Berlin II

We met up with Danielle at her place in Berlin on Monday morning around noon for more Berlin sight-seeing. It is always so great to meet up with close friends in a foreign city especially when they know where to take you for the best and less crowded sites! Jim, Danielle, and I, chatted, walked, rested, drank, trained, and visited Check Point Charlie, sections of the Berlin Wall, and the Topography of Terror. The sites were mostly by where the Berlin Wall once stood and where it once divided Germany into the east and the west. We saw various sections of the remaining wall, the guard tower, the documentation of the Nazi ruling, and the history of the division of the Berlin Wall. The sites were extremely intriguing and it was hard to imagine that the Berlin Wall which divided Germany into the east and west stood and fell both in my life time in our generation. These sites took us about three to four hours to walk through and we ended up in Potsdamer Platz for deserts, snacks, coffee, and drinks. It feels like one moment we were in the midst of the divide between the east and west of Berlin and the next moment we were in a completely different century. When the wall fell, the Eastern Germans must feel the same way, it must be hard to adapt to the schizophrenic changes.

For all this time that we have been in Germany, we almost always ate at traditional German restaurants. Since Jim and I can no longer have more sausages and pork dishes, Danille and her Italian friends took us to La Batea for some familiar and tasty Spanish / Mexican cuisine! It seems to me that the conversations with Italians over dinner and wine are always so pleasant! We talked about Rome (I just can’t help myself), Italian and American culture differences, Italian outlet stores, Berlin lifestyle, and it just went on and on… Before we know it, we just had a four hour Italian dinner in a Spanish restaurant in Berlin! I love meeting new people with different backgrounds! If it wasn’t 11:30pm at night, I am sure we can continue our inquisitions into our differences for several more hours.

I love the diversity that Berlin offers, there is so much to do, so many different people to cross path with, and so much history, culture, and burden… Berlin is not a lover like Rome but it is definitely a city for the curious – a city that is thought provoking, mysterious, modern, and all-encompassing.