nien, das ist mein hamburger!

we got to berlin late on sunday night. we got on the train at the airport, got off at charlottenburg and practically tripped up the stairs to the hostel it was that close to the train station. awesome!

 we love hostels that we dont have to walk to. and we had a twin room, which was fantastic after the 200 bed dorms at herrang! we spent the first few days recovering from herrang - sleep is SO good! we went in to town and walked up the shopping strip on the second day. it was cool because we knew where we were - sort of. we kept going: hey! i remember that! its nice to be somewhere sort of familiar. charlottenburg is a nice area. but, we found out, not as nice as mitte. or prenzlaur berg. east rocks. we met up with kelly and prue on wednesday night and had...

delicious fried rice with zucchini and lemongrass. and champignons. it was delicious! i thought about it all the next day!!

we moved into kelly and prues two days ago. they are staying in such a nice apartment! the area is soooo nice. the only bad part was the 300 (its actually 107) stairs to get up to the top floor of the apartment block. but at the end of the week we will have legs of steel. mmm. legs of steel. 

on friday we went to the pergamonmuseum, which was home to the babylon exhibition. 

the first half, with all the artefacts was awesome, but the second half had lots of weird modern stuff and wasnt so good. we bought the threeday museum card (much to jess' delight...) and set off to the bode museum around the corner. that was cool, it had lots of coins. we like coins. we went out with kelly and prue that night. the first bar we went to was called 8mm and was described by exberliner.com as: 

"The kind of cramped, stuffy hole   where desperate but culturally literate 30-somethings stand around soaking their liver in gin til 4:00am on a Monday night. But it's better than that: a lot of the barflies there are actually talented, multi-lingual flimmakers or over-the-hill cutting edge DJs. Yes, it's smoky and a bit grimy. But the DJs have class and the project the same weird movie all the time."

yes, we saw the barflies. yes, we saw the weird, slightly creepy movie and yes, we heard the djs. it was almost too cool for school. but we are cooler than school and therefore were too cool for it. 

on saturday we got up ready for another big day of museuming. we started off with the photography museum. there was an exhibiton on helmut newton which was amazing. he took some fantastic photos. there were also photos of the paparazzi and of 70s celebrities that didnt know they were being photographed. most of them were by helmut but there were a few from other photographers. for example, all the photographs of helmut newton were by a lady called alice springs, which we found quite hilarious. the guards didnt get what was quite so funny.

the second museum we went to was the berlinische gallerie. this had lots of modern art from the 80s and some disturbing photographs. we didnt like this one as much as the first museum. the gallerie was quite a walk from any tube station so we set off down one street back to the nearest tube station and stumbled upon the juedisches museum, or the jewish museum. when we were in berlin before we were told about a museum with crazy architecture and sloping floors which jess was quite keen to go to, but we couldnt remember what it was called. we walked into the jewish museum and were like: '... wait a minute... this is it!' it was the most amazing museum ever! the whole experience was intense. there was a room called the memory tower and it was a triangular tower with a tiny hole letting natural light in. it was meant for reflection and for people to think what they liked. another room was the memory void. (check photos on flickr because its hard to describe) it was like walking over the faces of the jews who lost their lives during the holocaust. they were metal and when people walked on them they made a clanking noise which echoed throughout the museum. the way the whole museum was set out was fantastic. there wasnt an overload of information; just enough to make you think.

on saturday night we made dinner..... ange went to the store and came back with ingredients for a masterpiece. well, a masterpiece in our eyes. we cut up an onion, diced some garlic, and cooked them good and through, then we put a cut up zuccini, and two cut up fresh tomatoes, half a tin of diced tomatoes to make it saucy. then we put it on wholemeal pasta and voila! a masterpiece. well, it was delicious..

yesterday we got up ready for our final museum day. we headed out to museum island again and discovered an awesome market strip. we spent a bit of time thinning out our wallets before heading into the egyptian museum. we saw nefertiti's head sculpture. that was awse, except for the guards that told me off for everything i did including breathing on an exhibit...

we then went on to the DDR museum, a hands on museum about life in the GDR. that was awesome. we got to pull drawers out and they had stuff in them we could play with. totally cool!

the last museum was the anne frank zentrum in mitte (the hip and happening centre of east berlin) it was done really well and had a contrast of modern life and anne franks life. there wasnt an overload of information which was good, seeing as we were nearly brain-dead from all the museuming we'd done over the past few days. 

ok, well, ange has pretty much covered most of it, so i wont write too much. Prenzlaur Berg (where we are currently staying) is awesome. kelly and prues apartment is the bomb. it is the coolest place, right in the middle of east berlin, only two train stops away from everywhere and anywhere! the apartment itself is such a nice place and we are so grateful that we could stay here. and just to top it off, prue's cooking is like eating at your favourite restaurant!

last night we all went for a stroll down the street and went to this little wine bar thats hidden into the rows of cafe's and apartments. you step down into this little doorway, and find yourself in this most amazing space. its a tiny bar, and you pay one euro to get in. the lady then suggests a wine you might like (they only do red wine - dad, you'd love this place) and then you find a seat at this big wooden tables and the lady brings your wine and some water. the atmosphere was so great, its very dimly lit, mostly by candles, with bright fairy lights dotted here and there. it almost feels like you're in a cave. very cool. we stayed there for hours, talking so much we only had one bottle of wine! at the end, you go and you pay only what you think the wine deserved. pretty cool yeah?

so all in all, berlin is definately up there in my most favourite places in europe...i can say that now because i've been to many... woohooo!! tomorrow we're going over to the west to the aquarium at zoologischer garten, which i am extremely excited about, and we're also going to check out some more museums and galleries.

lots of love to all, i feel a little bit homesick.. x