and walked around Prenzlauerberg, trying to find a story for her. We took pictures of graffiti and shops and laughed about people staring at us because it was hot outside and she wore shorts and I wore a dress. That's not the fashion here. We explored a tea room, a fruit stand and a bookstore, which I liked the best. It had a good atmosphere and calm music. Who knew J.K. Rowling's first name was Joanne? Books in the U.S. don't use her first, from what I can remember. Her middle name? Kathleen. I guess I'm not the exuberant Harry Potter fan.
(They have these "autofoto" booths all over Berlin.)

While we were walking, a guy asked if we were cold and we said no. We talked a bit about Prenzlauerberg, and he asked if we had gone out to any bars or clubs. We said no but we wanted to, and when I asked if there were any around, he said yes and that he would go with us and gave us his number. We took it, walked around the corner, and threw it away. Fail on Tony's behalf.

But then we had our fail when we toodled around Alexanderplatz and took pictures. I saw several guys who looked our age kicking around a soccer ball by a building. We walked over, and they actually turned out to be middle schoolers. We asked what they were doing and where they were from, and they would giggle to each other before every answer. From what we could tell, they were waiting on a teacher and go to school in Germany but didn't want us to take any photos. Fail.
(In the Alexanderplatz fountain, a homeless/drunk guy was sitting in a grocery cart, singing and mumbling. We didn't try to talk to him. Lara is the person on the right in white.)

Anyway, early Monday was mostly bonding time for Lara and I. At 4 p.m. Franka Bruns, a freelance photojournalist who graduated from Ohio University, spoke with us about the life of photography in Berlin. She has worked for AP and covers daily assignments, a lot of politics. Berlin journalism, especially AP, seems to be doing pretty well and also seems to be relatively open. She did talk about the non-stop life of being on call, but I think that's the sign of a good journalist everywhere, the adrenaline rush of being on an assignment. I asked several questions, and she was really helpful. The group then headed to a Thai restaurant around the corner from our hotel, and I enjoyed a huge bowl of Pho.

After dinner, I met up with Ian, a guy who graduated from college in Tennessee and worked in Nuremberg for a bit. He's now in Berlin, trying to find a job and making music. He's going to start his Ph.D. in Texas on ethnomusicology in the fall, I think. It's crazy the variety of people who have moved to Berlin. He showed me the spot where he creates music in Tacheles, an old squatter building that is floors full of graffiti, artists and musicians of all types. It's become pretty famous, and now they ask for donations from tourists and have signs up that say "no fotos" in certain rooms. (This is Ian above, in his Tacheles room.)

After that, I came back to the hotel and attempted to start a blog but headed to bed.

On Tuesday, the group set out on a bike tour of Berlin for several hours. At first, everyone seemed slightly nervous about being on bikes for so long, but it was excellent. My bike was named Pippin and had a squeaky toy Pluto in addition to a bell. It was fun :) Our tour guide was a really nice guy from Tampa. He showed us the longest still-standing stretch of the Berlin Wall, the Soviet War Memorial and Kreuzberg, where I stayed the first day here. (In this photo, Blakely is drawing Germany and telling us how Berlin was first split.)


We stopped to look at two bears that are kept in the city (as mascots) and heard shouts and honking a few streets over. Some taxi drivers were protesting, so we grabbed a few photos. Yay spot news. The woman in the middle is talking through a megaphone, announcing something. The group began cheering. We're still not sure what was going on. The bike tour was fantastic, and I recommend it to anyone who visits.

The group headed back to the hotel to shower and change for a musical play called Qi-eine Palast-Phantasie at the Friedrichstadtpalast, which is really hard to explain. It had dancing, singing, acrobatics, ice skating, comic relief and even magic. Freeman said in his blog, "The show will be like Berlin meets Las Vegas meets New York with a little bit of Cirque Du Soleil thrown in." It was incredible and made me want to act and dance again. Oh, the stage. A handful of us ate pizza at a restaurant down the street from the theatre and then crashed pretty soon after we returned to the hotel.

