Wie sagt man "sunburnt" auf Deutsch?

As I sit listening to the sweet crooning of Max Raabe mixed with the alcohol-fueled laughter of my next-door, German neighbors, out on their balcony, I shall attempt to recall the day's events succintly and with the help of visuals.

So, today was technically only Day 2 of our "History & Culture of Berlin" course, as the first full day we were here--Sunday--was a sort of "Welcome Day." We went on an awesome, day-long tour with Fat Tire Bike Tours, with a very knowledgeable, American guide named Kevin. Kevin's from Pennsylvania, went to Brown University, lived in New York, then moved to Denmark, learned Danish, went to graduate school in Sweden, and has lived in Germany the past two years, working as a tour guide. Anyway, as I said in my first post, I've never considered myself much of a hardcore adventurer. After an accident in second grade, I never rode a bike again, so today during the tour I had two options: skip out on the tour and visit local museums all day, or submit my pride to the forces of The Tandem Bike. I now happily announce that I did the latter, and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it'd be! Kevin was a good "driver," I was an obedient "passenger," and it was really quite a lovely day with, once again, herrrrliches Wetter...and the bad sunburn we all got is proof of it! :)

On the bike tour we passed by several things that Matthew and I had already seen as a result of our first-day adventuring (see previous post), but here is as cumulative of a list as I can recall, in no particular order (see photo album for all pictures):

-der Fernsehturm (TV Tower), of course

-der Reichstag

-der Gendarmenmarkt (the photo at the top of my blog is of this former center of French life in Berlin)

-the headquarters of the Nazi Luftwaffe (air force), now the German federal tax building

-Checkpoint Charlie

-St. Hedwig's, the oldest Catholic church in Berlin

-Humbolt University, one of the best universities in Germany, or at least it was until the Nazi era

-The location of the Nazis' Jewish book burning of 10 Mai 1933

-das Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate)

-der Lustpark (the leisure park), our final stop before returning to the Fat Tire Bike Tours shop

-More of the left-over Wall

-der Tiergarten, previously the hunting grounds of the German royal families; this place is expansive and so, so beautiful...just watch out for die Freikörperkultur (free body culture, AKA: the park-strolling, sun-bathing nudists)...

-die Siegessäule (the victory column), commemorating the Prussian victory in the Danish-Prussian War, and later augmented and ordered by Hitler to be moved down the street.
-Peter Eisenman's memorial to all European victims of the Holocaust--a large monument of thousands of big steel boxes, all different sizes, which has no rules for visiting and no explicit significance; it is up to the visitor to take something away from this memorial. One idea is that its magnitude overwhelms and allows visitors to experience something of the cold, impersonalness and the isolation of the time period. Another idea is that, from far away, the monument (like the War or the Holocaust) doesn't appear to take up much space, to be very complex. But when walking through it, the illusion of simplicity fades to reveal the true confusion and complication of the time and its events.

and, last but not least, and perhaps most interesting to me personally of all the things we saw today,

-Hitler's bunker, which the Soviets tore down and paved a parking lot over; there is a sign marking its location, and there are excavations going on. We weren't actually able to get up close to it, but it was chilling enough to stand sixty feet from it.

Following the first half of the bike tour (which included wayyy more things than I can remember and list here), we stopped at a quaint and renowned Biergarten in the area for, natürlich, eine deutsche Bratwurst on a roll and a beer...or a Radler. After Mittagessen (lunch), we rolled on through the city to do more exploring. It was a long day, and we--er, everyone else, really--biked from 11 AM to about 4 PM. By this point, it had truly become imperative to get sunglasses, so Matthew and I took the tour guide's advice and went to Alexa, an enormous shopping mall, or Einkaufszentrum, just past Alexanderplatz and the S-Bahn station, and looked around for about an hour. Finally, I found the perfect pair, which I've been seeking since Day 1: dark, sleek, German- and/or Eastern-European-looking sunglasses! :D The shades were my first big investment of the trip--well, other than the Internet and cell phone service--so I got a nifty glasses case, too, and am now all set for the days to come. I'm sure the employees at the glasses store could tell we were foreigners, but my trying on of the different pairs and the transaction were all in German, so that was exciting. Other than that occassion, unfortunately, I didn't really speak German today, since we were with an American guide on that tour all afternoon. But tomorrow, I'm determined to make up for what I missed. :)

Following the outing at the mall, my buddy Matthew and I headed back home to our apartments for dinner. He cooks a mean white rice and eggs (which is good, because it's what we may live off of the next six-and-a-half weeks), so we had that for the second night in a row, chatted about our day, schemed future adventures we could embark upon in the Berlin area, and after a couple of hours we called it a day.

It's getting pretty late here, and tomorrow will be a long day with lots of walking--it's Museum Day--so for now, I will say Gute Nacht und mach's gut (good night and take care)!

Thanks for reading!

-Monika