Auf de kaka gehauen

Guten tag faithful readers! I'm writing from beautiful, historic Berlin and classical music is playing in the hostel, so if this post seems more elegant than usual, that's why.

Berlin is awesome, yet so different from Amsterdam. There, we just biked around on every interesting, picturesque street. Here, on the other hand, the city is very spread out, we take the metro everywhere and after 3 days I still feel like I've barely seen anything. So far, my favorite thing about Berlin is seeing the on-going dialectic between the past and present. Everywhere you go, you see evidence of Prussia, Weimar, Third Reich and the GDR, all smashed up together but not exactly in conflict. Areas like Checkpoint Charlie and the death strip are now tourist attractions, and fragments of the Wall are now works of art decorating the city. On the whole, Berlin is incredibly balanced about its past: neither self-abnegating nor glorifying. I haven't been to many places in my life, but this seems like a rare quality.

So here are some highlights from this leg of the journey:
Watching Barack's inauguration over beers and nachos in an American-style diner.
An unbelievably thorough Paul Klee exhibit and a Jeff Koons exhibit that got us all asking the Big Questions about Art.
The East Side Gallery, the longest stretch of fragments of the Wall which artists were commissioned to decorate.
Humboldt University, where Hegel taught and Marx and Einstein both studied.
Markisches Museum, which was built to look like a church but serve as a museum, so that walking through the building is itself an artistic experience. They have incredible art and artifacts from pre-historic, ancient and modern German history, plus a cool exhibit about artificial lighting. There, too, the past and present peacefully coexist.

Outside the Markisches Museum is a tiny park that's home to two brown bears (Berlin loves bears!). Before going there, I asked a man, in my rudimentary but spirited German, where the bears were. He said they were sleeping and I found it very odd that this museum employee would know the bears' nap-schedule. Maybe two hours later, I remembered it was January and realized what he meant: the bears are hibernating. So I'll guess I'll have to come back to Europe in the spring to see Holland's tulips and Germany's bears.

Just one final note about how great our travelling company is. Everyone brings different skills and interests to the mix, and I think we bring out the best in each other. It's also strangely comforting being with other Americans who live in Russia. For one thing, that gives us much more street cred in Europe than just being from the states. But also, it's so funny to see how we've all been Russified, like how we all packed slippers and drink tea every time we come inside. Plus, we all break out, as Lauren said, "shit-eating grins" whenever we hear people speaking Russian on the street. This trip is making me see how very non-Western Russia still is, but I think I'll go back reinvigorated. But I sure will miss Europe's great variety of ethnic cuisine.

Well I guess I'll say auf wiedersehen. Just wanted everyone to know that we're taking care of each other and having quite a laugh. Ciao for now.