This brings us back to this morning and my excellent adventure. I woke up at 7:30 a.m. and got on the tram at 8 a.m. with other people going to work. I felt like I was truly working in Berlin! I met with Torsten Hahmann, who works for the Berlin Football Association. Today was an under 16 game between France and Germany, and I was able to walk all around the stadium with him and take pictures on the field. I was allowed in the press room and even snacked a bit. Good times. It's hard to believe what opportunities I'm running into, but I'm excited. (Here, I took this picture while sitting in the stands with Torsten, watching the game. Goooo Germany - the guys in white.)

Tomorrow we meet with an editor at Der Spiegel, Freeman says Germany's equivalent of Time. I'm really looking forward to that.

I feel like this blog has been less detailed lately, but I hope it's still entertaining.
Best,
C

And the beat goes on

I'm pretty sure Fink has some German in him. I saw two men with gigantic eyebrows like his. Yes, I took photos, but, no, I can't post them. They wouldn't look passable without some cropping, and I'm still being a slacker about installing the right software. I'll get on that during some free time tomorrow.

Today was a walker. We left for a walking tour around 10:30 a.m., took photos all over the city and learned some history about specific places, including the Brandenburg Gate, the Berlin Wall, the Holocaust Memorial, the bunker where Hitler committed suicide (which is actually underground and not open or visible to the public at all) and Checkpoint Charlie. I learned quite a bit that I didn't know. I'm not as pleased with today's photos because they seem so typical and touristy, but today's tour gave me great ideas for places to go back to later.

We then met with Stine, a German girl, and her sister at Potsdamer Platz to talk about story ideas and the culture of the different districts of Berlin. It was really interesting, and I hope we meet up with her again to go to a market or something. We then moseyed around the Sony Center and took pictures before going back to the hotel. It was a pretty chill afternoon, and while Professor Freeman wandered around Berlin, the students got on our laptops or napped. I climbed into the windowsill and wrote a bit and then slept for about an hour. Once Laura and I woke up, we gathered a group to eat at a Thai restaurant nearby. Later tonight, a group of us headed to a bar for Lauren's birthday, but Laura and I forgot our IDs like goofballs and a few of us headed back.

Photo adventure below:

Uber tourist shot. Checkpoint Charlie. The end.

A girl playing with water at the Sony Center.

Abigail's doughnut from Dunkin Donuts. They're not this cool in the U.S. New meaning to "ich bin ein berliner ..."

Hello, Megan. These advertisements are EVERYWHERE.


Typical picture ... one foot in East Berlin, one in West Berlin. These double stones all over the city show where the wall once stood.

Holocaust Memorial. It's really cool and better to show with several pictures. I'll do that when I get back. This is the main place I want to go back to and shoot at night. There are lights around the stones.

Didn't believe me about the kissing? Well, here ya go, while tons of people are walking all around. It looks like a scene from a movie, doesn't it?

These touristy travel things crack me up. I thought this was the perfect one for my inside jokes - Dirty Dancing with Megan and Blue Man Group with Bobby (Arrested Development ... ties in with a segway tour going on. Don't worry, I have pictures of them, too. And then we bonded with our German tour guide by quoting the show. Ha.)

This is Neue Wache, or New Guardhouse, a memorial for victims of tyranny and war.

This was just for fun. Berlin has some amazing architecture. And of course I love the river ... oh me and water.

So I didn't write a book for some of you to live vicariously through, but today was pretty touristy and relaxed, mostly bonding with the group. I'll retell the facts when I flip through pictures with you at home.
Love,
C

Not just a walk through the park ...

Today turned out completely different than I (or anyone else for that matter) expected.

No bike tour, a soccer game and a carnival later, and I'm tired! I'll seriously be in need of a massage when I get home (hint, hint, Roberto).

