O Berlin

This will be a quick one as it is almost dinner time and we have been non-stop all day at the Jewish Museum Berlin and the Museum of Checkpoint Charlie. To facilitate a quick post, I will have to resort to bullet points.

-The German Language: I might be biased because the only languages I can pronounce or mumble gramatically incorrect sentences in are Romance languages, but something about German really throws me off. To my ears it lacks melody and the chopped up manner makes it difficult to pin down the intonation. Was that a sentence, a question, an order? It´s hard to say (literally and figuratively). It sounds so harsh, and when said loudly kind of scares me. This might be my American bias of having Germany painted in history books as the home to those who rule with terror, but it definitely is throwing me off and I am looking forward to being surrounded by a more lilting language in Barcelona.

-The Wall: It´s interesting for me to experience Berlin as a young person because it is one of the first places I have been where such a huge and tumultuous part of historz has happened in my lifetime. It amazes me that my parents and I visited Berlin just five short years of the wall falling. I can´t really put this into words, but it is bizarre to walk down the street and know that many of the Germans I pass lived in a city split in two for many years. I can´t help but wonder what side of the wall they were on, where they were the day of the botched GDR press conference and if they ever considered escaping or helping someone to escape.

-Doner Kebab: Delicious thick pita with lamb or chicken, salad, tomatoes, cucumbers and garlic sauce. A perfect pre or post-drinking snack. Reccommended highly to us by our virtual tour guide Chris DeWitt, former study abroad student in Rome.

-Free bike tour and Boozetour bar hop: Was led by a guy named Dave from Overland Park, KS -a KS suburb of my hometown Kansas City, MO. He said he could´ve pegged me as an St. Teresa´s Academy girl before I told him which school in KC I went too. I´ll take that as a compliment. Went on a bar tour last night with an insane amount of people through the same tour company. Imagine fifty plus people rolling in a group, beers in their hands, walking through the streets of Berlin from bar to bar. We left after the third bar because of slow transportation, and because at that point, more than twenty drunk people moving in a pack is a bonafide shitshow.

That´s all for now. Off to get another Doner Kebab or maybe some delicious Thai fare. Traditional German food is not actually served too often, but I promised myself I would find sausage before I leave.

More in Barrrrthelona.

maria