Day Eleven - Berlin

And just like that, I feel better! So that was that. Thank goodness. Ok so today is the day we decide we will make it to the bike tour place on time. We grab breakfast and coffee then make it back to Alexanderplatz in time for the tour.

The weather is certainly not as great as yesterday, it's overcast and much colder but that's ok, I'm feeling good and we are ready to roll. The bikes are comfortable and they all have name tags. I'm riding Duck Tales, Jacob is on Kurt Vonnegut. After brief introductions we head off. Jacob volunteers to be the last rider in the pack. There was a young lady in our group who apparently did not know how to ride a bike. It was both comical and frustrating. She kept losing her shoe, falling off her bike and narrowly missing other riders. This added quite a bit of time to our journey.

We visit a multitude of historically and culturally significant sites. Remnants of the Berlin wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the site of Hitler's underground bunker, Brandenburg Gate, The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, etc. Berlin is a city of new concrete, not old cobblestones. It's a city of memories, memorials and new beginnings.

In the middle of our tour we make a stop for lunch. During our ride we meet Christina. She was born in Mexico City but is currently living in Dubai. She's in Berlin with her husband who was working so she's out sightseeing on her own. She sits at a table with us and we discuss dogs (apparently the are very difficult to have in Dubai), traveling and Germany.

After our lunch stop we are back on the bikes. Luckily the girl who booked a bike tour without knowing how to ride a bike made the wise decision of

throwing in the towel. So we make good time, finish up the tour and end back at the bike rental shop. Jacob gets a beer and souvenir pieces of the Berlin wall as a thank you for being the rider at the end of the line.

Our next plan is to visit the East Side Gallery. Because of a very big navigational mistake, this never happens. Ok, so we get on the S-Bahn and we are heading in the right direction. I'm watching the little blue dot on Google maps and the blue dot says we are very far from the stop we need to get off on. So I confidently say to Jacob "No, not this stop." Big mistake, huge. It was that stop (the blue dot lied!).

The reason this is a big deal is because the next stop is 25 minutes away and WAY outside of Berlin. So we sit there, rushing further from the city all the while knowing we have to take a train all the way back, another 25 minutes. In the middle of our unintentional journey the train car attendant starts randomly checking tickets. Remember what I said about ticket validation not really being enforced. I was wrong. Luckily she took pity on our weary tourist souls and didn't give me a citation. We get off, get new tickets and start the return journey. At this point we just want to be in the hotel for a bit, so we go there and relax.

Most of the nightlife in Berlin is techno clubs that get started around 2 am. Not our style, so I was happy to find a dive bar called 8MM bar. They played shoegaze music and project art house films on the wall. We could have been in Austin. We order Bulliet (bourbon is hard to find here) and grab seats at the bar. A very interesting character walks in and proceeds to talk to us. Picture a very drunk Russel Brand. He playful flirts with Jacob, then grabs all of my hair, then saunters away while lifting his shirt up and dancing in front of other patrons. Then his attention is directed back to us. He is convinced we are from LA and that we are talent scouts even after I tell him many times we are not. I should have played along. All in all it was very entertaining and harmless and the only worry I had was for that guys hangover the next day.