Last Day

My last day in Berlin is coming to a close. Tomorrow morning Petra will deliver me to the airport bright and early to catch my flight home. I’m almost done packing, I just need to get my shampoo and stuff out of the bathroom and find some place to put them. Unfortunately, I seem to have bought a lot of stuff, and my big duffel bag is currently full to bursting. I have no idea where I’m going to put said toiletries, or the clothes I wore today and the pajamas I’m going to wear tonight. I supposed I’ll be stuffing it in the bag and hoping those zippers hold.

I bought enough chocolate alone to feed a small army. Maybe that should have been a clue that I didn’t need so much stuff. There will be a very happy element at the Air Force Academy next weekend, I think.

I wasn’t able to meet up with my friend this afternoon to get some pictures that actually have me in them (remind me to get a cell phone next time I leave the country), but I still managed to get the occasional passer-by to do it for me. Listening for other English-speaking people really helps things out. I now have proof that I haven’t just been hiding in a hole somewhere and making this all up.

See?

I also headed over to Checkpoint Charlie, and got the picture of the sign that I missed the last time I was there.

There are more pictures on Flickr, although I admit I didn’t reach my 1,000 picture target. Looks like I feel 129 pictures short. Maybe I should go to the zoo again.

This picture has an interesting story. Or sad, I supposed, depending.

The woman in turquoise hangs around tourist attractions, asking “Speak English?” If you say yes, she pushes that card in front of your face, which asks for money. I saw her at the Topography of Terror, Checkpoint Charlie, and the S-Bahn station at Alexanderplatz at least 3 times. She keeps at least one child with her, and one time it was actually an older child who was asking tourists if they speak English. What I find interesting is that she seems to be very well-cared for, and the little girl even more so, even though she spends her whole day begging tourists for spare change. I feel bad for the little girl, really.

On a different note, I still have to figure out how I’m going to fit the rest of this stuff in my bag, so I’m going to make an effort to do that. Oh, and dinner’s ready, so I’m going to eat. Sounds like a plan.

So Many Stairs

I went to the top of the Siegessäule today. It’s a big tower in the middle of the Tiergarten, and you can see the whole city to the top. The big lesson I took away was that I won’t be complaining about the 6 flights of stairs to get up to Petra’s flat anymore.

Photos Are Up

Click the Flickr link on the right to view all the photos.

I have 805 photos in the Germany section right now. I’m curious to see if I hit 1,000 by the time I leave on Saturday. I’m also really thankful they’re digital, and not film. I’d be pushing 34 rolls of film already. That would cost about $170 to get processed at Target. Wow.

At some point I should go through all those pictures and find the best ones. There’s something I could do during the 12 or so hours I’ll spend flying on Saturday.

A few tips, before I link to some photos:

Berlin Zoo and Aquarium

I spent a few hours at the zoo today – that was a blast. I had so much fun wandering around by myself, taking pictures of anything that moved. I shot 240 pictures, and have pared that down to 155 that are in focus and not basically the same shot of the same animal in the same position. Follow the links to the right of the post to see my pictures on Flickr.

In many situations, the auto-focus insisted on focusing on the bars or glass between me and my target, so I had to switch to manual focus. If any of the shots are slightly blurry, this is why. Most of them are fine, though. Click for more.

Holocaust Memorial

I went to the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe today, or Holocaust Memorial. I got an audio guide in English, and decided it was an excellent investment. It really helps the exhibit to come alive.

Of course, for an exhibit like that to come alive means I heard some pretty heart-wrenching stories.

This Week

Tonight (Monday) is the Stammtisch, the party at the school for all the students.

Tuesday is a German film, and I’ve been thinking I’ll go to one of the museums I haven’t seen yet that day. I’ll ask Hattie if she wants to come with me. I’d like to see the Musical Instruments Museum, the Jewish Museum, or the German History Museum.

Wednesday is the Holocaust Museum, and I’m definitely interested in seeing that.

Thursday there is a bicycle tour of the middle of the city, or a boat ride on the Spree. The boat ride costs money, but the idea of the bicycle tour reminds me of biking the Golden Gate Bridge, and I just don’t feel a pressing need to repeat that experience. It was great, Mom, but I don’t need to do it again. I think I’ll walk around Mitte and call it a day. Oh, wait, I’ve already done that. Besides, the boat trip sounds really cool.

