Sammertag, and der living is lazy...(plus more hooker-dodging and a little glass-dancing!)

Well, Ian slept through the night, and the next morning, and well into the afternoon. Me, I was just happy to catch some naptime without getting physically or emotionally assaulted, so I also slept the day away. When we finally shook off the sandman, we decided laundry was the first order of business.



Here I am struggling comically to understand der waschingmackerunddrucker. We had a light breaky during the wash, and while I guarded the clothes during the dry, Ian went out in search of some lunch. Turns out, Berlin is the fourth-largest Turkish city, by population, so all he could find was more shwarma. And of course the beer. Have I mentioned how they love beer over here?

Our clothes cleaned, we returned to Rosa Luxembourg Straße to plan out the rest of our itinerary.



Ain't he sweet? We've nailed it down now, and although we sadly won't be staying in the Douglas Adams-themed hostel I'd hoped, we will be staying dangerously close to a forest, and I'm worried my snores might somehow resemble the mating call of the Black Forest Bear, who will be roused from his slumber to maul us all in our sleep. More on that later.

Here's a picture of the "walk" symbol on Berlin traffic lights.



Why is he wearing a hat?

We spent the evening strolling Schöenhauser Allee, enjoyed a bizarre french pizza whose german name I can't recall, and then went back to the hostel to get ready for Sammertagnacht in Berlin. From our room, we could hear the voices of groups of drunken pre-partying Euroteens singing (just the choruses of) such classics as Queen's "We will rock you" and "Hey Hey Baby".

Then we went out clubbing, Mitte-style.



This is der Fernsehturm, a giant TV tower and symbol of Berlin. I'm sure there will be better pictures of this later, but it looked cool at night.




Searching for the perfect night-spot, we came upon this improbably-named street. What are the odds? As we crossed the street, we noticed it had now become:



That's right, Rochstraße. (NB: Sorry about the neckstrain, I am at the mercy of foreign and uncooperative technology. Maybe I'll correct it later.)

Oh, wait, the hooker-dodging. Well, it started in Barcelona, where a young charming American, in the spirit of international goodwill, would smile at attractive females wandering the streets, only to find he had entered into a non-verbal contract which sometimes was only broken with physical removal. By Berlin, we've learned to avoid all eye contact with scantily-clad solo women, although tonight we did witness an altercation between a, well let's just say a lady of the evening, and what appeared to be a local business owner intent on preventing the current transaction from proceeding. Although we don't speak any German, so for all we know it was some sort of marriage ceremony.

We had a several choices in clubland (including a Freak Camp Session of 100% dubstep, and Funk Inc. Summer Camp (big beat, funk, hiphop and disco)), but eventually decided on this place called H2O, which I believe is German for "water", ironic because I came out of there completely dehydrated. Anyways, there's no denying that there's something about rocking out hard to some American hip-hop in a club located under the railroad tracks in formerly Communist East Berlin.



We had quite a start at first when, after paying our 6,50 € cover and receiving our handstamps, the first room we entered had a musclebound black man grinding on a pole, but we soldiered on, and were entertained by the adequate DJ skills of DJ Little Oh & MC Noize (an apt moniker if ever I heard one; why take the music away and rap along? Sure, a long instrumental, you gotta keep the crowd pumped. But do you really think you sound more krunked than Lil Jon?) in the one room, and DJ Merique, who rocked the congabeat, in the other. We got our freak on for a good hour or so, although my sneakers have picked up so much broken glass I can now tap dance. A good time was had by all, but an ill-timed Vodka and Red Bull has left me here at 5 am pounding Beck's and trying to get sleepy.



This picture was taken at 3:41 AM, and already the sky is becoming light. I'm afraid to turn away from this screen now, it will probably be noonish. A scant three hours until the free brakfast, so I'd better lumber upstairs, silently crash around for a bit, and then mash my face into the pillow in an (vain?) attempt to muffle my breaths.