I finally went to bed around 1 a.m. last night, listening to the Elizabethtown soundtrack on my iPod. I woke up around 8 a.m. ... probably ... I don't have a clock, remember? But the gals in my room had an alarm set for 9 a.m. for us to get up and get ready, so I wasn't too worried. Or was I? I kept waking up every 15 minutes or so from a dream I was having that we didn't wake up to the alarm and woke up at noon, missing the bike tour. But we actually got up around 9:20 and got ready for the day, sad that it was raining. We didn't want to worry about steering bikes and lugging camera equipment in the rain. We got ready anyway.

I walked downstairs, and Professor Freeman was there with about half of our group, eating breakfast. They have all kinds of toast, granola and yogurt and even had meat, cheese, cucumbers and tomatoes. He decided that we shouldn't do the bike tour but visit the Annie Leibovitz exhibit instead, which we of course didn't object to. A few of us went back upstairs to finish getting ready.

Which brings me to one of my fun observations. I've figured out why people have such good skin here ... the wind that blows everyday just dries it up. The acne on my face was pretty much dried up, and I picked off the dry skin in the mirror. Gross, I know. It'll probably all clear up just in time for me to leave.

And I'll admit it, Mom. I really should have brought my tennis shoes. We've been walking a lot, and I'm really going to regret not bringing them when we do the bike tour on Tuesday. I'll give you plenty of chances to say, "I told you so."

As I looked in the mirror, I wondered what it would be like to do this trip as a UF student with friends here - or more like, what would it be like to do this trip with MEJ and UGA photo peeps? I was surprised that not everyone knew each other here, but photojournalism is a major at UF rather than an emphasis. At the same time, I don't even know everyone in the emphasis at UGA. I did think of how much fun Frannie, Jim, Waites, Jake and I would have wandering around Berlin. Fun. And funny. Getting lost with them would be hilarious.

At any rate, I'm really getting to know everyone, and as expected, they're all really nice and don't hold too much against me for going to UGA. (Thanks, guys)

So then we headed to the Annie Leibovitz exhibit, and now I'll start adding in photos for you. (Here is the building the exhibit was in. We couldn't take any inside, but it was an excellent exhibit!) We stood in the line for quite awhile, which was good for conversation and observation. It seemed to be a touristy part of town - restaurant names started appearing in English and a sign near the exhibit promoted a "pub crawl," which Chris told me the other day is a big joke in all large European cities that caters to tourists and basically is only used by tourists who want to get drunk and hook up. It's not authentic at all, which makes sense. But the exhibit was wonderful ... I'll explain it in detail later to those who are particularly interested. She had some striking celebrity poses ... the naked pregnant Vanity Fair cover of Demi Moore that she won an award for, Leonardo DiCaprio with a swan, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp and Kate Moss, and of course more serious ones like George W. Bush, Colin Powell and more. There are so many more, including some gigantic, gorgeous landscape photos. It was really inspiring.

When I left the building, nine others were outside, waiting. (Check out this picture ... the dog is yawning. Yes, we were bored ... and quite taken with the dog. Sorry also that these photos aren't cropped or toned. I need to add the right photo editing software to my laptop. Sigh.) We stood outside for awhile but were getting impatient and hungry.






Freeman stayed behind to wait for the others and directed us where to go to get on the S-Bahn (think Marta, but cooler) to get to Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche, a church that was hit in 1945 during air raids. Another church is built beside it. It was interesting, seeing it surrounded by several food stands and touristy shops. I got an order of "pommes," or fries. (From the little hut in the photo, on the right.) The prices were upped quited a bit, which made me think of Six Flags and tourists. (This isn't the best photo I have of it, but I wanted to include one for the blog of the food stands next to it.)











We stopped to take pictures of street performers, which was fun. (Top photo: This guy was spinning on his head ... pretty cool. Bottom photo: This guy was breakdancing. I thought this picture was pretty cool because it looks like he's going to hit is face in about .5 seconds. He didn't, of course.) I decided to play with movement today in my photos.


