Berlinettes

Berlin 1st 12 hours:
Ate at a New Zealand cafe owned by the owners of our hostel because we came into down super hungrz but it was...surprisingly...really good. Walked to the wall from our hostel(we are staying in east berlin). On the way we saw awesome records stores and second hand shops and tons of really good graffitti. And everyones bikes....everyone here is on a bike which is really cool. Furthermore, every bike is pretty normal and plain looking. So there is a definite bike culture but its not super fashionable and stupid like SOME cities ,) no but what i mean is that everyone seems to bike...the traffic seems to be tame and...no one is looking to turn their bike into a fashion statement. At the end of the wall...we turned left and found a skatepark+beach party+bike co-op+volleyball game+lots of sand that came from i dunno where+old rocksteady and reggae records being blasted throughout. I heard about this. Berlin is way into the idea of the beach party. The problem is...they have no beach. I thought it would be lame but this place was awesome. Plus, it was right on the river...we grabbed a drink...through our legs over the edge of the river wall and listened to music while germans and african immigrants sipped beer, played volleyball and relaxed all around us. And finally...they made us give them a euro as a drink deposit. Basically, it is to make sure you bring back your empty bottle so they can recycle it. If you dont...they keep your euro. The irony of this place is endless but they did it well. Not to mention we were sitting on the edge of a river on the east side of berlin where so many people had tried to cross during to the soviet area and unfortunatley never made it. While on the subject, i have to say that while most of the wall is down and the part that is up is covered in art...its still a very intimidating thing to walk next to. I cant even imagine what it must of been like. The rest of the evening was spent and a couple of bars, one which is owned by this guy from New Mexico. Its a ping-pong bar...pretty cool and he gave us some tips of other places to go. We had tons of trouble getting back to our hostel(didnt get in until around 4) but did finally make it thanks to some wits the very little german i know and some very little english a cabbie knew.
+Today+
woke up late...wandered around for a bit trying to find a place to eat. this was really frustrating but we ended up over by jewish memorial and then walked to the reichstag(that place hitler burned to the ground, said it was a terrorist and then used it to gain full government control of military and parliamant...hmm sound familiar?) . Walked through Tiergarten...which is a really massive but beautiful park in the Berlin. Seriously...this place is great...old statues of Goethe and german leaders and thinkers are randomnly placed throughout...small creeks run through it with tiny bridges...etc. Its great and when you get to the other side your on a completely different side of town with lots of museums. So we walked through...went to the Bauhaus Archive. Ate is some random lebanese cafe across town...and then a 45 minute ride back to east-east berlin...
drinkin an erdinger...its hot...gonna rest up...going out later on...
berlin is awesome.