Two posts in one day, it's so exciting! (Don't piddle yourself.) I've uploaded my photos from last weekend in Berlin to my pbase photo album, which is much better suited for housing lots of pictures. The Berlin album can be found here. The trip was incredibly overwhelming, and I felt like Berlin beat me quite handily. I never got a good sense of the city, and perhaps that is because the feeling changes depending on which street corner you're on. There are (at least) 3 cultures in Berlin: East Berlin, West Berlin, and the strange overarching reunification culture of East mixed with West. Plus there's the Berlin nightlife (it's the hotspot in the EU these days, though I was too exhausted at the end of every day to actually go check it out), the enormous Turkish influence (man, those were some delicious Doner Kebaps!), and also the constant reminder of the War. There is construction everywhere, which gives the impression that Berlin itself is still trying to figure out exactly what it wants to be. But the architecture was quite impressive, the Reichstag was staggeringly powerful and beautiful, and I saw some great art (including my first gaze upon an original Brueghel which moved me more that I had expected) and mind-blowing archeological exhibits (including the Gates of Ishtar). Be sure to check out the pictures on the pbase site, but I will also include a few below just to highlight the confusion I felt in Berlin.

First stop in Berlin: Dunkin Donuts. That's right, you heard me. Sweet, delicious, sugary, creamy, Dunkin Donuts. America runs on Dunkin, and Lordy B, so do I.

It was my birthday, so I ate cake (or donuts) at every meal. Shake, shake, get some cake!

Here's some more intriguing German signage. This sign was located right near Checkpoint Charlie. I took a picture of it because I had NO idea what it could possibly mean.

Upon further contemplation, I realized that if you turned the sign upside-down, it was the picture of the East-German soldier jumping over barbed-wire. But why?

We toured an outdoor exhibit located along a portion of the Berlin Wall called Topographies of Terror. I was so exhausted by this point that I wasn't able to take much in, but they did have some incredibly cool maps of Berlin pre-WWII. Or, as the sign said above this particular sign, "Berlin bevor 1920." The Germans pronounce the "v" like an "f" so I suppose that spelling made complete sense to them. I thought of Maria, she would have like all the maps. After all, Berlin is her favorite city ("I should have been born German!" she has said to me more than once), and maps are her favorite pasttime. What is it that Pat Conroy said in The Prince of Tides? "My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call." Maria, vor you.