Food is cheap

...especially if you pretend Euros are dollars.

Today's grocery shopping: 17,58E. Included a bottle of gin, a bottle of vermouth ('Wermut'), a box of ice-cream sandwiches, a liter of milk, a whole bunch of produce, and a jar of Nutella knock-off. Crazy:

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And dinner last night. 6,80E. Two dönner kebabs, and two half-liter lagers. One is the original Czech Budweiser (of which the American 'beer' is an imitation) and some Polish beer that ended up being awesome. And, if you want, you can walk down the street without fear drinking your beer without a bag.


(Yes, we are trying to make you jealous. But only because we miss you all and wish you were all here to join us in eating and wandering around the city.)

Naomi's birthday

Today Naomi turned... a day older than yesterday, but in a birthday sort of way. It was a nice day.

We went out to the 'Carnival of Cultures' that was happening in Kreuzberg, along with 700,000 other people (according to the TV in the subway). It was cool, and crowded. So crowded, in fact, that:


('No Place for Nazis')

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Before dinner, we got birthday cocktails at an Indian restaurant.

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And, coming home, the light was amazing - a sunset on one side, and a dark storm on the other. Not a bad metaphor for Berlin. Here's the sunny side:

Marx, Pickles, Soccer, Kant

We live near the famous 'Karl Marx Allee,' supposedly one of the best examples of Socialist Realist architecture (at this point they just look sort of old, and unkept, which is interesting compared to other parts of the city which look brand new even if they are older). And.... here it is:

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We decided we do not like German pickles. Sadly. Senfgurken (the big yellowish things) should be 'mustard pickles,' but we're not sure quite what they are. Any ideas?

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We stumbled upon some sort of soccer event (or as they call it here, 'NFL' event). People were wearing green, others were wearing red, and all of them seemed to be yelling. And drunk. It wasn't clear whether the game had happened already or not, or where it was taking place. But there was a cool church:

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And Colin really liked this street. Probably because of the pavement.

Fernsehturm

A couple days ago, with Mom (Colin's Mom), we went up the TV tower. It was pretty impressive. There's a restaurant on top that rotates 360 degrees every half hour. A little nauseating, but worth it. It is also an impressive piece of 1969, East German architecture (i.e. ugly):


"Who Let the Dogs Out?" -- good question... but who is asking? And why do they need to broadcast it to space?



The tower from a distance:

A couple pictures (more on the way)

Some of the things we've been up to.

zusammen (nicht getrennt)

(i.e. together - not separate)-- This is the beginning of the joint blog:
(Naomi): Yes, I happily made it without problems! So far, we've walked around a bit (yesterday and today were a bit rainy, though), seen some of the city and done a bunch of people watching and eating. For instance, tonight for dessert we had karmalisiert spargel (caramelized asparagus, with strawberries) -- much more delicious than it might sound, in fact. I also got to try something else that sounds un-tasty -- the famous licorice ice cream. I just had a taste, but it was much less gross than i imagined (although not something i would eat regularly), and oddly tasted somewhat like coffee...

Some first observations: It is very weird to see people walking around with beer bottles on the street, at all times of day, very normally. In NY that's something you'd get arrested for, but here it is sanctioned! crazy! (I'm still curious what kind of social effect public drinking has -- so far it doesn't seem like much, except for a woman on the train missing her stop, which she didn't end up being that upset about).

Also, the city is interesting and different from a lot of other European cities I've been to in that the buildings are mostly new (i.e. post-1950-ish, I'm guessing), at least so far, I haven't seen really any "old" buildings. At the same time, they are also very colorful which just makes the city seem fresher and more youthful than, for instance someplace like NYC, even though every surface is highly graffitied...

(Colin) I don't have much to add, because I'm very full of asparagus (we also had some asparagus cream soup - tasty). Naomi got to see the old apartment today, and watch as the last piece of furniture left. I feel validated by her not thinking the lakritz ice-cream was completely disgusting.

Naomi made it here...

without much drama. Her bag didn't make a connection, but the Lufthansa people delivered it to our apartment last night.

The next post will be from both of us.