Having found a more user friendly cafe (but alas, no more user-friendly keyboards for English speakers, so forgive any strange spellings, lack of apostrophes or random oumlaus) I intend to put all the alcohol I just consumed to good use and bang on a bit about Berlin.
This evening Damo mused that all the westernised countries he has been to have the same feel, and by that I think he meant the people and their ways. I can see his point - we are all watching the same TV shows, spending our daily lives with foreigners, eating Italian food (those I-ties sure are making a good show of culinary world domination!) and drinking coca cola. To this end, we arent that different, save the ubiquitous language differences. And even on that front I can see parallels, doubtless due to frenchy-fresian origins of English.
But to notice only the people would be to miss every other point of difference - and for me particularly architecture is what lends a city its unique feel. Berlin is unpretentious and still has a feint friction between socialist and democratic leanings. Despite nearly 20 years passing since the wall came down, there is a certain tension between old and new and this is only highlighted by the busy reconstruction across all of Berlin.
There is indeed a good deal of juxtaposition within architecture, food, cultures and class. East bumps against west and the only cushion is the Tiergarten (which, by the way, beats any inner-city park Ive ever seen). The mood is buoyant despite significant city debt thanks to some impressive mismanagement of welfare. And I suspect that Berlin is almost entirely riding the coat-tails of its tourist dollar right now...
Public protesting is now legalised and a good old afternoon protest is rather popular. Weve seen one every day, but because our German is so bad we have no idea what they are about. I think one was anti-nuke... and the other one looked like something about elections. Finger on the pulse eh?
Food. Oh the food. If I lived here Id be the size of a house because I would only eat bread. Tasty, tasty bread in all its forms - brezel, croissant, pumperknickel, etc etc etc. Also you can imagine that Germans like their meat (fleische) and so Ive taken it upon myself to try all kinds of cured items including sampling multiple currywurst, which is effectively a tasty carb bomb of slop atop a wurst sausage. YUM and kicks ass with bier.
Right Im going to intervene in Damos surfing the net for how to get to the Luftwasse museum. Otherwise he will start making plane and bomb noises which are apparently some form of language that men can communicate in, but not with their wives, who just roll their eyes and wish for another bottle of Dom Perignon.
Cheuss!
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