Berlin!

Back from Berlin, and it was quite a trip. Berlin is a very modern city, very clean, very pretty, lots of new buildings. It's gorgeous, and not at all like Budapest. It was marvelous to see Carlye, and in two weeks she will only be 3-hours away! She has a really nice apartment, in the nice part of West Berlin, and she's only 30 minutes from her school. Berlin's public transit is outstanding. They have 9 subway lines and 9 elevated lines, plus all the trams and buses and such. You can get anywhere in the city in 7 different ways. It's awesome.

Thursday night Carlye and I went out to dinner at a little German place near her apartment, then just hung out and caught up.
Friday we went in to the city. We saw the Reichstag (one of only two Parliament buildings larger than Budapest's), walked through the Tiergarten (at the center of which is a statue that looks a lot like the one in Heroes Square here), through Brandenburg Tor, along the Unter den Linden, to the Gendarmenmarkt ( a beautiful square with a museum in the middle, flanked by two symmetrical churches on either side) and Checkpoint Charlie. We went to a huge, fancy chocolate shop with replicas of the Reichstag, the Titanic, a volcano and Brandenburg Tor in chocolate. We went out to dinner at an East African restaurant (which, true to German form, was not at all spicy), and then went to the Sony Center. It is a huge open square, in between a couple glass buildings, all covered by an expansive glass roof which glows purple and blue alternately. It looks like the future, as Carlye put it. Plus, the Berlin Film Festival was going on, so there were red carpets around, and cameras, and all sorts of glamour and glitz. We saw The Darjeeling Limited at a movie theater in the Sony Center and then rode the train home.
Saturday we went to see the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, a beautiful old building at the convergence of six big streets, which was partially destroyed during WWII. It was left like it was, and a chapel was built next door. The new chapel was built entirely out of small one foot glass cubes, and when you are on the inside, the sun shines through them, and the place glows blue. It's fantastic. We walked down one of the fancier shopping streets (there were three H & M's on this street) and went into the KaDeWe. KaDeWe is one of the largest department stores in Europe, and one of the fanciest, and it has long been a symbol of what West Berlin had that East Berlin didn't. We just stopped in to see it, but it was pretty crazy. 7 floors, with everything you can think of inside. We then went to a cool bookstore, and went home for a bite to eat. Then we went out to Sanatorium 23, a "Mega-Cool" bar, as the guide said. It was on Karl Marx Allee, and was decorated with hospital beds and other such things. It was very fun, with good weissbeir and chips and salsa.
Sunday we woke up early to go to St. Hedwig's Cathedral for mass. It was the first Catholic church in Berlin, built in 1925!! It was one of the only Catholic churches in Berlin, and it was pretty small, despite being the Cathedral. Outside of it is a memorial to the book burnings in 1936, at least I think that is the year. It consists of a 2-foot square piece of glass in the ground. Upon looking through that, you see a vast empty cavern below you, the walls of which are filled with empty bookshelves, capable of holding some 80,000 volumes. We then went out to breakfast at a cafe across from Carlye's school. It was a breakfast brunch, and it was delicious!!!! Then we went out to see the longest remaining stretch of the wall. That was pretty moving, but it was more interesting to me to see where it used to be in other parts. Throughout the city, wherever the wall was, they bricks set into the sidewalks or streets so you can see where it was. After taking a nap, we walked around the Charlottenburg Palace and it's expansive grounds. Finally, we went out for Kaffee & Kuchen at Carlye's favorite cafe. They had no Kuchen left, but we had some cider and tea, and talked for hours.
This morning I came back to Budapest, and while Berlin was amazing, I can honestly say I am happy to be back here, since it sorta feels like home.