Berrrrrrrrrrrrlin

Berlin... WOW what an amazing city. Very modern, but there is still a constant reminder in the air of how awful it was there.

I stayed in what was once East Berlin and it is still to this day, not as updated or progessed as West Berlin. Not as many shops and such but very unique.

My first night i walked around town and just soaked it all in and grabbed a super cheap Vietnamese dinner for 8€! Amazing! Berlin doesnt have the typical German Food anymore, it is so international, that it is easier to find Asian cuisine and Turkish food than typical German food.

The next day i of course did the bike tour. It was alot of fun even though it rained cats and dogs! and i am not kidding.. a few poodles did actually fall out if the sky! But it was great. We went everywhere, Fernsehturm (TV Tower - which the Swedes actually built), Brandenburger Tor, Bebelplatz (where studentsburned nearly 20,00 books) - unreal!, The Reichstag, the Jewish Memorial, Tiergarden (of course for beers in the beer garden and lunch - delicious tomato soup!), Check Point Charlie and the Berlin Wall, and so much more. It was really great and i got a free T-shirt since i did all three of the Fat Tire Bike Tour Tours as well as my own piece of the Berlin Wall! WAHOO!

That night, practically everyone from the bike tour did the pub crawl. We all kinda bonded in the rain. And the pub crawl was hysterically fun. We went to this on bar that was 4 stories high and with a beach bar on the bottom floor between the buildings. But what is so cool about this bar, like Chirstiania in Coppenhagen, it is run by squatters. Basically after the war, the Soviets tore down all huge buildings to create parking lots. But when they asked who owned or lived in that building, artists claimed it, so the Soviets said, heck, Keep it! So it has art galleries within as well as dance floors and bars. very cool.

The next day i again walked Berlin. In East Berlin they have the "Old School" walk and don't walk signals.. SO great! Western Europe wanted to change them to their more modern signal, but they refused. I also went to the Check Point Charlie / Wall Museum. Unreal. They had personal stories of people that escaped and unfortunately of those that attempted but failed. One lady hollwed out 2 surfboards and laid in between the two. Another lady nailed two suitcases together and laid inside that in the back of a trunk! Unbelievable the guts of these women! This one man was a janitor, and he hide his family in the janitor closet for 2 days then sent a signal to his buddy on the West side and they hooked up a zip line and he and his family zipped line across the wall just above the lights undetected! Crazy!

That night i did probably the absolute best thing i have EVER Done in my life. I had "Dinner in the Dark!" That's right - absolute darkness. You decide which menu you want, veggie, fish, meat or mystery. I went fish, while my two friend Tom and Curtis went mystery. It was AMAZING! After you decide what you want, they lead you downstairs where a blind person, in our case, Wolfgang, takes your hand and you are lead to your table in a conga line style. There Wolfang walked us through the details, for example if we were finished eating, we had to call his name, because obviously in the complete darkness and that he is blind, he cannot tell that we are finished and if we had to used to the restroom to call him, so he could escort us to it. Unreal. Your senses are in complete overload. I think you actually enjoy your food more, because you cannot see what it is your're eating. Usually, if i don't like how it looks i am a little weary to eat it. But in this case you had no choice! -- and of course we each tasted the lemon garnishes on the plate, thinking it was part of the meal!!! Hysterical! And by the end of the night, even though we could not see at all, the three of us were pretty good - Cheersing, passing bottles and silverware with no problems at all. Unbelievable! Oh! And how could i forget, they also put on a show in the dark! Some of the waiters and staff were actors and actresses. The night that we went, they did mini movies. So we were inthralled with Titanic, Psycho, Dick Tracy, and a few others. Over course it was all in German and in the dark, we we had to really think on what it was, but it was amazing!

The next day, it rained, again. Awful! But I still headed out. Went to the New German History Museum. Really insightful. Everything from the Nazis to Communism and the Romans before that. Intense.

Then... Munich!