While on the S-Bahn, Vince talked about going to the Bundesliga soccer match between Hertha BSC and FC Schalke. So we went! He and I took the S-Bahn out to Olympic Stadium and talked to a few guys who suggested that we scalp some tickets. So we did. It was amazing to be there - we could hear the cheers from way outside the stadium, which reminded me of Saturday gamedays in Athens in a way. The security people stopped me and patted me down, and the woman told her supervisor to come over. I don't think I was allowed to take my camera in, but I think she gave up when I kept giving her a blank stare and said it was OK. Ha.

Vince and I found our seats, and two guys were standing at them. The one at Vince's seat moved back a row, but the guy in mine didn't. I tried to stand next to him (like we crowd the stands on gamedays), but people were actually sitting down in the fold out chairs, and I had no room. I asked the guy where his seat was, and he only spoke German. He said something angrily that seemed like "someone else is in my seat a few rows back" and ignored me. A few minutes later, I was getting increasingly annoyed and pointed at my ticket and told him to move. He yelled at me in German again, probably telling me he got there first. A guy next to Vince spoke English, and Vince said something to the guy, and he started arguing with the angry German in my way. From what I could decipher (I heard "dame," which means female), the guy was telling the rude one to let me have my seat because I'm a girl and guys should be nice to ladies. He still wouldn't move, so Vince and I traded spots, and Vince slowly edged him out, and he left. Ha! The guy who stuck up for me apologized for "rude Germans," and I said it was fine. He was really nice for helping. He ended up being the funniest to watch during the game - he got so frustrated and yelled, reminding me of how intense Bobby gets during football games. I could tell he kept cussing because two little boys in front of me kept looking up at him, and the dads looked slightly annoyed. The guy even looked down and apologized at one point. It was really cute to see that. And the dads who brought their sons. And the groups of guy friends who would cheer, wave flags and toast beers. The chants were really loud, and I tried to catch on and clap with some of the cheers. The game ended 0-0 for the last home game for Hertha BSC, which made it awesome. The 72,000 seats were sold out! I'm so glad I went. I thought about going to a soccer game while in Berlin, but I didn't think it would be possible. It was the best experience.

Vince and I took the S-Bahn back to the hotel and it was PACKED. There were so many people leaving from the match. I was squished between two couples, and may I politely observe that PDA here is a problem? Couples have no qualms about snogging in public, let me tell you. Anyway, that was fun.

We walked right into the lobby as the group was heading out to the carnival. We didn't even take a breath and went out with them to Hermannplatz, which is near Kruezberg. We got off the subway in the same area I went the first day. It's crazy how much more I know about Berlin and how much more comfortable I feel already.

The carnival was interesting. The rides were way too expensive - the cheapest was 2 euro - so I bought one corn on the cob and cotton candy (see the photo? Corn was popular in our group. Om nom nom.)

I just wandered around and took pictures. The typical stop, pan, blur types, but still fun to do at a carnival anyway. The best/most interesting part is that most of the rides played popular English songs, so I heard "Poker Face" and Pussycat Dolls. I wish I had written down the others, that would have been fun. There were several popular rap songs and even a band that sang English oldies. They smiled at me when I took a picture. Too funny. When we were coming back on the tram, a guy was listening to "Kiss Me Through the Phone" on his iPod. Nice. I'm stuck between America and Germany. Now I'm back here, trying to type this up and thinking about tomorrow's walking tour. I need a shower and some good sleep. I hope you enjoyed!

Love,
C

Just getting started...

Orange juice, espresso, scarves, strawberries, bundles of cilantro, blackberries, blueberries, breads, salmon, beef, cheese ... cheese ... cheese ...

I walked through a market in Kreuzberg (I guess you could say a burg/burro in Berlin) today, and it was glorious. I don't know if the U.S. has open air markets like these around New York, D.C. or L.A. (I'm sure it does), but we definitely don't in Athens, let alone Newnan. There was anything and everything, and it was all pretty cheap. I bought an espresso, some potato pastry thing, a scarf and a whole box of strawberries. I was invited to go to the market by a guy named Chris, who lives in Kreuzberg. (He took this picture of me buying the scarf for 1.5 euro, not bad considering you can get lame ones at American Eagle and whatnot for $30ish.)

