walk, walk, walk

7/11:
i woke up late and then set out to discover berlin in the daylight. first stop: checkpoint charlie, a former berlin wall crossing point. i spent a couple hours just wandering around and learning more about the recent history of berlin, and the (literal) divide that occured during the cold war, separating friends, family, and neighbors.

then i made my way over to potsdamer platz. built on the former death strip, it is now a very popular, busy plaza with shops, restaurants, clubs, and hotels. there are remnants of the wall still in place, covered in interesting grafiti, of course.
then i walked up to the holocaust memorial. it is a park of almost 3,000 concrete blocks of all different sizes built atop rolling ground. from outside it looks stark, but interesting. almost like each block is a tomb. as you wander through, the columns become taller than the people, and most kids had begun a game of tag or hide-and-go-seek in this concrete maze.
further up the street was the wall victims memorial, commemorating all the people who died during their attempts to cross from east to west.
then the famous brandenburg gate and down Unter den Linden, stopping for a vegetarian kebap along the way...

after lunch i walked alll the way up to the berlin wall documentation center, a museum about the wall with a viewing tower overlooking a memorial across the street. this museum was free, but the view was not really that great and most everything was in german...too bad i had walked 25 miles to get there.

i finally made my way back to the hostel, made some dinner, and passed out. i was exhausted!

7/12:
check out was at 10am so i woke up early, showered, locked up my bag downstairs, and headed out. i was determined to see as much as i could before catching my 5oclock train to leipzig.
first i walked a long way to the east side gallery, the longest surviving stretch of the berlin wall, covered in grafitti and other art. it was completely worth the hike over there (through some sketchy neighborhoods). for 1.3 km i experienced some of the best graffiti i'd ever seen, and and some of the best other forms of art as well. from trippy scenes, to cries for freedom, to revolutionary depictions, to political cartoons...this is the kind of art that appeals to me. it tells the story of berlin's history, germany's history, and in many ways, the history of the world as a whole.

after the emotional experience provided by the east side gallery, i wandered up to alexanderplatz, through the parliament building, the university and the art museum, and finally back to the hostel to collect my bag and head to the train station.

i caught the train to leipzig and met my friend felix, whom i had met at my hostel in brazil this march. he had offered to show me the city and let me stay at his flat for a couple nights. and honestly i was really excited to be staying in a "home" for a couple nights.
his flat is really nice. he lives with his 18 year old brother brother, and the flat is actually owned by his parents who had to move to another city recently for work, but the boys stayed in leipzig to study.
felix showed me my room and then we went on a bike tour of leipzig, a very lively city (due in part to the university's presence, i believe) with a long history and beautiful old town. felix was really an excellent guide... would i know this much about chicago?
we stopped for dinner and made it home just as the rain began. then we made a cake! ha it was really nice to be able to do normal home activities.

today we will go to some museums and then i will help felix and his friend begin their "at-home wine production".