So we’re done with Berlin but it was a friggin sweet city, I have to say. Our hotel was on one of the main streets (Unter Den Linden) of the huge central neighborhood of Berlin (Mitte). On Tuesday we took a walking tour with an American ex-pat who has been living in Berlin for over 10 years. He was extremely knowledgeable about just about everything, and had some cool insight into the rebuilding of the city, especially after the reunification in the early 1990s. He pointed out that many of the blocks on the East side of the city were never rebuilt after the war under the communist regime, and as such are brand new buildings built to look just like they had been before the war (at least on the outside, many of the insides are totally modern and some even abstract). On a few occasions he pointed out buildings that had been lifted off damaged their foundations by huge jacks, had their foundations re-poured and re-solidified, then set back down in order to preserve the look. Cool engineering. Yesterday we explored a bit on our own, going out to some pedestrian markets, through some old shops and all over Mitte basically. I picked up a sweet antique Soviet army-issue mechanical tanker’s watch for a few Euros and it actually keeps perfect time. Those Soviets definitely knew how to build reliable machines for their soldiers.
Berlin also provided a welcome break from the monotony of heavy krauty food in Bavaria. For a change of pace, we did Vietnamese, an American style restaurant (which I was expecting to suck, but I guess there are enough ex-pats around that any American food has to be reasonably good), and Thai. It also is really gonna help that they’ve figured out the E. coli BS and I’m gonna be able to eat all fruits and veggies again.
Today was the train ride, again not much to discuss there, but we got to our Hotel in Amsterdam around 6:30 PM, thinking of Portuguese food tonight. Definitely looking forward to the arrival of Senor Levy on Sunday to start our month of madness.
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