Berlin and Barcelona

Wednesday Night: I write this at 11:22 PM, sitting comfortably in the Circus Hostel in Berlin. The last two days have been a pretty good time.

Yesterday, I finally roused Max at 11:30, but it took us awhile to really get going. After that, we walked down Las Ramblas to the coast. We walked around that area for awhile, looking for a restaurant that Max’s guidebook recommended. With a little luck, we found it, and the meal was delicious. The restaurant hit all the key points: in the middle of nowhere relative to the touristy areas of the city, hard to find even when you’re on the right street, packed with locals, and cheap. If a restaurant is like that, you know that you’re going to have an enjoyable meal. Max had some delicious fish, and I had a platter with sausage, pork loin, a fried egg, and some beans. So, so good.

After our meal, we walked over to the Picasso Museum, which traced his development as an artist probably as much as any museum does for any single artist. It had his paintings from when he was a kid. He had skills then too. Max is a really slow museum-goer (he likes to take his sweet time looking at every piece of art, it seems), so that took like 2 hours, even though it wasn’t that huge of a place. We then walked around the Barri Gothic area, but didn’t go in the cathedral. I was/am morally opposed to paying for getting into a church (even though I haven’t held quite true to my principle this semester, I will admit). Jesus wouldn’t approve.

From there, we walked to the hostel, so Max could change. We wanted to go up to Montjuic (=Mount of the Jews; I was disappointed I did not find Rachel Silton and Aaron Gerger on the top), but were nearly talked out of it. We were told that the funicular wouldn’t run at night, and it was a sketchy area. But Rick Steeves says it runs until 10 PM, and we trusted Rick. Rick Steves is a failure; we ended up walking up the whole mountain. In reality, it wasn’t so bad. Good character building, etc. Max got to climb some trees at the top of the hill, and we got to scare ourselves by going into really dark areas in a public park at night after being told it is dangerous. Those experiences are always fun.

After we headed down the Jew hill, we went back to the hostel, because we wanted to meet our new friends from Stanford and Max needed to clean sap off of his hand from his ridiculous climbing activities. We realized that food was an important thing to have, so we walked around the Las Ramblas area in search of a good looking open place. Easier said than done at 11 PM on a Tuesday, even in Barcelona, apparently. We ended up eating fairly well, but our search was worthless: after about 30 minutes, we ate at a place 2 minutes from our hostel. The calamari was delicious and cheap, though.

Back to the hostel to go out in our last night in Spain with our Stanford buddies. We got only one to come with us, and the receptionist at the hostel ended up taking us with her to a club after her shift ended at 1 PM. It was a really relaxing blues/jazz club as opposed to the ridiculous clubs I was whining about last week. A good time was had by all. I was back in the room at about 2:30, but apparently Max didn’t come back until 5 PM. Party party party.

We woke up at 7:30 in the morning to grab our flight to Berlin. After lounging on the internets for awhile while Max took his sweet time, for he doesn’t get hurried too easily. We walked up Las Ramblas to Placa Catalunya to catch the bus to the airport. No problems with the flight, and we were hostel to hostel in less than seven hours. Nice.

Our new hostel is pretty nice. It seems more like a college dorm than a hostel. There are something like 280 beds here, and there is a café and a bar attached. I like it, but it doesn’t have the character as the Barcelona hostel, which was way smaller. Also, it is not was well located. Max and I walked a long, long way to get to the Checkpoint Charlie museum today (excellent museum, by the way. I don’t know exactly what we’re doing tomorrow)

On the way to this museum, we got sidetracked for a long time. Why? There are amazing Christmas markets in Berlin. It seems like they’re at every main area, and they are all huge. Easily the biggest ones I’ve ever seen, all in the same city. Cheap German sausages, hot spice wine, pretzels, Santa… I couldn’t be happier in those markets. We had a blast looking around and watching a group of 12 year old-looking accordion players (about 10 of them, and they were good as a group). However, it got cold, so Berlin wore on me pretty quick once we were out of the Christmas markets. I was freezing and miserable for much of our walking around, but I tried to hide it the best I could. I was thrilled to make it back to the warmth of the hostel. On that note, I think I may run outside to grab some grub.

Berlin Day #2: Technically, since it is 1:24 in the morning on Friday, this is Berlin Day #3, but who’s counting? Last night we went to bed pretty late (3 AM, according to Max). We spent the night chilling in the basement bar of the hostel. I was karaoke night, and Max and I brought down the house (and ended the night) with our version of Piano Man. It was glorious. Anyways, this morning I woke up at 11 AM (I cannot remember the last time that happened… 1st semester last school year, maybe?). I went downstairs and chilled on the internets for about an hour (the wireless internets are not working so hot, that is why I am writing this post in the format I am on Word. I did not want to waste my valuable hardwire computer time on writing blog entries). Max got up at about 12:30, showered, and we went out for breakfast at a place up the road at about 1:45 or 2. How college of us. Anyways, I had a pastry and a badly needed coffee.

After that, we headed down to the Western side of town. We walked around some Christmas market in Potsdamerplatz (I think that’s the name), and then went to this massive department store. Interesting food note: at the Christmas market, we had ½ meter sausages. ½ a meter is pretty freaking long. It was Germany-tastic! We spent a surprisingly long time in this store, KaDeWe, which was apparently a symbol of capitalistic goodness for the poor folks on the East side of the wall for a long time. Some parts are so over the top that there was a 6000 euro bottle of Hennessy there. From there we went to the German Parliament building (Reichstag, I think) and scaled a dome. We then went to the Brandenburg Tower, and got a video of me going “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”. It felt appropriate.

From there we went to a restaurant that Rick Steeves says has the best desserts in all of Europe. It was very classy, reminding me of the Mozart café in Vienna. The Eiscaffee I had (coffee, ice cream, whipped cream) was supurb, and Max enjoyed his first Sacher torte. From there we walked all the way back to Alexanderplatz, where we promptly turned around the headed back to the West side of town, because we wanted to go to this one bar in Max’s guidebook. It said it had cheap food, good beer, and attracted local college students. I figured it was our kind of place, and so it was. Max enjoyed a couple of brews while I ate some chili and good apple strudel. The bar was really smoky, just like the place in the basement of the hostel, so now a good lot of my clothes smell like carcinogen. Totally worth it, though; the place was very relaxing and played classic rock. We were happy. From there, I rode the subway back while Max set out to find some techno club. More power to him, but I am not paying for another damn dance club again, much less one that plays techno. So now I’m waiting for Max to get back, because he forgot to bring his key (Max = super smart, but Max also = super forgetful of small things like that).

I just got the news that I got an A- in my development economics class. That infuriates me: he told me that I got an A+ on my first test, an A on the second, I only got slightly worse on the third than the second, and I did better on a class project. Plus I did extra credit. Something does not compute. The teacher was clearly out of his element when he taught the class, and it’s really bugging me because the guy seems to not know what is going on most of the time. I sent him an email, and I hope to have him change the grade… Arg. I did not go to study abroad to have my GPA go down, dammit. Especially in a class that was easier than some high school classes.