Berlin May 17, the busy continues!

OMG! So much has happened since two weeks ago, there's no way I'll be able to get it all in this note... I'll try my best to just get through some of the highlights, and I'll save the trip to Munich for when I get the photos from my fiancé
So, starting there, My fiancé visited me this week. She arrived last Saturday, and just flew back a few hours ago. Things were non-stop go from there till now, which is why I haven't had the chance to write anything from the week before or before that either... so where to begin,

So Monday the fifth we went to a bar in Nollendorf where they had this "Quiz-o-rama" thing going on. The bar's name was HAFEN, and it's on Botzstrasse. Amazing fun place. The quiz is in English once a month, so we were able to follow along much better. The questions ranged from simple stuff like "Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?" To knowing which side of some ancient portrait someone's ear was hanging lower from... I also learned that Icarus was the god that tried to fly to the sun, but melted his wings, Cain was the first recorded birth in the bible and that there exists a nude photo of Jude Law on the internet somewhere! (Gay Bar... go Figure). Really fun place and we almost would have won too, if it weren't for missing two of them... I would have been able to get the super-hard tie-breaker question, which is how many feet are there in a mile... lolz... you wouldn't believe how esoteric such a fact is to most places outside the US.

I had an excursion with my Cultural Orientation class on that Thursday. It was pretty nice, though super long. We toured the ancient history of Berlin, and how it was founded originally as a ford town, because the Spree had so very few crossable places. We visited the first church ever built in Berlin as well. It was prety small, but nice. I'll put a photo up of that of course.

The next day I went on a tour with my partner Kensuke to Bormholerstrasse. This is the historical location that the border between East and West Berlin first opened. It's funny that they record November 9th as the day the wall fell, even though it was barely by even a nose at the end of the day, and this was the only location that had even opened by the end of November 9th... I think that's more of a self-fulfilling prophecy thing, since Germans just seem to have a dichotomously significant relationship whit the particular date: Krystal Nacht, the day hitler arrested all oppositional forces and declared total power over Germany and before that and after WW1 in 1923 when the first Democratic (Weimarer Republik) Government... what a political day! So yeah, that was a fun little excursion. We had to interview any passerby that would stop for a second to talk. We eventually found a friendly east German guy with a Rat-tail who gave us a little story, and we were done there.

The next day Kristina, my fiancé arrived! I was ecstatic. We wasted no time, and went out to a club together in Warschauer Strasse called "Matrix" Really nice and friendly place. Plus it's free entrance from 10 to 11. We drank and danced and had a great time there. It was some sort of Biance after party or something, and we got some random "Paparazzi" photo of us taken. They just took the photo and gave us some little information flyer on where to get the shot... first time that ever happened to me... oh and their go go girls were the most terrifying creatures I had ever seen... they could have ripped me in half... see my facebook profile if you'd like a short clip on that!

The next day we went to the Berlin Zoo, which is a must for anyone who comes to Berlin. You can easily spend a whole day there and not see everything, as we did. The highlights are as follows: The giraffes. There was a recent birth in this exhibit. The baby giraffe is very cute and awkward. The Panda is super cool, but you have to have some patience. Generally he's the laziest animal in the zoo, but every once in a while he will reward your devotion with a quick walk around his cage for you. The lions and tigers are super fun, especially during feeding time if you like that kinda stuff. The rhinos are a amazing, and they have a special house in the back of the zoo, where you can get really close to them... as most places in Germany, safety standards are kinda lax :). The seals and otters are also pretty fun, and of course the polar bears! They were involved in a recent current event if you look it up in the news; a woman just a month or two ago jumped into their cage DURING FEEDING TIME! She's probably the dumbest person to ever survive such a foolish act. They had to pull her out of there as the polar bears 'nommed' on her fat buttocks. The polar bear one was pacing back and forth eagerly when we arrived, waiting for the next bozo to jump in the pen with him for dinner. They pretty much have everything you could imagine in that place, including all kinds of nocturnal animals, rodents, felines, reptiles and Australian animals. We saw as much as we could, and got some pretty good photos.

The next day we went to the Pergamon Museum, which is an exhibit with tons of old middle-east ottoman style architecture and statue work. It had artifacts originating from places as far as India, and as close as Greece I'd say. It' a pretty good place to check out at any rate. We also went inside the Berliner Dom on the same day, which is the gigantic and beautiful church on the Museum Island. We had to kind of speed though there... gigantic crypt in the bottom full of deceased lords and nobles... wish we had more time to look around in there, but we were on a busy schedule! Went to an amazing Thai Restaurant that same night over... ah man, can't remember where we were... it was Germany's red-light district or something, but the food was amazing


The next day we were off to Munich, but I'll save that story until my Fiancé posts the photos up for me to share... amazing how culture exploration can lead you to so many other places...we all have sehenssucht for something else, as the world begins to tie the knots of a beautiful vicarious bow of exploration... More on that later with the Munich experience, but for now I'd better tend to my facebook farm! haha... peace all.
Dave