We arrived in Berlin at 5 in the morning. The guy who was in the compartment talked to us and told us to call him up later and we could go get some food or something. We paid 50 cents each to go to the bathroom. We saw the tower of a church with the top blown off from World War II, so we walked over there and looked at the outside of it. It was the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtnis Kirche. Then we ate at Mcdonald's. While we were ordering, something else looked good, so we'd order more. The guy gave me a free fanta. They closed at 6 to re-open at 8. I was so glad Matt bought that Travels in Europe book. We used the map and suggestions the whole day. We walked along a road and were so tired that we stopped in the Tiergarten, the biggest park in Berlin and took a nap on the benches. Then we walked and found a tall statue in the middle of two roads, so we crossed to it and saw all the bullet holes on it from the wartime. Then we looked down the road and saw the Brandenburger Tor, so we walked and walked and walked until we got to it (it was a lot longer than it looked). Wow. We got some cool pics of that, and saw where the wall had been. Then we went over to the Reichstag. What a cool building. We walked along Unter den Linden and found a free museum about Berlin that probably only had people in it because very large under the name it said, "Toiletten". Whoa! Free ones somewhere! Yippy! That's why I went in. Anyway, then we saw Humboldt Universität and the Neue Wache, where an unknown dead soldier is buried and there is a statue of a mother holding her dead son.
Then we saw the library (YAY! VERY GRAND!). Matt had some stomach problems, so we sat for a while in the shade. After that we walked to the Museumsinsel (we decided to skip one museum to go to the Pergamonmuseum). The Pergamonmuseum was SO COOL! At first I was disappointed because the first room just has a lot of models of Greek architecture and art. Then I saw the facade of a real Greek temple, and when we walked through the hall, there was . . . the ISHTAR GATE! THE REAL ONE! Wow! I was so happy. I couldn't wait to tell Tanya. No way! I told Matt about the weird animals that used to be based at the front of it, and I couldn't remember what they were called, and then we walked down the grand walkway and there they were, just as I described them. They are called lammasu. Wow. I also saw a model of the stele of Hammurabi! (Tanya would like that too). The museum was so big that we got tired of walking around and didn't want to go to any more. We saw ancient money (some was just mud squished down with a thumb - they still had thumbprints), and Turkish rugs and a ton more. Outside there were a lot of vendors and I looked for some antique Märchen books. I found three, one of which was a German classic that I remembered from Mr. Brough! It had the story I liked where the kid sucked his thumb, so it got cut off. Then we walked back towards Potsdam and I was so tired of walking I thought I might keel over. Matt carried my backpack and finally I said, "Let's just get on one of these buses." The sun outside while walking scorched us, but the heat of the bus baked us. Did I already mention in my blog that they don't believe in air conditioning? Yikes.
We went back to the Gedächtnis Kirche and saw the inside. There was no organ for me to take a picture of, so we went out and got some food. The lady handed me a roll with a steak inside of it, so I grabbed plates for us, and she freaked out. The other lady came over and put her hand on the plates and glared at me. Okay . . . no free plates for the nasty tables. Good thing I already got the fork and knife, because I had to cut off nasty fatty pieces, and put them onto the nasty tables. Mmmm. Then we were walking past the Gedächtnis Kirche and Matt told me to go into a door, and it turned out some ugly cement building was a church! It was a weird church. It was very dark inside, and it had blue stained glass and a Jesus at the front that was comparable to Emperor's New Groove.
We bought juice at a store and waited for the train. I called Amy and talked to her about getting married (it was about 8:30 there) and she was getting married at 4:20. Sad. I wish I could have been there. She said that the postcard got there, though, on Thursday! Wow, someone was generous! Matt and I figured with the map that we walked about 8 miles! No wonder we were tired! We went too many stations in Hamburg, so we had to go a way that transferred a lot of times. Those trains were CRAPPY! They had old brown seats that I didn't want to touch and mirrors were missing and it just looked really dirty. Then all of a sudden this dude opened the compartment and asked if we wanted anything from the cart. Are you serious? A food cart in this junker? None of the nice trains even had a food cart. The Hogwarts Express . . .
When he went to the next compartment, we heard glass shaking, and I have no idea how he turned around so quickly, but he came hurtling down the hallway and passed us with a scared look on his face. Matt joked that the fat lady in the compartment up had threatened him and he got scared and ran away. When we waited to get off the train, there was lovely stuff on the floor of the WC. On those trains, you had to push the door open yourself. We barely got to a station on time for the next one, but we finally got back to Kiel! Wahoo!