Hi Everyone!
Sorry for the delay in writing, but it has been a busy weekend! I promise to post most of my pictures onto facebook tomorrow :) That was you can have visual evidence of what went on...
Friday night after dinner we went to Kreuzberg. Its a neighbourhood in Berlin that's big on nightlife, bars, and people. Its like the Queen street West of Berlin in the sense that you can find the strangest things there, but it is a lot of fun. Many of the bars we tried to get into were packed with people and impossible to enter...can't say I've seen much of this in Toronto (with the exception of the Bier Market on the Esplanade, but it serves European beer like the bars here, so I see a trend...) We ended up finding a bar with a pool table, and so I played what turned out to be the best pool game of my life. I managed to make some ridiculous shots and of course missed some of the easiest ones...I also developed a really great method for ordering beer. I just always order the first one on the menu since I don't know how they all taste like anyway...and this way I always end up trying a different beer.
Saturday morning I finally got to sleep in (!!)...I then went to the flee market which is apparently a popular attraction on Saturdays and Sundays for everyone, even non-tourists. I didn't really find much there though, but they did have many huge painting and heavy china which would for sure not fit into my already overflowing suitcases. I also found another Berlin Bear! I think I will just collect all my Bear pictures and post them into an album later this week!
We then headed to the zoo. I really, really love zoos, so this was quite the highlight :) I think there are a few reasons the Berlin zoo is great. For one, its located right in the centre of Berlin, unlike the Toronto zoo which is practically in the suburbs. The other really unique thing about the zoo is that it also has a huge aquarium inside of it, which we didn't make it into because we only had 4 hours or so. Finally, the zoo has this nocturnal animal pavilion which had some really cool animals that I have never seen before, including the Kangaroo rat (which lives in the dessert and has probably the most efficient kidney in the animal kingdom...thanks Animal Phys II) and another really cool animal that looks like a perfect mix between a kangaroo and a bunny. Watch out for pictures :) Besides that there were all the usual awesome animals: giraffes, rhinos, lots and lots of birds, flamingos, elephants, and many more. However, the whole time we were trying to find the polar bears. And so, after a 4 hour journey through the corners of the zoo, we finally saw the polar bears. Needless to say they weren't too excited to see us, and just looked like they were pacing around and swinging to some sort of inaudible beat... we were glad that we at least reached our much desired destination!
After the zoo we were all about as hungry as those polar bears, and so we had Doner kebabs. A Doner (pronounced Derner) is a lot like a shawarma, expect the bread is thick Turkish bread instead of a pita. Its probably the most popular fast food in Germany. There are some arguments about whether it came to Germany with the immigrants from Turkey, or whether it originated in Germany. It was really good. Possibly also because we were all really hungry. After this, we headed to a bar to watch the finals of the European soccer league teams. It was a game between Manchester United and Barcelona. We were probably cheering for Barcelona just because one of the guys who was with us had a Barcelona jersey. What I am trying to say is that we didn't have much choice...but we clearly picked a good team to cheer for because they beat Manchester U 3 to 1.
After getting home I managed to sleep for a few hours before getting up at the crack of dawn to get on a train to Dresden, which is this city southeast of Berlin. To be honest I haven't read up so much about it, but I do know that it was one of the last cities to be bombed by the allies during World War II, and that it was bombed when the allies were pretty sure they were going to win the war. Apparently most of it was destroyed, but the beautiful castles have been rebuilt since World War II. If you look at the pictures you can see just how blue the sky was today. It was pretty much unreal.
I think that almost as interesting, was our adventure to Dresden. We were supposed to take a 2 hour train from Berlin, and then switch over trains and take a different 1 for an hour to reach Dresden. Somehow...and we really still don't know how (and are blaming it on being hungry...) we got on the wrong train at our transfer stop...and found this out only about 1.5 hours into what was supposed to be a 1 hour train ride. Needless to say we freaked out a bit, but luckily we got some help from some of the ticket agents on the train, and so we took it to its final destination, Chemnitz, before switching over to a 1 hour train to Dresden. We got really lucky with this transfer because if we didn't catch that Dresden train, we probably would have had to spend the day in Cheminitz. Anyway, we somehow made it to the city, and learned to never trust print outs that tell you what platform to get on at. Just to reinforce this lesson, the platform we were supposed to get on for our train to Berlin was mysteriously changed to one next door to it, so we suspect this is what happened during our first transfer when we weren't paying much attention...:(
Okay, I am quite exhausted now, considering my early start to this crazy day. Hope everyone is doing really well back home! I have heard again that the comments tool doesn't work properly, and if it continues failing I might switch to a different blog website...I will see. But leave comments if you are able to do so, so that I know that it at least sort of works :)
Cheers!
Alina
Bloggle!
ReplyDelete