But that was to pull you in. If you want the excruciating details, I've got the excruciating details. I'm at 176 photos, and it could easily be more, but I haven't taken my camera everywhere.

I'm just going to start writing, and it's going to be long, so feel free to drop off when you want. I hope to fit the photos in here correctly ... I didn't take any until Paris, so here's to some serious text mess.

OK from the beginning:
Mom took me to the airport after we dropped by Granny's house so I could pick up some spending money from her and Aunt Carole (Thank you!!) and I checked in at the airport as usual, went to the E concourse and sat at the gate for about an hour, talking to Yashesh, Bobby and Mom and judging the people on my plane. I got on the 10:30 p.m. flight from Atlanta to Paris and ended up smack in the middle of an aisle.

The last few times I've flown, I've been on smaller planes with only four or five rows. This plane had seven, and I ended up in the fourth. I sat next to a lady who reminded me of Mrs. Elder from EC in a way but not really ... she wasn't cool enough. I didn't talk to her much but did find out she is lactose intolerant and speaks French fluently. The man on my right reminded me of my uncle John (just the way he said things, I guess, and I think they have a similar dry sense of humor), and we talked a good deal. He has a daughter who is an upcoming senior (like me!) at a New York film school. They live in North Carolina.

I knew to adjust to jet lag I'd have to sleep on the plane, so I tried pretty hard to fall asleep when we first took off. I didn't anticipate the screaming child in front of me and the flight attendants coming by after we took off to get us to fill out some forms about where we were staying just in case someone on the plane brought in the swine flu virus and they needed to contact us. Yay for France trying to protect herself.

Then we were served dinner. The plane food wasn't bad, actually. I chose this pasta ravioli stuff, and it came with bread and crackers and a small brownie. Tasty. The movie "Yes Man" with Jim Carrey came on, and I watched it for just a bit until Zooey Deschanel's bit in the fake band Munchausen by Proxy came on, then I went to sleep. I've been watching the clips online since Andrew got me into her real band, "She & Him." I slept through that movie and the next one, "The Express." When I woke up for five seconds, I saw dogs and thought it was "Hotel for Dogs" or something and went back to sleep. I had a dream that our UGA photo professor Mark Johnson used an entire class period to critique my photos, so I guess that was me getting myself ready for the trip. Ha. I woke up again to the flight attendants serving breakfast (a bagel and banana - one of the best I've had in awhile, actually) about an hour before we landed in Paris. Not bad getting some sleep. The flight wasn't too bad either. It was a bit bumpy over the English Channel, but I was just happy to be near Europe.

I'm also proud of myself for not going to the bathroom during the entire flight. Weird, I know, but that was also practice. You have to pay to use most of the public toilets in Berlin.

Right before we landed in Paris, the man on my right and I talked again. I told him about The Red & Black, Zinkhan and sexual harassment. He typed our Web site in his phone to look up later. Sweet.

So then in the Paris airport I looked up my connecting flight gate and wasn't sure where to go. It was D55A, and I saw a sign that said "2D," so I followed. And walked and walked and walked. I think it must have been on the other side of the airport or something. (This is what I saw of Paris, basically.)

When I was going through security, the man checking my camera bag under the X-ray asked me if I was a journalist, and I said yes. He said I had a microphone and a lens, and I told him three lenses, and then he said OK. I don't know what that was about, but it was weird.

It was also weird adjusting to not really knowing the language when people around me talk. I've learned how to be pretty quiet in those situations. Even though I know a handful of French and German words, it's like I completely forgot everything but "merci" at the airport. The humidity inside the Paris airport was ridiculous, so I ended up sitting on the cool tile floor (also because there weren't any more seats near my gate) and took a few pictures. A woman stared at me. Ha. Then a child right next to me started screaming and crying, and the mom wasn't doing much to quiet him. I got up and moved, and then the plane started boarding a few minutes later. I walked down the connected hallway thing (as you see above), and I thought the plane above was mine. But the hallway actually leads to a staircase, too, and down below we were loaded on a tram and driven to another concourse where our plane was. It was weird. It's cool how smiles mean the same thing in every language, though, because I put my hand in between two men to grab a rail when the tram started moving, and a German businessman moved out of the way a little so I could have space. My smile meant "thank you," and his looked like "you're welcome."

