So I've had quite interesting perspectives of Berlin. In total on my trip in Berlin, I've hung out with a group of early 20s east germans, a group of early 30s west germans, and a group of mexican exchange students. So go figure. My friend Vanessa had a friend in Berlin, Marco, who I met up with and is a radio news anchor, so I got to see all the happenings at the German radio station. They weren't quite ready for an english-speaking American to start giving the news out, but maybe they'll change their minds in time. :)
So in any case, I spent a day hanging out in cafes and pubs with Marco and his friends who live in Berlin but one was actually Hungarian and another was Turkish, so I guess it's just like the US these days that there is a hodgepodge of people from different cultures. We went to a pub called Scotch and Sofa which was cozy and a reggaton guy tried to sell us cds for 7 euros and wouldn't leave until I started speaking Spanish with them and he was so impressed he gave me a cd for free, which surprised the other who had listened to him haggle with them for 15 minutes. It was a lingual victory for me since I had listened to everyone speak German all day and felt like an ignorant idiot as usual and so here my Spanish saved the day!
I ended up rooming with Marco for the next two days, so it was nice being in an actual apartment instead of a hostel. I went to the east gallery and saw the remains of the Berlin Wall and its graffiti, and then I saw the Jewish History Museum which was highly recommended to e. It was really interesting and really well done. It was kind of eerie to walk up to the building and see 5 police guarding it at all times as well as metal detectors. Nonetheless, the history was well-presented and the architecture was really interesting and added to the experience. Hard to describe, but some rooms were very narrow, had halls leading to nowhere, or were just empty to show the void in history when so many jews were killed.
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