Green Eggs and Spätzle

Last night at the hostel we watched the movie Hostel.

Well, Ian watched it. I watched the first twenty minutes, the parts with all the naked breasts and rampant drug use, but once kids started disappearing I ran away and hid, coming in later only to see horrible bits like eyeball-popping and finger-chopping. Why do people like that stuff?

Anyways, we checked out of the spooky rural hostel and bussed our way back to East Berlin. I know everybody says it, but I was really struck by how West Berlin could really be Beverly Hills or Santa Monica or some other upscale American neighborhood. All the high-end shops and pre-fab architecture did not feel old-world or European at all. And clearly there was a lot of money around. It was strange coming back to Mitte, where you'll see shoddy brickwork and former squats converted into nightclubs.



For those who didn't believe me about the name of the hostel. It's actually one of the nicer we've stayed at, with bright sunny rooms and a delicious breakfast no doubt lovingly prepared by our host, Dirk (and his houseboy, Nino). It's located on a little street just off Oranienburgerstraße, in an area I'm going to go ahead and assume is the gay quarter of Mitte. Why not? There's an abundance of theatres, the local English pub is called The Oscar Wilde (!), and there's just something about the way the waiters look at Ian.

As I may have mentioned before, there's no wifi here, so Ian and I set off for some sightseeing. We began with a light lunch at a corner cafe. I had the boulette, which is a traditional German meatball, served on a bun with waaaaay too much ketchup and mustard. And not the kind of brown, spicy mustard you'd expect to find in Germany, we're talking bright yellow.



So Ian and I went to the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, which was started by this guy in his apartment right after the wall went up. As the stories poured in, he just kept expanding his collection, and now it's full of art inspired by the Wall, historical records and stories of escape attempts, paraphernalia, etc. It's pretty amazing, the lengths people would go to try and escape the East, as well as the lengths the Communist government would go to prevent them. False passports, secret compartments, underground tunnels, homemade hot-air balloons and flying machines, it just went on and on. Fascinating stuff, and well worth the seemingly exorbitant admission charge. Even Ian liked it, although it is rather stuffy and we got stuck behind "another one of these Old Spice guys."



I don't know why I thought I'd get a good exchange rate at this place, but I went in anyways.

After the Mauer (wall) Museum, Ian was feeling a little sleepy (I can't imagine why he has so much trouble getting a full night's sleep) so I continued the sightseeing on my own.



This is the Bundestag, which everybody just calls the Reichstag, even though the Reich has long since been defeated.




In the interest of transparency and openness, they've built a big glass dome on the top of the building, where anyone can go in free of charge and look down on the German Parliament doing their business.



In the dome is this big mirror thingie. It's all full of photovoltaic cells and good stuff like that. I didn't really understand that part of the brochure, I just thought it looked cool.



That little flashpop is me.

For dinner, Ian and I went out for some authentic Swabian (southern German) cuisine at a place called, wait for it, Schwarzwaldsteuben. Ian had the Kässspätzle (sort of a German mac and cheese) and I had the Maltauschen. This is like a ravioli with meat hidden inside. It was invented during the Catholic rule days so that people could secretly eat meat on Fridays by hiding it in pasta. Great, right? As Ian put it, "Take that, useless dogma!"

Checked out Cafe Zapata again, though the biergarten is somewhat less fun in the drizzle, so we went into the Oscar Wilde just in time to hear a cover band of British expats massacre Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out." It was about to, so we went into the other room and tried to figure out what was going on in a UK-Netherlands soccer match, but it was almost as incomprehensible.

Some more wandering around the Oranienburgerstraße, a late-night shwarma from Dada Falafel, and it was back to the hostel to watch Daily Shows and Colbert Reports downloaded onto Ian´s laptop. I know, not that exciting, but we were taking it easy because tomorrow night is our last night in Berlin, and we're going clubbing, rain or shine (schön?)

Incidentally, in wrestling with that shwarma I think I discovered why Hasselhoff loves it over here. It's the land of messy messy sandwiches.