On Friday the two options aren’t at the same time, so it’s possible to do both. In the afternoon, there is a walking tour around Unter den Linden (which will make up for the bike tour I’m not doing the day before). It looks like it starts at Alexanderplatz and ends at the Brandenburg Gate. That’s actually a little far. I’ll have to rest up the night before. Later in the evening, there will be a pub crawl through Kreuzberg. Now, that sounds fun. I wonder if any of my friends are planning on going to that. I’m sure interested.

The activities on Saturday and Sunday don’t really interest me, so I think I’ll be seeing museums, maybe the zoo, and doing some shopping. I have a list of things that I need to do before I leave, and am planning to make some progress on it this week.

Technology Museum Pictures

A steam engine with all the parts labeled (in German).

Click more for…well…more.

Deutsches Technikmuseum

I went to the German Museum of Technology this afternoon. I took 98 pictures, and have weeded out 19. These were mostly just blurrier versions of other pictures. As I’m reviewing my pictures, I realize that I have a lot of train pictures. A lot. This was the first exhibit I went to, so I think I was a little trigger-happy until I started to get tired and hungry. I have a lot of airplane pictures too, and a few computer pictures. And honestly, that’s about the extent of the selection.

So – trains, planes, and computers. Anyone who knows me and my family shouldn’t see anything out of the ordinary here. Oh, and a couple of pictures of cameras. There was a photography section to the museum.

After the museum, I went to the Science Center. There were a bunch of really cool hands-on exhibits there, but I didn’t take any pictures. I have a few reasons for not doing so. First, most of the exhibits involved things that were moving or were very dark, involving light, so they would have made bad picture material. Second, everything was in German, so there were a fair number of exhibits that I didn’t even know what they were supposed to do. Third, there were so many little kids around that I could barely get involved, and the last thing I need is some parent screaming at me in a language I barely understand because I accidentally took a picture of their kid.

My exporter is giving me problems right now. (Beta software, what can you do.) I’m working on getting my photos uploaded, and when that happens, I’ll put some good ones in my next post.

Photo Attempts

I went out to the Brandenburg Gate again tonight, to try to get some night shots. This was rather difficult, as I don’t have a tripod, and there’s nothing to rest my camera against out in the middle of the square. Only 6 of the pictures I took of the Gate I feel are usable, the rest were just too blurry. However, a couple did turn out pretty well. Click for more info and pictures.

Belated Posting

I suppose I didn’t post all day yesterday, did I? Must have been distracted by my brand new, 700-page book. Fortunately, I’m a very fast reader, and have finished it already. It was excellent, and a perfect end to the series.

Yesterday afternoon, I went to the museum at Checkpoint Charlie. I took a few pictures, and they are all up on Flickr. The lighting was horrible, so a lot of them have a rather orange tint to them. I did what I could with my editing software to remove that, and some of them turned out very nicely.

There was so much information in this museum. I wish it hadn’t been so hot – the temperature was in the 90’s again yesterday (Fahrenheit) and the place had no air conditioning and very few windows open. That’s the kind of place you need a whole afternoon to see. It was very interesting, but also very confusing. I didn’t really figure out that it was arranged by event-based exhibits until it was too late for that to be of any use to me. The beginning of the museum focuses on a few escape attempts (although the real escape part came later) and what some of the political figures were saying at the time. Then you moved into a whole big section on escape attempts, an exhibit on Pablo Picasso, and a few other key things. Fortunately, all the text was printed in German, English, French, and Russian (I think), so there was no need to pay for extra services in English. There is an audio tour available, but I didn’t think it was necessary.

Last night, I decided to stay home (and read), and I haven’t really done much today. In my defense, it’s probably better that I get the book out of the way, so I can concentrate on other things. In my first class, we played a Jeopardy-style game, where we picked the difficulty of the questions and the category and had to give the answer. That was really fun, and my team won. I can understand the language better than I can speak it, and I’m even better when I can see it written. I’m thinking about buying a fiction book in German to strengthen my vocabulary, but I’m not sure if that would just frustrate me. I know very few words, and only one tense, so I wouldn’t know how to figure out what tense is being used. Maybe it should be a kids’ book, and that way it would have a limited vocabulary and few tenses.

It smells like dinner will be soon, and after dinner I think I might go back to the Brandenburg Gate and see if I can get a good twilight shot. I haven’t decided if I want to do something specific, like a museum, this weekend. Hattie’s parents are in town, so she won’t be doing anything like that. I could just sleep in, grab a late brunch somewhere, and spend some more time walking around town. Any suggestions?