Ich Ben Ein Berliner (Day 2) - Part II

Alright, it's time to get to the second half of our second day in Berlin before the memory of if completely escapes me. Now where was I... oh yeah, we had just finished our guided tour of the former East Berlin.

After a little fuddling around we decided to walk towards the Reichstag and stop at any cool shops we saw along the way. Our first stop was the aforementioned Ampleman store and then browsed a long flea market where I think I picked up an "You Are Now Leaving the American Sector" fridge magnet. Unfortunately when the got to the Reichstag the line to go up to the glass dome on top was hundreds of feet outside and not moving noticeably. So we did the next best thing we could think of which is to take a million pictures of it.

Then we headed back to Pariser Platz to buy a new umbrella and get some more trashy souveniers. My crappy (but free) American Express umbrella had finally eaten it on account of the strong winds that decided to accompany the many, many rain showers. I choose a small, sturdy dark blue umbrella that had the word Berlinerin writen on it. I didn't find out until I got back to Copenhagen that Berlinerin means a woman from Berlin. Awesome. Either way it was good timing because a few minutes after we left the store with more fridge magnets and golf balls in hand it started to downpour.

Once the rain slowed down to a more manageable level, the four of us (a.k.a. Melanie, Yaron, Talma, and myself) headed down the Straße des 17. Juni towards the Siegessäule a.k.a. the Berlin Victory Column, which is pretty much another kick-ass Prussian monument. We would have liked to venture over to West Berlin but we were starting to run out of time, so we jumped in a taxi to Al Hamra, the dinner spot of the night. On the way over we passed a couple establishments of note. The first was the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church (not my photo), which is most notably for the ruined belfry of the old church which was bombed during World War II. After the war a new church was built right next to it, but the belfry was kept as is. The other strange siting was what appeared to be a Chinese restaurant called White Trash Fast Food. It actually turned out to some sort of hipster tattoo parlor-barber-club-restaurant deal, which was kind of disappointing to be honest.

The rest of our night was relatively mundane but it was still a good time for all. We had dinner at Al Hamra, some sort of Middle Eastern joint that served ala carte which always seemed to be ala half empty whenever we got to the front of the line (we never did get any chicken, grrrr). The four amigos decided to skip the pub crawl and head out on our own, following the suggestions of a few locals. We walked up and down a few streets where I learned the joy of Original Berliner Weisse Red, a somewhat weak beer which is flavored with raspberry syrup to cover up its sour taste (there is also a "green" which is flavored with herbs and is described as woodruff-flavored, whatever the hell woodruff is supposed to taste like). After that is was off for some ice cream, and then back to the hostel for bed.