I got up at 7:00, surprizingly early. I took my sweet time and had a lesurly breakfast in the hostel kitchen. I got to talking to an older man who was staying at the hostel, he was going to run a half-marathon the next day, impressive. My free tour of the city commenced at 10:30 so I had loads of time to make it there. I left the hostel at 8:30 and took the two busses to the train station that the tour started at. Once there I realized two things: that I had an hour to kill and that the case that I thought had my sunglasses in it was empty! This same thing happend on my trip to Garmish. I used my massive intelect to deduce a solution to this problem, I would go out and buy some new glasses in the hour that I had to waste.
The stores did not open until 10:00 so I did some window shopping and spent a good deal of time standing mezmorized by the large aviary with parrots flying around in it. Eventually I went H&M and picked up some cheap 6 Euro cheap sunglasses (ZZ Top would be proud). Time for the tour to begin, I headed to the meeting point and met some people on the tour. Because it was a free tour and it was 4 hours of walking most of the people on the tour were young, less then 30. We took two S-Bahns to get to the Brandinburg gate where we met up with the rest of the people who coming on the tour. There was about 200 of us! We spit up into 5 English groups, a few German ones, a French one and a Spanish one and it began.
Our tour guide's name was Clair, she was a peppy English (from England) lady and tons of fun to listen to. It was 22 degrees out and sunny, I could not be happier. Clair took us from through tons of hstorical land marks, my favorites being the brandinburg gate, the Holocaust Memorial, the Berlin Wall, Bebelplatz and The Museum Island. It was a beutiful day and the people who were on the tour with me were all fun to talk to. We got some food at a nice resturant near Checkpoint Charlie; I had an omolete sandwich. The tour was 4 hours of educational, sunny good times and ended on the stairs of one of the museums on Museum Island. Here we all parted ways; it was about 3:00.
I met up with two of the people from the tour, Debby from Peru and Kivanc from Turkey, they wanted to go and check out a few more of the sights that had not been included on the tour. My plan origionally was to meet up with Tom, from Couchsurfing, but I had problems with the phone and decided that this would be just as much fun. We took the S-Bahn to the East Side Gallery, both the largest intact section of the Berlin Wall and the world's largest open air gallery (1.4km long!).
Unfourtunatly most of the wall was under construction to keep it from crumbeling (damn Soviet concrete) so the bulk of it was not very interesting. The neat part was towards the end, where the original paintings from 1990 were still there. They were heavily vandilized but you could still see the paintings quite well. They all represented the excitement of the fall of the wall in some way, it was a neat bit of history to check out.
After the wall I tried to contact Tom again, this time I got ahold of him. He told me which train station to meet him at and I was on my way. I said goodbye to Debby and Kivanc and got on the train. I met up with Tom at the train station and we walked to his apartment. Tom is a masters philosophy student working on his thesis. Philosophy is a fun topic of conversation, more people enjoy talking about religion then bolts in shear, and it kept us occupied for a while until his roommate Tim came by.
We decided to go out for some food. I really wanted to try some of the famous Berlin döner kebab. Tim and Tom are both vegitarians but brought me to a place that they thought would have good döners. They were right. We stayed for quite some time waiting for their friend Lara to show up. Once she did we decided to get the night started.
Apparently Berlin likes to mix things that are not normally mixed together in one venue. Tom was telling me about a driving school/winery. For tonight after hearing about how I was into climbing they recommended a nightclub/climbing wall. This is what I have been waiting for my whole life. Once we got there it turned out that there was cover on Saturdays and we were not down with that so we left. On the way out I learned something about Germany; a fifteen year old kid asked the two older looking of us (Tom and Laura) to pretend to be his parents so that he could get into the bar. Apparently in Germany it is OK to go to the club as long as you have your parents with you; your parents can also write you a note that lets you get into the club.
So, no climbing wall/club I had gotten over that. The next odd combo to be suggested was the basement of a döner shop that apparently was also a psychedelic electronic music club. This had been closed down due to changes in ownership of the shop though. We ended up in the park, by a playground drinking beer and listening to a chick play a guitar and sing. It was relaxing. We went back to Tom's had a tea then I headed back to the hostel at 2:30.
I took the S-Bahn. It was a long trip so on the way I almost fell asleep. When I realized that I should not fall asleep I realized that there was 4 emo girls singing lullabies to me, this had never happened to me before and I was not sure what to do, so I just rolled with it and pretended to fall asleep while I kept one eye on the display that said which station we were at. I got back to the hostel at about 4:00 and hit the hay.
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