Friday 3/27
Our train left Prague around 9:30 on Friday morning, and after some lovely views of the Czech, and German countryside (complete with a field of serious power windmills) and an on and off 5 hour nap for me, we arrived around 1:30pm. From the train station we took the S-bahn (above ground metro system) to the very colorful Pegasus Hostel. After several frightening foreign arguments
between Nina and the desk clerk about key distribution and paying our bill we were able to check into our room and get settled. We hit the ATM next for some Euros, and the whole group met up around 3pm to follow 
Fernando (landscape professor) around Berlin. We took the U-bahn (underground metro system) to the Sudgeland Nature Park. This Park was an incredibly cool place, that actually used to be a bunch of rail way lines, or maybe a station type place, but its been out of use for ages and nature has taken over it. So basically its lots of old stuctures and tracks all encompassed by trees, grass, and general over growth, which some awesome sculpture and development worked in. It was very cool and pretty, especially with the setting sun sneaking between the trees. I only wish it had been warmer. So we walked though there for a while then turned around to walk back up the other side of the functioning track. There we encountered some German boys (eh..) and their Husky puppy (yesssss !!!!!!). His name was Hanky and his older black lab friend’s name was Rocco. And they were both adorable, and the puppy rolled over my shoe!!!! I almost fell over, I was so excited. But then we had to go so I said goodbye (while of course contemplating how I could explain a stolen husky puppy in my carryon luggage to the train conductors- I couldn’t come up with anything besides pretending to be blind, which would have been a disaster for both my shins and anyone in my path, so the puppy stayed)Our next visit was to Potsdamer Platz which was a big commercial area of Berlin with awesome new buildings, bright neon lights and a ton of cool fountains, sculptures and public art. It was a very hip place that was awesome to see at night. After that we stopped for a quick (very non-German, to my disappointment) dinner in a food court, before continuing on with Fernando to a cool hippie, gallery place in another happening part of town. It was so happening in fact, that we encountered a new aspect of German culture. It began with one women dressed in high heels and a puffy coat with a corset over top. I thought this fashion choice was odd but we all continued walking, and after passing several more corseted women, the realization sank in that it was less of a fashion and more of a “uniform.” Yes, we walked down a street of jazzy restaurants and German hookers (the tally got up to about 22, within a 3 block distance) It was eye opening, but we all were pretty exited that we got to add German hookers to the list of crazy thin
gs we saw in Europe (face it, you would be too. ) So we hit up the very artsy, grungy, slightly dilapidated, gallery hippie place after that where we saw lots of cool Berlin/political/random themed collage work, some graffiti art and this cool little display room called Eroto Shop, featuring, you guessed it, sex themed art. The artist lady was even in there working on some stuff. Pretty cool overall. A few people and I signed one graffiti wall - probably the prudest thing we could do in the grand scheme of that place. We got back to our hostel around 10:30 and I tried my first German beer- a Warsteiner from the convenience store next door. Tasty, but pricier than Prague :( Exhaustion took over next.Saturday 3/28
Saturday began with breakfast from the grocery store across the street, and tagging along with the LAR kids once again. We walked down the street a little bit a discovered we were staring at the Berlin Wal
l. (one of the parts that remains standing) we walked along it for a while snapping lots of pictures, (I tried to squeeze through one of the cracks in it to the other side-unsuccessfully) till it ended and we were at a very large bridge. It was old and ornate and looked very pretty with the shiny water and sunlight. After walking though the bridge (it was tunnel-like in design) to the other side we hopped on a metro to the Jewish museum. We didn’t actually go in the museum but, it was really cool because it has two parts. The old building, which was a traditional museum-like design, and the new part which was all metal, huge semi-star shaped with big gashes in the sides that served as windows. Very drastic differences and the new part is only accessible though an underground tunnel from the old part, pretty awesome conceptually. Around the outside of the museum there were some little metal play spinny things that we hopped on and immediately began abusing ourselves via warp-speed spinning, inevitably getting flung to the ground. Very hard 
core (my knuckle even bled a little.) After the ensuing Vertigo, we stopped at Dix Café, part of a another museum, for some quick lunch. I had potato Soup with Little slices of salmon in it. Perfect for the cold day.After lunch we walked through a lot of neighborhood parks and Fernando talked about “space” to the LAR kids. Then we went to Check point Char
lie, which was the main American base/checkpoint along the Berlin wall in WWII. It was really cool to see and there were a lot of historical info plaques set up so we could learn more about it -People did some crazy things to get out of East Berlin. We stopped at a little tent/cart thing after that so the hungry boys could get some Bratwursts, then we were off to Potsdamer Platz again for the daytime view. We climbed up this cool triangle shaped hill outside of the main commercial center and got to watch a little screaming German boys run down the hill with his ice cream cone, only to fall and drop it at the bottom. We all saw it coming and I couldn’t have planned it out more perfectly in my head; the b
all of ice cream just plopped right off the top. It was pretty hilarious but he didn’t seem upset so we didn’t feel too bad laughing. Moving on. A few fashion girls and myself broke off from the group to get coffee and pastries, because we were cold and craving sweets. Then we met up with the group again to go to the Holocaust memorial. The memorial was amazing. It was basically tons of stone rectangles (slightly resembling tombs in size) all different heights, arranged in rows on varying levels of land. It was very stark looking, but walking though it was actually very playful because it provided the perfect hide and side and peek-a-boo arena. So, we shamelessly creeped around the stone blocks popping out at each other along with the rest of the tourists.Our group moved down the road to the Brandenburg Tor next. This is the only remaining gate of a series that formerly entered Berlin. Now it leads into Unter den Linden which is the big boulevard of linden trees that we walked down next. Here we saw a green peace demonstration, which was a bunch
of people on trashcan drums. Pretty cool. One guy came over and explained to us that they were protesting/ spreading awareness about nuclear energy/power and the danger it poses to workers. He was very friendly. As we were walking down the street we stopped to watch a group of puppeteer people manipulating this life size stick figure guy for the crowds. they had some awesome choreography. It was fun to watch. After that we made our way back to the hostel, stopped at the supermarket for bee
r, took naps and got ready for the night. We went to the Biergarten next door for dinner, where I had a traditional wiener schnitzel (fried pork chop type deal) with potatoes and salad and a dark Kostriker beer. Sooo filling and delicious! We went back to the hostel to try our grocery store beer and then ventured out to a club down the street that was a really cool old building near the wall. We had lots of fun there, then realized around 2:45am that it was really 3:45am due to Europe daylight savings time, and promptly decided to leave. A very long and tiring day, with more ahead of us.Lauren
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