September 1: Berlin

Spent the night on the train and it was kind of ass. The transport system here is pretty cool and very effective. We met up with Josie, one of Nick's friends, and her family and went to their house in Rahnsdorf (east of Berlin city) and had a huge nap.

Then we went into the city and and went to Alexanderplatz and shopped a little. Alexanderplatz is also home to the tallest structure in Berlin (possibly the whole of Germany? I don't know, but definitely Berlin) which is this TV tower/bally looking thing. Then we met up with Sim and Harry at the Sony Center which is this big circular open area with shops and movies and offices.

We walked from Potsdamerplatz (which is where the Sony Center was) to Unter der Linden (another train station) and visited the Holocaust memorial thing - the official name is "Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Europe". It is near where the Berlin Wall stood and the buildings on the side where East Berlin was were kind of old and ugly (or so Harry said, because he lived on that side). We had dinner at Hackerscher Markt which is sort of the bar district.

Afterwards we went to Ostzone which was a retro East German commie bar for beers (consumption today: 1L) and then we ate a Doener on the streets of Berlin! (Yes, I really wanted to do that at some point because everyone said they were the shit, and they were pretty good.) Then we went and got hot fries from a vending machine in Ostbahnhof (the Eastern train station). You put money into a machine and it cooks the fries in 30-45 seconds and drops out a bunch of condiments and stuff. The cool things is that you can get beers and drink in public and on the train and stuff. We got back to Josie's at 3 (but we needed to walk through the woods for a while and there were apparently wild pigs).