Berlin: bardzo schön!

Natalie and I got back from Berlin on Tuesday. Though we were reeeeally close to missing the train from Szczecin because of a delay earlier in the day. Anyway, we managed to get home safe and I even brought along some bugs for my upper respiratory tract.

It was quite an "eventful" vacation. We met some interesting people in our hostel and out on the Sandeman pub crawl- including a professor of social anthropology and a fun gal from Detroit (i.e. second person after  Eminem whom I now associate with that place). There was also a bit of language confusion- we both know the odd German word or phrase so agreed on trying to say simple things whenever we got the opportunity. However most of the time "danke schön" got mixed with "dziekuje bardzo" and "enschuldigung" with "przepraszam" as well as "ja" with "tak". We got several confused looks and gave ourselves a few facepalms.  The clerks and people behind the counters had a good laugh when we used rock-paper-scissors to decide on which tickets to get or what to have for dinner... Good times. So whilst in Berlin we also:

1) Chilled
2) Strolled
3) Chilled (as in- froze)
4) Met randoms, as mentioned..
5) Chilled
6) Ate
7) Chilled
8) Strolled around in museums
9) Learned about Checkpoint Charlie (well, I did)
10) Chilled some more
11) Met more random people
12) Waited [impatiently] for the Superbowl to start, watched the beginning (well, Natalie did) and went straight to bed (myself)
13)  Chilled
14) [almost] got frostbitten whilst chilling ( see what I did there...)
15) hung out with some amazing bears:

...did I mention we just chilled?

Well I have to say the Pergamon museum (i.e. close to the site of modern Bergama, north of Izmir in Turkey)  was good, although not as breathtaking after spending a summer in Turkey seeing similar sites in real life (i.e. Hattusha and Ephesos). The current exhibition however was really worth the time and money we spent. It was simply a huge panorama display in a huuuuuge cylindrical room with a 3D-feel that showed an image of what daily life in Pergamon was like with vivid colours, background music with natural sounds and lights changing the mood from morning to evening. The image was so detailed and you could look into the mountains in the horizon as if you stood on top of a hill overlooking the people, the temples, gardens and the settlement area. Really cool!

We only went through half of the German history museum this time (aaaaawesome place by the way- highly recommended! I've been before :p ) , but I guess that is one of the many reasons we have to go back to this city very soon!


.n