If I think it’s a terrible entry…

Gangstas

There are two restaurants out the front door of my hostel and one has signs all throughout the hostel saying “Pizza and Pasta”. At least that’s what I thought it said for three days until I actually looked and it and realized it said “Pazza and Pista”. I cannot believe it took me that long to see the mistake and continually read it incorrectly, the way my brain wanted it to be.

I always forget that museums are closed on Monday’s, every day is a Saturday to me and as such everything should always be open. I had planned to go to the “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe”, their name not mine, but it was Monday and the underground part was closed. I was able to walk among the tomb like concrete structures above ground though and it was very interesting the way they made it but also very sad because I know what the tombs were representing.

I was able to go up in the Franzosischer Dom, some old tall building, and have good view of the city, it was actually sunny while I was up there, for the first time since I came to Berlin. Then I headed to Checkpoint Charlie, one of the security gates between East and West Berlin. Its hard for me to imaging that in a country that seems so forward and normal that only 20 years ago they had a wall and wouldn’t let people cross it to see their families and friends on the other side. Not only that, but they didn’t even have Facebook, email or blogs back then so keeping in touch must have been really hard.

At night I went on an Alternative Pub Crawl put on by the same company that took me on the graffiti tour. We went to 5 different places, a regular bar, a gothic bar, a really smoky bar, a ping pong bar, and a club. The ping pong bar was the best, they had a ping pong table in the middle of a room and people can get a paddle for free and then people move around the table hitting the ball only once and then continuing around in a giant circle taking turns. When you mess up you have to sit down and it continues until there are two players who play a quick game to five and then it all starts over again.

Tomorrow I head to Amsterdam by train.

CLICK ON THE PICTURE BELOW TO SEE ALL OF TODAY'S PICTURES

10_05_09 Berlin small