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Ich bin Berliner...U2?
Berlin is all about inertia and nudges.
You could take that several ways. Upon arriving I found it very hard to
do anything but sit in the airport dumbfounded and overwhelmed. An
object at rest tends to stay at rest. It was Saturday night and I had a
hostel to get to. I finally found out how to take the bus to an area
closer to where I needed to go than Tegel airport, which was a good start.
When I got off, I walked through the heart of the newer parts of West
Berlin. I had bought a rather worthless guide book and so was left to
navigate by street signs, intuition, and English speaking pedestrians. I
was walking for about an hour and a half, through commercial districts
and red-lite districts (I was even slightly propsitioned by a, um, native
to one of these districts), and dark and scary streets.
Finally, I rounded the corner that the hostel was on, and fireworks went
off. No, literally. Fireworks started going off about a block a way.
Were not talking anything wimpy here either...these fireworks rivalled
some 4th of July shows I've seen. They were beautiful. What a nice
welcome, in a language anyone could understand. And a great nudge, too.
The hostel was luxurious comparied to the one I stayed at in London; I
spent a while talking with Christophe and Nick (from Germany) and Matt
(from New Hampshire), and then had a great night's sleep.
In the morning I was told that I couldn't stay another night, and was
cast out. But an object in motion tends to stay in motion. After buying
a train ticket and eating lunch on (pardon gros misspellings)
Fredreich-Wilhem-Plazt, I went to the Berlin Zoo and Aquarium. They had
such wonderful displays and cute animlas (sorry, I haven't been to a zoo
for a while) but I had to rush through so I could catch a walking tour in
English that started right outside the zoo (under the big orange Giraffe).
Lance from Indiana was our tour guide, an architecture student studying at
the Huemboldt University in Berlin. He was great, though quite
melodramatic about some stuff (e.g. at one point we got off the subway and
he just started walking, but after a bit he looked back over his sholder,
smiled deviously, winked, and said, "oh, by the way, welcome to the old
city of Berlin..." and kept walking. Keep it real, Lance.). We started
at the Zoo Gardens (U2 has the song Zoo Station about this place, and U2
is a subway line here in Berlin) and walked EVERYWHERE. I saw lots of
statue (one in the middle of 17 Juni road that Bono swings around in the
U2 video for "One" but it has lots more significance than that), a church
where Bach played the organ, Hitler's bunker where he killed himself, the
construction sites on Potsdamer Platz, pieces of the wall, the Checkpoint
Charlie museum, the new and improved Reischtag (what incredible
architecture), Fredreichs Forum and the memorial (very neat) to the
Burning of the Books, and tons of other stuff. It was my best investment
yet here in my travels.
After the tour I walked around some more by myself and headed towards the
train station. I had about half an hour for dinner, so I tried to find a
restaurant. Ironically, the only thing around was an Italian restaurant,
but they made good tortellini. At 10:30 the train left for Munich
(Muenchen) and it was a nice long, restless train ride, though my first in
a long time (the last time was on the Traine du Grande Vitesse in France
several years ago).
Arriving in Munich around 6:45 AM, I had several horus to kill, so I took
off for a walking tour of the city. And, okay, I was looking for an
Internet cafe too. Nothing was really open, but it was neat to see all
the street market merchants setting up for their day. One thing that was
particularly neat, I was walking around this big church-like building near
Marien Platz, the center of ancient trade routes in the area, and on one
wall was about 6 city seals from various cities around the world. The one
from the US was none other than Cincinnati, Ohio, which is where I'm from,
in case you didn't know that.
Back on the train for about 7 more hours, and here I am...in Italy.
Florence (Firenze) to be exact. 've secured accomodations for several
nights overlooking a nice part of town, and I'm very much looking forward
to my slumber this evening. I plan to spend several days here, seeing the
sites and learning Italian. The first order of business is to get some
dinner...probably Fettucini Alfredo.
G'night.
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