day 13 - august 17th

today corinna and I went out touristing again, first taking another great boat tour along the landwehrkanal, which is a very pretty narrow canal right through the middle of town, which is excellent because it provides parkfront and waterfront for many many neighborhoods. berlin also has lots of really neat buildings, and makes very cool architectural choices about incorporating the old with the new. (I have no idea what these buildings are; the tour was in german and corinna said it was mostly boring.)

some of the old buildings have super cool details, too. one of the things I liked best about the city was all the neat design details just for the sake of design. I don’t think we do that in the US – form and efficiency often trumps artistic sensibilities

you can also see the amazing clouds following us on the boat. we sat out at least two downpours on the deck, which was nice because I got a better view without all the other people!

there were lots of things to make the city nice and to make the canal accessible all the way along. I saw these cut out stairs going down into ports or canals all over, and in the Czech republic, maybe a carryover from when access to the water was necessary.

here’s a side bit of the canal, where houseboats are parked.

and public park and bike paths all along: and the ubiquitous “beach” bar where you can sip your beer in the sand

classic berlin:

and berlin had amazing graffiti. here’s a bit of the still-standing wall, where artists are encouraged:

and another shot, taken the next day from the bridge

now we’re getting into kreuzberg, a neat neighborhood with lots of Turkish immigrants and a very punk feel.

i saw these head-cut-off fish (sharks?) all over the city - would like to know what their story is.

the canal took us past the museum of (technology? something like that), which has an American plane hanging outside, the “raisin bomber”.

I never knew the story of how the Americans dropped food to the west Berliners when they were cut off from the rest of the west. they seemed to think it was a good thing, even though we were forcing germans to eat American chocolate. go figure. after the boat, we walked to charlottenburg castle, which was my first german castle and very very pretty. another picture here.

Sunday night we had reservations at a “dunkel-restaurant” where everything was dark dark dark, and you ordered by meal: beef, pork, poultry, or vegetarian, and then they served you 4 courses. we went to the unsicht-bar, which purports to be the first of the kind, and which boasts blind servers. (that’s an interesting issue in itself … ) anyway, it was a bit overpriced, but very fun, and not nearly as hard as it sounds to navigate your table, and the food was very good. Daniel and i both wondered whether it would be a good place for a date – maybe not a first date, but an early one. I kind of think so. Corinna didn't.