the continuing saga...

Before continuing the Berlin tale, let me first do some 'splainin about my aversion to museums. It's not that I don't appreciate them. Nor that I don't enjoy their contents. I just find them to be too much. One of the best things about living in DC was the access to all of the free Smithsonian museums. Because they were free, you never felt pressured to see everything at one time. And for me, that's the best way to see a museum: a little bit at a time. But back to our story...

When we left off, Jerry and I were sleeping. We slept a long time, skipping the hotel breakfast the next day in order to enjoy a day of really sleeping in. Once we got going, our first stop was (of course) Dunkin Donuts!

We hit this place (not always this particular one) many times while in Berlin. Well, Jerry did. I still don't like coffee, and at this point think there's a pretty good chance I never will :-) One thing that I find interesting is that in Berlin and Germany in general, people who hold jobs that Americans would consider low or working class often have a pretty good command of the English language. Most of the people who worked in the various Dunkin Donuts or snack stands spoke English pretty well!

With the Dunkin Donuts fix taken care of, we made our way to our first real stop of the day: KaDeWe. This is mainland Europe's largest department store and is eight stories high. This entire building is the department store:

The size of a city block, this place was huge! Apparently, Gant is some designer and there were a few areas dedicated to Gant, We thought that was pretty funny! Gant shoes:

Gant clothing:

Gant coats, like many things in this store, were very expensive!

At the very top of the store is a huge cafe, serving delicioius-looking foods and providing a great view of the city. The floor below, however, was the most impressive to me. It was a collection of gourmet and fresh food vendors. From fresh cut meats to huge assortments of cheeses to tea, this floor had everything! There were chocolatiers and seafood counters, wines and bakeries. And most places had seating areas where you could sit and enjoy these fine foods. So far, that is the only place where I've even seen Romano cheese in Germany, a necessary ingredient for making my Nona's sauce!

From KaDeWe, we walked to a train stop and on the way saw some pretty cool sculptures:

The one above is pretty cool because it's a sculpture and a fountain!

We spent a good portion of the afternoon aimlessly wandering around Berlin, finding ourselves in a shopping mall at one point. In Germany, malls are scarce. Generally, small shops are found in pedestrian zones in the centers of towns. And large stores are found in a special industrial part of town. There you'd find stores similar to Home Depot, Wal-Mart, etc. So being in a mall was a somewhat unique experience for us!

On the first evening in Berlin, we had seen a pamphlet for the Komische Oper, which was showing a modern ballet of Alice in Wonderland. It had piqued our interest, so we decided to go to the box office and see if there were tickets available for the evening's performance. Because we had purchased a special train package at the beginning of the trip, we also had coupons books for various places throughout Berlin, including the Komische Oper. So we ended up getting very good ballet seats for under $30 each....not bad! Because we had some time to kill before the performance started at 18:00, we walked to the "World's Best Chocolate Store" which was in the area. And, I must admit, it was a very impressive store. Even more impressive was that, in the face of all that chocolate, we didn't buy anything. We laughed later that night, when we stopped for chocolate at a convenient store on the way back to our hotel. Leave it to us to pass on the best chocolate and instead go for the stuff at the convenient store! Silly giantpantz!

We returned to the thatre for our evening at the ballet. Here's the inside of the theatre:

The theatre was really beautiful and the ballet very unique! If you'd like to see excerpts from it, I encourage you to click here: Alice's Wonderland The performance featured unusual costumes, including a half-naked white rabbit. And Alice was played by several different dancers. It was Jerry's idea to see the ballet, and I'm so glad he suggested it!

The performance started and early and was less than two hours long, so we were out of the theatre by 20:00. Because the night was still young, we decided that it would be the perfect time to finally make our way to the Reichstag glass dome. We were in luck, as the line through security moved fairly quickly (less than half an hour). Soon we found ourselves atop the Reichstag. Here's a night view of the city from the terrace on top of the building, but below the dome. The camera did something funny, but it looks pretty cool:

This is a photo taken of the center of the dome, as we were climbing up the sides:

And here we are at the top:

Since Mexican food was so good the night before, we decided that dinner that night was also going to be Mexican, venturing to a place listed in our coupon book. It was a drizzly night and the place turned out to be a little bit in the middle of nowhere. But it also turned out to be pretty good! Mexican food in Germany is a little bit different from here. My burrito was accompanied by some kind of a wild rice and the side salad was very German. But it was very good and again, I was able to enjoy frozen fruity drinks!

Finally, we called it a day and headed back to the hotel for our last night in Berlin.

Wow...I guess I took pretty good notes about what we did. These are some long entries!! I had intended to write about both Saturday and Sunday in this entry, but I'm exhausted just from Saturday's adventures. So there's still one more installment of the Berlin story to come!