Berlin

Late one night in Prague, we went into a gelato shop with our friends, Kate and Matt and their baby Liam. In this shop, we briefly met two Texans. In Berlin, our first morning, we saw these same Texans on the subway platform! What a small world! We got their names - Brett and Will - but we parted ways again. Later in the day, at the Pergammon Museum, we saw them again! So we spent the rest of the day with them. They're believers, who went to Spain for a mission trip and then traveled through a few cities.

We met another friend, Pablo from Colombia, on our walking tour in the morning. He has been traveling alone all summer, so we invited him to hang out with us. We got the famous currywurst and blood sausage and potatoes for lunch together and we loved it.

Our favorite part of the day was a walk down Eberswalder Strasse. It was an incredibly lively and unbelievably hipster area. There were two experimental street bands playing on the sidewalk with large crowds. The kids were dancing on the street, the adults - most with beer or cigarettes in hand - were happily swaying to the music. Behind the crowds were countless vintage stores, busy cafés and a handful of ice cream stands. We listened for a while and then got some ice cream cones and then strolled down the road to a speakeasy.

Berlin has some underground bars that are discovered only by word-of-mouth. Someone told us of a place to visit, so we went :) The address we had belonged to a large, empty kebab shop with only one employee there. We looked around and eventually poked around the back of the kebab place, behind the bathrooms, where we saw a red, British-style phone booth there in the corner. A tiny sign on the door said that no one under 18 years old can enter. Given that I spoke the most German of us all (which is still quite little), I stood in the phone booth, rung the buzzer and awaited the unknown. To make the story short, we were permitted to enter, and sat down in a window-less room, which looked quite like many bars, overpriced cocktails and only three beers available. Nonetheless it was exciting.  Apparently, these exist in many large cities and they can be found through Google ;) Pictures were forbidden inside. But you can see photos of our group and adventures throughout the day.

Gutenacht!