The flight to Berlin was only an hour and a half, but I conked out. I woke up to the flight attendants serving a snack. The people across from me chose tomato juice, orange juice and Perrier. Because I don't know how to say tomato or orange in French, I just asked for Perrier and said "no" when he offered snacks because I couldn't understand him. Sad. I'm sure he spoke English, but I had too much pride. The German husband and wife next to me just pointed at what they wanted, but I had to play it off. Ha ha.

As you can probably tell, I was really introspective on the flights. I thought a lot to myself and wrote down a lot of the details so I could recount them fully. I also got used to listening to the second message when the pilot would speak first in French and second in English. It makes me wonder if that's how some Hispanics feel in Georgia.

Then I got off the plane and grabbed my luggage (the airport workers broke the top handle of my bag, by the way. Sad times.) and walked to the exit. I didn't have to go through customs formally. Apparently there's a "no declare" line if you don't think you have any contraband. I guess because the flight was from Paris, passengers aren't really checked. I wasn't sure what I was doing, so I just walked through. Then I somehow easily found an exchange station and changed my dollars for Euros. Then I bought a two-hour transportation pass to get where I was going. It's really cool ... you can buy a pass that will apply for all the transportation in Berlin - the subway, the bus, the tram. I got on a bus and took the subway to my next stop.

And this is the part where some of you will get mad/concerned (sorry Mom), so there's this Web site called Couchsurfing, which is really popular in Europe. It's where you can get in touch with people and stay at their place for free so you don't have to pay for hotel or hostel charges. It's like Facebook for travelers. I joined it last year when Megan and I were considering backpacking Europe. Anyway, the study abroad program didn't officially start until today, but I saved about $1,000 on my plane ticket by coming in a day early but didn't have a place to stay, so I became friends with Chris in Kreuzberg. I stayed with him last night and slept on his couch. He was too nice - He met me at the subway and walked with me (carried my suitcase) to his apartment. He had to work but told me his friends wanted to meet up with me and walked with me part of the way, then told me directions, and I got there easily (Don't worry about me too much! This is my time for adventure. It all worked out fine. Please don't be mad).

So then I met up with Frederico and went to this bar/club place and met Chisco and Niccolo. I'm not sure if that's how you spell their names. They were really nice, and the bar was really just an outside patio, and part of it floated on the water. It was pretty cool. The river it was on, however, was pretty still, so there were some gross gnats over the water. I sat with them for awhile, but two of them are originally from Italy and kept speaking Italian, so I just people-watched for most of the time and felt awkward. Frederico was really nice and would talk to me every now and then, but I felt like I was just an extra person, in a way.

After a few hours, I walked back to Chris's place but got a little lost. People are so nice in Berlin, and it's really safe! I ended up in an area of town that had Arabic written on the signs, so I knew I had turned the wrong way. I stopped an asked someone for directions, and he actually walked me to the street, which was good because I would have gotten lost again. He was an Iraqi who has a relative in Atlanta. Small world.

I hung around Chris' apartment for a bit until he got home from work, then we went to a local convenient store and bought a couple of cheap lemon beers. They were fruity and tasty, and I'm not a beer person. I guess the really light, cheap beers in the U.S. that most college students buy just smell too much like pee to me. Ha. And they don't taste very good.

Anyway, we talked a bit then went to sleep. This morning, we woke up around 10 a.m. and went to the market I described earlier. It was too cool. We wandered around the streets of Kreuzberg some more because he was looking for a pair of sunglasses, but he didn't find any he liked.
Somehow I ate the whole box of strawberries I bought. (This is Chris, buying our potato pastry thing for brunch. This is the clearest picture I have of him for some reason. He never looked at me when I took his picture. Ha. I was being the annoying photojournalist.)

