day 10 - aug 14th

we were up very early for my flight, and b & v walked me to the bus stop across town. upon arrival we realized we had no idea how i was supposed to buy a ticket. i managed to ask an old woman in very broken italian, and she pointed back down to the center of town at the train station. ack! barbie ran back, and arrived with my ticket only 30 seconds before the bus did. the bus took me through the locals part of town, which looked really nice to explore, and the olbia airport was cute, small, clean and nice. i struck up a conversation with a german family who gave me some touristy ideas, and after a very short flight, and an amazingly easy experience with the berlin metro, i arrived in corinna's local stop! she and daniel picked me up at the station and we went home for lunch, and then they took me out for a bit of sightseeing. we took the tram to alexanderplatz, then walked around the city, went on a city tour boat which was very neat, walked to and then up the reichstag, and had (of course) schnitzel for dinner.

of course, by the way, german taxis are mercedes ...

the pics:
the tv tower, corinna's favorite, which one can see from her balcony if one stands on a chair:


and the red hall (what's its real name?):
and the old palace, in the process of being torn down, and currently a topic of great embarrassment to the berliners i talked to. you'd think no other city in the world has ongoing construction!
from the boat tour, which took us on the spree through town, including all these neat government buildings. this is one door down from the most expensive daycare in the (city? 5 mil euros, i think they said), the one where diplomat kids go.
and, of course, the reichstag. you don't see people playing frisbee on the white house lawn, is all i'm saying. we went up for the very cool building and interesting history panels, where i started learning german history ... and the brandedburg gate, which is now (since 9/11/01) closed to vehicle traffic, a great improvement!


walking along saw this fantastic grafitti (i think i offended corinna by taking a picture, but daniel helpfully recommended that i put the camera through the fence for a better photo - thanks!). it was amazing art, and then after dinner i realized how good my instincts were - this is the side of the tacheles building, which is the place to be for policital art in the city. it feels like a place folks are squatting, but i'm not sure they are. there's studio space and gallery space and there was a contsant stream of tourists in on thursday night.
looking down at the backyard from the top floor, where there was a 2 euro party in the back. the place was packed 30 seconds before i snapped this, but then the crowd all moved out at once - maybe to a dance floor or something?

here's the inside main stairwell. wish it were in focus.