We talked a bit more at his apartment about the U.S. - He's planning a road trip in America for June and July and was trying to figure out his best bets for motels/hostels, transportation, pay-as-you-go phones - then I headed out. I wanted to get to Prenzlauerberg (where the hotel is) a bit earlier than our 5 p.m. meet time, and I didn't want to take up any more of his time before his girlfriend arrived for a date later that day. One thing that I've learned is that time is really fluid here. There aren't really any clocks around, and no one seems hung up on the time. You just go. Then again, my phone doesn't work here and I don't have a watch, so I don't know what time it is anyway.

I took the subway up a few stops to Prenzlauerberg and followed Professor Freeman's directions but decided to be stubborn and walk instead of take the tram three stops, like he instructed. I walked all over Kreuzberg and figured I could do in Prenzlauerberg, but I didn't factor in how far apart the stops were and how heavy my luggage was. When I was one street away from where I was supposed to go, I thought I had gone too far and turned around. After walking back several streets, I checked a bus map and decided to turn back around and walk the way I went before. By this time, my luggage was getting really heavy, and I had to keep switching hands. When I was one street away, I realized I dropped my jacket somewhere but was too mad to go back to get it. I checked into the hotel and had a bit of time before the 5 p.m. meeting and walked down the street two or three blocks. And there it was - someone had picked up my jacket and tied it around the fence to a cemetery. How nice.

Back at the hotel, I met my roommates and several of the UF students. Two of them have been traveling through Italy before coming here and will go to France and Switzerland after this. Too cool. We met up at 5 p.m., and Professor Freeman took us to see a part of the Berlin Wall.

(This is from a tower we were at, so we're on the west side, looking on the east. There's a lower wall that didn't hold out well, and the actual Berlin Wall is the one closer to us with the rounded top, which made it harder to climb.)



(In this next picture, I'm on the other side of the smaller wall, looking through a slit in the concrete at the taller wall and the building I was just standing on.)








We then headed to a biergarten, and I got a tasty pasta salad and some raspberry fruity beer. It tasted more like soda (It was probably really weak, apparently a lot of the tourists like to get it. Ha. -- see the picture. Vince got the green kind.) Then we walked and took pictures along the way, and a few of us fell behind. Six of us didn't make the crosswalk light at one intersection and got lost, but we put a few clues togehter (what street we knew our professor was going to, where Vince thought the group turned) and finally found them at an ice cream shop. I got a scoop for .70 Euro. Tasty.

Aaaand now we're back at the hotel. I'm probably the most rested one here, so everyone else is already in their rooms. I'm in the lobby and about to head up to bed. I'm sore and tired ... and in need of a massage. All I'll get is sleep for now.

A few general observations:
-The guys I met in Kreuzberg were all emo-ish dressed. It must be a style here. They were all wearing slim leg jeans, zip up hoodies and ked-like shoes and had swoop hair. Too funny.
-Nobody wears shorts or flip flops around here. Two of the guys (the only two guys) in our group got called out for wearing shorts. It's pretty warm during the day but gets pretty cool at night, so everyone wears pants and jackets all day. I've seen a few girls with sandals who wear pantyhose. I've seen several with tights. It's definitely a style here.
-The police cars really do have weird different sirens. It always makes me think of Catch Me If You Can and Bourne Identity. In Kreuzberg, the ambulance was safety cone orange. Too weird.
-It's really cultural here, lots of different people speaking lots of different languages. Happy.
-It's also really safe here. People seem trustworthy, and kids play around in the many parks. People stroll the streets at all hours.
-There's also a lot of graffiti, and I took a lot of pictures of funny/interesting ones. (Check out this one of kissing penguins.)
-People are really in shape here! No wonder skinny jeans are all the rage. Everyone walks or bikes EVERYWHERE.

I hope all of my details were interesting ... and that the pictures were OK. I'll try to write a lot each day.

LOVE!
-C